by Jordan Grant
My words are whispered, so soft I don’t even think he can hear them. I barely hear them, but when my eyes open, he’s scowling at me.
Fuck. I shouldn’t have said that. More questions raised. No answers to give.
“Get him out of here,” he growls, throwing a sideways glance at Jonah. “And make sure he doesn’t ever come back.”
“Okay,” I say as I hear, “Ian! Excuse me, that’s my son,” shouted by Mrs. Beckett from somewhere in the crowd.
“Oh, and Harlow,” Ian says, frowning at me.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t hang out with him. He’s not a good guy. And definitely don’t accept any drinks from him.”
Is he implying… I make a note to Google this guy.
Mrs. Beckett arrives with Mr. Beckett at the interior circle that surrounds me, Ian, and Jonah.
“Ian,” Mr. Beckett says in that tone of finality he uses for everything, the one where there are no questions, just statements and demands.
Ian turns and walks over to them, leaving me wondering how I’m going to get Jonah off campus and away from me.
25
Harlow
I am debating how I’m going to pay the bill from the bodyshop for my car without tipping off my parents when Molly hands me something in an orange plastic cup. “Monster Mash” plays from the sound system installed outside the vacation home of Raven’s parents as we stand on the stone patio, near the fire pit. Dozens of upperclassman are here but no freshman and no sophomores. Her parents installed a spear-topped, wrought-iron fence along the property line with two security guard checkpoints after the Berkshire incident. Now, no one’s getting in without Raven having put them on the guest list.
I’m dressed for our Halloween party like Anne of Green Gables, my hair painted strawberry red, just like the character of one of my favorite childhood books. I’m out of place in a sea of scantily clad nurses and variations of Harley Quinn, but I have good company. Molly stands beside me as a giant, biped labradoodle because she said, and I quote, Atticus helped me pick it out and I just can’t tell him no. Raven stands on my other side in a badass Medusa-from-space costume she designed herself. It makes her look like she walked straight out of a horror film, with her silver astronaut uniform and her face and hair done by a makeup artist flown in from New York City. We are three peas in a pod known as the What are they wearing? trio.
I look down at the cup Molly handed me, and I know better than to drink without asking what’s in it after Taylor Noxubee offered us the drink of a century an hour ago. Turns out orange juice, Coca-Cola, tequila, and two candied cherries together in one cup is just as bad as it sounds. Scratch that actually. No, it’s worse, much worse, especially since he used high-pulp OJ in his monstrous concoction, so it globs in your throat on the way down.
“What’s in it?” I ask Molly, who gives me a sheepish grin.
Oh, look, suddenly the ground is fascinating if you are Molly Bellamy.
Lord, that means there’s probably multiple things in here, and I’m guessing one of them is coconut rum, her favorite, plus definitely something else that burns like the fires of Hell.
“Did you at least try it first?” I ask because I can’t take another Noxubee experimentation incident.
“I did,” she says with a hurried nod. “It’s good, I promise, but if I named all the stuff, you wouldn’t try it, so...”
She shrugs, and the ground is suddenly fascinating once again. I take one big gulp as Raven does the same out of her cup.
I was right too. It burns on the way down, like a swallow of liquid fire, and it sort of tastes like Red Hots and—I take another sip—yeah, coconut rum, definitely coconut rum.
“How is it?!” Molly blurts.
“Good,” Raven says before tipping up her cup and finishing the drink.
“Good,” I agree. “Strong but good.”
“I call it Cinnamon Paradise!” Molly says, beaming.
“How about Beach Bonfire?” Raven offers.
“Oooo! I like that!” Molly agrees.
Raven knocks her cup against mine, sending liquid sloshing over the sides and down my fingers.
“Come on, girl,” she says. “Have fun tonight. It’s Halloween!”
“Yeah.” Molly nods. “You deserve to have fun.”
“Mm-hmm,” Raven chirps. “The almighty king can’t keep his subjects down for long, and you’ve been at the indentured servitude level lately.”
I snort and take a nice, big gulp of Molly’s creation. I feel the burn all the way down my throat before it flares in my belly.
Raven and Molly are right. It’s been weeks since I last spoke with Ian, unless you count the occasional grunts of agreement from him in Mr. Collins’ class during lab, which I don’t. Hell, it’s been weeks since I’ve even really seen him. Maybe I scared him off after I interfered after the football game or maybe even before that in the exhibition hall.
I’ve been hot and cold, and like he said, my actions say one thing but my words tell another story. It was the last game of the season today, and I heard Voclain won, though I wasn’t there. Every time I see him I want to explain everything and ask for forgiveness, but I can’t. His arraignment just keeps getting pushed back, no doubt Finn’s evildoing, and now it’s scheduled for some time in December. Four weeks—twenty-eight days or so—until Finn will be forced to pay his dues and make this right. I just have to keep up my part of the bargain until then.
Some of the football team is already at the party, celebrating their meteoric success in the New York semi-finals, but I haven’t seen Ian or any of our friends, Chase, Everett, or Archie. They are probably celebrating the win on their own, so I take Molly up on her offer to drown my sorrows.
I lift the cup to my lips to take another swallow, but I don’t quite make it. Instead, with the plastic Solo cup nearly to my lips, I freeze when Raven in that smoker’s voice of hers goes, “Somebody tell me did I die and go to heaven?” My gaze snaps to her and follows her line of sight across the students dancing on the lawn, through the clouds of white smoke rising from lit cigars being passed around by the football team, to where the willow trees line the edge of the lawn.
“Oh my goat,” Molly says, breathless, and I get the feeling.
My mouth drops open, but there’s nothing I can do to prevent it. There, across the lawn, are four half-naked Vikings, surveying their domain.
Archie on one end of the group, followed by Chase, then Everett, and finally Ian. They are all shirtless, wearing nothing but their football pants and cleats. Red and black body paint covers their torsos and draws savage lines across their faces like they walked off the set of Braveheart. Moonlight bathes them in a soft glow, making the paint luminous against their skin. They are unabashedly primal, but I’m not looking at Archie with his blonde locks down his shoulders like a Norwegian god or Chase, whose tattoos peek out from underneath the body paint and wrap around his arms, or Everett, who looks like I could bounce a quarter off his abs. I am starting straight at Ian.
He stands there shirtless like the rest of them, his silver Academy-issued football pants still dirty from the game. There’s a sheen of sweat in his hair and an insouciant smile on his face. He’s got a swath of red painted over his pectorals and down his stomach in three angry diagonal lines, so it looks like a giant cat scratched him down his chest. Black war paint follows the same direction down his face, across his eye, over his nose, and down his plump lips.
The paint glistens, reflecting the light of the fire in the pit off to the right and the stars shining above us so that his abdomen looks like it’s covered in fresh blood and his face looks like it’s covered in coal dust. Every indent, every hard line, every ridge of his every muscle is more pronounced, more defined in the low light. My stomach somersaults like it’s trying out for the Olympic team.
My cup stays frozen millimeters away from my lips as my gaze follows Archie, stepping away from the group and in front of his friends. He slams his fists into hi
s chest, and I can hear the double thud from here before he looks at his friends and roars. They all do it back at him, but I am watching Ian, who throws his head back with the roar like he’s yelling at the moon, his teeth gleaming white in the night.
The sight is barbaric.
Beautiful.
Absolutely breathtaking.
“Holy…” I begin, but there are no words.
Raven snorts beside me. “Girl, you better pray because our god has arrived, and by the looks of it, he expects a blood sacrifice.”
Molly mumbles something as Raven snaps a pic and says, “I’m sending this to Vixson. This is totally beating the party he went to in Paris.”
I snap out of it and sip my drink, but I still watch them as they cross the lawn, cutting straight through the crowd like they own the place. Girls stop dancing to stare. Boys come up to them and slap them on the back, congratulating them for tonight’s win. A pang of jealousy cuts deep when a raven-haired girl lays her hand across Ian’s shoulder and bats her eyes up at him. She says something, but I’m too far away to hear it. I want to rip her hand off him and tell her to back up.
But that’s crazy.
Because we aren’t together anymore.
I thought going down on him in the exhibition hall would make things better between us, that it would make me feel strong and powerful, but it didn’t. If anything it made the divide worse, confusing him even more.
Damnit! He smiles at her, and I can’t watch him flirt with someone else. It’s too much.
“All right, bitches!” Raven calls beside me as she pauses the music from her phone. “Who wants to bob for apples?” When no one immediately jumps at the opportunity, she adds flatly, “They are spiked, you heathens.”
I know Ian’s staring at me because I can feel it in my bones, that heaviness that weighs down every part of me, making it hard to breathe and hard to think. His gaze lingers on my dress, over the swell of the white fabric as it stretches across my breasts, before moving up slowly to my painted red hair.
“I’ll go,” he says, volunteering.
“Uh,” Raven begins, and I know she’s thinking what I’m thinking, that he isn’t supposed to be drinking. How much has he been drinking lately?
I frown at him, but he ignores me.
“Who will compete?” she calls into the crowd.
“I…” begins the raven-haired, touchy-feely girl.
“I will!” I say quickly, and this time Ian doesn’t ignore me.
His gaze latches on mine, locks, and throws away the key. He stares at me, slices of silver and stone cutting through his gaze. I meet his stare as heat blossoms in my cheeks and crawls down my neck.
If he’s going to throw his sobriety away…or already has…the least I can do is try to make sure he doesn’t drink himself to death.
“Then let’s get it started!” Raven announces, tapping on her phone to restart the music.
We walk across the patio over to a galvanized steel bin on a table. Bright red apples float on top of the water. I stand on one side of the bin as Ian takes his place on the other, and he’s so close, I can smell the game still on him, the fading scent of sweat and dirt mixed with drying paint. I swallow hard as his fingers curl over the edge of the bin, the veins in his arms bulging with the flex of his fingers.
“What do I get if I win?” he asks, but he isn’t looking at Raven, who’s busy setting up a timer on her phone. He’s looking straight at me.
Whatever you want, I nearly say, but Raven mutters, “Bragging rights. My undying fealty. Absolutely nothing.”
She shrugs. “Ok.” She holds up the timer. “Have all bets been placed?”
No one replies, and I’m pretty sure literally no one has placed a bet. Well, maybe Archie, who’s rubbing his hands together as he watches us, though I can’t tell who he is rooting for.
“On my mark!” She raises an astronaut suit-covered hand toward the sky. “Get ready!” I brace for impact, tying my hair up in a bun quickly before I grip the bin and stare down at the water. “GO!”
My face hits the water.
COLD!
I shut my eyes, which has got to be the worst thing to do because I’m chomping around blindly. Also, now I get why Raven insisted Molly and I wear waterproof mascara.
Water sloshes in my ears and down the front of my dress. I take a breath, look around, and see Ian’s still under the water. I zero in on one apple floating against the edge of the bin. I dive back in and grab it, feeling my teeth clench into the fruity flesh before I lift my head. As I raise my head, apple still in my mouth, I find Ian already standing there, eating his apple bite by bite.
“I win,” he says, taking another bite with a crunch. His paint runs a little down his face, but if anything it makes him look even more fearsome than before.
“What’s next?” he asks Raven as I deposit my apple on the table.
“Well, I had beer pong…” she begins.
“Let’s do it,” he volunteers, throwing the apple core over the heads of our classmates into a trashcan.
“Well, uh, okay…” She glances over at me uneasily. He may not be swallowing pills, but this still is a dangerous path for him, and we all know it. I look over at Everett who, along with Archie and Chase, frowns at his friend. “Who wants to—?”
“I’ll do it,” I say, silently vowing to be the worst beer pong player ever.
Ian purses his lips, studying me like he can’t quite figure me out and it’s getting to him. I start away, walking over to the beer pong table, but it’s already been decimated earlier in the evening. One of the football players starts filling cups with two-finger shots of liquor. Ian grabs the paddle and tips his chin at me.
“You ready, Weathersby?”
“Always,” I reply, grabbing my paddle.
He hits the ball, and it careens straight across the table, landing in my cup.
Shit.
I pluck the ball from the cup and swallow the shot in two gulps, grinding my teeth together after it’s done. What did they put in this? Straight tequila?
Ian smirks across the table at me. He knows I’m about two more of those away from landing on the floor, and I’m already fighting it, given Molly’s concoction from earlier.
I bounce the ball lightly at him and manage to miss every last cup and barely make it over the net. Ian rolls his eyes.
“Come on. You can do better than that, can’t you, sweetness?”
Yeah, I think, but for your sake, I don’t want to.
He starts the serve again.
Thunk goes the ball as it collides with the paddle. Tic as it hits the table and bounces.
Thunk. Tic.
Thunk. Tic.
Thunk before it dances across the rims of my cups and lands in a drink. The crowd around us starts a chant, “Drink! Drink! Drink!”
“Bottoms up,” Ian tells me with a wicked grin.
I swallow it one long gulp and turn the cup upside down on the table.
“Your serve,” he says, raising an eyebrow.
My hands are starting to feel heavy, my movements a little clumsy, and it is getting harder to miss those damn cups. I calculate my options.
Hit the net and bounce it back to me? I’ll just have to re-serve.
Miss the table completely and hit the floor? I’ll have to take a drink.
Gingerly tap it just enough to hopefully make it over the net and let it roll to a stop in front of his pyramid of cups. That’ll have to do.
I hit the ping-pong ball and send it over the net where it hits the table, bounces, and rolls to a stop.
Success! I do a little dance.
Ian’s gaze immediately narrows on me. Uh oh, I messed up.
“I thought I chose treat, not trick,” he snarls with a glower. “Game’s over.”
The crowd boos, but he tosses his paddle on the table, grabs a cup, and swallows the shot in one go. Then he stalks around the table and yanks me by my arm, his warm hand locked like a vise as he pulls me a
way from the crowd.
I stumble after him, nearly tripping while I try to keep up. We barrel straight through the watching students, and I can hear them behind me, calling for the next round of contestants and setting up for the next game. We pass the infinity pool and then the pool house and finally the tool shed, until we are on the edge of the lawn, nearly in the trees, when he yanks me behind the shed and pushes me against the building. The clapboard siding creaks with the hit.
“Why are you fucking with my life, Weathersby?” he demands, his upper lip curling with his words. He leans in close, and my breath lodges in the back of my throat as heat engulfs my body. He regards me carefully, his gaze licking me with ice-cold flames that start at my feet and climb upward, over the cinch at my waist and up across where the fabric lies wet from bobbing for apples against my collarbone.
“I was going to fuck someone else tonight,” he growls, his eyes finally locking on mine again, “but you’ll have to goddamn do.”
26
Harlow
Oh. My. God.
I am hot, aflame all over, but there’s an ice-cold pinch below my breastbone. I want us together again. I want more than this. I want all of him. Every laugh, every smile, every heady gaze and mischievous smirk.
I want it all.
It’s like being at the bottom of a ravine and watching the cement of the dam begin to splinter, the crack branching higher.
It’s like standing on a wooden bridge over rushing rapids and looking down the moment you hear the board you are on snap.
It’s like looking out the window of an airplane and watching as the engine erupts in brilliant flames.
It’s too late to stop it. You are already royally fucked. You are scared, terrified even, and you’d give anything to go back in time and prevent all of it, but I’ve already been at the bottom of that ravine, stood atop that bridge, and looked out that airplane window.
I am living in the aftermath.
“W…w…what?” I barely manage with a swallow that we both hear.
