Innocents

by Mary Elizabeth

  “Maybe I would have felt more like a wife if I wasn’t spending every waking hour slaving over your kids, that you wanted, remember?”

  “We had options.”

  “Just for now, baby? Until I finish law school? Until I make partner? Go to Hell. Everyone knows you’re a fake.”

  “And you were a lot prettier before you drank your dreams away.”

  Shouting subsides, and I know my dad’s walked away. It’s what he does. It’s what I do.

  Flicking my cigarette, I lie back. For a few seconds there’s nothing but explosions in the sky and the weight of my pulse in my ears, then the Mercedes starts and tires screech. I open my eyes in time to see it peel out down the street.

  As I’m reaching for another cigarette, my phone vibrates in my pocket. In between missed calls and texts I don’t check, is one from the only person I want to hear from.

  It’s simple and it’s nothing, and I should just stop. I should run far away from love, because what am I if I let her—us—become this?

  I love you, Bliss says.

  My chest tightens. My whole body aches. It’s three words, and it’s everything, and it’s twisted as fuck, because I can’t stop or stay away. She’s the only thing worth anything in my life. I should protect her, but she’s got me wrapped around forever, and I can’t.

  Leave with me, I text her back. Tonight.

  Her response is immediate.

  Nothing should be this messed up.

  Come get me.

  There’s something about summertime.

  Between all day baseball games and blunt cruises on back roads, between beach sand and bonfires, I come home to love almost every night.

  She climbs onto the roof with me sometimes and lets me kiss her under the starlight. Sometimes we’re too worn out by the heat and freedom and almost snooze through both our alarms. Sometimes we talk until sunup, sometimes with our fingertips.

  And sometimes, we’re painfully still.

  I ignore the knots in my chest and cross the carpet to my closet. The hat Leigh got me four birthdays ago is sun-faded and worn-out, but I drop it far back on my head and breathe out.

  I’m thankful Leigh basically lives here during the summertime, but her walls have been up since this morning. She’s not allowed to be mad at me on my birthday, but guarding and blocking herself from me is worse.

  Kicking candy wrappers under my bed, I grab new car keys from my dresser. Complete with suicide doors and 24s, the ’64 Continental feels too good to be true, but I’ll take what I can get, because what I got is dope.

  Pete and I went by his cousin Easy’s garage yesterday looking, but it turned out Easy was in a bind. Lucky for him and me, he was willing to take as much cash up front as soon as possible, and I keep savings stashed in an old gear bag.

  Dad was pissed when I came home with the old Lincoln, but after one look from my mom, what could he do except pay the rest and let me keep it?

  Tucking two joints into my pack, I drop it with my wallet and phone into my pockets and head out. But as soon as I close my door behind me, Becka opens hers. She and Bliss step out, and what I see isn’t what I expect.

  Summertime light blonde-red hair is pulled high, and Leigh has on this little sea-foam colored one-piece thing. The shorts are too short, and there are white bikini strings tied around the back of her neck. Tapping something out on her phone, she doesn’t bother to look at me, and it makes my heart feel like giving up. It’d probably stop altogether if it wasn’t busy double-pulsing all my blood straight to my dick.

  “Where the fuck are you going?” I ask.

  “Agate Beach night swim.” Rebecka pushes my arm, tightening the drawstring on her board shorts. “Hal’s brother’s taking us.”

  Which means my girl’s going to be with Oliver.

  They close the bathroom door behind them, but their laughter seeps out, and my chest clenches.

  This isn’t how we work.

  Ignoring the phone vibrating in my pocket, I enter my sister’s room. I can’t believe I’m resorting to this bullshit, but I grab her shoe, stash it on the top shelf of the hall closet, and go back to my own room.

  I light a cigarette by my window and wait without patience. I’m almost finished before Becka catches up.

  “Wear your Chucks,” Leigh tells her.

  Love opens anger in me, and it burns.

  While they search, I toss my cigarette outside. I’m tired of waiting when I hear Leigh on the stairs. Every step is intentionally measured, a little gutsy, and totally deceiving.

  I’m at my door, opening it, and pulling her in before she knocks. I wrap my hands around her upper arms and hold her back to the barrier that keeps our secret a secret, but love-slighted eyes don’t shy from mine. Baby stands tall in her courage.

  “Growing up, little girl?” I ask.

  The blue-green fire in her eyes flares. Her silence spits kerosene at my burning nerves, and I grip my fingers into the susceptible skin and soft muscles of her arms. My anger guts me, but I swallow my sense of right and wrong and am tall enough that when I lean over the source of my frustration, she’s caged in me.

  Let her tell me not to leave a mark. Let her try to leave.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” I ask lowly.

  L’s whisper is close to a hiss. “Not everything is about you, Thomas.”

  “Tell me this isn’t.” I snatch the white strings around her neck, roughly undoing the bow. I narrow my eyes and I want to fucking shake her, but I let go. I look away and then right back, gesturing with my empty right hand. “Tell me this shit isn’t exactly for me.”

  Staring right back into me, she looks like she wants to scream and hit and cry and demand, but she doesn’t. And I can’t pull the blankets over her like last year. We stand here, locked and stubborn, wasting the few seconds we have.

  “Got it, motherfucker!” Rebecka calls from downstairs.

  Leigh doesn’t move or speak. She doesn’t blink, but her game face flips back on. I feel her go from my Bliss to the rest of the world’s. She breathes out through her nose and buries the acid hurt in her eyes and reaches up to retie her top.

  With her white strings back in a bow, Leighlee opens my door behind her back and looks at me through eyes she’s readied for my sister, her friends, and him.

  And I want to tell her don’t go.

  And I won’t.

  Instead she says, “I have to go home tonight. I won’t be here when you come back.”

  For a second, there’s resentment in her eyes that’s as sharp as it is scalding, and my stupid heart beats for it, but then she turns.

  And leaves.

  And I’m alone with the way it keeps beating.

  TURNING THE music down and rolling my shoulders back, I pull into Ben’s driveway and check my phone, but I know before I look there’s not going to be anything there from Leigh.

  I think about ditching the party for the beach and making Oliver count his teeth in the sand, but Ben comes outside with a wide grin and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. The party needs me, and I need it.

  I’m seventeen.

  We pick up Kelly and Pete, and I trade my best friend my open bottle for his blunt.

  The sun’s heat sticks to everything despite setting an hour ago. July air blows through open windows while we ride, and it smells like just-cut grass and hot asphalt, like chlorine and ice cream. Fireflies are all asleep, but cicadas and stereos buzz loudly. By the time we roll up to Mixie’s house, the porch and sidewalk are packed with people.

  Air-conditioning blows cool inside the small two story, but the living room is crowded-warm and the laughter is high. Rhythms and beats drift from floor-standing speakers while sweet smoke hovers, and everyone smiles at me, wanting to bring it in. I don’t recognize every sort of sunburned and kind of sweaty face, but I’m surrounded on all sides with hugs and happy birthdays.

  Val’s in the doorway leading to the kitchen, standing on the toes of her scuffed up Docs. She lo
oks like the devil in a little pink dress.

  “Hey, birthday boy!” She reaches both arms out.

  Our eyes meet and I extend my hand, offering her the bottle instead of the contact she’s seeking. She takes it.

  I think about Agate beach again, but someone turns the music way up, shifting my process.

  Surrounded by my boys and a few others, standing in a shape that vaguely resembles a circle, we pull scotch and smoke, hit after hit under a yellow-tinted light.

  Kelly and Katie bring out a tray of gas station doughnuts with seventeen lit sparklers jammed in them. I blow without making a wish, but they don’t go out. I blow again, and again. Ben jumps on my back and blows too. I stumble carrying him, and he pushes my hat over my eyes, making me as blind as I am careless.

  When I pull my hat up, Ben’s off my back and we’re in a dining room. I swallow bigger drinks and breathe deeper lungfuls.

  I blink and I’m outside showing Cas the ’64.

  I blink again and I’m on the back porch lighting one of my joints, passing it to Tanner.

  With another blink, I’m in the crowded living room. Smoke and sweat and slow beats linger, heavier now, and Kelly’s on her tiptoes, trying to put a construction paper crown on my head.

  “It’s your birthday crown!” she insists, rosy-cheeked and laughing loudly.

  Bending my knees and taking my hat off, I let Kelly coronate me.

  “Tell me I’m king,” I say.

  She hesitates for about a second.

  “Petey’s king,” she says, smiling at him over her shoulder in a drunk blip of sincerity.

  Another blink and I’m sitting in this wingback chair with this crown on my head that looks like it came out of the back of a coloring book. The fifth of scotch in my right hand is half-empty and my left hand is over my stomach.

  On that same side, perched on the arm of the chair, is Shirley Temple.

  Her name’s Stacey, but she’s got these candy apple red curls around her baby doll face that make her look like Shirley Temple.

  Ben told me about her last week. “She’ll let you put it anywhere.”

  She plays with the sleeve of my hoodie. She smells like girl sweat and baby powder, and I can barely stomach it when she leans in like she’s going to tell me a secret.

  “Want to go somewhere?” She brushes the backs of her fingers over my turning stomach, through my tee shirt while Johnnie Walker swims through my veins like a flame.

  Hazy between bored and annoyed, I take a drink.

  “Why?” I ask, not looking at her. I slouch further back into the chair so she can’t reach my ear anymore and remove her hand from my stomach. Now she has to say whatever slut-wannabe shit she has to say out loud.

  “Why what?” she asks.

  Shirley Temple’s a fucking rocket scientist.

  “Why do you want to go somewhere?” I ask.

  Darting her eyes and biting her lip, she stumbles over her words when she attempts an answer.

  I help her out.

  “So we can fuck?”

  She blushes and looks at the floor, tucking candy red curls behind her ear. “I mean … If you—”

  “I don’t want to,” I say, still bored and further annoyed. Leaning back in the chair, I scan the faces around me, and Katie catches my eye. My high spins in weighted slow motion with my drunk, and I point to the Slut across from us, watching the try-hard follow my aim.

  “Her,” I say easily.

  “What?” She sounds like she doesn’t get it, but I see her looking at Katie. She’s thinking about it.

  “I’d rather watch you fuck her,” I clarify, taking another drink. It doesn’t burn, and while I’m wishing it did, the girl next to me looks conflicted for half a second before she slinks off the arm of the chair and struts straight to Katie.

  I breathe out and feel my crown fall to one side as I drop my head back, disappointed it was that easy. She’s like rest of them, and as I bring the bottle to my lips, their queen in a pink dress purses her lips at me from across the room.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Valarie’s dilated eyes are empty and begging to be filled. She’d take anything, because all she has is needy evil, bottomless dark, hopeless unlovability. I look at her until the hair on the back of my neck stands up. As I stand and move, my focus sinks slowly but surely closer and closer to the bottom of the ocean.

  I smoke my other joint in the ’64 with Petey.

  I blink and I’m back in the living room, holding Ben upside down for a keg stand.

  I blink again and I’m in the backyard by myself. There’s an unlit cigarette between my lips and my bottle of Johnnie Walker is gone.

  I blink again and I’m in a bathroom doorway upstairs, watching Katie and Shirley Temple dyke out in the shower.

  The clear curtain’s pulled wide open, and Katie’s got her lips and fingers slide-pressing everywhere she can reach. The girl who wants to be her has her mouth on Katie’s neck and both hands on her breasts. Their eyes are closed, and the water slips down them in weak-red streams tinted by soaked candy curls.

  People around me laugh and holler and whisper obscene shit. Dipping her right hand between Katie’s naked legs, Shirley Temple’s fingers touch the same place my dick has been, making Katie arch and cry out.

  I’m not even hard.

  With another blink, I’m breaking into a liquor cabinet that is exactly like my dad’s, pulling the Chivas out and chugging straight from the bottle. Turning and looking around, I call for Pete.

  I blink and he’s there. He holds his mouth open, and I pour a double down.

  Handing the bottle to whoever’s on my right, I glance over. Kelly’s taking a drink and my construction paper crown is on her head, lopsided and almost over her eyes.

  Blinking my eyes open, I’m in a bathroom washing my face with cold water, listening to somebody mumble “fuck, fuck, fuck,” over and over. The light’s not on, but night’s dim glow comes through the window.

  I’m alone.

  The person mumbling is me.

  I’M ON the floor.

  My eyes burn when I blink. My chest hurts. My vision dissolves everything around me into shapeless shades of dull colors that bleed together. I want to be sick. I want to go home. I want it to be over.

  I’M SITTING up, thinking about love and calling her.

  When her voicemail picks up, I almost throw my phone. My chest has gone from painful with missing to tight with frustration.

  Love is sorely fucking difficult.

  She’s the answer to everything, and she won’t even answer.

  Love is doing nothing to stop our spiral.

  Love is perpetuating.

  Love bought a white bikini to fuck with me, and it worked.

  Love is learning by example, but love is foolish. She’s the only thing in my world that isn’t poison, but she’s self-destructive and hell-bent on showing me how strong she can be. I’m trying to save her, but what about me?

  Love’s got me, but I’m bent-twisted, disjointed and infuriated. I can’t see as I stand up, but I open the door, and I’m out in the hallway. The party’s still going, and love’s nowhere near, with no idea how good she has it.

  “LOVE …”

  The devil’s voice sounds far away. It’s breathless. Weightless. It doesn’t sound real.

  I start to blink, but I can’t bear lifting my eyelids. I clench them instead and grip so hard my knuckles ache.

  I hear the devil whimper, “I love you …”

  I freeze inside her and force my eyes open.

  Valarie’s underneath me.

  Naked.

  Shaking.

  Spun.

  Her eyes are heavy-half-closed and glassy, like she’s about to cry. Really cry. She’s rocking her hips and I feel her. I really feel her, and she’s about to come.

  Really come.

  “Thomas,” she whispers.

  Moving with a rush that blurs my perception and controls my steps, I discard the condo
m in the bathroom of whoever’s bedroom we’re in. I don’t bother turning on the light or looking up. I can’t get my shit buttoned, buckled, and together fast enough.

  When I step back into the room, I’m dizzy. I can’t feel the floor underneath my feet.

  “What?” Valarie asks. I avoid her stare. She sounds small and I feel stuck.

  I pull my shirt on and pat my pockets for my cigarettes, my wallet, my phone.

  My heart splits like a crack of thunder all the way through me.

  The devil’s voice, broken with something like shame or hurt, snatches my attention right back as I turn to leave.

  “Say something to me, you piece of shit.”

  Valarie’s black hair is tangled and sex-pushed, higher on the left than the right. She has somebody’s blankets pulled up over her chest, but I can see her bare shoulders. Under sunlight tanned, sweat-shining skin, skinny bones vibrate in her defense.

  She’s waiting for an answer.

  Everybody wants answers.

  “Go home, Val,” I tell her lowly, facing my hat forward and pulling my hood over it before walking out.

  NOT HALF as full as I remember it being, the living room is an entirely different world now. Pete and Kelly have disappeared, and Ben’s passed out on the love seat with his head in some girl’s lap. Other people have paired off and are talking quietly with drinks they won’t finish and eyes half-closed. Everyone’s winding down.

  Everyone except Mixie.

  I can’t see her, but I can hear her cracking up behind some nearby closed door. She sounds hoarse, but carefree-upbeat, wide awake. Coke happy—like she couldn’t give a fuck about anything, even if she wanted to.

  Bringing the cigarette I’ve been holding up to my lips, I pat my front pocket for my lighter. But it’s not there. And it’s not in my back pockets either. I have my wallet, my keys, and my cigarettes, but not my lighter.

  Or my phone.

  “Fuck,” I mumble under my breath.

  On the second step up the stairs, gravity blurs my balance, and I remember. I won’t be here when you come back.

  A year ago, Leighlee Bliss cried in an effort to keep me home. Her tears are the most fucked-up thing there is, but my influence on her has to be worse. It shows. It was clear today that nothing is getting easier. Everything’s becoming more distorted and difficult the older we get.