by Bella King
“Maybe we should go to your place,” I said as he jolted upright after an especially large splash of vodka hit him in the chin.
“I like your bed better,” Apollo said.
“We’re a bit far from there, aren’t we?” I asked, trying to get him to agree. I didn’t know his address, so he would have to give it to me if I was to pull off my plan.
“My place is like, right next to yours,” Apollo said.
“I don’t really think it is,” I replied, taking a turn away from the park.
“It’s on Redwing drive,” Apollo said, his voice slurring even more and his eyelids drooping.
That wasn’t very close to my house, but it was in the same neighborhood. I did a U-turn at the stoplight and began heading back. The easiest thing to do now would be to drop him off at home and walk to my house. It would take a solid forty-five minutes to get there on foot, but I didn’t want to steal Apollo’s car.
“Okay, we’re going to your place,” I said, looking over at Apollo. He was asleep.
I wiped my brow, thanking my lucky stars that he was done for the night. Any more of this and I might actually sleep with him just to get him to stop bothering me. I focused on the road and made another turn to take us to Redwing.
Chapter 10
The nights get longer as the year comes to a close.
I’m pretty sure that Apollo fell asleep in his front yard that night, but that wasn’t my problem. I got him as close to his home as I could without alerting his parents to my presence. I didn’t want to have to explain to them why their son was blackout drunk with a completely sober woman driving his car for him. Plus, my father would be pissed.
I got home on foot but had trouble getting back into the house. I ended up getting a lawn chair and placing it by my room to get up on the roof again. Apollo was an athlete, he could climb up with ease, but I needed assistance.
After a struggle worthy of an Oscar, I slid my window open and rolled into my room, relieved that I was finally done with Apollo’s lunacy. I could sleep in peace, with my curtains closed and my window locked tight.
I collapsed in my bed in my clothes and fell asleep, awakening the next morning to a message from Cora. She was outside my house already, urging me to walk to school with her.
I was far from ready to leave, but I texted her that I would be down in twenty minutes. All I really needed to do was rinse myself off in the shower and put my school uniform on. I liked to sleep in, so rushing to get ready was nothing new to me.
I hoped in the shower, rinsed off, and was downstairs to grab an energy drink from the fridge within ten minutes. I gulped down half the can and skipped out the door with it, greeted by cool morning air and a bundled up Cora.
“Good morning, sunshine,” she said as I bounced out the door. “You look chipper.”
“I’m always like this when I don’t get enough sleep,” I replied. The less sleep I got, the more awake I was in the morning. This always led to a crash later, but the morning was glorious.
“Thinking about Apple?” She asked, frowning at me in disapproval.
I gave her a guilty look. “It was a bit more than that, to be honest.”
“What? Fantasizing about him?”
“Gross, no,” I said, but I would be lying if I said I never did. “He came to my house last night.”
“What?!” Cora stopped dead in her tracks, her shoes nearly leaving skid marks on the pavement.
I shrugged. “He climbed up to my window like some kind of stalker, but he was drunk.”
“Holy crap, Georgia. Did you call the police?”
I laughed bitterly. “I should have. Actually, I was so surprised to see him that I let him in. Nothing happened, though. I drove him home because he was drunk,” I explained, conveniently leaving out the details about our trip to the park and his crude sexual comments.
“Oh man, that’s wild. You’re not doing very well with this whole not talking to him thing.”
“I know,” I groaned. “It was just so big of a surprise that I didn’t know what to do. I panicked.”
“You always do that. Literally, every single time he talks to you, this is how it ends up. You need to grow a damn spine. Maybe I should start sleeping over,” Cora scolded, but her face was soft. She looked a lot nicer than I did, but she held her won against guys like Apollo.
I didn’t.
“I’m not even sure if he’ll remember last night. He was so drunk. I was surprised that he was even able to get to my house,” I said, thinking back to the way he rubbed his cock through his pants in the car. No sober man would act so bold.
“He’s messed up, Georgia. It’s a good thing you’re not into him.”
Gulp. I kind of was, but I hated him at the same time. Why were bad boys so fucking sexy, though?
“You’re not into him, right?” Cora asked as I stared ahead in silence, thoughts of how wet I had gotten from Apollo flooding into my brain.
“Yes, I mean, right. I mean, no, I’m not into him,” I said, stumbling over my words like they were odd shapes leaving my mouth for the first time.
Cora shook her head, pulling her bookbag up her shoulders. “Maybe if you found someone else, then Apple would leave you alone. There are a lot of smart guys at Winterlake.”
“You mean a bunch of nerds?” I clarified. “Cora, you know as well as I do that those guys are even worse than the jocks. Not only are they hideous, but they’re also major misogynists. There’s a reason they don’t get laid.”
“Harsh, but true,” Cora said, pursing her lips together. “Maybe try something in between.”
“I might try a bullet to my head instead. It would be a short, but sweet romance,” I joked.
“You shouldn’t joke about that,” Cora warned. “That’s a step in the wrong direction. Listen. I know you’re stressed about this. Maybe we should do something fun this weekend.”
“Like a sleepover at your place,” I said. “Apollo wouldn’t be able to find me there.”
“Apple,” Cora corrected. She insisted on calling him by his nickname, so I wouldn’t grow familiar with his real name. Familiarity breeds fondness, as she said. “And I would love to, but it’ll have to be next week. I’m going to the mountains with my family for fall break this weekend.”
“Shit, I forgot about fall break. I’m pretty sure my parents are refurbishing a few rooms in the house then,” I said. “So, I guess next week is fine.”
“If he shows up again, just call the police. You don’t need to be sneaking out with him at night. There’s no telling what he could do to you.”
I knew very well what he could do. He was a powerful man and had little in the way of a formal moral code. He danced around in the gray area, skirting the line between good and evil.
“I’m not going to go out with him again. I’ll let him know that if he comes to my place again, I’ll call the police on him,” I said.
“Don’t even tell him. Just call them if he shows up. Maybe they’ll cart him off to jail, where he belongs,” Cora replied.
I laughed, twirling my hair around my finger while I thought about another late-night visit from Apollo. I wouldn’t have the guts to send him to jail without warning over something so innocent as wanting to see me. I knew that he would be back if he remembered last night at all. I had given in too easily, and he would use that to step in further.
Cora was the only one keeping me from toppling over the edge and falling for Apollo completely, but she would be out of town this weekend, and I was sure that Apollo would try something over the weekend. He knew where I lived.
I raised the chilled can of energy drink to my lips, spilling some messily over the side of my mouth as I gulped the rest of it down. I wiped my face on the sleeve of my black sweater. I was far too distracted to function normally.
As we neared the school, I crumpled the empty can in my fist and threw it into the garbage can with more force than necessary, causing a loud clink of metal in the empty bin. I was frustr
ated with myself.
“Come on, let’s go to the library and study for a bit,” Cora said, veering off our regular path once we entered the arched doorway of Winterlake Prep.
“Isn’t it a bit early for that?” I asked, rubbing my eyes with my fists.
“Apple doesn’t hang out in the library. We don’t have to study, but we’re not lounging around near the lockers,” she replied.
She was right. I followed her, sneaking a glance down the hall as we passed the turn for the lockers to see if Apollo was there. He wasn’t.
Chapter 11
Love and hate are both obsessions.
It was possible that Apollo was too hungover to come to school the next day. I was partially afraid that he had rolled out onto the road in his drunken stupor, and someone had run him over in his sleep. It was an unreasonable concern to have, but I was never reasonable when my anxiety levels were peaking, and goddamn if they weren’t at all-time highs now that Apollo was back.
Classes came and went, and I spent the majority of the day taking routes with Cora through the school that hardly any other students took. It was her way of avoiding Apollo, but part of me wanted to see him to make sure that he was alright.
There was an itch in the back of my head, an irritation of the mind that only Apollo seemed to be able to scratch. It was like I needed someone to hate, and ever since he had been gone, I had been searching for a replacement.
Hatred is an obsession. I knew that, but what was worse was that I couldn’t figure out if hatred was the reason for my itch, or if there was something else brewing under my skin, a craving to be fucked senseless, that drew me to Apollo.
I had never had sex before. I wanted it to be special, and they're honestly was nobody at Winterlake I wanted anywhere near my pussy besides Apollo. He made me undeniably horny, but that was it. Nobody else had that effect on me. It was embarrassing that the worst man in the world for me was the one who got me hot and flustered.
I never told Cora about that. She would buy me a vibrator and tell me to come to terms with my sexuality alone before seeking gratification from a man, and she was probably right. I refused to touch myself because I was also embarrassed to give myself that kind of pleasure. I don’t know. It felt dirty.
I needed a therapist, not a douchebag jock like Apollo, to help me figure out what was wrong with me, but I wasn’t about to ask my parents to send me to one. My mother was already in a fuss about everything I did, insisting that everything was fine and me all the time, even though it obviously wasn’t.
Perhaps it was my own parents' failed relationship that had me running to the bad boy and avoiding stable men. Whatever the reason, my willpower to stay clean was waning, and Apollo showed no sign of easing up.
Cora and I walked back home together, and the day started to feel normal again. Apollo was a memory like he had not actually existed, like he had never come to the school and harassed me yesterday. He was a figment of my imagination, a nightmare concocted from exam stress, and my mother’s warnings about my weight.
I could have dreamt it all up, but that would mean that I was still dreaming when I arrived home to find my window was broken and a large rock lay in the bedroom with a note tied to it. I knew who it was from before I even lifted from the carpet.
Dear Georgia,
Wine is red,
Curaçao is blue,
I may have drunk the memories away,
But I haven’t forgotten about you.
Love,
App
Great, now he was breaking my window with love letters. How charming.
I walked over to the window, examining the damage. I circled around the broken glass on the floor, not wanting to slice up my feet with the shards. I had seen that happen to someone before, and it wasn’t pretty. Glass cuts through flesh like butter.
I noticed that the window was unlatched. Had he been inside my room? Surely not. I probably just forgot to latch it when I came back home, but I could have sworn that I did.
I looked around for some sign that Apollo had been in the room. I sniffed the air, smelling his cologne in the air. He had been here, but nothing looked out of place. So, he had broken in, but stolen nothing? It seemed unlikely.
I searched through the obvious belongings, picking up things from my dresser, and placing them back down. I didn’t clean enough to not have dust, so any clean spots would indicate that something was missing. Everything seemed to be in place.
I rubbed my chin, confused by this. Surely Apollo had done something. There was no other reason why he would have broken in. I looked around again, this time opening drawers and sifting through my clothes.
I didn’t notice anything at first, so I checked the bathroom to make sure he hadn’t just hidden somewhere, popping out to slide into my bed while I was sleeping . The thought terrified me.
I yanked the bathroom door open on its silent hinges, waving my hand around the wall frantically in search of the light switch. The lights blinked on to reveal an empty bathroom, just as I have left it.
My paranoid mind wandered, leading me to believe that he could be somewhere else inside of the house. I jumped down the stairs, opening doors, and clearing rooms faster than a swat team. Nobody was home except for my parents, and they were in their room, arguing again.
I doubted Apollo would have slipped in there, but the thought gnawed at me, nonetheless. I wasn’t sure if I was losing my mind all on my own, or if Apollo was the reason for my paranoia. I was always an anxious person, but it had gotten much worse since meeting him.
I rushed back up to my bedroom after sweeping the house, checking under my bed and in the bathroom again. I would be locking my door tonight and putting something over the window, but that wouldn’t stop me from being terrified that Apollo was someone still in my room.
I flung open all my drawers again, trying to think hard about my belongings. Had he come in and taken nothing? It made no sense.
I got to the bottom drawer of my dresser, where I kept the little paper with Apollo’s phone number on it. My hand rested on it for a moment before I flipped it over. I could call him and find out what had happened, but that would mean once again breaking my promise not to keep in contact with him.
Fuck, what else was I supposed to do? He started this, and now I needed to fight back. Doing nothing clearly wasn’t working. Sorry Cora, but this bitch is taking her own route. I just hoped that it didn’t get me into more trouble than I was already in.
I lifted the paper from the drawer and spun around, going to my bed and stepping over the glass again. I would need to clean that mess up before bed.
I plopped down onto my bed and laid back, lifting the paper above me and staring at the numbers scribbled on it in red ink. I could see the way the ink and slowly bled into the paper as the light shined through it. This paper had been in my drawer for at least a year, probably more.
I pulled up my phone, tapping a black nail against the green phone icon. My heartbeat increased to an astounding pace the minute I began copying the number over to my phone.
Calm down, Georgia. Nobody can hurt you through the phone.
God, but what if when I dialed the number, I heard a phone ringing from inside my room? I could write horror movies. I reminded myself that I had checked and rechecked the room and the bathroom. Apollo wasn’t small enough to hide. It was possible that he had never even been in my room at all. His scent could have floated through the window and stayed inside after he broke the glass. Maybe he came in and left, thinking better of whatever it was he intended to do.
My heartbeat remained erratic as I finished dialing the number, and my thumb floated over the call icon. Blood rushed to my face and pounded in my ears when I finally mustered up the courage to push my finger down on the glowing green icon.
The phone rang twice before I heard the familiar voice of Apollo on the other end. “Hello?”
“Hey, this is Georgia,” I said softly.
“I was wondering when you w
ould call me,” he answered. I could hear his cocky grin as he talked through the phone.
“Listen, were you at my house today?” I asked, my voice rising in volume.
“Maybe,” he answered playfully.
“What the fuck were you doing in my bedroom? Did you take something?” I asked, aware of how frantic I sounded.
Apollo was enjoying this. He took his time responding, speaking in riddles instead of giving me a straight answer. “I may have something of yours, yes.”
“What is it? I swear to god, I’m going to call the police on you,” I warned.
Laughter. “For what? I haven’t even told you what I took.”
“Tell me,” I demanded, growing even louder.
“Alright, but you have to come get it once I tell you. Maybe we could meet up tonight,” Apollo suggested.
“I’m not doing that again. Just tell me what you took.”
“Your panties,” Apollo answered, letting the words roll off his tongue like he loved the taste of them.
“What?” I asked, floored.
“You heard me. I snatched a nice pink pair. I’m wearing them right now, actually.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” I said, shaking my head. “Unbelievable. And that’s nasty. I don’t want those back if you wore them.”
“Yeah, to be honest, they’re not very comfortable with my cock so hard like this.”
“Jesus Christ,” I groaned, my fingers tightening around my phone.
“And besides, I left you something in exchange,” Apollo continued in a deep voice.
I looked around the room. I hadn’t seen anything new, but then again, I hadn’t noticed the missing panties either. “What did you leave, the rock?”
“Not that. Something more,” he purred.
“Come on. I’m not going to play this game with you. Tell me what you left,” I demanded.
“It’s in your bed,” he replied, then the phone line went dead.
I jumped up from my bed, landing in the glass. A shard went into my sock, poking into the soft skin under my foot. “Ouch,” I yelped, holding my foot up and hoping away from the glass.
