Barbie World (Baby Doll Series) (7 page)

“Mom, I said I am sorry. We didn’t mean to. It was just Barbie was upset and—”

She turns to me. Her face softening as she pulls me into a hug. “I knew something was up when Dylan was practically barricading me from entering your room last night.” She holds onto me.

I glance up at Dylan who is very interested in a rock under his toe. “I am sorry.” I squeeze my eyes shut.

“I should have listened to my gut and not my heart.” She shoots Dylan a look. What was that for? She holds me out at arm’s length and her soft, brown eyes examine mine. “Why did you leave? You could have told me that you needed to go back to that house,” she says “that” like it is a dirty word.

“I am sorry,” I repeat lamely.

“Barbie, promise me you will never do anything like that again. I have to be able to trust that you are safe.”

I nod my head. It feels heavy on my neck. “I got the closure I needed,” I lie. Closure is the farthest thing I got. If anything, I have more unanswered questions and loose ends that need to be tied up.

She pulls me to her again. “It is okay. I understand that you needed that. I am getting you a cell phone. You need a cell phone,” she says. “Come on, I will make you guys some breakfast.” She pulls me into the house and I pray that Dylan will not notice my legs shaking as I struggle to walk.

Mrs. Knight lets us both off with warnings and a heavy dose of guilt that sits funny with me. Trust. It is never something I needed to earn. It was never something I had. I still don’t. However, Mrs. Knight wrapped it up in a nice little package and gave it to me. It feels like a ticking time bomb so I tuck it away and try to ignore the sound of the clock ticking down the seconds.

I go up to my room and spend the rest of the day trying to catch my breath, but life finds me by sending a person also known as Roxie. I promised her we would go look for jobs today. Since
Dylan has to go in to town, Mrs. Knight insists that he gives me a ride. She is afraid I might lose it again. I wonder how much of last night Dylan told her.

I now sit as far away from him as I can. Not far enough, though, because I want to climb across this center console and feel that feeling again. I want to feel his mouth on mine. I want to spin so fast that the world flies by me in a blur of color and silence.

He clears his throat. “Barbie?” His first word to me in so long and I want to melt. I want to hear him say my name over and over again. I try to pull myself together from this gooey mess he has made me become, so when he looks over at me, I avoid his eyes, or else he will have me completely undone.

Chapter 7.
Dylan

I try not to make it obvious, but I can’t stop staring at her. I would never have thought that it was possible to miss someone so bad and have them so close to you at the same time, but that is exactly how I feel. My chest aches. She is so close that I can touch her and it hurts. The pain is almost unbearable.

She sits right across from me in Katie’s car. Since we fell asleep last night, I never went back to pick Katie up. I know she is mad at me. She didn’t send me one of her million text messages last night or today. Do I care? Isn’t this what I really want? I want to be with Barbie not Katie. I tried to show her how I feel last night. I wanted to erase any bad moment or hurtful words that were ever said between us. It is ironic that I have become the very thing that I accused Barbie of being. A cheat. I know that Katie deserves better, a real boyfriend, but I will keep her until Barbie tells me differently.

Barbie has her bare feet posted up on the dash board. I don’t think Katie would appreciate that her feet are up all over her new car, or the fact she is even riding in it. Katie hates Barbie, I guess now she really has a reason, too.

The windows are open and the warm Alabama wind whips Barbie’s hair around her face as I forget all about Katie. She turns into that angelic girl I love so much. She has haunted me all day and it was all I could do not to think about her every second. The way she looked, the way her body felt undermine. Touching her in places I have never explored before.

Now, she can barely make eye contact with me. All I want her to do is look at me, to say something to me. I will take anything she is willing to give me. I am like a puppy waiting for a treat. As if she heard my thoughts, she glances over at me and I cannot breathe. Then, as quickly as the look comes, she looks away and is gone again, lost to her own thoughts, looking out the window. Leaving me gasping for breath. It is these moments that I long for, the pain that is associated with it is becoming addicting. A cut that I need to feel and, just like a drug, the high is quickly gone, leaving me desperate for the next fix.

“Barbie?” I say her name, needing to feel it on my lips. I wish I knew what is going on inside her head.

“Don’t,” is all she says. It is such a small and simple word yet, it is the word that hurts the most. I cut myself waiting for the next high.

“What happened…What happened between us…” I trail off. How do I tell her last night was beautiful, magical, all I have ever wanted, without sounding like a complete, desperate loser?

“It was a mistake and it can never happen again. There will never be anything between us ever again. We are just friends.” she says shortly.

Just friends. I hate those freaking words, but aren’t they the exact words I used on her? F that shit. I don’t want another friend, I want her. All of her. I can’t just leave well enough alone like I should. It has been so long since we spoke and then, when she finally starts to come around, she clams back up, refusing to let anyone in. Well, I am done with that shit.

I jerk the car off the road and slam it into park. Another action that would piss Katie off, I can hear her complaining now in my head. ”
Dylan my car. Dylan she is a whore. Dylan…
” Dust rolls by the window and I shake the nagging voice from my head, focusing on what I really want.

“What are you trying to say? That what we had didn’t mean anything? That what we had wasn’t—”

She cuts me off, filling in what she thinks I need to hear. “What do you want me to say? That what we had was beyond words? That you made me feel things that I never felt before? That you scared the shit out of me, but at the same time, made me happier than anything or anyone has ever made me feel? That I didn’t know what happiness felt like until I met you?” I can see the walls beginning to crack around her and I know that I am almost in. I am almost back to that guarded place I want to be in so bad, but she quickly rebuilds those walls and shuts me out. “Because I can’t, Dylan. I can’t say that. I can’t risk everything again and I will not. If you were my true friend, you would not ask that of me.” She opens the car door, grabbing her sandals, and climbs out.

Forget that. She is not getting off that easy. I am out of the car, running after her to where she is walking away from me. I am not going to just let her walk out like that. No. I am here. She can’t walk away from me. “Where are you going? You’re just going to run away from this?” I shout, throwing my hands in the air. I am desperate to have her back.

“I am going anywhere you are not,” she throws at me. She looks frazzled, on the brink of breaking down. “When I am around you, you make me lose my head. I don’t have sense when it comes to you. I feel like I am going crazy. So yeah, I am just going to run away,” she shouts at me.

“Barbie, I need you,” I say in a pathetic and desperate attempt to keep her. I cannot let her walk out again, not when I am so close to her. Maybe it is sick and really messed up, but I need her. Like I said, it is an addiction and I have to feed the angry beast growing inside of me. “Barbie. Will you just stop walking?!” I shout, but she keeps walking, so I race to catch up to her.

“Dylan, last night I was drunk and fucked up from the memories. You caught me at a moment of weakness.” A moment of weakness, maybe on the surface, but deep down, there was more. Besides, she was sober when she was with me; I saw it in her eyes. Maybe I took advantage of the situation, but I felt her desire to be with me as badly as I needed to be with her.

“That is bull and you know it. That was not a moment of weakness. You wanted to be with me as badly as I wanted to be with you. That is the truth and that is what you’re running from. The truth. Because, hell, sometimes the truth is scary. It is scaring the hell out of me right now, but I am not running from it.” She doesn’t respond, she just turns and starts to walk way again and like a puppy I follow her.

She holds her shoes in her hand as she walks down the dirt road. Her long, tan legs sticking out of her cut off jean shorts as the red dust snakes up her ankles with each step. I reach out, grabbing her bare arm and I am almost knocked to my ass at the sparks that emit off her skin. I can feel them coursing through my very own veins. We are one. She stops, feeling it, too.

“I can’t lose you again.” I turn her so she is facing me.

For a moment, I can see the beauty of the world around us in her eyes. The deep, rich, red earth that lines the pot hole covered road. Green moss covered trees heavy with the summer heat that umbrella the road. The wind creasing the branches and my own skin, it tugs at her hair that is illuminated by the sun that peaks through the blanketed world we are in. She can feel it, too, because she shuts her eyes against it. Slightly tilting her head towards me, I take her face in my hand, caressing her chin with my thumb. She nestles against my touch and I know she needs me to touch her and it’s all I want to do; to touch her, to reassure her.

I trace the soft petals of her lips with my fingers, she opens her mouth slightly and I let my finger linger on her bottom lip. She barely kisses the tip of my finger and I want to fall to the ground with her here in this magical world we created, to go places we have yet to explore together.

I step closer to her, placing one of my hands on her hip and the other on her neck, pulling her close to me so I can drink her in. She puts her hands on the back of my neck, playing with the curls that form at the base. She is driving me crazy. I can no longer let this scene play out. I need to have her mouth on mine. I need to taste her again. I want to remember what she tastes like. She wouldn’t let me kiss her last night; a mistake I will not allow to happen again. I lean in and she pulls up closer to me, the heat of our breaths dancing together.

“HONK. HONK. HONK.” Mrs. Berry’s white Lincoln Town Car pulls up behind us. Barbie jerks away from me, turning towards the car. Slipping out of my grasp, she runs over to the car and says something to Mrs. Berry before looking back at me. “You never had me to lose.”

She opens the door and gets in the car. I watch them drive off. Mrs. Berry giving me the death stare, shaking her head at me as they pass. She is wrong. I do have everything to lose in this game we are playing because I gave her my heart and it is hers to do with as she likes.

###

I pull into Katie’s circular driveway, but keep the engine running. I should turn around and go find Barbie. Too late, Katie’s mother spots me and gives me a wave. Her mother is following around the gardener, pointing out where to plant the impatiens. She wears a pair of pressed Khaki slacks and a white button up shirt with a black cardigan tied over her shoulders even though the thermometer reads ninety-eight degrees. Just looking at her makes me feel hot and constricted. She looks like an older, harder version of Katie. She would be almost pretty if she would smile, but her face is paralyzed from too much Botox and years of showing no emotion.

“Dylan.” She walks over to me and places her cold, thin hand on my shoulder and kisses me on the check. Friendly, but still informal. A chill runs through me. I am starting to get used to it. I kiss her cheek back because that is what she expects. It is like kissing cold, hard plastic.

“Hi, Mrs. Bloom. Is Katie here?” I know the answer. I just spoke to her a few moments ago on the phone and I have her car so where could she go? However, Mrs. Bloom approves of only a proper southern boy.

“I believe she is upstairs in her room,” she says.

“Okay, thanks.” I pull from her cold grasp and jog to the front door.

This is how things are between her mother and father. Mrs. Bloom greets me with a cold kiss and Mr. Bloom with a pat on the back and the same questions that follow every time. What did I think of last night’s game? How is my mother? And how are those poor orphan children that my good natured parents took in? I don’t know. I don’t watch football. My mother is stressed to the max and snapping at me every time my foot passes Barbie’s bedroom door, like I am going to go in there with my raging teenage hormones and do it with her while my mother frets outside the door. Oh, and the girl I love is torturously close to the point that I can smell her sweetly sugared skin, yet she barely looks at me. So I answer with, the game was great, my mother is great, and the poor orphans are great. This answer appeases everyone and I get to continue to pretend to have a relationship with their spoiled rotten selfish—

“Dylan is that you?” Katie calls from somewhere up stairs.

I walk through the white foyer, trying not to get lost. Katie’s house is huge; it is like a museum with a few carefully selected pieces of art on the walls and sculptures sitting on end tables in various locations around the house. Everything is white—the walls, the tiled floor, the carpeted stairs, the bathroom—everything is white. I kick off my dirty chucks so I don’t track dirt into the rest of the house. Black and white. Just like Katie, I used to be the same way, but now I am changed. I have been forced to grow up and see the world for what it really is. Not everything is as black and white as this perfect house.

I wanted to break up with Katie the moment I saw Barbie at the dance in her butter cream dress, twirling around the dance floor. I knew I loved her more than anything in that moment, but I was a freaking idiot. I let my idiotic pride get in the way of being with her and that was the stupidest thing I have ever done. I was a tool. I hate how I treated Barbie. Why? Because I was scared what others would think. I hate that I was the one to ever make her cry.

I want to make things better between us, I just don’t know how to. How do I earn the girl whose trust I lost back? How do I tell her that I lay awake at night thinking of her, that even though she is so close, I miss her so much? That being away from her makes me ache all over and being close to her makes me ache even more? How do I tell her these things? I was so close to her just a few moments ago. So close to having her back. Having what I wanted, but as close as she was, she was still too far away. I need to do the right thing here. I need to earn her trust back and being with Katie is not helping my cause.

At first, I thought I was doing the right thing by going out with Katie. It makes my mom happy and eases that worry she has that Barbie and I might get it on if I am not with Katie. I don’t want to give my mother a reason to change her mind about having Barbie and Everett with us, either. If being with Katie keeps Barbie with me, then that is what I will do—no matter how messed up it seems. I can’t risk losing her again. I need to know she is safe.

What the hell! I want to scream or punch something. I need to get it together and go upstairs in order to pretend to be the boyfriend Katie wants me to be. But how? How can I when I am sporting a boner for another girl?

I grip on to the banister and lean over, trying to think about anything other than the way Barbie’s ass looked as she walked away, the way her shorts were cut almost too short, but not short enough. I am jealous of that damn fringe, the way it caressed her soft caramel skin. The way she smells so damn good, it swims around my head making everything foggy. Come on, Dylan, get it together. Don’t think about how the strap of her tank top fell off her shoulder exposing the bare skin. Or how it would feel to kiss that spot where her shoulder and neck meet again or how her skin tastes—

Urgh! Get it together. Baseball. Mom. Third. Zombies. Third’s mom. Yep, that did it.

I stand up and take the stairs three at a time. By the time I reach the landing, I am a little bit winded. The latest pop song seeps out of the bottom of Katie’s bedroom door making me want to turn around, run, go back to Barbie and make her listen. I don’t want to care about the casualties. Before I can think about skipping out any further, the door opens and Katie stands there with her hair in a low pony tail and a scowl on her face. She is pissed.