by Scott, Eliot
“It’s all we need,” my father always says, and I agree with him. Money like the Sinclairs have is extra—and it has never brought smiles to their faces, at least none that they’ve shown me.
All of the land is what’s documented. Deeds and trusts with small payments recorded…sometimes. But when Alex and I went into the museum to ask about the feud a month ago, the curator told us that there was no real proof, no news articles ever written about it. It’s nothing but legend pointing to the Sinclairs and Wallaces actually having murdered each other over grudges and deals gone sour.
The woman also implied that the families were fighting not over land—but over love!
That last part—the love stuff—comes from a story I know is true. I was the one who surprised Alex when I told him about my grandfather being in competition with Alex's grandfather. There was an old fashioned fist fight—kind of like a duel or something, over which one of them would marry my grandmother.
He couldn’t believe the story, told me he would have heard of it from his side. But I, and later my father, confirmed it to be true with photos and my grandmother’s diary where she’d written about everything. I also confirmed it because, well, my mom was born, and then I was born—wasn’t I? So there.
I also was the first to tell Alex that my own mother and Alex's father—back when they went to the same high school Alex and I are attending now—used to be friends! Friends like us, although maybe not as close as Alex and I are right now. But still, friends.
Again, Alex didn’t believe me.
It took some time to prove that, but finally Alex and I found an old yearbook in the school library archives that showed a photo of my mom and Mr. Sinclair laughing together as they were crowned Homecoming King and Queen. I tried to pester my father with questions about this, but he said it was my mom’s private business…a story that was not his to tell, even though my father also attended that high school, but wasn’t in any of the photos besides the class one. That was because he said he couldn’t be in any activities. He had to work on the farm after school.
When I asked my mom about it once, about her friendship or whatever went down with Mr. Sinclair back in high school, she laughed it off as teenage silliness. She said that Mr. Sinclair had a big case of “pouting-sour-grapes” when she started dating, and then later married, my father.
She clammed up even more than my father did when I had more questions about it. She told me it just made her uncomfortable, then she begged me to not tell Alex. She called it silly and trite again and again, and finally she told me it was embarrassing for her and probably also embarrassing to Mr. Sinclair, which is why I was to never—ever—bring it up in front of him most of all.
I kept that promise mostly, but I had whispered about it to Alex. I told him that I think it had to be true that Alex’s father maybe wanted to marry my mother or something like that. That’s when Alex started to really believe. My mom is that beautiful, and kind. She’s loved by everyone in town, everyone who meets her, really. Back then, she’d worn her brown hair down all long and wavy, how I do.
Even now, in her late forties, my father and I would die for her. She had a scary battle with lung cancer that she won last year after they took out half of one of her lungs. Though I’m not too religious, I still thank God every day that he didn’t take her away from me, and I never once complain how my chores have doubled because Mom can’t do anything strenuous like run, or carry laundry. I won’t even let her do the dishes, though she swears she’s fine. I will never get over her being sick, nor will I ever let her risk being sick again.
“Are you ready to go home yet?” Alex wraps his arms tighter around me, jarring me out of my thoughts. “We might be in trouble…it’s getting beyond late, you know?” He presses a kiss against the top of my head.
“No. Not ready.” I point upwards. “Look. The sky is so black it's nearly nothing, and the stars look like millions of grains of salt spilt against granite. I never want to end this night.”
“Beautiful.” He answers, but when I glance back at him he’s not looking at the sky. He’s looking at me and rubbing his cheek against my hair. “You’re so beautiful. Smell so good…skin feels so soft.” His fingers dance along my midriff, toying with the bottom of my shirt. My body is spooned against his, my head resting on one bicep while the other holds me close.
Every tickle inches closer, moves my shirt up, and then up some more so my waist is exposed. Those fingers travel along the curves of my skin but he hesitates every time he heads up too high.
Every. Frustrating. Time.
Impulsively, I take his hand and guide it up and under my shirt, all the way to cover my breasts, and he freezes as he pulls in a huge startled breath.
“Fuck.” He responds in a short, fast pant. “What are you doing?”
I shift and press his hands tighter. “Please,” I whisper, loving how his palm feels cupping my aching breasts.
“Jojo…hold up…I—” his voice is pained, straining for control.
I can feel he’s harder now as his body involuntarily jerks against me. He stays pressed and throbbing into my backside, so tightly that I can feel the shape and the heat.
The thought of that—heat—the thought of how sexy and sweet and patient he is with me, how it will be when his skin is next to my skin, how that might feel inside my body, has sent my belly into a fluttery spin. I’ve thought of this so much that I think I’ve melted with how badly I want him right now. I can only hope he’s feeling the same.
"Alex...” His name comes out in a vibration.
He groans and starts kissing my neck, rolling with me until his lips find my collarbone. We’re sixteen. That’s how old everyone is for their first time. This is how I imagined it all.
My body presses and turns to inch for more, but his arms are locking me still. “Alex…”
"Mmmmm," he hums, burying kisses against the side of neck and into my hair. I feel him press and pulse against my hip this time. I press back—hard.
It's so hot. He’s…so…very…hot.
“You’re killing me. You know that?” he whispers.
"I trust you. You know that, right? I…want you. I want to…I want you to…”
My heart is pounding so hard my vision is shaking, so I close my eyes.
“Damn…JoJo. I know,” he answers, his voice all want and restraint, his body grinding into me, the force of it increasing with his own pounding, shaking desire.
“I know that you won’t hurt me, and I want to keep going, you know I do.” To prove it, I press against his erection again, and his whole body goes rigid. This time he stops kissing my neck and groans like I’ve hurt him.
I stop in a sigh and move my palms up fast to cover my face, hiding my burning skin in embarrassment. “You…don’t?” I say, mortified. “Oh, God! You don’t want to. That’s why you never? Is that why?”
“Are you kidding? I want to as much as you, I’m just more—patient. Less…desperate?” Alex pulls my hands away from my face, chuckles as I pull a face in response to his words, and finally, he shifts me, so we’re face to face. He’s now looking down at me as I lay half beneath him flat on the ground—hoping—hoping, and yes, desperate. I raise my head to kiss him again, hard.
He pulls back and his tongue passes over his lips as though he’s trying to still taste me, as his eyes dart from mine back to my mouth. He leans down and kisses me softly again, sucking my bottom lip gently before shifting me further under him, then lowering his body along mine and tilting his chin up to stare into my face.
I say nothing and force myself to breathe slowly until eventually I don’t breathe at all. No sudden movements. Nothing about me will signal him to STOP. Except for this one small motion.
Impatient, my fingers deftly unclasp the hook in the center between the two cups, and I feel the tension release.
He gasps, surprised at my move, and his gaze envelops me; the wanting I can read off of his face consumes me.
I moan a lit
tle and repeat, “Alex.” My eyes and hands say everything else as I touch the sides of my breasts. My nipples have hardened into high peaks in the cold night air, and I know from the way he’s biting his lower lip and looking at me that he thinks I’m beautiful—and that maybe he wants to put his mouth just where I want him to put it, too.
“Please…?”
“Can’t…not yet, damn.” His eyes are molten boring into mine. “Do you know what you do to me? How you look right now, that fucking impish smile on your face? Your eyes—with the stars reflecting in them as you look at me—asking what you’re asking me to do? Fuck…” he grits out, running the side of one hand along the curve of my breast. “JoJo…please, I just can’t. I promised and I won’t—not here not now, not all the way,” he whispers back.
The look he’s giving me is filled up with apology and with what I know is love for me, but it’s also loaded with something I just can’t read. Something that, I can tell, is still holding him back from me.
But what? Why?
Whatever it is, like him, it’s sexy—it’s mysterious, but it’s also frustrating as hell. The look he’s giving me now is not coming from the face of the boy who has always been so sweet with me. It’s this expression that makes him appear like he’s suddenly turned into a man. I like how he’s growing older, how he and I have grown older together since we met, and I wonder if finally I’m seeing the man he’s going to become. Maybe he can see me, wanting so badly to be a woman, but maybe he simply thinks I’m not ready?
His right hand slides up the center of my chest, testing the weight of my breasts, and pauses where the fishing lure he gave me after we’d made things official hangs on a thin chain I bought at the town’s Five & Dime. I’d made the necklace after he’d told me he loved me back, right after I’d awkwardly told him—months ago. I love how we say it to each other easily all the time now. I feel his fingers close over it gently, then he rests it back against my beating heart before moving on to the lacy bra. With both hands, shaking fingers and a little shifting on my part, he manages to re-clasp the bra over my breasts.
“You deserve more than a blanket on the hard ground. I also don’t have any condoms…so…” He sighs, eyes burning into my face.
I nod, pretending to understand, because I do, but knowing I’m still wide-eyed and wishing and so…wet, like I’ve never been before.
I’m watching the path his fingers are making over the edges of my now re-clasped bra, and I’m still about to lose my mind. I’m also trying to hide my disappointment as he adds roughly, “I swear to God, Jojo, I don’t know what I love more—the way you feel…the way you look at me…the way you moan when I touch you…”
His words make me lose it and my whole body tenses up again as his fingers slide over the delicate material that is now covering those hard peaks of my breasts. I shiver some because I can’t help it, and because the hungry look on his face is so sexy, and because…even to me…I know that I look attractive in this moonlight. “Or…” he continues, “Maybe I love the way you love me back, so simply. The way you let me call the shots.”
“For now, I do.” I frown because he’s pulled his hands away from me. “On this one topic, yes. But soon, I swear Alex, I’ll be the boss of you for making me wait like this,” I blurt out, touching my breasts again, and gently circling the lace-covered, rock-hard nipples with my index fingers, watching his eyes go wide as I add, “I wanted you to kiss these. And damn you for not doing it.” I pout, while I still my fingertips at the peaks.
“Did you?” His voice comes out low and slightly pained again. “I’m not a mind reader…and I’m sorry to have disappointed you.”
His eyes are now transfixed on the movements of my fingers, and he startles me when his mouth comes down fast, pushing my hands aside as his lips clamp over my left nipple along with the fabric of my bra.
It’s surprising, and scratchy—and it feels so crazy good I gasp out, “Oh…”
I squirm under him and watching his mouth on me makes the hot spot between my legs get hotter, all while the pull of his mouth is so intense on my nipples that I’m moaning and pushing myself—my breasts—everything that is me, up and towards him while his body and his erection presses back into me, hard. He does it over and over again, and it feels amazing. My arms twine around his back, and I hold him there, loving the weight of his body against me. I’m wishing he’d never stop.
As he groans and I moan back, all that was rational thought in my mind turns to me bucking upwards and him pressing back. I become sweat and heat and two million more wishes that he would just go all the way with me. Somewhere between kisses, his fingers have unbuttoned my shorts and I’ve helped him pull off his swimsuit. He’s reached down my bikini bottoms, and I’m touching the length of his hardness. He rubs and rubs his fingers gently into me, and presses and flicks them against the wetness, and the stars spin above us as I lose track of how I’m touching him because he’s made me come hard and shudder against his hand. While I lie there, panting and smiling, he jerks himself off, and he’s huge and he’s beautiful and he’s staring at me. I can’t take my eyes off of what he’s doing. I watch hungrily as he finishes, sending white hot moisture into the dark grass next to me, and when he’s done with that, he collapses flat on his back, our sticky arms barely touching where we lie exhausted and blissful.
“Fuck. Jojo. That was…” He glances at me, one arched brow high. “Should I apologize?”
“Never. Not for anything as amazing as that,” I breathe out and smile over at him.
When we come back down to earth, I’m blushing and out of sorts, and maybe he’s right—maybe I wasn’t as ready as I thought I was, because that—holy cow—that was more than enough between us for one night.
More than he and I have ever done.
And…already, I can’t wait to try this all again, but I don’t tell him that.
“I love you.” It’s cliche, I know it, but it’s all I can think to say right now that sounds right. He owns me at this moment. He owns me completely.
His voice is rough and full of emotion as he helps me back into my shirt. “I love you, too, Jojo. So much. So damn much.”
* * *
Present Day
I realize I’m nearly the last one left in the funeral parking area. I’ve been staring at the fishing rods and remembering so long my eyes feel weighted. The memories—or the damn sound of Alex’s voice reminding me of our past, and that he used to love me—it’s all made me feel like I’m going to cry.
But since I’m not going to do that, not before this funeral at least, I pull hard on the fishing line until the lure I used to wear around my neck as though it was more valuable than gold, pops off of where it’s been tied.
It was tied and forgotten for almost six long years.
I know Alex must have found it the night after we had finally made love, because that is the last night I saw him up close. That is the night he broke my heart, or tried to. And it’s where I left the necklace on the floor of his family’s boathouse. It was laid out on the canvas sails, just where I had been abandoned by him.
But I know—I know deep down—nothing that went wrong that night was his choice.
The chain is rusted through, so I work it off then flip the lure upside down and force it in place, using the little fish hook so it dangles into the fabric of my dress like a brooch.
This lure...it's lucky. And it means something to both me and Alex. It means friendship, love, promises and home. It means, to me, at least, that I still love him, and I hope when Alex is finished being angry or mad and worried about me—because he was always that—he will realize that me wearing it today is a symbol that the past is over and he still loves me, too.
I know he’ll see it. Alex never misses details.
I run my fingers along the cold metal of the lure, thinking on the boy I left behind here and the devastatingly gorgeous man he’s grown into, knowing that if I press my fingers too hard the minuscule hook will dig into my
flesh and draw more blood. This will remind me to be careful as well as remind me why I can't leave here without Alex.
I know I’m his only hope, our only hope. So I can't fail.
Alex doesn't belong to them. He's always been different, and he’s always been mine, and I've been very patient for the last six years.
Wherever or however it is the Sinclairs have buried the Alex I used to know, I’ve come to set him free. Based on what I just saw in his eyes, in his reaction to me, Alex Sinclair is very close to death. If I fail, his funeral will become the fourth funeral I attend because of these Sinclairs: my mother’s, my father’s—now Mr. Sinclair’s. But not Alex’s.
If that happens—if they, or the feud, or whatever darkness that rules this place gets Alex too—it will also kill me.
4.
Alex, Present Day.
I get my shit together—get my memories shoved back some, and analyze how she’s leaning against that car like she needs it to hold her up, like the sight of me might have already inadvertently hurt her all over again.
She straightens her slight shoulders then runs her hands nervously through the thick, mahogany hair at both sides of her ears like she used to do when she was trying to gather her courage. From her stance, I see she's undecided about approaching me directly, but I can also tell she's not going to move until I get out of this car.
“Fuck,” I mutter, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “Of course she hasn’t changed. Stubborn…stubborn girl.”
I hate how, like a starving man, my eyes have already gone over every inch of the exposed, luminous skin that makes up her long, bare legs. I’ve trailed over the curve of her cheek. Noted faint shadows under her eyes.
I can’t look away from curve of her delicate collarbones, and I hate that I've let my eyes linger just where they meet at that soft indent at the base of her neck. Hate even more how I long to place my lips there, how my fingers itch to feel those wild wisps of her untamable hair curling its softness around them.
