by Tiffany Sala
I almost wished I’d agreed to try bringing myself into his group. If Callie could forgive me the sin of caring about her, she was the best person to give me advice on how to handle someone in Steven’s league… but considering how things had turned out with her, maybe that wasn’t my best-ever idea.
Well, I wasn’t going to change my mind now. Over lunchtime, instead of tempting myself into doing something that might just start another round of trouble with Steven, I hid in the library with some homework. Of course, I’d never been good at concentrating on work at school at the best of times when it always felt like someone might be just about to creep up on me, and I soon closed my book and wandered over to the one nearby window positioned so you could see out of it.
I’d never realised before, but that window looked out on the sports fields, where people like Steven spent their breaks. And as I thought of his name, before I could do anything to stop myself, my eyes located him on the field, jumping for an impossibly high football. I couldn’t help staring at the play of his muscles under his shirt as he brought the ball close to his chest, landing almost with dancing grace. I knew just how strong he was, how much force he could bring to bear if he needed to. It was the last thing I should be doing, but it made me wonder what it would be like if he was bringing all that strength down on me when he wasn’t angry. If—
What I was thinking was completely messed-up. I knew what Mum would say: it was a product of the forgotten traumas of my childhood—and I wouldn’t have been completely confident in telling her she was wrong either. Although, considering everything that had happened with Callie, maybe it would turn out we were all just exercising poor judgement because of the stress of being so close to finishing school.
Steven came up alongside another guy who I recognised from that distance because he’d been imprinted on my memory after recent events: Tyrell. It just figured they knew one another well—
Tyrell staggered as Steven rammed him hard in the side. I wasn’t an expert at guy social interactions, but it seemed a bit rough by usual kick-a-ball-around standards. Tyrell appeared to be laughing it off, coming back around to jostle with him—and then Steven’s next strike sent him rolling. Tyrell turned right over and landed on his feet, and didn’t come at Steven again.
I kept staring, but my mind was a long way away. That had to have been a point Steven was making with Tyrell, and I was related to the most recent encounter he’d had with Tyrell to need to make a point. I didn’t want my mind to be going in the direction it was going… but I didn’t seem to be able to help it.
By the time I was able to focus on the actual activities outside again, Steven and Tyrell were running together, exchanging a ball in perfect synchronisation like they hadn’t fought in their lives. Whatever message Steven had been sending, he seemed satisfied it had gotten through. That was how the male half of the population worked. When the bell started ringing to call us in from lunch, the two of them ran in together, trading punches and back slaps.
I turned from the window and, just for a moment, crouched so nobody could see me. Was that how all males in this world worked? Was whatever they did to you only something that happened in the moment and gone soon after?
Did he think about that girl with the restraining order? Did he think about what he’d done to her, I meant, not in annoyance whenever it was possibly going to cause him a problem, but because he felt sorry for her, because he worried about how he might have hurt her? I wanted to believe the answer was yes, but I didn’t have the evidence to back it up.
I sat with my laptop on my knees late that night and stared at my chat program, which was of course a time-honoured method of getting more responses to pop up.
Aileen had messaged me just before dinner to let me know she’d decided an apology wasn’t necessary. She was stupidly forgiving like that—and I said stupidly, because obviously I owed her an apology. I’d completely ignored what she was saying to me and gone wild on my own ideas, and I still didn’t have the guts to face up to what I’d done.
Callie was probably already in bed by now. She’d become so obsessed with getting her ‘professional life’ right ever since she was first able to have a job. In a way I understood: she wanted more than she would ever get if she didn’t fight for it. But it still left a bad taste in my mouth, being apparently one of the things she was willing to sacrifice.
I wished I hadn’t thought of it in terms of fighting, though. Suddenly I was thinking about Steven again, wondering what he was up to that night. Probably I didn’t really want to know.
And yet before I could do anything to stop myself I was looking up his name, trying to find a social media profile.
I came up with nothing. When I checked Lucas’s profile it was strangely sparse—curated, he didn’t even have pictures of Callie there yet—but their friend Carlene was less discreet. She had photos of Steven all over the place, mostly turned away from the camera or scowling like he wished he hadn’t been talked into it, but one where he was lifting up his shirt to show a sleek muscled chest, smirking.
That one made me feel so dizzy I was barely able to focus enough to confirm that Carlene hadn’t linked his name to any account. Well… maybe he was one of those rare people who didn’t do Internet things. He was such a sporty guy he probably didn’t even miss it.
I shut my laptop quickly as Mum opened my door. “Oh, you didn’t need to jump on my account,” she said.
“I wasn’t doing anything really. I figured you wanted to talk.” There wasn’t any other conclusion to draw when she was bursting in on me already in my pyjamas.
I’d been so focused on heading off any encouragements to open my computer up again that would let her see what I’d really been doing, I hadn’t been thinking hard enough about not provoking her. I tensed for her reading it like I was hating on her for wanting to talk to me all the time, but she just sat down next to me. She was clearly very focused on what she was already here for.
“I’m wondering, have you noticed anything… different, lately, with Mike?”
I almost groaned, which would have definitely set her off. I hated these little discussions, but I had yet to find any way to avoid them while I was living in their house. Maybe that was why Ryan stayed out half the night… but it was easy enough for him, he could drive. I doubted Mum was as interested in having heart-to-hearts with her male child anyway.
“Everything seems normal to me,” I told her. I reached for one of my dolls.
Mum shrugged. “Maybe it’s me… I just wonder if this is what I really want any more. If I shouldn’t just end it before we’re sixty and stuck with one another for good.”
When I was fifteen, I’d worried when she said things like that. I pictured having to move with her into a smaller place where I would have even less privacy, maybe somewhere like where Callie lived, where Mum would be shaking scared all the time and I’d be scared too, but have to hide it. Now, I knew when she said those things about Mike it was all bullshit. She was never going to leave him, she probably didn’t love him all that much but she didn’t have any reason to hate him either. She just liked the sound of her own angst I guess.
I had to wonder if this was just how all the better adult relationships went. You thought everything was amazing to start with, and then once it settled down you realised you weren’t that keen on it after all and you’d thrown a lot of energy into something that was going to be a slight drain on you for the rest of your life. It was a discouraging thought.
Well, all I could do for my mum was listen. Honestly I wished she would just end it with Mike if she was going to go on about him like that all the time. It didn’t seem fair. But I doubted she would, because objectively Mike was not a bad guy. I’d never bonded with him, Ryan and I had been too old when they’d gotten together, but he was never any drama or anything. He just let us live, so we let him live.
“I’m sorry,” I told Mum, stifling a yawn. She was probably going to want to talk for a couple hours now, so I would
have to keep my brain from getting the idea it could switch off any time soon. “It always seems to me like you two get along great, but I guess these things are much more complicated with couples…”
I didn’t bother hiding my yawn as I made my way to my locker to collect my lunch. I wished I could avoid this situation entirely, but eating in the library wasn’t going to fly, so I figured I’d just scarf as much of my food as I felt like and then run off back there. At least at school, nobody seemed to notice too much if I nodded off, even if I was being noticed far too much aside from that at the moment.
Mum had talked bloody half the night, and this morning I had no better idea what exactly her issue was than I’d had at the start of that conversation. That was fairly normal with her, though. At least my exhaustion kept me from paying too much attention to everything going on around me, the whispering and snickering. Nobody was coming straight out confronting me like Tyrell had at least, which probably had something to do with Steven, but it still sucked compared to the relative peace I’d had before Callie started messing with a crowd we didn’t belong anywhere near. Even though I’d patched things up with Aileen I didn’t even want to go eat lunch with her. I didn’t want her to see how things were turning out for me, or drag her into the firing line. And I felt like she already understood that, because after she texted to let me know where she would be eating lunch, she hadn’t followed up asking where I was or anything.
I felt like I’d become radioactive, like it wasn’t safe for anyone to be around me any more, and whatever Steven had done to keep people from directly addressing it with me was just making it worse. I realised he hadn’t intended for me to know that he was doing anything… but I’d seen him, and that was that.
I walked around the block my locker was part of to reach my favourite alcove for hiding in—and there was a broad chest in my way.
By the time I realised it was Steven, he’d already grabbed me and pulled me in, turning so I was pressed into the space, the bulk of his body blocking me from any escape.
My lunch sack fell to the ground between our feet. The scent of Steven in such close quarters was making me dizzy.
“What are you—”
“Keep your voice down, Tamara,” he ordered, and his low tone made my empty stomach flutter so much I obeyed by default, unable to continue speaking. “I wanted to talk to you. To ask you a question. There’s something going on between us, isn’t it? You could hardly look at me yesterday.”
And I definitely couldn’t look at him now, as close as he was… as helpless as I was to fight him off.
He wasn’t doing anything I needed to fight off, though. He was just blocking my escape route, looking at me. “You want me, don’t you?”
I couldn’t explain to him that I was actually scared he would find out what I’d learned about him… but then being trapped there, him in my face, was making me feel things that had nothing to do with fear.
“I don’t like you,” I told him.
He didn’t even shrug. “This isn’t about liking me.”
That really hit me, because I couldn’t imagine someone like Lucas reacting the same way. He’d have to do something to make me change my mind. And Steven had been so angry when I claimed he and Lucas were the same. Maybe I wasn’t seeing Steven as clearly as I thought.
No… in a lot of ways, he was worse than Lucas. I couldn’t imagine Lucas physically threatening anybody. He was too slick to need to.
Steven leaned over so his forehead bumped against mine, more softly than I would have expected him to be able to make contact. “If you want me, you can have me. As much as you’d like.”
My legs started to shake, and he put his hands on me. Holding me up, but it just made me even shakier. I couldn’t process what he was offering here.
A smile crossed his face briefly, possibly the first I’d ever seen from him. “I get the idea you’re not an experienced woman, so you get to run the show a bit. You can decide how you’d like things to go, and nobody needs to know. I’ll even make sure all these shits who are bothering you at the moment back off, and you won’t know anything’s going on.”
“You’re not doing such a great job of that so far,” I informed him. “I saw what you did with Tyrell yesterday.”
He winced like it actually bothered him I’d caught him out. “Guess I’ll have to do better, then.”
“That’s not what you need to do better on. I thought you agreed to leave me alone.”
“Ah, we were both lying our fucking faces off the other day,” said Steven. “I thought we deserved a chance to clear the air without that fucking bitch interfering. But I’m not going to force you to do anything you really don’t want to do, so if you don’t want it…”
He gave me a second to process his not actually finishing that sentence, then he put his head down and kissed me.
I had time to take in lips and tongue and my little moan of submission in my throat, and then he was pulling back, smirking at me now, and I swung my hand back as much as I could in the space I had and slapped him.
“Oh I love when you do that,” he said.
“Try that again and I’ll do it again,” I told him, and only realised when his mouth was on me again, trailing down my cheek to the side of my neck, that I’d basically invited him.
And he was right, of course: I was the furthest thing from experienced. I’d kissed only a few other guys before, when I was too young to think better of it, and none of them had resulted in me feeling much of anything. Never mind this complete rush that left me afraid my blood might actually catch on fire.
I couldn’t get my head around the smack he definitely deserved once he backed off again. I could only stare at him, panting, aware I was obviously sweating now.
“Just an invitation,” Steven said. “The next move is up to you. You’re a proper little stalker, so I trust you’ll be able to track me down if you need to.”
And then he turned and walked away, leaving me to sink to the ground next to my lunch, my blood an inferno in my ears and the parts of my body he was no longer touching feeling like they were never going to be warm again.
If he’d stayed, I could have screamed at him. Hit him. But that smart bastard had left me to consider what I was going to do next.
I knew it couldn’t be nothing. But I had no idea what else it could be.
Chapter Seven: Tamara
I didn’t see Steven for the rest of the school day, thankfully… not that I saw anything else either for as long as I was still in school. Classes passed around me, Aileen spoke to me, and I think I responded at all the times I needed to, but nothing was really sinking in.
I felt like a stranger in my own life suddenly. Like, I couldn’t just go back and continue being the Tamara I’d been before, because now that I knew a man’s touch could feel like that, I didn’t fit the way I used to.
Now I understood it all. I knew exactly why someone like my mother would go for a man who could hurt her, who she knew would hurt her before she committed. Why she might select someone nice and safe like Mike in the aftermath, to protect herself, but never really be able to be happy with that. Because here I was, fighting the same battle in myself.
I’d never been precious about my purity or anything like that. My mother had drummed that into me from when I was old enough to understand the concepts. Don’t stay with a man just because he was the one to take your virginity, because chances are you’ll make a bad choice about that.
Not that I was itching for Steven to take my virginity or anything. Mum had also said I should wait until I was out of high school to think about things like that, give myself the best chance possible, and I was still so on board with that. But I was definitely up for more kissing… and maybe kissing in some different places, although when I had that thought my body reacted instantly and the horror of getting a bit turned on while sitting in class nearly snapped me right back to reality.
How could I of all people be having these thoughts about a guy w
ho had possibly abused another girl he was involved with? Perhaps he was setting me up to take her place right now, trying to isolate me from anyone who could help by keeping the whole thing a secret.
Well, he’d said nobody needed to know, not that I couldn’t tell anyone. But who would I tell? If I said one word to Mum she wouldn’t leave me alone until I assured her I’d given up on the idea. Aileen would laugh at me too much. The thought of getting Ms. Miller more involved was laughable.
I needed Callie. We needed each other. Everything had started to go wrong from the moment she decided to keep secrets from me, had become set on a path of wrongness when I’d gone off at her instead of trying to understand, to help. The thing was I didn’t know how to fix it now, and I wasn’t sure Callie wanted to try.
One thought rose to the surface of my messy mind: if I was straightforward with her instead of sneaking around, maybe she would at least listen to me. So instead of going straight to the street where Ryan parked to wait for me after school, I ran to the parking spots at the front of the school building and scanned around until I spotted Callie, standing outside a big car that had to be Lucas’s.
She stood up taller when she saw me approaching. “What’s up, Tamara?”
I didn’t know how to answer her question. I just stood there in front of her with my hands on my hips and my eyes swinging from left to right, biting my lip.
Callie sighed. “I’ve done all the apologising I can think of and Lucas and Steven will be here soon, so if you have something to say you’d better be quick about it.”
The last thing I wanted was to run into Steven. “I guess I’ll talk to you later,” I managed to get out.
The funny thing was, that seemed to make Callie happy. “I might like that.”
“We’ve picked up another one!”
