Beautiful Survivors

by C. M. Stunich

  “Gunner dings eighteen soon,” is my explanation. My words are a little slurred, but oh well. As long as I sit still here, tucked on the threadbare couch with my boys, elbow on the armrest and chin propped in my hand, the world stays straight. I know if I stand up, I'll probably start stumbling around like an idiot. “As soon as he does, I'll move in with him.”

  “That's eight months from now,” Nash says with a long sigh, rubbing his palms down his face. “Eight months is a long ass time stuck in Hell without you.”

  “Why don't you just hangout with Clea?” I snap, tugging one of the only two throw pillows in the living room into my lap. This particular one matches the holey chair in the corner and not the couch, but the couch pillows disappeared a long, long time ago. I think Clea might be squirreling one away in her room. Bitch.

  Nash just stares at me for a really long moment, his blue eyes this warm sapphire color that makes me think home, home, home. Like, when I look into those eyes, I'm safe. There's somebody around that's on my side. And yet … how can he be so stupid? How can he look at me like that and have no idea how he makes me feel? I know he has a rough past—we all do—but should that make him so stupidly oblivious?

  I stand up suddenly and stumble a little. Nash tries to catch me, but I end up just shoving the throw pillow in his direction as if it's a shield. I know I'm acting crazier than usual—cheap vodka will do that to ya—but I can't help it. My emotions are up in the air, and I feel like I have to juggle them all at the same time. If I drop one, it shatters.

  I move into the backyard, letting the screen door slam shut behind me.

  The yard is bathed in orange and gold from the sunset, the jagged graves like ruins in a shipwreck, trapped beneath the thick yellow waters of sunrays. Getting privacy around this place—especially with three overprotective dudes in my posse—is almost impossible. I decide to confront my own fears and duck behind the mausoleum, parking my butt in the flat patch of grass where Clea and Nash were sitting earlier.

  I spot the second vodka bottle nestled in the grass nearby and grab it, pausing when I hear the screen door slam again, followed by footsteps. By the time I get the top unscrewed and put the bottle to my lips, Nash is climbing through the brambles, cursing and swatting at the thorns as they catch on his stupidly tight jeans.

  “Can't I just catch a moment to myself?” I ask, but Nash is already lying down beside me, putting his head into my lap. Looking down at him, with his dark bangs feathered across his forehead, his sapphire eyes ringed in ebony lashes, it's hard to stay angry. As far as he knows, I think of him like a brother. I bet he's wondering why I'm acting like such a crazy person right now.

  “You're leaving on Friday?” he asks softly, like saying the words too loudly might make them come true sooner, erase all the days in between.

  “Guess so,” I say, feeling a sinking queasiness in my stomach. I take another sip of vodka, coughing on the rancid taste and handing it down to Nash.

  “I don't want you to go,” he says, almost like he's whining. After a moment, he sits up to drink and my lap feels desperately empty. How do I shut these emotions off, make them go away? As far as I can tell, Nash doesn't feel anything but platonic love toward me. Screwing up what we've got would suck—especially since I'm pretty sure Maddox and Gunner actually return some of the awful feelings I've got toward them.

  Sixteen and in love with three guys.

  Why am I trying to make my hard life even harder?

  “Nothing feels right when you're not here, Mer,” Nash says, finishing the vodka and then stuffing the bottle into a large hole on the back of the crumbly mausoleum. He manages to wedge it in about halfway before it gets stuck. “Gun and Mad shuffle around like zombies. Besides,” Nash turns to face me, getting too close to my mouth, “there's no one around to call me on my shit.”

  “Why did you even come talk to me about Clea last night if you're just gonna fuck her anyway?” I ask, pulling the condoms from my pocket and throwing them at him. They fall in Nash's lap, right over a slight bulge in the denim. Just talking about the skinny brunette makes him hard? Fucking seriously? “Put it away, Nash,” I say, not at all embarrassed. Just pissed. Living in this close proximity to so many other people, seeing a guy's hard-on is not an usual thing. I see my boys' all the time. I can't even count how many times I've walked in on them in the bathroom on accident.

  Unlike Clea Mooney, I don't generally do it on purpose.

  Nash takes a deep breath and fingers the string of condoms.

  “Mer,” he starts, making my heart thunder. I feel light-headed all of a sudden, looking into a face I've stared at thousands of time throughout my life. Sitting this close, I can even remember the first time we met, when Nash sat on the living room floor of his new foster home crying. A few weeks earlier, he'd been in a car accident with his dad and grandpa; they'd both passed away. With no other family left, he'd ended up one of the lost, lonely, and abandoned.

  “What are you doing?” I ask when Nash leans in and puts his cheek against mine, making me sweat, making me want, making me wonder. What if I just grabbed him and kissed him right now? What would he do? How would he react?

  I don't get a chance to find out because Nash … he kisses me.

  Our mouths meet in a hot, messy tumble. My heart reacts instantly, speeding up, making my pulse pound so hard and fast that I get dizzy. I'm so stunned I keep my eyes wide open, staring into Nash's face and catching the violent white-hot flicker of emotion that passes over it.

  What the …

  We fall back into the yellow-brown grass, my blue baseball cap tumbling off as I curl my fingers in Nash's tank to pull him close. My left pinky accidentally slips through the hole in his shirt and brushes the hardened point of his nipple, making him moan.

  What the fuck are you doing, Merit? I wonder, panic taking over me. It flutters across my skin like a flock of birds, dive bombing my chest. My heart skips a beat and then I'm pushing Nash away with a groan, practically throwing him off of me.

  “What's the matter?” he asks, panting and throwing an arm over one knee. Nash's coy little mouth is parted with wild breaths and he's staring down at me with a look of bewilderment.

  “What are you doing?” I ask him, sitting up and realizing that my own breaths are just as wild, just as frantic. My hands tremble, so I shove them in my hoodie pocket to keep them still, looking away before Nash's liquid blue gaze drowns me.

  Instead of making a joke out of the situation like he'd normally do, Nash scoots closer and wraps his arms around me. His breath feathers warm against my ear, stirring my hair, and his heart is beating so rapidly that mine immediately tries to catch up, galloping away behind my ribs.

  “Mer,” Nash says, pressing his mouth to my neck, flicking his tongue across the messy heartbeat of my pulse. I let him kiss me all over, closing my eyes and listening to the breeze chase through the dry grass around us. Any minute now, the screen door's going to open and Gunner and Maddox will come through it. They'll find us here and nothing will be the same ever again.

  Still, when Nash drops his hands to my hips and starts to pull my hoodie over my head, I let him.

  “Were you jealous, Mer?” he asks which is so goddamn unfair that I don't bother to answer. He knows; he's known for a long time. I mean, how could he miss the way I look at him? The way his playful kisses have started to feel real. There must've been some reason why he stopped coming in to lay with me, right? There's more in the air between us now, the dangerous whisper of sex, sex, sex.

  I just want it to go away.

  If I do this, will it?

  Turning, I slide a hand up the side of Nash's face and kiss him again. At first, the touch of our lips is gentle, inquisitive, questing. The energy picks up quick, arcing between us, amplified by the alcohol and the pain. Always the pain. We've lived with it for so long that sometimes I forget it's more than just a shadow, permanently sewn to my feet, always chasing after me. It was a gift, bestowed by the universe and nu
rtured into a demon.

  I know at least some of the wild, desperate need between us is being encouraged, coaxed, and coddled by the pain in both our hearts, but I don't care. I love Nash—whether that's in a romantic sort of way or not, I don't know. Doesn't matter. I can feel the emotion kindle like fire beneath my hands as I press my palms into his chest.

  Nash's tongue slides along the side of mine, slow and sensual but ferocious at the same time, like it would take the jaws of life to pry us apart. He kisses me and cups the back of my neck, holds me in a tender moment that burns hot, hot, hot. My eyes are half-lidded and a single bead of sweat drips down my spine, soaks into the denim waistband of my jeans.

  Kissing Nash, I can taste every emotion he's feeling on the tip of his tongue, a whole rainbow of flavors that seem to mix with my own, until we're just this unbreakable twist of humanity.

  My hands slide down Nash's chest, find the button on his jeans and fumble with it. I'm shaking again, trembling, but it doesn't matter now. Something miraculous is happening, and I just want to go with it.

  You're drunk, you're drunk, you're drunk! I try to tell myself, but I'm not falling over and passing out drunk, just buzzed and loose enough that I want to try this. Nash is one of the guys, my best friends, my family. I've also been kind of in love with him since I was six. Where's the harm in it?

  I also know that part of me is doing this because I know if I sleep with Nash, he won't sleep with Clea—or anyone else for that matter—while I'm gone. Is that fucked? That's kind of fucked, isn't it? In my heart, I know I could stop this right now, tell him how I feel, ask him not to act on anything while I'm gone. Our history's too deep for him not to respect that.

  Only … I don't stop.

  My hand sneaks inside Nash's jeans, sliding along the hot, hard bulge hidden inside his boxer briefs. Excitement streaks through me, bright and wild, teasing the hairs up on the back of my neck. I feel like I'm about to dive into something I can never get out of. I do this, and everything changes. Everything.

  Nash slides his left palm under my shirt and up the bare skin of my side, teasing my body to life, making me feel everything twice as fervently as I was before. I lean into him, pushing my body against his. Nash lets me push him back into the grass, my knees on either side of him, my hand still working at that warm hardness inside his pants.

  All of a sudden, there's this agonizing ache between my thighs, Nash's fingers dancing across the seam of my jeans. Even with the denim blocking his fingertips from my actual skin, it's too much. I gasp against his mouth and thrust my own hand inside his underwear, finding the smooth, bare length of him.

  Nash flips us over and grabs my arms, pinning me to the yellow-brown bed of grass beneath us. His face is serious, eyes earnest, the pulse point in his throat dancing wildly.

  “Are you sure about this, Mer?” he asks, pupils dilated. A single bead of sweat slides down the tip of Nash's nose and crashes into my forehead. It should be gross, maybe, but it's not.

  I jerk my arms from his grip and grab the sides of his face, unable to answer that question with words. Am I sure? Of course I'm not fucking sure. There are so many ways this could go wrong, so many things I could be screwing up with this one, simple act. Besides, shouldn't we both be completely sober before we make this kind of decision?

  Screw it.

  I'm a person, not an ad for a PSA. I'm allowed to make mistakes.

  Nash unbuttons my jeans, and I relax my arms enough to let him scoot back and tug my tennis shoes off first, then my pants, then … I wiggle out my underwear—borrowed gray briefs I stole from the new package in Gunner's room—and lie there with my naked butt in the grassy dirt.

  When he goes for my shirt, I push him away.

  “Not enough time,” I say as he sits up and bites his lower lip for a moment. For a second there, I think he might just throw up his hands and walk away. After all, this whole thing's a little out of left field. “Nash.”

  The solid syllable of his name draws his attention back to me, and then he's shoving his jeans down his hips, flashing me the long, hard length of his cock. It's straight as an arrow, pointing right at me. I mean, it's not like I haven't seen it before just … not in this context.

  I suck in a sharp breath and tap my palm on the ground, searching for the condoms without taking my eyes off of Nash. Instead of the goofy asshole he pretends to be, I can see the wicked depths of seriousness in his face.

  Whatever this is that's happening between us, it means something. I just need to figure out what exactly that something is.

  I hand the string of foil wrapped packages his way and wait as he tears one off, opens it, and slips it on. The latex slides slowly down his shaft, slick and shiny in the late afternoon sunshine. As we've been sitting here, the orange orb's been sinking slowly behind the horizon. In just a few minutes it'll be dark, and Mad and Gun will be out looking for us, trying to corral us in the house before we get hit with a curfew violation.

  Nash climbs above me and I cup his face again, kissing him with all the excitement of a new experience, a hot mouth, the warm buzz of alcohol in my veins. When he cradles his body between my hips, I kiss harder, drawing blood. If it hurts him, Nash doesn't let on. He adjusts his body so that he's pressed up tight against me, nudging my opening. Knowing him, he'll think his way out of this if I let him.

  Lifting my hips up, I encourage him with a sensual slide of my tongue against his. I guess then instinct takes over or something because he's thrusting forward and filling me up, sliding his body inside of mine with a single motion.

  My hands curl into claws against his back, bunching his shirt up. For several minutes there, I think we both forget to breathe.

  “Hey, Merit,” he starts, but I have no idea why Nash would try to talk in that moment. I wiggle my body against his and his breath comes out in a rush, his hips start to move. Nash works against me as I struggle to keep kissing his lips, torn between giving up to the pleasure and praying it would stop. It's so goddamn intense that I feel like I'm breaking into little pieces. All those cracks of pain and shame and loneliness I've felt throughout my life light up like they've been filled by lava, all that molten heat from the explosion taking place within me.

  When I crack my eyes open, I see Nash staring at me with the sapphire glaze of his eyes, all those long dark lashes feathering against his forehead and cheeks as he blinks. There's a shimmer there that I don't understand, that I can't place. Right now, I don't want to—just in case it's something I don't want to know.

  The white-hot pain between my legs is gone within a few minutes, easing into pleasure as Nash grinds his pelvis to mine. I imagine years of using my fingers to pleasure myself helped a little on that front, but the sensation is still strange. It's not me pleasuring me. No, this is Nash, the boy I've known since he was six and I was seven. It's so weird, and yet it feels so fucking good.

  Obliterate me, break me, shatter me into pieces. That's what I want, to feel like I'm being dismantled. Maybe then I'll be able to see the darkness hiding underneath, all the shadows sewn to my skin? If I can find them, maybe I can flood them with light and drown them, banish them forever?

  Nash doesn't make me feel like I'm breaking though. Instead, he pulls me together, uses the power of my feelings toward him to get inside all those cracks, fuse me into a single piece. It should feel good, all that healing and coming together. Only … I'm not ready for that. I need to clean out the infection before I let my scars heal over. If I don't, all of that pain will be trapped inside forever.

  My hands curl around the back of Nash's neck, pull him close enough that I can feel his breath against my ear. I don't want to look at him anymore, even if the rough, hot push of his body sends bursts of lightning scattering inside me. There's a storm there, complete with thunder and gray clouds and bursts of cool rain. It's charged, and beautiful, but it's also got the capacity to damage irreparably.

  Nash fucks me until I'm soaked in sweat, he's soaked in sweat, and we're
bleeding all over each other. There's hot, molten wetness between my thighs drenching us, a little blood dancing on my lower lip.

  The slick slide of his body inside of mine pushes me to an almost uncomfortable crescendo, one that I fight with every molecule in my body. Instead of letting myself succumb to the physical pleasure, I squeeze Nash tight and wish I never had to leave him again. Wish that he had everything we both need to fix ourselves, to get better, to survive. Because that's what we've doing our whole lives, surviving. I know I need to find a way to live, but I'd rather be a beautiful survivor than an ugly ignorant.

  The orgasm hits Nash like a bag full of bricks, tightening his muscles, drawing this long, unfamiliar groan from his throat. A few more thrusts and it's all over. He's rolling off of me into the grass and panting, and I'm sitting desperately trying to find my underwear.

  “Merit,” he starts yet again, but I'm not in the mood to fucking talk right now.

  As I pull my panties up over my hips, I hear the screen door and Gunner's strong voice calling out to us. Turning, my bare feet scrape across the dusty ground, and I look down at Nash, still lying half-naked on his back with a used condom clutched in one hand.

  “Coming!” I shout out, hoping that Gun and Mad stay inside and wait for us. I'd rather they didn't walk around the side of the crumbling mausoleum and see this. “Don't tell them about this,” I threaten as I lean down and grab my blue baseball cap, jamming it on my head and yanking my jeans on.

  Nash doesn't say a word to me the rest of the night.

  There's nothing gentle about the way the cop manhandles me into the back of his squad car, practically tossing me into the back seat. I can't do shit about it because I'm cuffed, but I do kick the door when he slams it closed, using both booted feet so I can make a show of it.

  Let these guys think they caught me in the act when the act was already fucking done.