Fairest

by Beth Bishop

  “Why do you care?”

  “What, you tutor me for three months, and I can’t ask you a friendly question?”

  “I tutor you for three months, and you still hardly make eye contact with me.” When I walked past him, he snagged the top loop of my backpack, yanking me back to him, again. “Fine. I’m going to New York to visit my daddy. There. Are you happy to know my exciting plans?”

  “Yeah,” he said, letting go of the loop. This time, when I began walking away, he didn’t stop me. “I’m going to my dad’s place in East Hampton. You should come out and visit,” he all but shouted. “Maybe we could go for a sail or something.”

  I kept my head down when three older girls from my dorm passed me on the sidewalk. One of them mooed at me, one giggled, and the third—Sicily—called sweetly to Whit. “Yeah, whatever,” I said.

  “What?” he yelled at me.

  “I said, ‘Yeah, whatever,’” I yelled back to him.

  “Come watch me play tomorrow night. I’ll give you a ride into the city on Friday.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I mumbled.

  Chapter Two

  “That little twit gets everything?” I screeched at Colby. “I don’t get anything?”

  “Well, you get something,” he said. “You signed a prenup, Liz.”

  I hurled a Waterford vase against the wall and watched it turn from exquisitely expensive into a pile of worthless, crystal bits. This was bad news. The worst. “It isn’t fair!” I stomped the floor like a child. “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “You get nothing if you divorce him. If he dies, all but about $50,000 goes into a trust for Skye.”

  Knees suddenly watery, I dropped down onto the ottoman. “Only fifty? I can’t live on that, Colby.”

  He looked around the lush living room of my gorgeous, antebellum house. “No, and you certainly couldn’t afford me.”

  Hired by Winston to be my legal and financial advisor, Colby kept me abreast of all things concerning Winston and his money. Oh, how I wished Winston had hired him before. It was stupid of me to have signed the prenup, but I needed Winston to believe I loved him. I needed him to believe I was after his heart, not his money.

  “Now, if you had a child by him…” Colby began.

  I groaned. “He’s fixed.” I dragged my hands through my hair.

  “He’s hardly ever here. I don’t see your problem.”

  “His cholesterol is through the roof. He’s teetering on the edge of diabetes. The man is a walking heart attack.” I glared at the picture of him on the end table nearest me. “If he dies, I won’t get diddly-squat. Skye will get everything.” I tapped my finger on my chin and then remembered not to touch my skin, lest I cause a breakout. I looked up at Colby. “How much do you love me?”

  “Not enough to kill for you,” he said.

  “Okay, but enough to find someone who would?” I batted my eyelashes and shifted my knees apart so that my skirt revealed my lack of underwear.

  Colby licked his lips in response. “I could do that. You realize that having him killed won’t solve your problems, right?”

  “Yes, but if something happened to the princess,” I said as I inched the hem of my skirt up my thighs.

  Colby walked over to me and knelt in front of the ottoman. As his thumbs hooked the skirt and shifted it higher, I imagined an assassin stalking Skye down a dark alley. When I lay back and felt Colby’s breath on me, I pictured big, hairy-knuckled hands closing around Skye’s tender neck. I bit my lower lip and focused on seeing Skye’s pale green eyes go dim, maybe even one of them rupturing a blood vessel.

  “Kill the princess,” I said and smiled.

  * * * *

  Colby hired a man. After giving me the phone number, he instructed me to refer to the man as Bob. Bob had a down payment and orders to wait. I had a promise that, when I was ready, Bob was ready.

  I decided to hold off until Skye’s Spring Break. Winston planned to meet her at the New York apartment for a week of father-daughter time, and I felt giddy, knowing there were all sorts of bad things that could happen to a fifteen-year-old girl in a big, scary city. It was all going to happen sooner than I could’ve dreamed and so much more easily than I could’ve imagined.

  Chapter Three

  Thursday night, I went to the game. Whit actually waved at me, so after I moved away from the girls who were talking about me, I cheered for him. When the game was over, he came up into the stands to say hello.

  “What did you think?” he asked and jerked his head over his shoulder at the field.

  “It’s more violent than I thought. The one guy kicked you in the shin. Shouldn’t he have gotten penalized for that or something?”

  Whit rolled down his sock. “If the ref had seen? Maybe. That’s what shin guards are for.”

  “Yo, Whit. Finish putting in your order and get your ass over here,” Lincoln yelled at him.

  “Don’t frown,” he said to me. “He’s an idiot. Well,” he said as he rolled his sock back up, “time to celebrate. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He kissed my cheek and then bounded over to his friends.

  After Whit reached the group of boys waiting for him, my gaze shifted to Lincoln. He was staring at me—no discernible emotion on his face. That made me more uncomfortable than if he’d been sneering. I shifted my scarf closer to my throat and hurried out of the stands.

  When I got back to my room, I found chicken bones shoved under my door. I cleaned up the mess and spoke to no one when I took the garbage from my room to the bin in the main room. To clear my mind, I focused on packing my bags. When it was time for bed, I decided against going to the washroom and brushed my teeth in my room.

  Friday morning, I passed Sicily and her friends on my way out of the dorm. “Have a nice snack last night?” she asked.

  I paused, looked at her, and said, “I find it hard to believe you have nothing better to do than tease me.”

  “I’ve got better things to do, sure. This is just my little hobby, like you seem to be Whit’s little hobby.”

  “No, no.” I shook my head and pursed my lips. “He’s got lots of them, but I’m not one.” With that, I went on to breakfast.

  I was antsy all day. I didn’t pay attention in most of my classes. I worried that Whit would hear something, change his mind, and leave me stranded at Irstwitch. During lunch, I searched cab companies for a backup, but when classes let out, I found Whit waiting for me outside my dorm. Like a perfect gentleman, he loaded my suitcases into his car.

  On the drive, he told me about his plans for Spring Break, which included several parties, sailing, and a lot of lounging around the house. He planned to make a few trips into the city for dinners and live music. He invited me to some of these things, and I stayed noncommittal. Some of Whit’s school friends planned to drive down as well, and I had no desire to spend any time with them or any of Whit’s other friends from New York.

  “You must enjoy playing the role of social outcast.” He glanced at me quickly before returning his eyes to the road. “I mean, it doesn’t have to be that way for you.”

  I snorted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t choose for all the girls I live with to hate me and for people to moo and cluck at me.”

  “Okay, but you don’t stand up for yourself, either. Those idiot girls are just jealous of you.”

  “It’s easier this way.” I looked out my window at the wall of trees lining the highway. It would’ve been a pleasant drive if not for the topic of conversation. “The only thing those girls are jealous of is that I spend three nights every week with you. It doesn’t matter that I’m tutoring you.”

  “That’s not the only thing,” he said. “You, uh…you are pretty and sweet.”

  “Don’t do that.” I held up my palm to him. “I don’t need a pep talk.�
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  “Fine. Then, what music do you like?”

  “Don’t do that, either. Your pretending to be interested is far more annoying than Lincoln Moore smacking me in the head with a hacky sack.”

  “I’m not pretending.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at my feet. “Yeah, well, I don’t believe you, so just drive me home, okay?”

  The engine revved as he sped up, and moments later, Radiohead blared from the car’s speakers. I sighed and continued to stare out the window as Whit drove us into the city.

  * * * *

  Whit insisted on carrying my suitcases up to my daddy’s apartment. I think he just wanted to see the place. My daddy wouldn’t sacrifice comfort for beauty, so the two-bedroom apartment had expensive yet cozy furnishings. Since my stepmother Lizette spent most of her time in Savannah, decorating the block-sized historical house my daddy bought for her to “play with,” she hadn’t bothered to add feminine touches to the New York apartment. It remained Spartan and manly—mostly wood and leather, dark yet warm.

  I opened the front door, and Whit and I took a moment to shed our coats and put them in the coat closet. From there, we went into the large living room with the open dining room on the right. My favorite part of the room was the left wall of bookshelves broken only by the fireplace.

  “What a pad,” Whit said when I shut the door behind him.

  “Yeah, it’s a far cry from the place where I grew up,” which was a tiny house in the voodoo swamps.

  “Where’s your room?”

  I pointed to the hallway just past the enclosed kitchen. “Down that way, on the right.” While Whit took my bags into my room, I went into the kitchen. “You want something to drink?”

  I opened the fridge and found it stocked for my weekend at home. My daddy always made sure to fill the fridge and pantry with food when I would be around to cook it. It was something calming that I enjoyed doing, especially since he was rarely home to eat, and even when he was, Lizette rarely cooked for him.

  “Whacha got?” Whit asked from behind me.

  He poked his head between the fridge door and me. I pushed the door against the wall and shifted away, giving him room to look without crowding me. “Coke, cranberry juice, milk.” I moved the cartons and the two-liter. “No tea, yet.”

  “Tea?”

  “Sweet tea. Just, ah, help yourself. Glasses are here.” I pointed to the cabinet to the left of the freezer side of the fridge.

  While Whit prepared his drink, I took down the kettle, filled it, and put it on the stove. As the water heated, I raided the pantry for tea bags and dropped them into the plastic gallon pitcher. Whit took his drink into the living room.

  Once the water boiled, I poured it onto the tea bags. I fixed myself a Coke and went to join Whit. He was nowhere in sight.

  “Where did you go?” I asked.

  “I’m in your room.”

  “Why?” I walked down the hallway to my room. When I entered, I found him sitting on my bed and looking through one of my photo albums. He looked so out of place, sitting on the old girls-with-bonnets quilt I had for a comforter and surrounded by my lavender walls. “What are you doing?”

  “Look what a cute little girl you were.” He gestured to a picture of me. In it, I sat cross-legged on an old, falling apart wooden dock. With a fishing pole in my hands, I stared over the water of a pond. “Cut-offs and a tank top.”

  “It gets hot in Savannah in the summer,” I explained. I set my Coke down on a coaster on my nightstand and heaved one of my suitcases onto the bed. “You’re gonna hang out?”

  Without looking up at me, he said, “Yeah.” He flipped through more pages and read the little captions I wrote listing the date, place, people, and events of the photos.

  “Okay. I’m unpacking, then.”

  I unzipped the suitcase and took out a stack of shirts. After hanging all of them, I moved on to hiding my underwear between my pairs of jeans and quickly stuffing it all in my dresser drawers. I left most of my formal school clothes at Irstwitch, but I brought a few dresses with me.

  As I hung the last one in the closet, Whit said, “What is this necklace you wear all the time?”

  “Oh, it’s something my daddy got me after my momma died.”

  I took a seat beside him and looked at the picture. Crouched on the front porch of our old house, I scratched the belly of my orange cat. The pendant on my necklace hung in the air.

  “I’ve never seen you wear it at school.”

  “I keep it under my shirt.” I pulled it out to show him.

  Whit held it against his palm. “It’s a solid gold heart.”

  “Yeah, my daddy got it for me back before Cluck Moo, when he was a shrimper and really couldn’t afford to buy such things. My momma used to call me her heart.” Whit looked at me. “Before you ask, it was pancreatic cancer, I was five, and I’m fine.”

  I started to get up to unpack my second suitcase, but Whit put his hand on top of mine. With the photo album still sitting on his lap, he reached over and slipped his hand into my hair, tucking it behind my ear—the one hit by the hacky sack. He cupped my jaw with his hand and rubbed my cheek with his thumb. It was rough and calloused from rowing.

  “I thought your skin would be soft,” he said, looking into my eyes as he moved closer and pressed his soft, warm lips to mine.

  It was the first time I kissed anyone, in a romantic way, so I wasn’t sure what to do. Whit’s lips parted slightly and then closed around my lower lip, so I did the same thing to his upper lip. With his hand, he angled my chin up and opened his mouth so that his tongue just traced my lip. When I started to do the same thing, he slipped his tongue into my mouth.

  My heart pounded, and my face heated. Whit was frenching me, and he would barely even look at me when we weren’t alone. I liked him, somewhat, and he could be very nice, in private, but I wasn’t going to keep kissing him when he clearly felt ashamed of being my friend. I pulled away and stood.

  “No,” I said firmly and crossed my arms over my chest. “You just started talking to me when you’re around other people. You don’t get to be my friend, or whatever, when it’s convenient. You and your friends might think I’m trash, but I’m not trashy.”

  “I don’t think you’re trash or trashy.” His brows drew down as his temper flared. “I really like you, Skye. Hell, I kissed your cheek last night and waited on you outside your dorm where everyone could see.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I glared at him. “I have no idea what you tell your friends when I’m not around. For all I know, you could tell them I begged you for a ride. Besides,” I lifted my chin, “I’m not about to be one more girl in your long list of conquests. I have more self-respect than that.”

  He slammed the album shut, making me jump, and stood. “I think you’ve been given some bad information. Conquering isn’t on my list of extra-curricular activities. I like you. Now, I know I like kissing you. I’m pretty sure I’d like dating you.” I rolled my eyes at him. “You won’t even give me a chance.”

  “The first time I spoke to you outside the library, you looked at me like I had lost my mind,” I shouted at him. “I’m not going to kiss someone who is ashamed of me, no matter how cute I think he is.”

  “I’m not ashamed of you.” He dropped the album on the bed. “Wait…you think I’m cute?”

  I hugged myself tighter and looked away from him. “Duh, everyone thinks you’re cute.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t care what they think. I care what you think.”

  I looked up at him. “Oh, I bet you care what your dad thinks. What’s he going to say when you tell him you’re dating Miss Cluck Moo? I bet he’ll be thrilled about that.” Whit hesitated, and his expression told me he hadn’t considered that aspect of the situation. “Yea
h, I thought so. I think you should go now, Whitney.”

  “I hate it when you call me by my full name,” he growled. “It makes me feel like I’ve disappointed you.” When I didn’t speak, he started to leave but stopped when he was beside me. “I don’t like disappointing you.” He gave me a kiss on the cheek and then left.

  I stood in my room, staring at the floor for a long time, even after I heard the front door bang shut. When I finally shook myself free of zoning out, I gulped down my watery Coke and went back into the kitchen to finish the tea.

  While I stirred in the sugar, my phone beeped to tell me I’d gotten a text. There were two. The first one was from Whit and read, “Lock up. Call u later.” I made a face at the phone and then read the second one from my daddy. “Sry. Emg mtng Japan. All wk. Go to GA. Luv u.”

  I sighed. I didn’t want to go to Savannah if he wasn’t there. I got along with Lizette fine, but since we had next to nothing in common, we didn’t exactly enjoy hanging out together. Still, I understood why he had to go and why I had to go to Georgia. He would freak out if I stayed in New York for a week without an adult.

  Since he opened the first Cluck Moo when I was eight, my daddy had worked hard, and by the time I was twelve, there were Cluck Moos all over the United States. Now, my daddy wanted to go global, in particular, to Japan, and it looked as though it might happen. It was good for him and business. It just sucked that it had to happen over Spring Break.

  I went back to my room and took my laptop out of my other bag. After a quick online search, I found that Shinedown was playing at the House of Blues in New Orleans on Monday night. I’d been there a few times, and I really liked the city. For a split second, I thought of asking Whit if he wanted to go.

  “Reality check,” I told myself and batted away that thought.

  I decided I could stay in New York for the weekend, fly down to New Orleans on Sunday, see the show Monday, and then fly to Savannah on Tuesday. It could work if I was sneaky enough.

  There was no way my daddy would agree to let me go to New Orleans by myself, but I had a feeling Lizette would. She attempted to mother me by offering me advice on boys and buying me all sorts of expensive clothes and shoes. At ten years younger than my daddy, she was more like a thirty-seven-year-old sister than a mother. As such, she tended to let me do things that a parent wouldn’t. I dialed Savannah.