Innocents

by Mary Elizabeth

  This is the nervousness of a little virgin baby princess.

  She doesn’t realize what I could do to her, but she’d let me anyway. Leigh wants me enough to give me anything. She lets me fuck with her head—she’d let me fuck her body simply because she loves me.

  That’s our deal.

  I could move baby-pink delicates over and slide my dick inside her if I wanted to. I could roll and ride and push until she cried, and nothing I did would shelve her trust and love. She would think it was supposed to be that way, because it’s me, and the judge’s daughter doesn’t know any better.

  Sometimes I forget she’s only fourteen.

  But no matter how badly her body feels ready, I want to preserve her innocence a while longer.

  Descending slowly down untasted skin, I kiss Bliss’ stomach over her dress. My lips press to the inside of her thigh, appreciating how untouched and brand new every inch of love is. She’s nothing like anyone else I’ve been with. Valarie doesn’t look or feel this way. Valarie incites and spreads like a slut. She scratches like a bitch and fucks like a whore. She sucks dick with experience, and screams dirty words while she fakes coming because she thinks it’s what she’s expected to do.

  Someone taught her to be that way.

  With my face close to Leigh’s center, small, bare heels burrow into my bed, and she arches her back and bites her lip to keep noiseless. The taste of her skin is easy on my tongue but hard on my resistance. I suck until she’s twisting and kiss the purple spot when I feel she can’t take any more.

  Moving back up her body, I whisper into her ear as I touch the side of her throat with the back of my fingers. “I can’t mark you here…” I press my palm over the bruise my mouth made on her skin “…but I can here.”

  She draws in a slow breath. “Okay,” she whispers, rubbing the inside of her thighs along the outside of mine. “Okay.”

  Leighlee is two and a half years younger than me, and outside of this room, I have a whole life she doesn’t know much about. The drugs, the sex, the parties. At night, she’s tucked in tight, and I’m out getting my dick wet and my head fucked-up.

  She hears shit—rumors or whatever. I knew once she was in high school it was going to be harder to lie to her, and easier for her to find out about me and other girls. Especially Valarie. Leigh believes almost anything I say to her, but she’s wary of Val. It’s probably why L pushes this sex shit so hard. In her mind, it’s probably a cure-all.

  “We can do it, if you’re fast.” Her tone is courageous, but the tremble in her fingers lets me know differently.

  What will she do if one day I just fucking do it?

  Because I won’t be able to stop myself.

  One day, I’ll fuck her.

  “Right now?” I ask, pushing my hard dick along her soft, too warm middle.

  Her breath catches, but she leans her head back, opening up her neck for me. “Be fast.”

  She’s clueless.

  It’ll take time to fit inside her. She’ll cry—she’d probably ask me to stop.

  I won’t.

  But to have her offer it up, over and over …

  Grinding against her with nothing but cotton between us, there’s bottled up want and caged need in the pit of my stomach—turning, crushing, building. I’m a ticking time bomb; I’m coming for this girl.

  Leighlee cries out and curves her back away from the mattress. Her legs are spread, parted wide. Her arms are motionless at her sides, and pouty lips are open enough to breathe in and hold it.

  “Fuck.” I groan, rolling to my back and pushing down on my dick.

  Denial is not effortless.

  At my side, Bliss gasps and her cheeks are beyond flushed. “Oh my God, what was that?” she asks, squeezing her thighs together.

  Touch yourself, baby, I want to tell her. Touch yourself and come.

  I correct her dress instead and sit up, pulling at the ends of my hair.

  “Thomas.” Leigh moans, searching for something to help her ignite and burn.

  I almost turn around and do it, but the knock on the door comes first. Then the handle jiggles. It’s locked.

  “Open up and look what Hal brought for me,” my sister shouts through our oak barrier.

  Leigh shoots upright with her hands over her mouth, panicked and tense.

  “Hold on,” I call out, not at all worried.

  I pry love’s hands away from her face and kiss tight knuckles before lifting her from the bed and carrying my girl to my bathroom shower. “Stay quiet, strawberry blonde.”

  “Thomas!” She giggles.

  I shut the bathroom door and put my shirt back on before I let Rebecka in. “What?” I ask, crossing the room, opening the window so I can smoke.

  “Look,” she says. For a moment, she’s the excited little girl who smells like sweat with a chipped front tooth following me and my friends around.

  I have no idea what it is. “Why are you showing me this? Where’s your friend?”

  “It’s a Chia Pet. And she’s probably out back catching butterflies. I didn’t see her in my room, so I came here.” Rebecka sits on my bed—the same bed I was dry fucking her best friend on—and presents her clay cat head.

  I step to my sis, taking the figure from her hands. I look at it, decide it sucks, and kick her out of my room.

  “Leigh will like it,” she says as she leaves.

  As soon as the door clicks shut, Bliss appears, tiptoeing from the bathroom. She climbs on my lap, as if Becka didn’t almost catch us together, and asks, “What was that? What was happening to me? It felt … like …” Her smoldering eyes search mine, looking over my face for the answer. “It felt like I was on fire … inside.”

  I don’t hesitate to slip my hand between her thighs, under her dress, over my mark. “Here,” I ask. “Did it tingle here?”

  “Yes,” she whispers, smiling shyly.

  I don’t answer. This little girl doesn’t need to know. I don’t want her to have it yet.

  SOMETIME LATER, when March sun sets and the moon rises, Becka, Bliss, and I head to the back patio and eat pudding cups, circled around the seeded cat head while the sprinklers in the yard humidify the air and dampen our faces.

  Leighlee licks chocolate from the corner of her mouth, and I think I might stay in tonight. I want to be around my girl.

  But when the sprinklers turn off and Becka swipes at the bottom of her cup with her finger, the doorbell rings and Bliss’ expression swings from careless to careful and drains of color, guilty. I know who’s here.

  The fucking sweater giver.

  Laid-back ease below the stars shifts to heavy edginess under the blackened sky the moment Smitty and Oliver come around the side of the house. I don’t have a problem with the quiet one, but I hate that other motherfucker.

  “Your mom told us you were back here,” Hal says quietly. My sister’s boyfriend shoves his hands in his pockets and waits at the bottom of the steps to be invited up.

  Oliver stands back, not as timid, not as cool. He lifts his cap from his head and runs his hand through his hair, watching me from under its bill as I drop my pudding cup and spoon to the table and stand up.

  “Later, kids,” I mumble indifferently, patting Bliss on the top of the head as I step by and walk away.

  Entering the kitchen through the backdoor, Mom’s at the wine rack, pouring herself another glass. Makeup free, the face I grew up loving beams as she turns to see me, troubled but happy she’s near.

  “You’re here.” She smiles, handing me what’s left in the dark bottle.

  “No plans,” I say, taking a bitter drink.

  Mom rests against the counter beside me. Her dark red wet hair smells like ginger, and her lips are stained nightcap-violet. Tommy Castor may seem bold outside of these doors, but it’s forced. Confidence is easily spent when your dreams die and your husband cheats with his prettier, skinner co-ed. She suppresses a rocky past with a couple bottles of wine, nightly.

  “I’m so
rry I’m such a shitty kid,” I say, smirking as she rolls her eyes, not trusting a word.

  There was a time when I stood where her silk robe sways at her knees. I’d reach up, needy for her attention, and say, “Hold me.”

  Taller and stronger, I do the holding now.

  “I love you,” I say, relaxing my chin on top of her head. Mom lowers her back onto my chest and sighs, holding my arm under her collarbone.

  “I know you do, Dusty,” she says with breath that smells like berry and liquor.

  Gripping a little tighter, I lower my mouth to her ear and whisper, “You should tell Oliver and Smitty to leave because they suck.”

  Mom laughs out loud and spins in my arms, pushing me playfully. Her drunk eyes are low and unwound, pretense-free.

  “Be nice to your sister’s boyfriend, Thomas,” she says before sipping the last of her drink.

  “Is that little prick here again?” my dad asks, flipping on the kitchen light.

  Surprised by his sudden presence, my mom and I both jump, and then we laugh.

  “What?” he says, holding up a box of cereal. “I got hungry.”

  We sit at the kitchen table, under a dimly lit low-hanging chandelier. Dad’s slurps milk. Mom takes small bites, and I’ve let lucky marshmallows go soggy. Eating isn’t possible while my girl’s outside with another guy. The gnawing ache in my chest is almost painful enough to make me say forget it and tell everyone Bliss was made for me.

  Cowardly, I’m in love with her.

  It’s not her father that makes me apprehensive. There’s no doubt he’d toss me behind bars for touching his underage daughter, but that’s what my dad’s for. If her parents tried to keep Leighlee away from me, I’d fight them until I was bloody knuckled and halfway in the grave to I found her.

  Despite that strong feeling about her, and instead of making us real, I choose to lie and hurt us both. But there will be a day I take her away from here, and it’ll be different. It’ll be us.

  That’s our deal.

  WHEN MY phone rings upstairs, it’s welcomed.

  Mom caresses my hand, excusing me from the table as if I need her permission to get up. I slide my chair back and head to my room. My cell is on the nightstand beside my bed, next to my pack of smokes, lit up and vibrating.

  “What’s up, Pete?” I answer.

  “It’s my mom,” he says.

  Twenty minutes later, I’m dressed and smoking a cigarette, ready to go. When I flick the butt out the window to the patio below, knowing Bliss and her friends are down there, I only hope it burns Oliver’s eyes so he can never see my girl again.

  “Asshole!” my sister yells as I shut the windowpane.

  To my surprise, love notices I’m leaving.

  “I thought you were staying in tonight,” Leighlee asks, meeting me at my car.

  “Something came up,” I say, looking past her. “Go back before my sister comes over here.”

  “She won’t.”

  I kiss her forehead and get in the car. “I have to go, princess.”

  FRIDAYS ARE bad for Petey.

  Paydays.

  His mom wastes her entire check at the same bar she works hard to earn it from and doesn’t normally come home. If she does, it’s in this condition: facedown, in her own puke.

  “I can’t get her to wake up,” Pete says, walking around the living room, trashing empty booze bottles. “She’s breathing, though.”

  He’s thrown a sheet over her, but I can tell Rachel doesn’t have any clothes on beneath it. It’s upsetting seeing her this way, because she’s always been a drunk, but she hasn’t always been pathetic.

  The house is beat and smells worse than it looks, so I take the trash bag from my boy and finish picking up while he straightens out the furniture. We step over Rachel, working our way through the rest of their home. I wash dishes while Petey cleans the bathroom. He runs out gagging, ready to kick his drunk, passed out excuse for a parent before going back in with a blue bandanna tied around his nose and mouth.

  Having left her for last, we stand beside his mom, looking down on her limp body.

  “You take her hands, and I’ll take her feet,” Pete mumbles, pushing her onto her back. The cover falls away and we both see everything.

  Unable to stomach embarrassment for either one of them, I pick up the tattered sheet to cover her again, but Petey rips it from my hands, tearful.

  “Fuck her, Thomas,” he cries because of his mother, like many times before. “Let her wake up like this so she knows.”

  My heart breaks for him.

  Drunk weight is dead weight, and we struggle to get her down the short hall to her bedroom. Pete drops one of her legs and spits words to his mom she’ll never hear.

  “Leave her,” he says with red-rimmed eyes and a quivering chin.

  “Come on,” I say gently, hooking my arms under hers. “Help me out.”

  Once she’s safely in bed, I head out for fresh air and a smoke while Petey cleans up the bile his mom was sleeping in. But when I hear him dry heave, I go back in to help out. It won’t be the last time.

  It goes without saying that we take it to the grave.

  MONDAY MORNING arrives after a hazy weekend, and I haven’t seen or heard from my girl since I left my place Friday night. Not from a lack of trying on my part—I’m being avoided.

  Driving into the school parking lot, I find a spot and turn off the car. Rebecka gets out and heads straight to class, blowing me a ruby kiss as she goes. Instead of trailing in behind her, I stay back and wait for Judge McCloy to arrive with his daughter. She can’t dodge me forever.

  I deserve Leighlee’s anger, but I don’t accept it.

  When Thaddeus’ silver sedan pulls in, I grab my backpack and follow Leigh through the gates. If she knows I’m behind her, she doesn’t let on. Her red ballet flats make a light squeak on the cheap linoleum floor as she walks easily, not rushed. Head down, yellow-soft curls falling over her shoulder, she hugs her black folder to her chest.

  Love doesn’t notice the way girls look at her with envy, and the boys with want. But when they see me, they look away.

  She turns the corner, and I’m right behind her, ready to pull her to the side. I’ll make something up. I’ll tell her I’m sorry and that whatever she heard isn’t true, and if it is, I don’t remember.

  But I don’t get the chance to lie to her.

  “What the hell, Thomas,” Valarie punches me in my chest, shoving my shoulder into some lockers. “You slept with Mixie? Seriously?”

  I stand straight and right my backpack, unable to keep my eyes from Bliss.

  She sees me now.

  She hears me now.

  Petey and Ben run down the hall, too little too late, with the Slut in question not far behind them. Valarie’s in my face with red eyes, like she’s been crying, as if she’s able. She wants me to argue about this with her in front of everyone and make a scene. This girl I don’t love wants to show Mixie that I’m not hers to fuck.

  But that’s not our deal.

  With my best friends walking up, the Sluts waiting nearby, and Leigh watching, I say, “So?”

  Val hits me again.

  My friends laugh.

  Leigh walks away.

  I didn’t have sex with Mixie. She sucked my dick on the back porch. From the look on Leigh’s face, she knew, and I need to find out who’s filling her in.

  LITTLE SISTERS are untouchable.

  This rule seems to apply to everyone in school except for two people: Smitty and Oliver.

  When I see Leighlee in the halls between classes, she’s with him every time, shoulder-to-shoulder, too close for my comfort. It puts me in a bad mood, and by the time lunch is over, half of the day has passed and she hasn’t replied to a text or the letter I dropped in her locker.

  “Are you coming?” Valarie asks.

  The same girl who hit me waits for me. The cafeteria is slowly clearing and no one wants to go back to class. As I watch Oliver walk love out
through double doors, with his hand on her lower back, I know I won’t be going at all.

  I stand from the table and sling my backpack over my shoulder. I walk past Val and say, “See you later.”

  With my head low and my hands in my pockets, it’s all I can do not to crawl out of my own skin. I’m trapped within myself; shame hammers against my heart, opening it up and hallowing it out. Regret eats me alive, starting with my lungs, making breathing impossible, while misery twists my stomach, aching and agonizing.

  None of it hurts more than the loneliness settling deep into my bones, leaving me drained without Bliss.

  “Hey.”

  The sound of her voice trickles down my spine and I turn around.

  “Hi,” I say. My own voice carries off of the lockers.

  With the exception of one late freshmen running into class, Bliss and I are alone. Misery and loneliness back off, but shame and regret rejoice.

  I tilt her chin so our eyes meet. For the half-second she lets me, I see the pain of betrayal set in her green irises—because of me. Without hesitation, Leigh smacks my hand away and drops her eyes to the floor.

  “Want to get out of here?” I ask.

  She shrugs her shoulder. “Sure.”

  I’ve ditched school enough times to know the faculty doesn’t notice who’s coming and going, but the thrill of our escape excites Leigh. When all that’s left between us and the car is the parking lot, I drop my lips to her ear and say, “Run.”

  Color darkens her cheeks and her mouth curves into a smile. With our fingers laced, I pull her behind me, sprinting between cars and rushing toward stolen freedom. I fake nervousness and pretend I can’t get the key in to unlock the car door. Leighlee bounces up and down, full of thrilling anxiety.

  “We’re going to get caught,” she says, laughing.

  Once I open the creaky door, the first-time ditcher climbs into the passenger seat and sinks down. Baby thinks she’s hiding, but as I walk around the front of the car, I can see the top of her head.

  She could never hide from me anyway.

  Our drive is quiet, but careful. I don’t go over the speed limit or switch lanes without using my blinker. My hands are at ten and two, and our seat belts are buckled and tight. Getting pulled over during school hours is the last thing I need to happen.