Seven Sins

by Piper Lennox

  On any normal day, I’d leave the conversation here and move on, but last night clings to me like smoke. Truth be told…I think I’m still mad. For once in my life, I can’t just breathe and let it go.

  I knew traveling with Van would wear on me, but I never expected him to rub off on me.

  “Awfully hypocritical of you.”

  I feel the laser of his stare again. My pulse rivals the rattle of the engine.

  “Excuse me?”

  “If I had ideas, which I don’t, it’s not like you’ve been innocent.” I clench my hands on the wheel to keep from fidgeting. “I’ve seen how you look at me, sometimes.”

  Not sometimes. Every hour he’s awake.

  “Lust,” he says, after a minute. The word is sharp when it reaches me, laced in spearmint like a tempting little drug.

  A rush of hormones paints the inside of my skull. This might be worse than if he just denied it.

  Actually, there’s no “might” about it. It is worse.

  Because now I can’t stop wondering what ideas he’s got—how it would feel to have a man take me, in braided lust and hatred, and destroy me in one beautiful blaze.

  I clear my throat and reach for the radio. This conversation needs to stop. It’s dangerous.

  Van’s hand intercepts. He grabs my fingers.

  My heart locks up inside my chest.

  “Let me clarify,” he says. I’d call it a growl, if there was a hint of emotion behind it.

  Roughly, he places my hand back on the steering wheel. “When I say ‘lust,’ I don’t mean I’d like to fuck you.”

  I’ve heard this curse tumble from his mouth a thousand times…but in this context, it makes my breath catch.

  “When I fuck a girl, I want to intentionally make her feel good. Incredible.” He stretches his arms overhead to crack his back. “What I want with you, Juni, is merely to use you. The fact you’d feel good is just a coincidence. Might even make you come. In fact…I think I’d have to actively try not to make you come.”

  He has to know what he’s doing to me.

  He has to somehow feel the fire between my legs, or the thundering of my heartbeat in the air.

  “But I don’t want you to feel good about it. I want you fucking devastated by how amazing it feels having me inside you, knowing I can—and will—take it all away whenever I damn well please.”

  His eyes land on me again. Even though I don’t dare look back, I feel every ounce of ice inside them.

  “I want to teach you how it feels when someone lights up your whole life like a firework…then leaves you.”

  The road vibrates underneath us. I count the dashed lines of the passing zone until they blur.

  To be fair, I think, I did tell him to pick one and stick with it.

  “Wow.”

  Van shrugs at my reaction. “Yeah, well. Truth hurts.”

  “No.” I swallow. “I meant…wow, that’s a lot of words when you could’ve said, ‘I want to break your heart.’”

  “Not much sport in breaking something so fragile.”

  I laugh. Van throws me a glare, but I genuinely find this hilarious: the giant lie he just spit.

  “I might have a few nervous habits, now and then,” I tell him, “and yeah, I hate confrontation. But there’s nothing fragile about me, and you know it.”

  Van shifts in his seat. I like it. It’s not often I get to call him out on his crap; he’s usually got one of those persuasive speeches at the ready.

  But not this time.

  He said it himself, last night: whatever I ran away from, it must have been pretty horrible.

  Yet here I am, still in one piece.

  “Fine,” he says eventually, and the coolness pours back into his words like menthol. “My point stands, though: I’m not interested in breaking your heart. That’s putting way too much significance on things. Lust is like revenge. Something to get out of your system. Doesn’t take long.”

  Finally: my chance to strike him with a low blow. I urge myself not to take it.

  But maybe his habits are rubbing off on me after all, because all I can think is, How could I not take it?

  “Is that why you always climbed into my bed with me at the ranch?” I ask. “Just getting something out of your system?”

  His eyes snap to me again.

  And even with that indecipherable face, I know I’ve cut him deeply. Perhaps even worse than he just did to me.

  Him getting in my bed seven years ago wasn’t a sexual thing. He never made a move. In fact, he didn’t even put his arms around me.

  Always, after I’d wake up from a nightmare to find him in the darkness, he’d slip underneath the quilt and shut his eyes, telling me it was okay to go back to sleep. There was enough distance between us to be respectful, but not so much I couldn’t feel his body heat.

  Not so much that I couldn’t reach out and touch him, once he fell asleep.

  I liked tracing the muscles in his arms, taut and boyishly elongated. Not quite lanky, but lean.

  I liked touching his hair, dark brown and whispering across his forehead.

  The jutting bone of his hip, whenever his flannel pajama pants slipped too low.

  His lips.

  Of all the things Van had taught me about the world so far, he’d yet to even mention things like kissing, or sex, or dating. How different were the rules here?

  Did they call it carnality here, too? Was any of it really a sin? Was it normal that I wanted to do them all, anyway?

  Was it normal that I wanted to do these things with him?

  More than once, I tried to ask him. But I was too afraid of what his answers might be.

  So, night after night, I taught myself what I could by watching him, and dragging my fingers over this beautiful boy I wanted like I’d never wanted anything else.

  Once, I kissed him.

  It was light. He didn’t wake.

  Most likely, I didn’t even do it right and couldn’t call it a kiss—just my lips passing cautiously over his, long enough to feel our skin catch. Long enough to know what he smelled like when I got closer than close.

  I’d drawn back and sworn to myself I would never, ever do it again. Not if he wasn’t awake.

  Not if I didn’t know, without a single doubt, that he wanted me to.

  The next morning, I asked Mr. Durham if I could stay in the carriage house instead. Howard loaned me a cot. I took all the gifts they’d given me outside in wooden crates, ignoring Van’s protests.

  For the rest of my days there, I slept horribly. Even after I left, it took years for the nightmares to fade. Nothing and no one could chase them away like he did.

  That was why he got in my bed: to guard my dreams. It was a gift.

  So I know what I’ve just implied—that he did it out of lust—isn’t just hypocritical of me. It’s the best and worst thing I could possibly say.

  It’s the best because…man, does it feel good to finally have the upper hand, to briefly don my own emotionless mask and make him think he means absolutely nothing to me anymore. That, maybe, he never did.

  But it’s the worst, because it works. I’ve hurt him.

  And when Van gets hurt, he gets angry.

  “See if I ever get in a bed with you again,” he says.

  Drop it, I order myself, as he gets up and stomps to the back.

  He does that a lot, but I’ve realized it’s rarely on purpose. His footfall is just naturally heavy, as though gravity weighs him down more than the rest of us. When he’s not on his board, anyway.

  I watch his back in the mirror as he grabs his phone and hooks it up to charge. The muscles under his shirt are suggestive of so much power, I feel that burn between my legs again.

  I think, I want him.

  And I wish, with everything I am, that I didn’t.

  “But you just said you want to…” My tongue locks up on the curse word. “…sleep with me.”

  “No,” he calls over his shoulder without looking, “I said
‘fuck.’ And then made it exceedingly clear that I don’t want to. Not in the way it means to me.”

  Van might be the only person on this earth who could take that word and have it mean something truly intimate. And I suddenly want to experience it more than I can stand, even when he warned me exactly what will happen if I do.

  “My point,” I call back, swallowing again, “is that you couldn’t do that without getting into a bed with me.”

  “Really,” he laughs darkly, scrolling his phone. “You think sex only happens in a bed? You think sex with me only happens in a bed?”

  I squeeze my thighs together even tighter. Not anymore, I don’t.

  “But,” he goes on, setting down his phone to stretch out on the comforter with a yawn, “this is a pointless discussion. Because, sure: I lust after you, Juniper. I’ll announce it through a megaphone at every national broadcast for a year, I don’t care. But I’m never going to act on it.”

  “Well, why not?” I challenge. Here’s hoping my sarcasm sounds convincing. “Don’t I deserve everything you said, about giving me all that and taking it away?”

  There’s a beat of silence. Foolishly, I think he’s about to take his words back.

  “Yep,” he says, and yawns again. “But I don’t care enough to give you what you deserve.”

  Just like that, he’s volleyed my low blow right back to me.

  I turn up the radio, so he can’t hear me deep-breathing all the way past the New York state line.

  Fourteen

  “Couldn’t you have just asked your dad for a plane ticket or something, instead of driving? Seriously, dude, I’ve been so bored.”

  “Anyone ever tell you you’re a spoiled little bitch? Who gets bored in a kickass vacation house right on the water, where he’s free to do whatever he wants?”

  I squash an ant with my thumb before it can scurry up my shorts and switch my phone to the other ear, since the right one’s already tired of Theo’s whining. If my dad could splash cash like his, and my childhood was all about luxury instead of fiscal prudence, maybe I wouldn’t feel too guilty to cash the checks Dad sends because he thinks I can’t possibly survive on my own. Instead, here I am living in a car just to prove a point.

  “None of my friends are in town until Friday.”

  “Aw. Poor little King Theo, all alone in his empty palace.”

  Some tiny piece of me actually does pity him, but not because he’s bored. Theo is so easily lonely, even when surrounded by a crowd. If my people skills are broken, he has the tragic luck of semi-operational ones that come and go at random. I don’t think he really connects with anyone, besides me and Wes.

  And let me tell you, if your only friends are Durhams? You’re one sad fuck.

  “I’m only about…two hours away, first of all,” I tell him, squinting at the clock on a bank sign across the street. We’re in some random neighborhood; Juniper did the impossible and convinced a total stranger to let her refill the water tank with their garden hose, in exchange for nothing. Telling her the sink wouldn’t work constituted the first words I’ve spoken since our argument this morning. I slept, and fake-slept, for most of the afternoon.

  “And second, I wouldn’t ask my dad for a tank of gas, let alone a plane ticket. So, like, sorry you’re bored and lonely, but cut that shit out.”

  “Yeah,” he sighs, either like he knew it was a longshot before he asked...or he secretly wishes he hated accepting his old man’s money half as much as I do mine.

  But hey, we’ve all got voids to fill, so no judgment. Theo chose money, Wes chose pills—and I chose skating.

  “Almost done!” Juniper calls from the back of the Transit. I cover my phone’s mic and throw her a nod, before I realize she was talking to the owner of the house, not me.

  It occurs to me I should tell Theo I’m bringing a guest. I could roll into that house with the entire ’95 Bulls roster and he wouldn’t bat an eye, but still. My mom did drill a few manners into my skull.

  Before I can speak, his espresso machine screams in the background. It’s six-thirty p.m., but Theo is basically nocturnal. If he sleeps at all. I really couldn’t tell you.

  I use it as an excuse to say goodbye. Giving him the run-down of this situation will be far easier in person.

  Besides, it’s not like Juniper has to stay in the house with us. She’s got her entire house, right here.

  Alternatively, I could just send her on her merry little way and hop out at the curb.

  But then what? She can’t repay me in money yet, and I really don’t want her Transit. Even I’m above taking a girl’s home away. Even this girl’s home.

  All I want by this point is to finish my original plan: travel, skate, get my shit together, and land some sponsors again. I hate admitting it, but her little karmic-balance thing is the only option where we both get what we want.

  Before we leave, Juniper hangs the hose back up so precisely, I should take a photo for Better Homes & Gardens. She even knocks on the door to thank the woman again, and leaves with a hug and two jars of homemade apple butter. Holy shit.

  “Teach me to hustle like that.” I open one jar and scoop it out with my finger. The woman waves from her porch, so I make myself do it back. It is damn good apple butter. “You talked a stranger into letting you use their water, for free, and here she’s acting like you did her a favor.”

  “It’s not hustling.” Juniper waves again, then buckles up before I swing into traffic. “Honey over vinegar. You’d be surprised how much easier life is when you don’t scowl at everyone, waiting to get screwed over. Kindness goes a long way.”

  “God, just link up with a hippie caravan, already.” I pass her the jar; she runs her pinky around the rim to clean the mess I left, puts the lid back on, then sticks her finger in her mouth. It makes me think about a thousand things I shouldn’t. “That’s not how the world works.”

  “Not all of it, sure. But enough of it.”

  “Uh-huh. And your proof?”

  “The full water tank and free food aren’t proof enough for you?”

  I sigh. Plenty of comebacks come to mind, but I’m too tired to deliver them.

  While I drive, she plays that crime podcast she loves. It’s kind of growing on me, actually, if for no other reason than it slams my libido into a coma. Nothing like descriptions of Saran-Wrapped limbs discovered in unassuming chicken coops to keep your mind pure.

  I can’t believe I was stupid enough to admit I think of her that way. What happened to not putting ideas in her head?

  “So,” she says suddenly, turning down the radio, “when we get to the Hamptons—”

  “When you get me to the Hamptons.”

  Juniper draws a long breath, then exhales an even longer one. “When we arrive at your cousin’s house,” she says sharply, “I’ll park at a Wal-Mart. Just DM me when you’re ready to leave, and we’ll go to the next stop. Wherever you want to go.” Pointedly, she flicks the air vent that was trained on my face, to hers. “As per our agreement.”

  “The ones near here don’t allow overnight parking.” A boldfaced lie, but I know she won’t check. “You’ll be better off parking at Theo’s, on the side of the house. The driveway’s huge. You’ll have room.”

  Her mouth twists to the side. “If you’re sure Theo won’t mind, then...okay. Thanks.”

  “Not doing it for your sake.” I cut to the far left lane, then veer back when I remember this behemoth can’t handle high speeds. “I don’t like the idea of you being where I can’t see you.”

  “What?”

  There’s a weird stab of fear to her voice, mixed with hope. She thinks I’m falling into old, protective habits.

  “Let me rephrase: I don’t want you ditching me.”

  “Oh.” Relaxing, she gathers the apple butter and pivots to the back, crouch-walking them to the fridge. “Well, for what it’s worth…I wouldn’t ditch you.”

  While she’s gone, I put the air vent back on my face. “History’s taught me
otherwise.”

  It’s almost dark when we pull up to the house. While Juniper marvels at the modern architecture, I find the most obscured part of the driveway I can and park.

  “See you in a week,” I tell her, then grab my bag and climb out before she can stop me.

  The video doorbell is synced to the television in the living room. I ring, then fill the lens with my middle finger.

  “Finally.” Theo’s voice buzzes through the speaker. “It’s unlocked, come on in.”

  “Good way to get yourself robbed, but all right.” I swing open the massive door and step inside.

  One breath, and I relax. Yeah, I hate accepting my dad’s money—but I do enjoy luxury. And Theo’s summerhouse is swimming in it.

  I turn to shut the door behind me.

  “Ow!”

  “Don’t stick your foot in the way, then.” Instead of opening it to let Juniper in, I slip through and stand in her path. “What are you doing?”

  “Saying hi to Theo.”

  I laugh. “Uh, fuck no.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “You want the truth?” I ask, crossing my arms and leaning on a pillar that, I’m pretty certain, holds up nothing. “Theo doesn’t like you.”

  Another lie. Theo ignores Juniper online (at my insistence), but he won’t say one bad word to her face. Guy’s too soft.

  Still, I can tell she believes me.

  “Yeah,” she sighs, her raised eyebrows boiling my blood again, “bet you made sure of that.”

  “Damn right I did. And I’ll never stop making sure of it.”

  “What, then? You really expect me to sit in his driveway for a whole week and not thank him?”

  “He’s not even going to notice.”

  The frigid air of the foyer hits my back. “Notice what?” Theo punches my arm hello and starts in on the name-calling, but freezes when he sees Juniper. “Oh…hi.”

  “Hi, Theo.” Juniper ignores me, and the “why, God, why” look I shoot overhead, to return the handshake he offers. “I don’t know if you remember me, but—”

  “How could he forget you, Fairy Lights?” I slap on a smile. “But, for manners’ sake: Juniper, Theo. Theo, Juniper. You know her best as the girl who kissed my father, then stole a few thousand bucks for good measure.”