Drowning in You (4 page)

Dexter couldn’t have done
it.

Well, I dunno. Maybe. However,
any guy with those crafted muscles, hair that flicks off his
eyebrows, that sexy eyebrow ring just below, and that damn V-line
is a saint. That’s a V-Line to O-heaven, if you get me, Charlee.
Heh, heh. ;)

And
then,
But you know this all better than me
so why are you asking,
Rosa
replies.
Something happen?

Dexter is even hotter, taller,
stronger in my arms than I imagined. That’s what I feel like
saying, but things of that weight are simply too hard to type in a
message.

A guy can be
hot and still do evil, unspeakable things,
I type.

I don’t know why I say it. It’s
not what I believe about Dexter, but as long as Rosa is on one
side, I need to make that clear. Play the Devil’s advocate. I only
speak my mind to Rosa. Anyone else and I would have just
agreed.

Really, Charlee.

Dad wants to
die,
I say.

You don’t know that. Your
father would not want to die.

He said it, Rosa.

She doesn’t reply and so I
stand up and walk back to the pool house to see what Darcy’s up to.
He’s standing at the edge of the pool, toes curled over the edge
and his hands straight out, level with his shoulders. He pushes up
and flips in the air, his jump so perfect that he only makes a tiny
ripple in the water.

I grab the towel from the deck
chair and tuck it around my hips.

Do you want to
know the worst bit?
I
type
.

I’m sorry…about your father. I
don’t think he actually said that.

Noo!
I reply in between messages but she doesn’t
notice.

I didn’t mean Dad. I want her
to please stop talking about death because it’s starting to sound
peaceful, easy, right.

I think he’s preparing you. In
case, you know?

Rosa, I meant Dexter! The worst
bit about him…

And now I want to take back the
last two minutes and never mention anything. I can’t tell this to
her.

What is it? Don’t tell me he’s
guilty?

Nothing like that.

I type the letter “I” three
times before I know I can’t say, “I still like him.” What type of
person does that make me? Intentional or not, he killed my mom, and
if my dad sticks to his agenda, Dexter will have killed him,
too.

So, what? I have feelings for
my parents’ killer.

I run to the bathroom near the
pool house, hearing my cell pinging with notifications from Rosa
but I drop that on the way because I can’t stand imagining all the
things she’s saying to me. This house is so cold now and the wind I
create as I dart for the shower sends chills over my skin. They
settle on my bones and I’m shaking again. I turn the water on full
hot. Steam curls and climbs up the glass walls. I lock the door,
step out of my suit and let the water burn my skin.

When I rub water from my eyes,
I notice the steam has clung to the roof, curling and slipping
through cracks—the door strip, the window, the cabinets. Trying to
be anywhere but this hot, hot room with me in it.

Heck, I want to escape me,
too.

Rosa. She’s
one of the few people in my life who would kill to be here with me,
and I’d kill to be anywhere
but
here. Guilt pushes down on my shoulders until I
slide down the shower wall, the glass screeching as my back sticks
to it.

When everything finally feels
warm and my skin feels like it’s slipping off my bones, I dry, wrap
the towel around my body and tuck it under my armpit.

Where did I leave my phone? I
find it on the floor, just outside the door.

I don’t want
to check it because a niggling feeling inside tells me something
bad is on this phone. Rosa has sent me a bad, bad reply and so now
I want to check because I can’t stand any more
what ifs
and…and I gasp.

Of all the possible replies—you
like him? You fucked him already? He asked you out?

It’s none of those. It’s two
words.

Read this.

I don’t “read this” yet. I
decide to change before I do what she says, so I slip on a low-cut
tank top and a mini skirt, and then see my reflection and slip into
some loose pants and a T-shirt. I look for my gray socks to match
my gray T-shirt and they take forever to find.

I put on each one slowly.

I want to be hungry but can’t
force anything down, so I empty the dishwasher, and then I’m still
not hungry, and Nana has done a fair job at cleaning the kitchen so
I can’t do much else.

I curl up on the sofa with my
feet under my bum, and open the link Rosa sent me. It’s about the
ski accident. After all the coverage, how haven’t I read this
article yet? But I suppose I haven’t watched TV or read the news
online or in the papers for three weeks now. I gave up because I
could make myself feel a whole lot better than the fantastical,
unbelievable stories made me feel.

But this is horrible. This
story is every one of those articles and news reports and stares
from strangers all at once because the first line of the article
says:

“
Dexter
Hollingworth, operating the lift at Mason’s Ski Resort on the day
of the fatal accident, has now been reported as a drug addict who
frequently has episodes of ‘zoning out’, reveals a
source.”

Hours ago. I was there, and I
saw it. Him gripping the passenger-side door where Darcy was—I
should have kept Darcy away!—as if he was going to lose it if he
didn’t have something solid to keep him up. How he was leaning into
my face the whole time, the acidic scent on his breath.

When I caught his arms I saw
symbols running up the inside of one forearm and a forest
intertwined with what seemed to be a thorned heart on the other.
How far did his tattoos run? Then there was the bar from his
eyebrow ring making me want to see what it felt like under his
skin.

And now I know it for
certain.

I’m the most despicable person
alive because I’ve never been more attracted to anyone than I am to
the druggie who ruined my family.

4. Want, Wish

Dexter

That blonde hair again. I see
it when she grips Darcy’s shoulder and skulks out of the hospital’s
revolving entrance. I shouldn’t, but I text my mom and say
something’s come up, can’t meet.

I follow. I duck and slip the
hoodie over my head and shove my hands in my pockets. The slouch in
her shoulders causes me to stiffen and anger ripples down my neck
and builds in my knuckles.

Because I did this.

Because I tore her family
apart.

So why am I following her? Do I
need her to think I’m a stalker? Before they were all dropped, I
had enough charges from the accident on my head and that’s as close
as I’d like to be to trouble again.

None of that matters when I
watch Darcy get his fingers into her tummy, hips, underarms. That
boy is all she has left. Even from here, I hear Charlee growl a
lethargic sound that seems like she can’t be bothered to laugh or
even chide her brother, and it’s so real, so packed with hurt and
beaten spirit that I call out, “Hey, Charz!”

I’ve done the wrong thing. Her
eyes are scornful but she shrugs off that hateful look and turns in
the other direction. She was either going the wrong way all that
time or she’d rather wing it and try some other route that doesn’t
involve me.

“
Charz!” And
that’s me calling, making myself look like an even bigger dick when
I didn’t need to look more pathetic. But I can’t help it. I can’t
stop myself. I pick up my pace and sort of half-run closer to them.
Darcy has stopped and turned to look at me. I can tell Charlee
would rather keep on walking, but she won’t leave her brother,
either.

“
Hey. Dex,”
she replies, not looking at me.

I eye a paved retaining wall
littered with dying, cracked leaves. I sit on the edge, careful not
to sit on the leaves and snap them off, crumble what’s left of
their lives. Darcy jogs up and shakes my hand, saying, “Hi, dude!”
and I tell him things aren’t bad and he seems satisfied.

On a whim, I ask Darcy how
things are with Walter so I won’t have to watch Charlee coming this
way. I’d rather not see her now. She’s a poisonous animal in my
world—the type of animal who rocks bright colors and is utterly
irresistible to other wildlife until the prey gets cocky and wants
that stunning animal for itself and then dies from her poison.

She sets her bum down first
next to Darcy then slides her weight onto her propped hands. My
palms are sweating, so I rub them down my jeans. It’s such a
giveaway.

Nudging her shoulder, I grin
and say, “You camping in there or something?”

“
No, of cour—”
Charlee stops herself when she gets I’m kidding.

Her cheeks are red and I’m not
sure if she was flustered before she sat, her slim legs next to me,
her boobs rubbing at the lining of her top. Now I’m rubbing down my
pants again and my heart is pounding.

“
I’m joking,
relax,” I say, laughing it off.

“
You wanted to
know how Dad was?” Darcy asks. I nod, kicking my mind and body and
everything I am that my badly timed question is coming up now with
Charlee and me sitting here together.

“
Well, Charlee
said he was getting better and that soon he’d be doing a ton of
stuff like playing with me but…”

I tear my gaze off Charlee’s
leg and look at Darcy’s head hanging down. His heel bashes the wall
behind his legs.

“
But he’s
not,” he says.

Charlee is looking at him and I
can tell she understands him, even if she doesn’t like his choice
of words. Then she meets my eyes. We share a look again, and her
skin is so touchable, but I’d rather stay like this until I could
map out the way her hair kicks out at the ends, or describe her
lips from memory.

Her eyes move to her lap and
then she sends a quick, gentle smile to Darcy, but they return to
me. Once, twice and the third time confirms I could have her. We
could be something, one day. And I could sink into her company, her
comfort.

Her comfort would numb so much
shit in my life, which is why I need to remember not to flirt. I
need to remember what a piece of lowlife crap I am. Knowing I’ve
killed someone and getting a reward—Charlee as mine—is plain
wrong.

“
So…” Darcy
begins. The emphasis on the “O” and how he drags it out tells me
he’s going to ask a really horrible question, that it doesn’t
matter if I’m cleared because the talk around town says I’m— “So
are you two like boyfriend-girlfriend or something?”

Charlee splutters and when I
pat her back her muscles tighten at my touch, so I release her so
she can cough up whatever went down wrong. When my hand is cold and
empty, I realize it’s too late to remember what her skin felt like
on mine.

“
No, Darce!”
Her voice is strong. You’d never know she just coughed her lungs
up. “You’re so ridiculous. I don’t even know this guy. I don’t
even…”

“
Yeah, bud,” I
throw in, lying as badly as she does. “Charz and I don’t really
know each other. We just went to the same school.”

“
Charz?” she
says, a look on her face.

“
Yeah.
Charz
,” I say. That look
she’s given me is imbedded in my mind. “Charz” is stuck whether she
likes it or not.

“
Hmf.” She
wipes away her smile with a flick of that long hair. “No one’s ever
called me that.”

We say goodbye about ten
seconds or three minutes later, after the longest silence in
history. Their bodies shrink along the path down to the corner
where they’ll disappear.

But as I watch, Charz turns and
says something to Darcy before she jogs back to me. She catches her
breath, her hair full of air.

“
I do know
you, Dexter Hollingworth.”

Shock from those words makes
them so alien, so far from what I was expecting or from what I can
grasp at this moment. I don’t know this Charlee. I tilt my head,
trying to process what she wants. There’s a flicker of that sweet
candy perfume but the wind carries that off and stiff eyebrows and
a hand clutching her hip replace it. This pose is possibly the
scariest thing because it’s turned her sexiness into that poisonous
animal again, and she’s bright red from anger, I suppose, and I’m
unaware—the prey about to be eaten.

“
I
do
know you, Dexter.” She
steps in closer. Here, with her nose an inch from mine and anger
flaring from her nostrils…it reminds me of Dad. I sink back into my
heels, though, and don’t straighten up to stand taller, or tense my
shoulders. She
isn’t
Dad.

“
I know what
type of person you are, know what state you were in when you let my
mother die. And you should know you’re…you’re…” She squeezes her
eyes shut and tips her head to the sky. She’s about to explode and
shower me in the worst type of rain that’ll haunt me for
nights.

But she doesn’t. Charz shakes
out her neck and shoulders, calls to Darcy, and slips around the
corner.

I whip out my cell to call my
buddy, Elliot, to see if he wants to do anything in the world to
keep my mind busy and he says, sure.

“
I’ll be there
in twenty minutes.”

Wishing can be bittersweet
because on the way home I remember her windblown hair when she came
back to me, and her teeth close enough to me behind those sweet
lips to rip my head off.