Kiss Crush Collide (13 page)

He leans his head back against the seat and laughs as the rain drums against the solid metal of the truck.

“You decided,” he says. A “finally” is kind of implied.

“Yes.”

I lift my hand and swipe my wet hair across my forehead to stop the drips from rolling into my eyes as I nervously ramble on, “And it was difficult.” Counting off on my wrinkled fingers, I run through the choices for him, “Jon—too plain, not you. And Jon Duffy, well, that’s a bit formal for us . . . isn’t it?” I look into his eyes to see if it really is before I continue. Yep, it is. “And Porter, well, you know how that one goes.” He nods because he does know. “And JD.” I sigh and shake my head before quickly saying, “Well, JD sounds like something from
The Dukes of Hazzard
.” His quizzical look keeps me explaining, and I draw an imaginary line with my finger through the rain right above my waist and clarify, “You know, from below the Mason-Dixon line.”

He grins. “Been there,” he says, looking down.

“Yeah, well,” I grab his chin and drag his eyes back to mine, “the North wins.”

He holds his hands up and concedes with a smile, then leans past the green glow of the dash lights and almost disappears for a second when he stretches to grab the latch on the passenger door, letting me in.

Slippery, wet, and shivery, I scramble toward the other side of the truck and stumble and slip on the high step up. I look across the cab, and those intense green eyes melt me like flux as they take in every movement I make, my clinging T-shirt, my plastered shorts, every drenched bit of me. His hand reaches out to steady me, and I slide into the seat, a puddle of rainwater and anticipation.

Duffy busies himself, playing with the heater, turning the dial quickly to set it on blast furnace, adjusting all the slats and vents to point directly at me, while I take a look around at the gray plaid interior of the truck. A collection of shorty pencils lines the foggy crack between the dash and the windshield and a fuzzy gray golf club cover hides the stick shift.

I have a feeling that this might be Big Duff’s truck. It smells exactly like the cologne aisle in the drugstore downtown, woodsy and a little bit cheap, but potent, just like Big Duff. I pull a half-swamped piece of paper from under my left butt cheek and smooth it out with my damp hands. It’s last week’s church bulletin. That and the overflowing ashtray make me think, Yep, it’s got to be.

“Is-Is this—” I stammer because I can’t bring myself to say it, to use the words
Big Duff,
’cause that would make the smoldering guy dropping into reverse next to me Little Duff, which has so many negative implications and is, honestly, too close for comfort to Little Johnson for me. So instead, with a little residual teeth chattering, I ask, “Is this your dad’s truck?”

He flips up the lid on the boxy fake leather console between us, reaches in, and pulls out a handful of thick, supersoft cream-colored paper towels.

“Yep,” he says. He hands them over and shifts into second with the wipers set on high.

I wipe the rain and the last traces of my mascara from my cheeks, leaving dark black smears across the bold gold script running along the edge of the towel,
COMPLIMENTS
OF
HILLPOINT
COUNTRY
CLUB
.

The tobacco-scented heat blasts away as we drive through the empty park, past the high school and the country club, down endless country roads, soaked and stormy, a thick trench of rain rolling out in our wake.

I get the feeling we are going farther tonight than we ever have before. The wipers keep time with the classic rock on Big Duff’s car stereo, the fan heating so high and loud that we can barely talk above it. I rest my head against my window. Rain streaks by on the glass, creeping past my eyes and disappearing behind me, back toward town, where I’m sure someone, maybe everyone, must be looking for me, wondering where I am, worried, knowing that the pool is closed and I should be home by now.

They can always call if they are so desperate. I’m sure my phone is somewhere in the bottom of my soggy backpack. I don’t bother to check it. Instead I let the rain lull me. It dodges and slides along the glass as we drive on, taking with it any guilty thoughts of Shane or my family that linger in my head and I think I could go on like this forever, wrapped in a safe little womb of moving warmness, music, and Porter. Um, I mean, Duffy.

The rain finally stops, dwindling to a heavy mist that clings to everything and leaves the windows so foggy that I have to crack mine open just to see out when Duffy starts to slow down, driving the truck into a clearing somewhere on top of a low, wide hill. He pulls right up to the base of some wooden stairs. I lean out and look up. The stairs wind around and around up the sides of a tall, square wooden tower with four platforms, the top one so high it’s lost in the dark slate sky.

“I want to show you something,” Duffy says as he kills the engine and the lights.

He reaches for my hand, and I slide out of the high truck. He pulls me to him as we dash through the long, wet grass and start to climb the thick plank steps. It crosses my mind that climbing a tall tower in the middle of nowhere just after a thunderstorm is probably not totally safe, but I don’t feel scared with his hand holding mine, pulling me along. Up and up, his work boots clomp on the stairs, setting the pace in the semidarkness. A step behind, I depend on their sound and the trailing swish of the red nylon jacket tied loosely around his waist to lead the way.

I stop short when we get to the very top of the steps and the final platform. I drop his hand. My world is spread out before me, a broad skyline of tall trees and small towns separated by dark, open spaces. How is it possible that I have never seen this before? Never been here? I turn, speechless, wondering at the view from each side of the tower. We can’t be more than a couple of counties over.

“My mom used to bring me up here,” Duffy says as I step up next to him, “when I was little.” He turns toward me with a small smile, his green eyes reflecting back a bright bolt of lightning piercing the sky somewhere behind me.

I watch him closely. This is the first time he has ever mentioned his mother. He’s letting me in, a little bit at a time, first with the truck and now this, and I am not sure what to say. I walk to the edge of the platform and hold tight to the wooden railing. Under my fingers I can feel the scrapes and scratches of initials and other gouged graffiti in the splintery wood.

I lift my face and watch the sky, twinkling with the lights from houses in some places, cloudy and streaking with distant lightning in others. Duffy moves in behind me quietly, close and warm. His hands straddle mine on the railing, his body blocking the wind and rooting me to the spot, breathless. We look out over the patchwork of freshly washed small towns below us. My blood runs hot and quick through my veins, pulsing at my temples and the base of my neck. I lean into him, feel his arms wrap around me tight as he slowly turns me to face him, the air tense and thick between us. He lifts my chin with his hand and then . . . rain, heavy and sudden. Dumping down on us.

Duffy grabs my hand and pulls me across the platform and down one flight of stairs so quickly I don’t even feel the steps under my feet. Panting and laughing, I rush in and kiss him, warm and wet, and we fumble and slip down to the floor, dry as kindling under the shelter of the top platform. There’s no music or soft car seat underneath me, just raw lumber, the sound of rain, and hard, hungry kisses.

I am shivering all over. Duffy stops, leaning up on one elbow, his fingers trailing lightly across my shaky stomach and asks, “Cold?”

Yeah, that’s it, I think as I nod my head, knowing that it’s not, ’cause all those nights with Shane I have never done anything like this. Not even close, really. He reaches behind him and grabs his slippery red jacket. I sit up, and he puts it under me, Porter side down, fleecy white fabric rubbing softly against my bare back as I relax into it. He stretches out, pressing up against the length of my body. It feels as if our friction could spark in the air, and I know what I want to do. The storm presses in around us, silencing our sounds and separating us from the world below as the edges of the sky flare again and again with lightning that reaches down like long fingers, searing into the dark, wet ground.

The morning air slipping through my curtains feels cool against my fingers as I reach up to touch a fluttering hem. The rain outside sounds soft and gentle, a soft beat against the patio and the rooftop. The storm has passed, and it smells like worms.

I roll over, untangling my legs from the duvet and rub my fingers lightly over my scraped shoulder blade, wincing a little. I close my eyes, feeling safe and snug in the tight cotton weave of my tank top, daring myself to drift back to sleep, to dream of Duffy and ignore my pissed-off parents and the inevitable punishment I know is waiting for me below.

“Leah, get your ass down here!” Yorke blares from downstairs. The smell of coffee curls under my door. I am awake.

It wasn’t that late when I got home. Seriously. It just felt late since it had been dark since breakfast, practically.

“Where is she?” I asked as I dropped my soggy backpack onto the floor with a squish.

Yorke and Freddie were seated around the island in our kitchen, elbows on the granite, stools pulled in close, filling little lace sachet bags with confetti. They scooped and filled, handing over the bulging little bags to Roger for tying and stacking. Roger was tying little white bows faster than any man should be able to tie little white bows.

Yorke pointed up at the ceiling, and my eyes trailed along the smooth white plaster, imagining the
shink, shink, shink
of my mother and her bracelets as they made their way down the hall toward her bedroom.

“Shane’s out looking for you,” Yorke said, scooping into the confetti with her eyes trained on me.

“Why?” I asked, acting nonchalant. “I’m here.”

“’Cause your shift is over and you’re supposed to need a ride home,” she said, swirling the sparkles in the bowl with her breath.

“Umm,” I glanced over at the window. “It’s been raining for hours.”

“Really?” Yorke asked, sounding surprised.

“Storming, actually,” I said, and she craned her neck to look out the window at the gray sky and dripping window screens.

Freddie did not look. She knew it was raining, just like she knows everything. Roger seemed too busy getting his fingers around a slippery ribbon to realize we were even talking, let alone notice the weather.

“Oh, right,” Yorke said, “look at that.”

She turned back to me with a hungry glint in her eyes and asked, “Where have you been, then?”

Crap. Caught by my own competitiveness. I shouldn’t have pointed out the weather. I should have sauntered by and escaped to the solitude of my room and the softness of my bed. They might never have even noticed I’d gone missing.

“Yes, Miss Leah,” my mother said as she walked into the kitchen, wearing a bright yellow embroidered tunic and crisp white capri pants. I swear the woman does not wrinkle. A cloud of Chanel No. 5 followed her. “Where have you been?”

I stood, mouth open, not at all prepared for the onslaught. A good excuse or escape plan had never crossed my mind.

I’ve been in trouble before for stuff like being late to dinner or not cleaning up before Silvia, the cleaning lady, was due, but I have never felt the wrath. Not really, not like Yorke has. I looked over at Yorke with pleading eyes—help me. Yorke just smiled and kept filling those little bags. Apparently I was on my own.

“I know you know how to use a telephone,” my mother said as she reached into her purse and pulled out a shiny silver lipstick. “Yet you didn’t call.”

Truth is, I don’t really pay much attention to my cell phone anymore. The one person I want to call doesn’t believe in cell phones. Only drive-bys. But I can’t tell her that.

“Now poor Shane is out looking for you.” She continued, rubbing her newly coraled lips together and dropping the lipstick back into her bag. She glanced at the window. “And it appears to be raining.”

God, does anyone in my family ever look past themselves and maybe out a window or something once in a while? I might get over the fact that they didn’t miss me too much, but how could they miss what might just have been the best storm ever?

“Well?” my mother asked, her foot tapping on the tile, her arms crossed. “I’m waiting.”

“Beg for mercy,” Yorke said.

“Save yourself,” Freddie teased as she handed another sparkling bag to Roger, her fingers glittery.

“Learn to drive,” Roger said baldly as he tied and tossed another filled bag onto the tottering pile.

Yorke swatted at him, halfheartedly. He ducked out of the way and chuckled, annoyingly deep and low.

“I can drive!” I yelled.

“Leah!” my dad bellowed as he walked into the room, freshly shaven, patting at his pockets absentmindedly, looking for his always disappearing set of car keys.

“Pipe down, you three,” my mother said. She dropped her set of keys into my dad’s open hand and swung her bag up onto her shoulder before she turned toward me with a tight face, expecting an answer.

I sucked in my breath and let it all out with a whoosh.

“Yeah, well,” I stalled as I brushed past her, “I was waiting, too, and nobody showed.”

I pulled a stool up next to Yorke and reached for an empty sachet. “I had to beg a ride from Valerie.”

“Who’s Valerie?” Yorke asked. She drew the name out as she said it, stretching the vowels and wrinkling her nose, as if the letters somehow smelled bad.

“A friend.” I lied.

“From the pool,” I added, and Freddie tilted her head at me, her scoop paused above the bowl. Of course she remembered Valerie. Freddie secretly has her eye on anyone with a superhigh IQ.

I cringed, realizing I shouldn’t have added that last bit about the pool. My story would have gone down better without it.

“And the hours between then and now?” my mother asked.

“Studying.” I shook the little bag open. “Summer reading list.”