My Book Boyfriend: Ed/Shadow

MBB is a weekly meme hosted over at the Unread Reader where you can post about any literary guy you're currently crushing on. Check out the intro post here!


Edward Phil Skye
-(named after his grandma, Philomena--who left him a collection of Pez dispensers)

-has hair that's "unplanned"

-dropped out of school after Year 10

-worked in a paint store so his single mom could take time and attend nursing school

-loves Vermeer

-his first date with Lucy ended in a broken nose for him


From Lucy's POV

“I can't believe you're still mad at me," Ed says.
"You grabbed my arse."
"You broke my nose."
"You broke his nose?" Jazz asks. "You grabbed her arse?"
"It was two years ago-"
"Two years, four months, and eight days," I tell him.
"-and I was fifteen, and I slipped and she broke my nose."
"Wait a minute. How do you slip onto someone's arse?"Jazz asks.
"I meant slipped up. I slipped up and she broke my nose."
"You're lucky that's all I broke," I say.                  
"You're lucky I didn't call the police."

“Let me meet Poet, too, but mainly Shadow. The guy who paints in the dark. Paints birds trapped on brick walls and people lost in ghost forests. Paints guys with grass growing from their hearts and girls with buzzing lawn mowers. A guy who paints things like that is a guy I could fall for. Really fall for” 

I look over at Ed. He's staring out the window giving Leo the thumbs-down. I wait till he's looking at me, then i give him two fingers up. He gives me two fingers back. I give him the middle finger. He gives it back to me. I don't know any more signs, so I make up one. Three fingers. Take that, mister. He sticks up four. I call your four and raise you five. He skips straight to ten and does something with his thumb that disturbs me. I bounce my hands on my lap. Ed bounces his lap right back.

Ed's quiet for a while longer, then his laugh breezes over me.

"What?"

"Nothing. I was just thinking. You hit me because you wanted Mr. Darcy and I wasn't him."
"You know who Mr. Darcy is?"

"I exist, therefore I know who Mr. Darcy is."  

From Ed's POV

I watched her at school, too. While she was drawing these pictures of people tangled together. I kept dreaming me and her were tangled like that. Kept dreaming of this spot she had on her neck, this tiny country. I wanted to visit, to paint a picture of what I found there, a wall with a road map of her skin.
Mrs J. paired us up for a research assignment on Jeffery Smart and I was watching that spot and she looked up from her book and caught me making travel plans. “What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Only. I was thinking. We should see a film.”

I try to put into words what it feels like to look at that painting, but I can't and that's the point. "Art like that doesn't need words. That painting tells you something by pulling you into it and pushing you out, and you know what it's saying without words being spoken."


Her words are pictures, and I'm painting them on the wall in my head as she talks"

It's funny how two guys can look at the same thing and see it differently. I don't see peace when I look at that bird. I see my future. I hope it's only sleeping.

I pull her hair back and think how I'd like to get closer. You'd have to be a different guy for that to happen, the shadows say. maybe i could be Maybe there's a way I could be a different guy from the one who painted the inside of that caravan. What way? the shadows ask, but I don't have an answer yet.

I should have been straight with her from the start, but it's too late. No wall I can paint can take us back there. And if I only have five minutes left on the roof of the free-love van with her, then I wasn't to spend them talking. Because I'll miss talking to her tomorrow.