The Accident

by Devyn Forrest

  I felt the orgasm take hold and wash over my body. I had never felt anything like it before. This time it was deep within my core, and I cried out as the pleasure washed over me again and again like a wave. I could feel him so deep inside me, against something that pulsed and ached, and as I dropped back down, I gasped. Feeling me come drove him crazy, and he pumped a few more times before gasping and then he gripped my shoulders and came hard.

  “My God,” I whispered, panting. I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t help but suck in deep breaths as I heaved and tried to relax my breathing. Maybe there was no other way to explain how you felt about somebody after they made love to you for the first time. Theo gave me a tender kiss and slowly pulled out of me. He ripped the condom off and wrapped it in a Kleenex, to toss in the wastebasket. Then, he cuddled me close as he too tried to get his breathing under control.

  I wondered what I would feel next. Emptiness? Fear? But instead, I just felt safe and tired, and my eyelashes drifted toward my cheeks. Within minutes, we both had fallen asleep. And when I awoke in the morning, he was gone, and I was tucked under the blankets—still naked, lost in the softness of falling in love.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I asked Theo to drop me back at school on December 28, a few days before everyone else. Just before I left, Mr. Everton took me aside in his study and asked if I wanted him to go ahead and pay for the rest of the following semester, as well. I felt a strange lump in my throat, even as I nodded and thanked him. I hated the idea of owing anyone anything, but I leaned toward him and said, “I can’t thank you enough,” and knew that the money meant nothing to him at all.

  Coach Jonathon had barreled a stream of texts at me on December 26, demanding that I head back to train early, which was the reason I skipped out of Theo’s so quickly after Christmas. “We can’t waste any more time,” Jonathon had said. I guessed he had probably heard that Poppy and Coach Jeremy had kept up their training, if not at the Denver Academy gym, then at the one downtown.

  Only a few other athletes lurked around campus those few days. I kept mostly to myself between training sessions. I was strict with my diet and ate mostly protein, vegetables and whole grains, and read countless articles about previous National Championships. Coach Jonathon was stricter than ever, but I took every day as a unique challenge—even going to bed early on New Year’s Eve and waking up for a morning run at 6 a.m. on January 1.

  You have to win Nationals. If not just for yourself, then do it to prove to your father that you were always enough. You were always more than enough. You were…

  The rest of the students arrived back on January 2. I was thrilled to see Chloe, and we leaped up and down in our dorm room and hugged each other. She told me she had trained twice a day back at her pool in California, and she dragged out her arm and popped out her muscle, and I let out an “ooh” and “ahhh” until she laughed at me. It seemed outside the bounds of reason that we might not make it to the Olympics; it was our everyday conversation. It was our end goal.

  One afternoon in the middle of January, I stood outside the dining hall with my hands stuffed in my pockets, laughing with Zed. I had caught him again post-run, and he joked that his endorphins were so powerful, he would have laughed at anything. “Runners high is supposed to be as strong as weed,” he told me.

  Ellison, Poppy’s best friend, drew up beside me. Her eyebrows snuck over her eyes and her cheeks looked more pinched than normal. Ellison normally kept her distance from me, and I’d always assumed it was her own act of resistance toward Poppy’s unadulterated hatred toward me. But when she spoke, her voice was icy and flat.

  “You really play a funny game, don’t you?”

  Zed’s face fell. I blinked at her and glanced around, thinking that maybe Poppy hid in the bushes and prepped to leap out at me. “What do you mean?” I finally asked.

  “You know what you did,” Ellison continued. “Poppy did some digging, and she found out the truth. It’s just disgusting, you know? Hearing that you take such huge hand-outs from people. I don’t even want to know what you did to make him agree to it.”

  My heart thudded. “Ellison, I don’t know what you’re…”

  Zed’s voice cut in. “What is she talking about, Rooney?”

  I felt trapped. I swallowed and blinked at both of them; anxiety made my stomach bubble.

  “She’s everything that’s wrong with this country, Zed,” Ellison continued. “A gold-digging, conniving…”

  “Fuck you,” I snapped. I whipped around, and my cheeks burned with anger. I hustled back to my dorm room, again demonizing Poppy. I guessed that because she had run into Theo, Zed and I at the gas station in Denver. She had dug into the information regarding my tuition fees and known that I had struggled with them previously. She probably hadn’t expected me to stick around so long. But who would have told her? Was Mr. Everton cavalier about the information? Had Mr. Piper learned and told a friend, who’d told a friend, who had told Poppy’s mother?

  As I ducked into the foyer of the girls’ dorm, I heard whispers up the stairs. “Yeah. He’s paying the remaining of her tuition, I guess. I mean, she did get a partial scholarship, but can you even imagine? Asking someone to do that for you?”

  “Never. If you can’t afford to come to Denver Athletics, then I really don’t think you should be allowed to come,” the other returned.

  I scampered down the stairs to the basement and shot into a full-out run until I reached my room. I whipped the door closed behind me, pressed my back against the wood, and eased all the way down to the floor. “Fuck,” I screamed out as I ran my hands through my hair. I pounded the floor in frustration.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Chloe’s words were similarly flat and emotionless.

  I turned my head slowly up to look at her in her lifted bed. She glowered down at me with more anger than I’d ever seen. She crept up to the edge of the bed and crossed her arms and said it again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what? You’re talking about the money?” I looked at her square in the eye.

  “Actually, it’s a lot of things,” Chloe burned back. “It’s—it’s you taking money from Mr. Everton, which is kind of weird in and of itself. But the fact that you lied about it or didn’t tell me about it… it makes me think that there’s something else going on.”

  I almost choked back my words in anger. “What the fuck, Chloe. For one, I didn’t lie about anything and it was a gift from Mr. Everton! The school offered me a scholarship, but I still had to come up with the remaining five grand.”

  “But then there’s the issue of you actually having sex over Christmas with Theo, and also keeping that from me?” she continued. “What the fuck, Rooney? I thought we were like sisters. I thought we told each other everything. And now you’re just accepting thousands of dollars from that asshole over there in his mansion, and sleeping with his son.”

  “Oh my god! How did you even find out about that? I just didn’t know how to talk about it and it just happened!” I cried. “About the money and also about the sex. I just… I hate taking money from Mr. Everton, but if I hadn’t, I would have probably had to drop out. What other option did I have? Chloe—I’m basically an orphan, you know?”

  “Except you’re not,” Chloe muttered. “We both know where your dad is.”

  “No, we don’t because I still don’t even know for sure if he is my dad! And I’d really appreciate it if you keep that to yourself,” I returned dangerously. I jumped to my feet and held her stare for a long time. “I don’t need any more gossip flying around this place.” After a heavy silence, I added, “Who told you I had sex with Theo?”

  This was, perhaps, one of the worst insults. I had lost my virginity, I’d left it right there in the guest bedroom, and I had ached with this strange sadness afterward. It had been beautiful and romantic, perhaps more beautiful than a first time was meant to be. And yet, I still felt this feeling of loss—perhaps at the childhood, I could never return
to, or the fact that falling in love was one of the most painful things you could do, and I felt very much like I was apt to do it with all three of the guys, rather than just one.

  Chloe shrugged. “Everybody’s talking about it. It’s just common knowledge. To everyone except me, I guess.”

  I growled with anger, “Common knowledge? Goddammit!” I clambered up into my bed and laid flat on my back for a long time, my eyes so intense I felt they might burn holes into the ceiling. Theo had told the entire school that I’d had sex with him. What else did the school know about my sex life? Did they know about Clinton on the roof? About Zed in the forest? And what did the boys say to one another about me when I wasn’t around?

  I felt like a tool—the girl Mr. Everton needed to prove whatever he needed to prove to Rudy Eyser, the girl the boys needed to toss around, to trade like you might trade old Pokemon cards. I grabbed the blanket and yanked it to my chin.

  “Chloe?” I finally whispered. The room was dark and Chloe hadn’t moved in a long time. I had no way to know if she was asleep or awake, but she gave no answer back. My word just hung there, without an anchor or a destination. I ached with fatigue, my muscles tight, and my heart was filled with sadness. I hadn't any idea what to do next.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Again, the school had found a way to draw a thick fence around me and keep its distance. In the mornings, Chloe shuffled around the second her alarm clock blared, just so she could dart out the door five minutes before me. Zed hadn’t looked me in the eye since Ellison had approached us in the arboretum, and Theo seemed generally done with me, focused entirely on his training.

  Two weeks after everyone learned about my benefactor, Clinton yanked my ponytail in the hallways after Biology Lab and laughed. “There she is. Don’t go asking for handouts from me, Rooney. I only do handouts in exchange for real labor. Like handjobs.”

  I gaped at him and stopped walking in the center of the hall. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. He winked and cut down the hall, and his biceps rippled beneath his t-shirt. As I stood, I felt a stab in the center of my foot. I yanked to the side, but Poppy’s heel held my foot down flat. She had a few inches on me, and she towered over me in those heels—her chin tilted down and her lips only a few inches from mine.

  “Poppy, that fucking hurts,” I cried.

  “Oh? Does it? That’s too bad.” She dug her heel deeper into my shoe. The thin material had nothing against the strength of her thighs, her calves. “I was wondering about something, Rooney. Do you know how you ruined my shoe a while back? That unhappy accident with the acid?”

  I just blinked at her.

  “Well, maybe your little friend Mr. Everton could give you an extra thousand-dollar hand-out for a new pair? It would really mean a lot to me, and I know you love to ask,” she said. “I wonder what you and Mr. Everton do when you’re alone—is it anything like what you and Theo do when you’re alone? Tell me, Rooney, is the term like father like son appropriate for this situation? Like, in the bedroom?”

  Pain spiked up my foot and through my leg. Ignoring the last part of her sentence, I said, “Seems like you have enough shoes, doesn’t it?” I was careful to make my voice flat and emotionless.

  “A girl can never have enough shoes. Don’t you know that? It’s the first rule of being a girl,” Poppy returned. She whipped her ponytail around and let out a bone-chilling giggle. “It’s just funny to me, you know. Now that you’ve fucked Theo and messed around with Zed—my ex, by the way—and also Clinton, it seems like they’re just as done with you as I’ve always been. I knew it would only be a matter of time before everyone caught on to the real you. Here we are at the end of the road. Hasn’t it been delicious for you? Pretending to have friends for a while? Pretending to be wanted?”

  Suddenly, a hand reached up and shoved Poppy hard across the upper chest. Poppy whipped back, and her head whacked against the locker like a rag doll. Chloe stood beside me, her hands in fists. She glowered at both of us, then glanced down at my foot. There was a deep round indent where Poppy’s heel had been.

  “That must kill,” Chloe murmured.

  “Fucking bitch!” Poppy cried. She rubbed at her skull, where it had smacked the locker. “Both of you! If you don’t think you’re going to pay for this—then you’re fucking idiots.” She turned on her heel, stomped down the hall, and disappeared down a stairwell. The sound of her heels continued to echo long after we couldn’t see her anymore.

  “Thank you,” I murmured. I hadn’t said anything to Chloe in a few days since all this bullshit started. The loneliness had been all-encompassing, a kind of dull blanket over my thoughts and personality. I turned slightly to try to catch her eye.

  “Poppy is such a bitch. We’ve established that,” Chloe returned. Then, she shrugged and sauntered away. I remained in the center of the hall, with countless students streaming past me like I was a rock in the middle of a river. I was unnoticed, really, just an obstruction to the regular path.

  I wanted to call out to Chloe to tell her to come back. I lurched around and watched as her hair cut away from the hallway and down another stairwell. I rushed toward the stairs, half-planning what I might say to her, how I could figure this out. But when I reached the staircase, I nearly stumbled head-long into Theo himself.

  “Woah. Easy there,” he said. His voice was gritty, dark, and his blue eyes didn’t have that once-familiar sparkle.

  “Oh. It’s you,” I stammered. I stepped back and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “You look happy to see me,” he said. He arched his brow and leaned against the doorway. His eyes traced down my shoulders, across my breasts.

  Enraged, I reached up and pressed my hand hard against his muscular chest, until he stepped back, nearly tripping. “Calm down, Rooney,” he said.

  “How can I just calm down?” I demanded. I knew that I had completely lost sight of Chloe, now; she was off to her next class, and probably had shoved me into the back part of her mind. “Everybody thinks I’m a huge fucking slut. And also they hate me for taking money from your father. And if you only knew why he did it…”

  Theo’s grin was brash, arrogant—but so handsome. I thought I might scream. “Tell me why he offered it, then, and we can clear everything up,” Theo countered.

  “I would never tell you anything, Theo. I should have known that I couldn’t trust you. Even after… after everything that happened over Christmas. I should have known you’re just the type of guy to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants until he’s bored of it.”

  “You’re pissed. I told my friends that I had sex with you, huh?” he said, his voice low. He took a large step forward so that his nose was only a few inches from mine.

  What he said silenced me. I couldn’t even stutter, couldn’t find the right words. I murmured, “Yeah, I’m pissed. That was private, you dumb ass. It was my first time. It was supposed to be special, not broadcasted to everyone.”

  “I can’t control what others do or say, Rooney,” Theo demanded.

  “Fuck you, Theo.”

  Now he was trying to put the blame on his friends and not take any accountability. Fuck, this was so messed up. “Did it not mean anything to you?” I finally asked and arched an eyebrow as I held his stare.

  “Of course. Right back at ya babe,” he countered and leaned in, waiting for my response.

  “Are you fucking kidding me right now? Of course, it did, you idiot. You took my virginity!” I barked at him. How could someone so gorgeous be so fucking stupid!

  I watched him suck in a breath and look down at the floor. He was lost in thought and I knew he was frustrated when he finally looked at me and said, “Don’t fucking think that just because rumors bleed all over Denver Athletics that I have anything… I don’t know… Fuck, Rooney. You’re so fucking worried about your image and where your story is going, you don’t even consider that maybe the rest of us have our own story, too. You haven’t even looked at me in fucking days. I thought you didn’t
want anything to do with me. That you were fucking using me for my dad’s money.”

  I was completely shocked at his words and just gaped at him when the bell blared through the halls, indicating the next period was about to start. “What? Are you…”

  But before I could find the right words, Theo cut around me and sauntered the rest of the way to his class. I whirled around and watched him go. Was he right? In wanting to protect myself, I had completely ignored everything and everyone around me? I was just so self-consumed that I never for a moment considered what he had just said and it made my mind whirl.