Drowning in You (21 page)

“
You like The
Crooked Shelf?” I ask, nodding at the cup.

Darcy looks at what he’s
holding and seems surprised. “Do you want some?”

“
Nah,
buddy.”

“
I’ve been
there a while ago. Mommy and Charlee used to take me. It was our
place but now Mommy’s gone and I can’t go anymore.”

“
Has your
sister been going there just recently?”

Darcy nods. “Yup!” He slurps at
his milkshake again, without asking me if I want something, without
noticing I’m balling my fists at my side, without seeing my face
hot and red, without hearing my teeth grinding together.

“
So, just in
the last couple of weeks she’s been going back?” I find myself
asking.

“
Oh, yeah. She
doesn’t come back with food for me which sucks bad but today she
got me a milkshake!”

Why does
everything have to be exclaimed!?
“She
doesn’t take you, huh? Just goes and comes back without
anything.”

“
How did you
know?”

I make a “never mind” gesture
with my hand, because I can’t say anything. He resumes his game,
forcing me to shatter my stick figure into poles, plunge him over
cliff faces, and crumble him into oncoming cars. It’s all I can do.
He lives for fifteen seconds by my last game.

My phone
buzzes from inside my pocket. It’s Raych.
Fuck
.

Sure enough,
she says,
Hey babe. What are you doing
tonight?

Busy,
I reply and pick up my game again.

She’s bipolar, I swear. She may
not remember trying to make me fuck her at my work, but I do. At
fourteen seconds into the game my phone buzzes and knowing it’s
Raych makes me lose my focus. My stick figure dies ten milliseconds
short of fifteen seconds.

I’ll just come to you.

I’m busy.

“
Is that
your
girl
friend?”
Darcy says, exaggerating the “girl” in girlfriend as kids his age
always do, as if I should be embarrassed by that.

“
Dude,” I
ruffle up his hair. “I’ll tell everyone at your school
you
have a girlfriend.
Whatcha think about that?”

He begs me not to and I give in
when the kid looks desperate.

Fuck your ‘busy’ Dex. I know
you’re fucking that blonde-haired bimbo right now.

Five seconds
later she continues,
So say hi from me and
that she can’t suck your cock like I can.

I crush my fist around my
phone, telling myself to breathe, that it’s okay to let go, that I
have to anyway because I’m not a May. I can’t break phones and
iPads and cars and buy new ones whenever I feel like it.

I’m not doing this. Leave me
alone.

No, we’re going to talk about
this now! Tell me what you’re thinking. You’ve already moved on,
haven’t you?

Please. There’s no “us” to move
on from. You were the one who said being friends was what you
wanted. Just been busy.

I storm out of the room,
replying to Darcy’s confused tone that I’ll be back.

I will be back—I’m not gonna
leave that kid—but right now?

Crack, crack,
crack.
My knuckles bleed when I shake out
my fist. Even expensive bricks hurt like a motherfucker.

“
Fuuuck,” I
whisper to myself, cradling my hand, then thinking better and
shaking my fingers out. I alternate like this for a bit, walking in
circles.

“
Dex?” Charz
says in a wary tone as she heads for the door.

There’s no fucking way she’s
getting inside that house without explaining what she’s done with
Elliot. I block my hand across the door. She halts, gives a look,
and turns to me.

“
I really
think you need space,” she says.

“
I do need
space but you’ve fucked everything up anyway.”

I regret the
harsh words the second they’re out of my mouth. Part of me knows
this isn’t fair since I haven’t asked her to be my girlfriend, but
does that matter?
Does that matter?
Not now.

She gasps, and steps back,
tripping. I catch her arm, which reminds me of the first time we
met in the rain, by her car, when I was having a hypo and she
caught me and stopped me from falling. At least I’m honest with
girls. They know what to expect with me.

But remembering how beautiful
Charz was with her hair down, and when she tucked one side away
behind her ear to reveal that smile at one edge of her mouth—the
way she looked at me. It turns my world upside down.

I let go of her arm. I don’t
want to think or speak or anything.

Charz just needs to tell me
she’s not with my best bud, Elliot.

“
Thank you.”
She clears her throat. “I’ll let you, err, calm down. Can I make
you a tea or coffee inside?”

I grab her
shoulder roughly, thrusting her against the wall. The way her body
melts at my touch, how she lets me handle her, the way she bites
her lip as she sticks to the wall with her legs just separated,
waiting for me without knowing how much this makes me want to take
her right here—she steals my words. I don’t need much strength to
keep her here like this, but my body seems to react to how she
knows I could hold her down, against the front of the bricks and
she’d
want
me to
hold her down. That’s the look she gives me.

She stares at
my arms, so I look down too, and it is shocking under the light
beam. My veins pop from inside my elbow and run down my forearm.
The tattoos are distorted, stretched over the skin and muscles.
Charz reaches out and I don’t want her to touch me but at the same
moment I
do
, which
is why I end up allowing her to touch my eyebrow piercing with her
finger to feel the bar under my skin.

I mumble to myself and look
away, letting her go, and she arcs against the wall, her curves
marked by shadows under the porch light.

I pace the porch once, twice,
glaring at her and doing another round before storming back into
her space. She does that half smile again and leans in toward
me.

Pressing two fingers to her
lips I push her away despite her sweet candy scent breaking my
walls apart, and ask, “Are you with him?”

Charz doesn’t ask who. She also
doesn’t say no.

19. Loving and Losing

Charlee

To say Dex looks hurt is both
shocking, and an understatement. Dex is the perfect actor when he’s
around me. He could tell me he won a million dollars in the lotto
and I’d believe it just because Dex has a customizable poker face
at his beck and call.

I’ve obviously discovered the
tick that gives away his game. Dex isn’t the guy who plays girls
how I thought he did. Which makes my heart shiver. His two fingers
dropped from my lips the moment I don’t answer. Of course I want to
jump him and say I am his, but that isn’t sensible or right given
the situation with my parents and Elliot.

Or that both yes and no never
seem to work with us.

Shaking my head, I work
something out. “Wait, you know Elliot?”

“
Elliot
Sanders? Er, he’s my best bud.”

You know there’s this gaping
space between us, and if I leaned forward I’d grab Dex’s shirt
without ever touching him. You know there’s a three-inch-thick
glass wall separating us.

Now we know, too.

“
But I’m not
with him,” I say, finally answering his original
question.

That “Dex” poker face doesn’t
go back up. My lips still burn with the memory of his fingers on
them. And for once, all this skin-deep attraction to each other
makes sense. Wasn’t that what it was before? Two strangers who
thought each other attractive?

It doesn’t feel like that
anymore.

I get how people call their
partners their soul mates now. It’s because you can’t explain why
you love someone. Why would anyone want to risk their sanity and
secrets with someone who fights with them daily and annoys them
beyond the capability of any other person on the planet? It’s
because finding your soul mate, your love, isn’t a choice and when
you know it, it’s already happened. You’re linked.

Expressionless once again, Dex
says, “Took a while.”

In the spur of the moment, I
cross the distance and smash my lips to his. He paws at my hips
with his huge hands, grabbing the skin under my tank top, but still
not touching what he seems to need—or perhaps just not enough of
it.

Our lips move together, tongues
lashing at each other’s. I don’t relent and neither does he,
pulling me tight against his crotch, and moaning softly into my
mouth. I can’t breathe with him holding me so close, one hand
cupping the back of my head and the other clenching my waist,
massaging my skin, burning me with his touch.

Realizing we’re under the porch
light by my front door, I shuffle us backward. He follows my lead.
We move with his lips still hungry against mine, now both of us
suddenly struggling to breathe. I rasp what sounds like a noise of
pain and he grunts into my mouth, holding us together, chest and
pelvis, until we tumble onto a wooden bench, whose tie-up cushions
break our fall.

I lift one leg and curl it
around him so I’m straddling his front. He starts framing my waist,
but in a flash his huge hands circle my breasts, moving in a
kneading motion until Dexter grunts and reaches into my bra to—

Oh. My. God. Is this what it
feels like having a man touch you? I don’t think I’ve actually ever
been touched before. Not if this has always felt like tickling and
Dex’s fingers instantly dampen my panties.

His fingers
trace up until he finds my nipple and alternates between a soft
pinch and vibrating his finger over the tip. My body trembles,
though I am embarrassed to the highest heavens and back for looking
so silly, and a very O-sounding noise escapes my lips. I’m already
wet between my legs and my nails are imbedded in poor Dex’s back,
which I’ve only just realized,
way
after I lost control of my body.

He sucks at my lip until I pull
back too far and it pops from his mouth.

Sweet Lord!

“
My dad is in
serious need of a load of cash and it seems like he’s been stalking
your parents for years,” he says too fast, his eyes
shut.

I repeat what I think he said
in my mind, and the words in the sentence only make sense once I
do.

Why does he have to do this?
It’s not the shocking things he says, but it’s as if he knows how
much they hurt at certain times and that’s why he says them when he
does. He always does this once we get too close.

I’m suddenly aware of the
pressure I’m sitting on. The first time he is hard against me will
now forever be remembered as the moment I hate Dexter Hollingworth.
Why would his dad do this? Lisa is one of Dad’s nurses. I’m in love
with Dex. This doesn’t make sense.

Dex
matter-of-factly lifts me off his body, just puts me down next to
him. We sit in a silence choked with tension.
He’s joking,
I think.
He’s pulling some kind of fast one on me.
That has to be the answer, so I grin to myself and
nudge Dex’s shoulder. “You’re such a good actor!” I say, pinching
his chin and turning his face towards me. “Look at you. You haven’t
blinked, or broken into a smile, or done that thing where you mess
up your hair when you’re nervous. Nothing.”

I give his lips a peck, which
feels so odd, because it’s the type of thing boyfriends and
girlfriends do, and we’re nothing at all. “I’m impressed.”

“
Dad,” Dex
says, glaring at me without flinching, “has been having
conversations with his old gang about plans to steal money from
Walter’s account. He even has a bank statement with your dad’s
details. I am absolutely not kidding.”

Dex hangs his head after this,
running a hand through his dark hair. If he’s thinking about the
joke I made about his habit at all, he isn’t showing it. When he
takes his hand from his head, it’s shaking. His face is pale.

I stagger to my feet and
backwards. “You’re kidding.” I’m not asking him; I’m telling
him.

“
He needs a
ton of money to get him out of a motherload of a mess.”

I want to yell at him that he’s
lying, but I keep my mouth closed instead and shake my head.

Dex storms
over to me. For the first time I’m scared of him. Even more scared
than the night a car followed Rosa and I down a dark street at
three in the morning, after we’d left a nightclub looking for a cab
home. If Dex’s dad is anything like him, I should run. I should end
my fantasies and take Darcy somewhere where the season isn’t the
same as this one, somewhere
that
far.

“
Why won’t you
fu—” Dex shocks himself, and tries again. “Why won’t you believe
me?”

Inside Dex’s grip, my fingers
are beginning to tingle and lose feeling. My pulse is pumping like
it does when I touch the wall after a race but my mouth doesn’t
open for air. Good use I am.

“
Why didn’t
you tell me earlier?”
Oh, that’s right, he
did try. At the pool house. But I shut him down.

“
I didn’t know
what he was going to do for sure, and it’s not the type of thing
you dial the cops about. ‘Just had a feeling, sir.’ My dad has
documented a lot. It’s not all locked away, so we can find a way to
get in without him noticing.”