by M. C. Cerny
Damien shrugged and lifted himself up further. That should have been my cue to start running for the car. Unfortunately my legs had been rooted to the spot in half surprise and half fear.
He looked me over and tiny shivers left me quaking in my shoes. A growl from deep in the center of his chest emanated for my ears only. “You better run, brat.” Demon climbed out of the john looking a bit blue around his gills.
“Oh crap.” Taylor’s voice slowed down the momentum I needed to get out of there. How did two syllables sound like two minutes?
“Damien, that blue stuff stinks.” He climbed out fully, looping his leg over the side for balance, and I was treated to a vision in peacock blue. Giggles made my nose wrinkle. I couldn’t help but start laughing hysterically, doubling over. It was done, I was officially, certifiably crazy. I couldn’t stop, not even when he was standing in front of me dripping blue dots onto the grass at my feet, because I was afraid if I moved I might actually pee myself. My knees weakened, sending me to the ground holding my stomach. My mind circled back to crazy hypotheses. If we mixed fluids, potentially blue might become green and the image made me laugh even harder unable to speak.
“You’re such a bitch sometimes.” He didn’t offer me a hand up and I wasn’t sure I would have taken it anyway, considering. I rolled to my side and stood up after a good minute wiping tears from my face. Everyone else had left us to stand safely on the porch, out of harm’s way, watching the exchange between us.
Snorting, I barely got out, “You feeling blue, Demon?”
“Dying to say that weren’t you?” he grumbled and I nodded. “I told you to run.” It hit me suddenly that he was going to exact retribution. Who wouldn’t after being pushed over in a shit-shack? Even a clean one, a shit-shack was still shit-shack. I badly wanted to make another joke. I was unprepared for the reaction, followed by him yelling and giving chase. I didn’t have much of a head start to work with, running across the yard, but I knew I had nowhere to go. My screaming filled the yard, and I dodged big blue as our friends cheered from the porch. Assholes.
“I’m sick of this shit,” he yelled.
Darting behind a tree, I giggle-snorted, out of breath. “You look like it.” I tried faking him out, but the game was up when he tackled me to the ground. I was no match for a guy who started every season of football my dad coached his team. Having known better was part of my problem. Never underestimate one’s opposition. We rolled for several spins before he pinned my body underneath him. A hand cradled my head from hitting the ground, blue fingers tangled in my hair. I could only imagine what my hairstylist currently standing on the porch would say once she saw my red ombre had become a mixture of blue and violet. Demon took the upper hand and rubbed himself over me suggestively, pressing my body into the still-dewy wet grass soaking my back, and I couldn’t push him off.
“Are you done?” I asked.
He was on top of me, a position not completely unfamiliar to us, but awkward with our present audience. “Are you?” he asked back, eyes bright under his sky-blue skin.
I wanted to pull him close and let our physical needs take over. I was horny, and adult enough to admit I wanted him—even if it was only one more time—because the chemistry was too good to turn down. We challenged each other mercilessly; it was in our DNA.
He rubbed his cheek along my face, spreading the gunk. “Please tell me I tipped it over before you peed in it,” I asked him.
“I pinched the tip and zipped up the second you slapped the door, Pebbles.” He whispered softly against my ear, leaning into me. Thank God for that. As gross as this was, at least it was a fresh port-a-john and not a used one.
We were both covered in blue crap when he finally, relented helping me up. I stared at his hand before taking it. He squeezed my palm, spreading the blue between us, staining me, claiming me. We were already a mess—what was a little more?
A shout drew our attention back to the house and our audience. “Okay, well when you two are done recruiting for Vegas, I’ll be on the roof working.” Hunter kissed Taylor and walked off with the lunch we brought, nonplussed about what had just happened.
“Vegas…” We both spoke and looked at each other and the idea bloomed. Hunter and Taylor didn’t know what we were about to hatch between the two of us, and we shared a secret smile before he spoke again.
“We should probably hose down now.”
I agreed, following him. “Yeah, probably.” I trailed Demon to the back of the house, where the hose was located, and waited for him to exact further retaliation. Instead he motioned me closer and held up the spray before shooting me with it.
“Ah wait.” Holding my hand up, I paused.
“Come here, the water should be warmer the first few seconds but it’ll get cold quick.” He almost looked remorseful. We both knew the first few seconds would be ball-shrinking cold but that was a punishment I was willing to take for my shitty behavior.
I punched his arm gently. “Aw, you care?”
“More like my balls are going to care when I’m struck with ice shards. Come on woman, let’s go.” True to his word, Demon kept the hot spray on me, getting most of the blue out. The water turned cold quick and my nipples pebbled painfully when he let up to clean himself off. He gave me the hose to spray him and he shook under the water like a big dog, making enough noise for the neighborhood to hear him. His hair, slightly longer on top, took on a spikey style and his blue jeans stayed darker either from the water or from the blue gunk. I didn’t really want to know which it was, but his legs were outlined with the slick denim clinging to his thighs and my mouth dried up thinking about peeling them off of him. I needed to get out of there before I did something stupid like jump his ass out there in broad daylight. Demon’s eye held a similar look, and we groaned when Taylor found us nearly shivering but slightly cleaner.
“I think you two are going to need these.” Taylor stood to the side of our mess holding old towels she must have found in Hunter’s truck. We didn’t care as long as we could dry off and get warm. As soon as I finished drying my face off, Damien was long gone, having walked inside the house leaving me out there. Asking him about planning Taylor’s bachelorette party would have to wait.
Taylor peevishly raised her eyebrows, silent recriminations aimed at me. “I can’t believe you—” She held her hand up, stopping her own thought mid-sentence. “No, I absolutely should have known you’d do it.”
I shrugged, hands up. “What?” If she was looking for an explanation, all I could say was that the opportunity to torment Demon was there and impulsively I couldn’t pass it up. Tormenting him was my drug and I was addicted.
“Uh huh.”
“What?” I shrugged again.
Drolly she said, “Make sure you dry off good before getting in the car, please.” She walked away, leaving me there. And to think that this day had started out so well…
8
Damien
“She is an evil, evil woman.” I looked at Pebbles’s older brother, bracing myself for a good ribbing. Chase Calloway didn’t even try hiding the shit-eating grin on his face with his hand flailing. There was a time Chase would have beaten me to a pulp on and off the football field for picking on his baby sister, but since then he’d seen she was as much at fault as I was for our current hate relationship. His shoulders stretched his shirt with thick, defined muscles. Everyone had wanted to be Chase Calloway, and even though he suffered a career-ending injury right before college, he still had it. We all thought he would go pro, but it wasn’t meant to be.
“I uh… heard about your little art show the other day.” He snickered.
I hadn’t planned on attending this picnic party, but every year Kristen and Chase’s mother hosted a Fourth of July party to welcome in the summer. I was never technically invited, but considering we were all neighbors growing up and there were like six degrees of Kevin Bacon between us, it was sort of a given I’d show up. Mrs. Calloway would give me the side eye and I’d tal
k sports with Mr. Calloway for most of the night until the fireworks started. Those were the traditions that kept me in town, making it hard to walk away.
Chase kept snickering and I wanted to tip his beer over. Instead I said, “Fuck you.” Was I in the mood to explain how a port-a-john got tipped over on the jobsite with me stuck inside of it? Nope. But I also knew our friends wouldn’t leave out the opportunity to humiliate my jackass self either. That’s love for you.
“I can see you’re less blue today.”
Grunting, I wondered how long it had taken him to make that up. He was laughing and I wanted to hit something, but Chase was solid muscle. He remained built like a brick house since our football days, and I didn’t feel like rolling around in the backyard in front of his parents.
“She tipped over a freaking port-a-john like she had guns of steel. What the hell is eating her these days?” My question was rhetorical, but no less valid. I had been searching for years for someone to help me make sense of this girl.
“What do you expect? My sister is crazy.” Chase handed me a new beer and sat down, opening them up to clink them together, chugging the contents down. I was still attending those Intoxicated Driver Groups and I was supposed to remain sober because if it wasn’t humiliating enough to be in them, they also did weekly urine screens. I wasn’t an alcoholic and I hated being told what to do, but it was a holiday and I wasn’t going to have more than two before I walked home. Since group wasn’t until the following week, I wasn’t worried about alcohol remaining in my system that long. It was shitty, and yes I was breaking the rules, but I was pretty sure my life couldn’t be any more humiliating right then.
“I don’t know how you do it, being related to her.” If anyone should have understood, it was Chase, having lived with her all those years.
“I swear she’s a nosy pain in the ass. Damn spirit animal must be a raccoon the way she tries getting into my business and everyone else’s.” Chase laughed.
“Yeah, but only if it’s one with rabies.” I joked watching him shudder in agreement. Kristen was vicious when crossed. She didn’t need to dye the ends of her dark hair flame red; she had a bit of the devil residing in her already, and I envied the man who tamed that.
“I’ll have to save that one for later.” Chase said. We laughed, drinking our beers.
“Did she rope you into the auction?” he asked.
“No, but she managed to finagle a hundred bucks from Hunter and a tuxedo. I figured the only monkey suit he would wear was to his wedding.”
“This is my sister we’re talking about. She could convince you to buy sand in a desert.”
I didn’t want to talk about the girl I would never get, and switched gears to find out more about Chase’s mystery woman. Cute, Asian, and—from what I could see—being harassed by Kristen and Taylor not even five minutes into the party. “So who’s the girl with you?”
“Winnie Grey.”
“Pretty,” I said, remarking on her looks. I wasn’t attracted to her, but I could still appreciate clear, smooth skin and a nice figure. For all I knew she could be a harpy just like Pebbles, and Chase would deserve it.
He finished off his beer, uncapping another one and quickly grousing, “And hands off before I make you blue with bruises instead of shit juice.”
“Aw, dude, why you have to be like that,” I moaned to his retreating form waving me off as he returned to the party. I watched everyone talk and laugh, feeling once again like an outsider.
A powdery scent and petite body plunked down next to me in the spot vacated by Chase, swinging a glass of red wine. “I hear you got a shit bath with my granddaughter.” I turned to see Kristen and Chase’s grandmother nursing her wine, winking at me.
“Ms. Halle!” I leaned over, hugging her happily, surprised. This woman might have been the only one to ever fully accept me, warts and all.
Her face wrinkled in a smirk behind wise eyes that looked like a version of Kristen’s fifty years into the future. There was a time when Ms. Halle was obviously stunningly beautiful—before time graced her with deeply etched lines and lavender hair that looked like a poufy Q-tip.
“Don’t you get sweet on me, you little shit.” Her elbow ribbed me and I knew her ornery attitude had been bred deeply into Pebbles, who made her rounds among the partygoers as I watched from my vantage point on the back patio.
“Someday. Maybe.” I thought about her granddaughter, unsure what future, if any, there was for us.
“She’s an exact replica of her mother.”
We both snorted. Katherine Halle Calloway was a hard-ass, using her forceful personality in the courtroom. A classic bob of dark hair swung on her shoulders, and her confidence oozed out around her. Kristen wasn’t an exact replica, but her qualities were there—and where others saw this intractable hardness about her, I saw a vulnerability we both shared. She was an outsider like I was in my own family. Oh, they loved us, but we didn’t quite fit the mold and that made us stick out like sore thumbs. I thought we had bonded over that decades ago, but it had morphed into something else. I wanted to get back what we’d had before.
“Softer,” I said, half agreeing with the old woman I respected.
She chuckled. “What planet are you on, son? It’s obvious you revolve around her like the ones that get too close to the sun. That’s why she’s burning you. Step back. I bet with a little distance she’ll come racing back faster than a heat-seeking missile.” She downed her wine, patting my knee.
Ms. Halle probably had a point, but as usual I ended up picking a fight with Kristen before the evening was over. I ended up feeling like a dog with my tail between my legs.
9
Kristen
I was soaking wet and I thought I might have called Demon a unicorn dick, but I was too mad to remember. No, I was soaking wet from sweating because my air conditioner stopped humming sometime in the middle of night and it was July.
“Ugh.” I rolled over in my bed and found Evan lying half in, half out. I was guessing we had sex. Normally it was great, but the fight between Demon and I made this thing between Evan and me awkward and not so great. I smacked his boxer-short-clad ass, eliciting a groan. He still had his bottoms on. I looked under the sheet, and I did too. Sex didn’t happen but the hangover did.
“Please don’t murder me right now.” Evan crawled back up into the bed and wrapped himself around my body, hugging me.
“I am so… drunk still.” I said feeling the roll of my stomach.
He laughed. “You should be, lush.”
I pinched his side and he grabbed my hand to stop me from further abusing him.
“Couldn’t perform last night?” Goading him didn’t earn the humor it typically would between us.
“Kind of hard to do when you’re calling out some other guy’s name.”
I thought about that for a minute. Demon’s name was probably being yelled in anger and not passion, and poor Evan was being a good friend and ex-booty-call.
Evan seemed to know what I was thinking without verbalizing it.
“No, Kristen, I brought you home and you proceeded to drink more, so I stayed to make sure you didn’t vomit to death.”
“Did I?” I held my hand up to my face, breathing in it to smell. Seemed good to me.
“No, but you did get your period because that was next thing you were dying to tell me.”
“Ugh, embarrassing.” I let myself fall back into the pillows and sheets. “And you stayed to be my knight in shining armor?” I queried.
“Again–it was kind of hard to leave you.” Evan looked me over. I was wearing my festive bright red bra and panty set with glittering rhinestones for the Fourth of July.
“Are you mad at me?”
Evan snorted at my question, and I thought about the night before and what happened. Or didn’t happen.
We argued—or, rather, Demon and I did. Taylor squirted us with the hose and things went to hell in a hand-basket. I think Grandma Halle pulled me out of the
fray by my earlobe, a move she hadn’t used since I was thirteen. I met my brother’s girlfriend, Winnie, who probably thought I was crazy, but that was okay; it just meant she was a good judge of character.
Right before the fireworks, I called Evan and he came over to watch the fireworks with us. It was insane and tense because of the fight Demon and I’d had in front of everyone. All I wanted to do was take him down a few pegs, and then it got ugly.
“I’m not mad, but I think I know what has to be done.”
“Shit,” I muttered, knowing it as well.
“Kristen, you’re one of my best friends. I’ve known you a long time. We’ve had a lot of fun together, but this isn’t working anymore.”
“Oh my God, are you breaking up with me?”
I tried to look indignant, mad, something other than that pinch of hurt because he was removing me from his life with speedy surgical precision that was cold and yet not.
“You are totally breaking up with me, you asshole!” Even as I said it, there was a strange relief that came over me because I didn’t have to make the decision. That made it seem like a cop-out, but Evan and I knew each other well enough that he knew I needed the push, even if I couldn’t ever admit to him or myself.
I tossed a pillow at him and he tossed it back, letting it bounce off my bed.
“Seriously?” he said.
“Yeah, yeah. We haven’t been together-together in a true relationship, but still.” Was I allowed to pout? I didn’t know the protocol for breaking up a non-relationship.
“I asked you to marry me once and you remember what you said?”
Of course I remembered. I remembered everything about that day, and the weekend after when we went to Sonoma to celebrate our friendship and lack of engagement. Over several bottles of wine, I told Evan that he didn’t love me. He loved the idea of me just as much as I loved the idea of love, but I hadn’t felt it yet—not with him, though I loved him the way best friends love.
