Innocents

by Mary Elizabeth

  He nudges me with his elbow, nodding toward Val, Kelly, Mixie, and Katie. “They’re fucked-up,” he says, glancing from the Sluts to Casper.

  On her knees with her hair pushed over her shoulder, Val has a rolled up dollar bill in her hand. She leans over the table, placing the bill at her nose, and closes her eyes before swiftly snorting three white lines like they’re nothing—like she does it all the time.

  “Oh, shit!” She laughs, falling back onto her calves with her eyes still closed. She drops the bill on the table and rubs her nose. “Fuck,” she says lazily, finally opening up.

  “That wasn’t your first time, you fucking liar.” Casper laughs.

  “Yes it was,” Val insists, slapping him in the chest.

  She is a liar.

  “Is that coke?” I ask Petey quietly.

  “Yeah. I guess Casper’s selling that shit now. Gave the Sluts a try for free.” Petey hands me the bottle. I take another drink.

  My pocket still burns.

  Forever the follower, Kelly goes next. She sneezes and blurs her lines, and Casper gives her shit about it and her friends laugh at her. With watering eyes and shaking hands, she tries again, but it doesn’t go better than the first attempt. Uneasy under harsh stares, she does it a third time.

  Between Petey and Val, Kelly must be full of regret.

  “Birthday boy!” Valarie shouts. She hurries over, wide-eyed and rubbing her rubbed-raw nose.

  I give her a one-armed hug and step back.

  “You’re a coke slut now?” Petey laughs, throwing his head back. He’s fucked-up, which is where I need to be.

  She rolls her eyes, braiding the ends of her hair. “Hardly.”

  Ben blows smoke in Val’s face; she punches him in the arm. On her other side, Casper laughs.

  V introduced me and the boys to Cas at the beginning of the school year. Up until now, he’s been strictly bud—small-time, dime bags and stuff. He sells a few pills, and he hooked me and the boys up with E a few months back, but this hard shit is new.

  He’s a skinny motherfucker, but the girls dig him. Especially Mixie. Probably because he has the drugs. He’ll be a junior this year, so I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to buy for a while. He says he’s going to college after high school, but he won’t. Guys like him are lifers in a town like this. His dad drives a truck, and his mom works at the bank. He isn’t going anywhere.

  “Happy birthday.” He drops a bag into the palm of my hand. “It’s on Petey,” he says, draping his arm over Mixie’s shoulders. She’s kissing his neck, gripping onto his shirt.

  “Sweet.” I open the baggie and inhale.

  “Roll a Philly—let’s celebrate.” He pulls out a chair where the girls were doing their dirt. “Unless ...”

  “I’m good with the green, Cas.”

  I’m cutting open a cigar when Valarie sneaks up behind me and covers my eyes with her ice cold hands. “Guess who?” she whispers into my ear.

  I smile, setting the cigar and the blade down. “Stop messing around.”

  “Only if you promise to share.”

  I shrug. “Whatever.”

  Valarie sits on my lap and leans her head back on my shoulder. Hot and tacky, this girl smells like cigarettes and feels like raw energy. In slow circles, she rubs herself against me and breathes deeply.

  It’s fucking gross.

  “Touch me, Dusty,” she says, totally faded.

  Petey snorts, and Ben hides his face in his hands and laughs, so lit his eyes are hardly open. Kelly and Katie share the same look as Valarie—spun. Mixie straddles Casper’s lap, literally dry fucking him in front of us all while he winks from over her shoulder.

  I push hot and heavy off my lap and roll my gift.

  THREE HOURS later, the room spins. Unfazed, moving with the thump of the stereo, Valarie’s back on my lap and I’m holding onto her hips to keep the room still. The swift sickness of too much alcohol and the rush from just enough hits fight inside of me, and I think of Bliss to keep calm.

  “I have to go,” I mumble.

  In only black lace underwear and a neon green bra, Valarie scoots up my legs. “I haven’t given you your present yet.”

  “I don’t want anything from you, V,” I say.

  I feel trapped and don’t see or hear any of my boys around. I move Valarie off and pull my cell phone out of my back pocket. It takes a second for my eyes to focus.

  Nothing from Bliss.

  “I have to go,” I say again, standing up, but Valarie pulls me down.

  She’s messy, persistent, and like me. When her mouth collides with mine, this dry kiss tastes wrong, but I touch Val to escape regret.

  Leigh won’t be in bed when I get there.

  I messed up.

  I kiss Valarie until she pulls away and cries out, digging her nails into my shoulders. She’s on her back, and I’m between her legs … We’re in a living room full of people.

  She’s not Leighlee.

  But if my girl wanted me home, she should have picked up.

  Fuck her. Fuck Bliss and her candy wrappers, her cold toes and soft snores and warm sleepy touches. Fuck her knocking on my bedroom door and sleeping in my bed when she isn’t supposed to, and for doing it night after night. Fuck her for being beautiful and soft and heartfelt, and for caring about me. Fuck her for making me feel guilty about being what I am.

  I can’t help that I’m emotionally stunted.

  That’s why I’m good with Valarie. She’s easy. Painless. There are no expectations or sweet moments. I fuck her and I’m done. There are no lingering afterthoughts or twisted feelings of responsibility and devotion.

  Love is corrupt.

  Love is lying.

  Love is hard work. It’s suffocating and using. It’s head-fucking and soul-ruining. It’s apprehensive and back-stabbing, passionate and chilling. It’s smile-giving, but neck-breaking. It’s not worth it, but it’s worth it. It’s everything I thought it was, and everything I know it’s not.

  Love is always supposed to understand, but love is at my house, ignoring my unease.

  Love is supposed to be effortless.

  Love is supposed to be loyal.

  But love is love’s traitor.

  I DON’T remember leaving the couch, but I’m in Petey’s bedroom now, and it’s hotter and darker than the rest of the house.

  I touch my chest over my out-of-control beating heart and lift my head. My legs are hanging off the side of the bed, and Valarie’s between my knees, lowering my zipper. I want to tell her to stop, but my voice won’t work.

  I pat my pockets, looking for my phone.

  Nothing from Bliss.

  I push Valarie away from me.

  She laughs, and she isn’t alone.

  “Happy birthday, boy,” Valarie whispers seductively—crudely—before kissing Mixie.

  The room starts to twist.

  Valarie side-eyes me as her lips move with her friend’s. Mixie kisses her neck. She touches her breasts while Val unbuttons my jeans and pulls them down just enough. She reaches in my boxers, wraps her cool hand around my dick, and pulls it out.

  “Val, stop.”

  But her mouth is on me. I fall back and clench my teeth, closing my eyes and griping onto blankets.

  She takes me deep, deeper, deepest.

  My stomach turns.

  “Stop. Stop. Valarie, stop.” She does, but she has it all wrong.

  The girl who had her mouth on me giggles. “Too much?”

  She climbs up the bed and holds my wrists to the mattress. I open my eyes in time to see Mixie put her lips where her friend’s were first. I drop my head back and breathe through my nose, thinking about my everything.

  Love is in the little girl with the yellow Popsicle.

  Love is watching the fireworks in her eyes.

  Love is a strawberry blonde, liar, tease-baby, princess-girl, torture.

  I’m off the bed and outside, emptying my stomach into the street.

&n
bsp; MY MIND is empty and I have no idea how I made it home, into my sister’s shower across the hallway from her room. Cold water rains down on tainted skin, pooling at my feet before slowly seeping down the hair-clogged drain. Lemon sage shampoo is my only option, and the citrusy tingle is welcomed by my dull senses.

  Discarded, soiled clothes are piled on the floor. I step over them, wiping the foggy mirror with my hand. As condensation drips, blue eyes are unforgiving, and I think to myself, I am not this person.

  But I am exactly this person.

  I’m a letdown.

  I pass my sister’s bedroom door with a heavy heart and head toward my own. Disappointment is thick, and as I walk into my dark space, it takes everything in me not to unmake our secret, go to my girl and scream, “You are not allowed to abandon me!”

  But then I hear her snore, and when I turn on my desk lamp, I see her sleep.

  “Wake up,” I whisper, kneeling beside the bed.

  I slip in near her and kiss her neck. I kiss her lips. I kiss her hair. I kiss her fingers. I kiss her wrist and the inside of her elbow.

  “Bliss, wake up.” I drag the blankets away and climb over her. She’s sleepy-warm and smells like she should: me.

  Slipping black cotton shorts down her legs, I drop them off the side of the bed and kiss the inside of her knee.

  She smiles.

  I roll onto my back and bring her with me. Laying her cheek on my chest, she asks if I had a good time.

  Love is fighting a losing battle.

  Leigh kisses the spot where my throat meets my jaw bone when I don’t answer. She sits up, straddling my lower stomach, but she doesn’t circle her hips. She’s not like that. She’ll never be the girl on her knees in front of white lines. She’ll never have dilated eyes and a drug-dry mouth.

  She’ll always be this.

  Love is reassuring.

  “I missed you. I called.” My eyes burn. I feel like fucking crying. This relief is overwhelming.

  “I was sleeping,” she whispers in the dark. “I’m sorry I got you upset.”

  We’re quiet, and it’s okay. I can be here, doing this, with her, forever.

  “Thomas?” Leigh’s palm is on my chest. “We only have a little while.”

  I open my eyes and she’s pulling her white sleep top over her head. She carefully places it on the bed beside me and covers her face before sighing and showing me herself completely. I rub slow, soft circles on her stomach with my thumbs, studying her chest, her face, and the way she breathes. I touch her pink lace bra, and Bliss smiles.

  Long, red-blonde hair falls over her shoulder, framing beauty at its most untouched.

  Love is brave.

  “I thought we could try,” she says softly.

  Sitting up, keeping her on my lap, I kiss the top of her shoulder and hold her close. She places her arms around my neck but doesn’t push her chest against mine or hug too tightly. Baby is soft-spoken-flawless, and I like the way her skin feels brushed, laid, and pressed against mine. I rub my cheek along her arm and glide my lips up her neck until they hover over hers.

  Love is perfect.

  “Can we stay like this?” I ask, kissing the corner of her mouth.

  “I thought—”

  “We will,” I promise without promising, kissing her lips to keep her from insisting. “Not tonight. I need this more.”

  Leigh tickles the nape of my neck with her warm fingers, reminding me, “Be a gentleman, Thomas.”

  My girl plays with my hair and whispers against my skin. She laughs while we kiss and sighs when I breathe into her hair. She touches me until I fall asleep and rubs me rested. Bliss leads me to contentment and promises me forever.

  And I believe her.

  Because love is a lot of things, but above all, love is what we make it.

  And we’ll make this never ending.

  I’m stressing over something I can’t control.

  Everything I see, every conversation I hear, every song I start to sing along to reminds me of the person I think most about. Like the universe is trying to tell me something, the world and all my thoughts constantly circle back to him.

  Loving Thomas is everything in my life reduced to my heart’s worries and desires. Love for him doesn’t listen to logic, practicality, or consequence.

  It’s a lot like him in that way, our love. It wants what it wants, when it wants it. And when it wants, it needs.

  Alone between sheets that smell illicitly sweet but don’t quite feel like home without him, I close my eyes and try to sleep, but my mind circles back to my stress-thought: Dusty.

  I know he’s bad news. He keeps the details from me, but I’m not blind or deaf, and I’m not, not paying attention. I love Thomas, but I do so knowingly. I can feel the hold our love has on my entire life. This permanent and colossal feeling. Astronomical and boundless.

  Binding.

  And stupid.

  This is so, so stupid.

  It isn’t normal.

  Becka and Smitty are normal. My too-constricting parents are normal. Even Lucas and Tommy Castor are normal.

  This—lying here all alone while only one person in the world knows where I am, and that person is out doing who knows what with I don’t even want to know who—is not normal.

  But that doesn’t make leaving this bed any more appealing.

  I want to be here when my missing boy gets back. A handful of secret hours before the sun comes up every few days is all we get. It’s irresponsible to stay and to keep staying. We risk losing each other, and I chance my friendship with Becka too, and completely undermine my parents’ trust. I know that being half of this huge, all-consuming secret isn’t smart.

  Or fair.

  I know.

  But I love how I feel when I’m with Thomas. I’m sorry it’s unfair to everyone else in our lives, but I don’t want to be smart. This person is right for me. I want the so-enamoring way he kisses in the dark and the way he wakes me before first light: all sleepy whispers and uneager-to-let-go arms. I want him here now, under these blankets, touching me with his nose, his cheeks, his chin, brushing my bare skin with his lips.

  My love for this tremendous secret is equally tremendous, and here in our safest place, love is stronger than worry. It’s comforts and eases as I curl down into Thomas’ blankets and slowly drift.

  HE’S BOY-SOAP clean and refreshed warm, pulling me close. He’s above and all around—breath and lips at the corner of my mouth, and I wake to the hint of blood.

  “Thomas—”

  “Shh.” He brings the covers up around us, over our heads like a makeshift tent. It’s pitch-black, but I know he’s smiling. I feel it in the way my pulse flutters quickly and rushes deep, and then I feel it when his lips touch mine. His top one is cut.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  Thomas kisses breathless laughter down my cheek to my neck. “I was fighting for your honor.”

  But my honor doesn’t need defending. My innocence isn’t a question. This is how Dusty tells me he’s not going to tell me anything at all.

  “Let me make you an ice pack,” I say, bringing his right hand to my lips and kissing knuckles that are rough with cuts and hot with hurt.

  “No.” He pushes the blankets back and breathes from my skin instead, and I can feel his strength. I feel what he could do if he wanted to, how he could hurt another person if that was his intention.

  Thomas is capable of total destruction.

  “You’re soft, sleepy girl.” He slides his hand under the bottom of my sleep shirt. “Let me take this off you?”

  Lost in loving, I nod. His sheets are smooth on my back and his tee shirt is thin between my stomach and his. He brushes his fingers and palm up my naked sides, giving me his lightest touches. I tilt, and he leans, and we kiss.

  The taste of violence lingers on his top lip, refusing to let me forget that we’re from, and we live in, two totally different worlds.

  “You shouldn’t fight,” I whisper un
der his lips.

  It’s dark, but I can feel this boy grin against my cheek—he knows, like I know.

  He rubs his thumb along the bottom of my bra, over my ribs. “You shouldn’t let me take your shirt off,” he counters, touching his lips to mine again, opening my smile with his.

  Closing my eyes, I hold on with both arms around his neck. I yield to love and feel my whole body roll like a ribbon under the weight of his kiss.

  “I miss you when you’re gone,” I whisper when we’re out of breath and my heart’s beating crazy. “I miss you everywhere.”

  Thomas brushes his lips right over it. “I know.”

  It beats harder for him.

  I tickle-tingle deeply for him.

  His silhouette is cut out of dim streetlight glowing through his window. His eyes are closed as he drags his teeth lightly over my heart, but mine are open. I can see my skin turn white and then pink before he presses his lips softly over the beat that’s so intense I feel it around my lungs, in every breath.

  “You shouldn’t go places I can’t,” I tell him in the mostly dark. “It isn’t good for either one of us.”

  Lifting his head, he covers my lightly marked-up chest with his hand.

  “I know, baby,” he tells me, concession softening his quiet voice. “I know.”

  “MOM, WHERE are my earrings? The little pearl-drop ones?”

  “They’re in the bathroom with your necklace.” Mom peeks into my room on the way to hers with a reassuring calm-down smile.

  “Thanks.” I pull my dress from my closet. I am calm. It’s the first day of high school and I want to wear a very specific outfit.

  I’m nervous, but knowing Becka and everyone else will be there calms most of my nerves. The ones it doesn’t calm, can’t be.

  Being back in the same school as Thomas means having to see things I’d rather not. Namely, Valarie. I spent more time at the Castors’ than she did over the summer, but I’m not misled. I know she still gets parts of him that I don’t. She gets to have what I only sometimes get to feel, but I can’t avoid school because it’s one of the places mine and Dusty’s worlds overlap.

  I slip into my white eyelet sundress and tie the bows of my espadrille wedges. I comb my fingers through still warm curls, brush blush on my cheeks, and dust my eyelids.