by S Doyle
Then it happened. The softening of her mouth. The tremble I felt through her whole body.
Let me in.
Then I was. It was everything I thought it might be. There was an innocence to Beth’s kissing, that was obvious, but the power of her personality, her passion, her fierceness. All of that was there, too.
I wanted more. I wanted all of it. I’d spent years with the certainty that, somehow, we were connected. That all this tension that had always existed between us was there for some kind of reason.
I didn’t think about where to put my hands, or how to tease her lips, or to thrust my tongue against hers in a way that would elicit a groan.
We were simply kissing and breathing and groaning. Her hands on my face, my one hand reaching for her breast. I wanted her under me. I wanted her naked and on a bed where I could destroy her. I wanted to teach her how to fuck like I’d been taught and find ways to make her orgasm that she hadn’t even considered in her, until now, pure and innocent life.
I wanted to fuck her. I wanted to fuck her now.
I heard a noise I didn’t like. A squeak instead of a moan and I backed off immediately.
“Are you okay?”
She rubbed near her chest and I realized I had squeezed her breast too hard.
“I lost control,” I muttered, sitting back in my seat. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t… I mean, I liked it…I just…it startled me.”
No, I’d pushed too hard too fast. I knew I couldn’t do that with her. I took a breath. Patience. Control. My dad had had the sex talk with me years ago and he’d instilled that in me. Take only what girl is willing to give. Don’t push for more than she wants. Focus on her, and in the end, I would enjoy it more.
That had all proven to be true. I liked giving pleasure. I liked watching someone while I did it. I loved the feeling of control it gave me beyond the pure sexual thrill.
But Beth. Beth was different. Beth made me want to grab and hold tight so she couldn’t squirm away.
Too tight.
Lost in my thoughts, I wasn’t even looking at her when I felt a weak punch on my shoulder. The sad part was when I faced her, it looked like she’d put a lot of effort into it.
“You said this wasn’t a date!”
I smiled and refastened my seatbelt. Then I started the car because we were going to the party. The tension, for now, eased.
“I told you, it’s only a date if I kiss you at the end of it. That, was just to shut you up.”
“I think I hate you, Fitz. But I also think I may want you to kiss me again.”
“Sure, Bennet. You just need to say pretty please.”
“Asshole.” Then she folded her arms over her perfect breasts and didn’t speak to me again until we got to the party.
Beth
Ugh! I was a huge horny mess by the time we got to the party. I wanted to climb Fitz like a tree, wrap my legs around his waist and grind on him until I came. Yes, I was a virgin, but I knew how to make myself come.
At least intellectually. I understood the biology behind it. If not the reality.
In fact, if I was being honest with myself, the few times I’d thought about trying to make myself come, I’d also been angry with Fitz. It seemed being furious with him for any reason also had the side effect of making me want to touch myself while thinking about how furious I was with him.
When we got to Chas’s house the driveway appeared empty, but Fitz didn’t pull in. It was a rookie move to park in the driveway. It alerted the neighbors a party was happening, and it was an easy way to get trapped when the cops showed up. And the cops would show up. In fact, I was pretty sure it was a majority of the work they did in this town.
We held underage drinking parties. They broke them up.
No one typically got in any real trouble unless there was serious damage done to the house.
Like last year when, apparently, students fleeing a house party ran over a pool covering to escape, shredding it to the tune of thousands of dollars. Fortunately, no one drowned and the person having the party was rich enough to not really care.
Because that’s also how it worked.
Kids destroyed property. Parents turned a blind eye and replaced it.
“Wait here,” Fitz said as he parked in front of a house two doors down.
Why did I need to wait? Was he planning on scouting out the party first?
I barely had time to register the thought when he was coming around the front of the car to open my door.
“What did you just do?”
He smirked. “I opened the door for you. Deal with it, Bennet.”
“Do you know how completely old fashioned and, some might say, misogynistic that is?”
“Or chivalrous. Some might say that, too.”
He offered his hand, and I took. When he shut the door behind me, he took the opportunity to push me back up against the car.
“We kissed, Bennet,” he whispered into my ear, his body pressed against me.
“We did,” I agreed, my stomach now full of flutters.
“You liked it.”
“Maybe,” I admitted reluctantly. He chuckled then bit the bottom of my ear lobe, making my whole body quiver with lust.
“Let’s go,” he said, pulling me along.
“So you tricked me into a date,” I said, unbelieving we were holding hands yet thinking how utterly lovely it felt to hold hands with Fitz.
“Basically.”
“Why not just ask me?”
“Because you’re too stubborn for your own good, Bennet.”
I stopped and jerked on his hand to make him stop, too. “Does this mean we’re…dating?”
He took another step towards me so that I had to crane my neck to see his face.
“No,” he said imperiously, like the high school God he was. “Too soon for you. Let’s just say we’re exploring.”
“Wait a minute. Who says you get to decide what we’re doing?” I asked him.
He barked out a laugh and bent down to kiss me. A firm, but brief peck on my lips. “I do. Now, we’re going to go in there, drink beer and flirt with one another. Then we might try to find a private spot and make out for a while. Work for you?”
I shrugged, having no real sense of what I felt other than wanting to make out with him some more.
“I guess. The world has just turned upside down for me, so I imagine I’ll just go with it. For now. But we should still spend some time spying on people.”
“Fine,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Spying first, then flirting and making out second.”
The party was as expected. Loud, cramped and even barely after eight o’clock it appeared as if everyone was already drunk.
“You should know I don’t like parties!” I said loud enough for him to hear, which was basically shouting. “You probably don’t want to explore with someone who doesn’t like parties!”
“I’ll tell you a secret,” he shouted back. “I don’t like parties, either. Especially during football season when I’m sober and everyone else is shitfaced.”
“Then why are we here?”
“Because we’re teenagers. We’re supposed to like parties. So let’s pretend!”
He moved us through the crowd effortlessly. I wasn’t completely oblivious to my fellow classmates reacting to the fact that Fitz and I had arrived together holding hands. My first instinct was to hide that Fitz and I were together in some way. I knew what my classmates thought of me. I knew what they thought of Fitz. He was the Homecoming King, and I wasn’t supposed to be within ten feet of the court.
Didn’t he realize that? How vastly different our social status was. Yes, we were two teenagers who lived in Haddonfield, but that’s where it ended. Things would be said to me. Things like, I wasn’t worthy of him. He could do better.
Just like I wasn’t worthy to MC the fashion show. The difference was I could care less about the fashion show. That hadn’t been worth it at all.
; But Fitz was different.
We wound our way to the kitchen. Chas was sitting at his dining room table with Star on his lap. She was drinking a beer and laughing, her arm around his shoulders, as if nothing bad had happened to her last week. It could have been a brave show, but I didn’t think it was. After the trauma of the event itself, we’d been cracking jokes about it ever since.
If anyone said anything to her about it, her response was always the same.
“Yes, they’re real and they’re spectacular.” A nod to Seinfeld re-runs.
Because Star was above it. Always above it all. What I wouldn’t give for an ounce of her confidence right now.
“Beer?” Fitz asked me.
I nodded. I didn’t particularly care for taste of it, but alcohol of any kind seemed like a solid plan.
“Fitz!” Chas called out when he saw him.
Fitz gave him a chin nod, while he filled two cups from the keg that had been placed in the center of the kitchen.
“Beth!” my sister called to me. “You came to a party! That’s so…un-Beth of you.”
I smiled and walked over to her. At least I had one friend here.
“Fitz insisted,” I said. “He says they are supposed to be loads of fun.”
“They can be with the right person,” Chas said, bouncing Star on his lap, making her giggle.
Fitz came over and handed me a cup. “You watch it. You don’t put it down. You need to go to the bathroom, you hand it to me. If you do put it down, and you want another beer, you tell me. Got it?”
“Yes, Dad,” I said instinctively, then frowned. My father had never once given me a warning on how to behave at parties. Never a lesson about the spiking a person’s drink out of spite or even just for the fun of it.
Or for something more sinister.
“Wait a minute, did you two come together?” Chas asked.
“We did,” he answered.
My sister looked at me and she didn’t need to say anything. I could hear the questions teleporting through the air.
When did this happen?
I knew you were into him!
Why didn’t you tell me?
OMG!
I answered with a shoulder shrug, a body shake and a head nod. Then I took a sip of beer.
“This is awesome. We can go on double dates!” Chas said. “I don’t like any of Star’s friends, but I like you, Beth.”
I smiled. “I like you, too, Chas.”
“What do you mean you don’t like any of my friends?”
“They’re all uptight bitches,” Chas said. “You’re too nice for all of them.”
“That’s sweet,” she said, clearly not offended by his assessment. She kissed his cheek, then he used his finger to turn her and chin and…then they were making out.
I turned around because I did not need to watch my sister make out.
“Should we?” I made gesture like we should go and work the room. There was drinking in the kitchen, dancing in the living room. We made our way downstairs to what was an expansive playroom. There were six people playing beer pong, including Ed.
I watched as he deftly tossed the ping pong ball into the Red Solo Cup across the table. It landed and the demands to drink, drink, drink were shouted by everyone playing.
“Do you see anyone doing anything out of the ordinary?” Fitz bent down to ask me.
“Yes, I see you hanging out with me at a party. That is very out of the ordinary.”
“Your face is turning red. Are you getting a little tipsy, Bennet?”
I was and it was another surprising thing to find I liked it, too. It made it okay for me to press a little closer to Fitz, to work my hand around his waist so that my fingers could slip under his shirt and touch the small of his back. This was me touching Fitz like he was mine to touch.
“We’re supposed to be in the spying phase of the night,” he said. But the look in his eyes said he was ready for the finding-a-private-spot part of the evening to begin. God, those purplish-blue eyes. They really were too perfect.
“Fitz, Beth,” Ed called out to us. I removed my hand from under Fitz’s shirt and took another sip of my beer to distract myself. I was barely halfway through my first cup and I could feel my face flushing and my blood running hot.
Or was that the Fitz effect?
Fitz greeted him with a nod.
“Hey, you know Wick is here with Gigi, right?” Ed said.
“What?” Fitz asked. “She didn’t say she was coming tonight. This party is too old for her.”
“I’m telling you, I walked in and I was, like, oh shit. They were in the kitchen the last I saw them. Didn’t you see them upstairs?” Ed asked.
We looked to each other. We hadn’t seen Wick at all. Which meant if he wasn’t on the main floor, or in the basement…
“That motherfucker,” Fitz swore, reaching the same conclusion I already had. “This time I really am going to kill him.”
14
Fitz
There was no time to think. No time to consider the consequences. Gigi was here at a party where there was drinking, most likely drugs, and with Wick. A guy I knew to be a douchebag. A guy I suspected of running a betting ring for freshman virgins.
I told myself, as I ran up the stairs of the basement, that Gigi was smarter than Wick. She knew how to play him, how to keep him at bay. It’s doubtful too she would have drunk anything he gave her.
Our parents had drilled into us the rules about drinking in public. They knew we were going to do it, so they taught us how to be careful. Especially Gi.
I did a quick once over of the living room and dining room and didn’t see either of them. I wasn’t going to take the time to stop in the kitchen. If Chas had seen Gigi, he would have told me before Ed.
I raced up the center staircase. I’d been to Chas’s home many times before. All of the bedroom doors were closed. Because Chas didn’t want people in them, or because they were already occupied, I didn’t know. I considered who Wick was and tried the master suite first.
It was locked. I didn’t hesitate to put my weight behind my next push and the door snapped open. The lock nothing more than a minor deterrence.
It took a few seconds to process what I was seeing. Wick with Gi in his arms. She looked to be nearly unconscious as he was leaning over the bed touching her face. I could hear the pounding of footsteps behind me, shouting at me. Calling my name.
Wick turned at the shouts and saw me in the doorway. In three strides, I was beside him, pulling him off the bed and slamming him against the wall.
“What did you do to her?” I raged. Lifting my fist, I brought it down on his face.
He crumpled to the floor and held his hands up over his head.
“Wait,” he cried out, his eyes watering from the pain. “It’s not what you think. I swear.”
Ed caught me under my arms and physically moved me away from Wick.
“Gigi!” Beth was leaning over her. Slapping her cheeks gently to stir her. I moved Beth aside and looked down at my sister.
Had she overdosed on something?
“I need to get her to the hospital,” I insisted. I was bending down to pick her up when she stirred, and her eyes opened.
“Fitz?”
“Gigi!” I barked. “Tell me what you took. What did he give you?”
“I was just so tired,” she said. “I had a few beers. And I took E but all it did was make me sleepy.”
I laid her back down on the bed and turned back to Wick.
He shrunk down again and held his hands up over his head. “I swear she drank two beers. That’s all. She said she was tired so I told her she could come up here and lay down. That’s it!”
“Show me the pills,” I growled.
Wick reached into his jeans and took out a small bag of white pills. “It’s just E. And it’s not even a good batch. You don’t get any kind of high from it.”
I took the bag, bloody from his fingers, and held it up.
“
Let me see,” Beth said reaching for the bag. She took out a pill and looked at it. Then she let out a humorless laugh.
“It’s not Ecstasy,” she said. “Reen knew. How did she know?”
“Reen knew what?” I asked. I took the pill from her and I could see a letter stamped into it. “It’s a funny looking E on the pill.”
“No,” she said turning the pill in my hand. “It’s an M. It’s melatonin. Probably a really high dose. This, with the couple of beers Gi’s not used to drinking, basically just put her to sleep.”
“I wanted to lie down,” Gigi admitted, sitting up on her elbows. “So freaking tired.”
“See. I just brought her up here to lay down,” Wick said now standing and reaching for the box of tissues on the bedstand to staunch the flow of blood from his nose. “I think you broke my nose, asshole.”
I got up in his face again. As a defensive safety on the football team, Wick wasn’t exactly small and still I towered over him.
“So innocent,” I snarled at him. “Then why did you lock the fucking door?”
“You know how these parties are. I didn’t want anyone coming up here and bothering us.”
“Don’t think for a minute I buy that bullshit. Maybe you thought you were getting her drunk and high, and instead, you just made her sleepy, but the end result was the same. My sister was passed out in a bedroom. Alone. With. You.” I pushed my finger into his chest with my last word and had the satisfaction of watching him wince.
“Beth, I’m taking my sister home. Now.”
“Come on, Gigi,” she said helping Gi to sit up on the bed. “Let’s get you up.”
“I’ve got her,” I said, bending over Gi and picking her up like I used to do when she was a little girl. She didn’t resist. Just put her arms around my neck and pressed her face into my chest.
“Don’t be mad, Fitz,” she said drunkenly. “I wanted to try E once. Just to see. Nobody tricked me.”
I grunted and carried her out of the bedroom. The hall and stairwell were packed with people taking in the show. I said nothing, simply looked down at all of them and watched as they dispersed themselves.
