by Bright, Sera
Need only fueled the desperation. The water lifted me higher against his body, my breasts sliding along his chest. A streak of possession urged me on. Mine. He skated his hands down my back. The heat of his fingers branded my skin through the thin nylon of my running shorts as he moved his hands down to cup my ass. I steadied myself on his shoulders. The waves pushed us toward the shore while his lips traveled the angle of my jaw.
“You shouldn’t have left,” he muttered into my neck. “Think what we could’ve been doing by now.”
The water around us turned icy. I had left, hadn’t I? I didn’t know if he meant this morning or last year, but the result was the same. I had hurt him by running away, even if my intentions were good. I broke apart from him, lowered myself, and stood on the rocky bottom. He wiped a hand over his face to clear the water, and reached for me, but I kept backing up. I knew I was going to wreck everything again, the same way I knew the curve of every one of my fingertips.
I blurted out the first thing I could think of to keep pushing him away. “Have you developed a fetish for kissing girls when they’re dripping wet?”
And then I promptly wanted to sink into the water and stay there. I couldn’t have sounded more lewd if I’d tried. But instead of pushing him away, that pushed him too far.
“God damn it.” His fist smacked the surface of the water. “Why are you making this so hard?”
“I don’t know what this is.” Frustration fueled my words because I knew exactly what was going on, but couldn’t bring myself to allow it to happen, either. “I don’t know what you want from me. One moment you agree to going back to being just friends, and the next you look like you want to strangle me or screw me. So excuse me if I’m not too comfortable you, either.”
“That’s probably the most honest thing you’ve said to me in a long time, and it’s still a complete lie.” He sneered. “You can’t express a normal human emotion without making a joke or changing the subject.”
Mission accomplished. I threw my hands up. “Then we agree, it’s all my fault. We obviously can’t go back to being just friends.”
He took a step toward me. I took two steps backward, the hem of my shirt dragging in the water.
“We were never just friends, and you know it,” he bit out.
“No, I didn’t know that!” Another blatant falsehood. I couldn’t stop. My nails cut into my palms. “But it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?”
“You’re still lying.” The carefully controlled tone was back, as was the neutral expression on his face. “And I’m not giving up until you start telling me the truth.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, holding myself together, and set my chin in challenge. “If you think I’m such a liar, what’s the point? Liars can’t be trusted.”
He looked to the beach, his silence confirming he also didn’t trust me to not fuck things up. Great, we finally agreed on something.
I waded the rest of the distance to the shore. Water dripped off my clothes, landing in cool drops on my sandy toes. I went over to the sign, where my shoes lay in the sand. Ash stood on the beach behind me, and I forced myself to march over to him. He’d driven my truck to the park, or he wouldn’t have found me so quickly. His car was probably parked downtown. He could go home from there and leave me alone.
“Give me my keys.” I held out my hand.
All he needed to do was hand me my keys, and instead he stood there staring at me with those damn guarded eyes.
“Stop playing around and just give them to me, please.” My voice broke on the last word.
He dug into his wet jeans pocket and pulled them out. He laid them on my palm and then gently folded my fingers around them. Refusing to meet his eyes any longer, I turned and walked to the stairs. Wet hair stuck to my cheeks and forehead, drops of water rolling down my face. My foot was on the first step when his voice carried on the wind.
“You asked me what I wanted from you,” he called. “All I want from you is to try to give us a chance.”
The stairs blurred in front of me. I’d tried once before, and it ruined our friendship, the most important thing I’d ever had. And look at the result—we could barely have a civil conversation without pushing each other into resentment.
“I swear to you,” he said from the bottom of the stairs. “I’ll follow you to the moon and back if that’s what it takes to convince you. I’m not letting you go again.”
“Then it’s a good thing I didn’t join the space program.” I stopped, weariness weighing heavy on my shoulders. “Besides, that would imply you had me in the first place. We just had some fun last summer, that’s all.”
“Is that what you’re telling yourself these days?” Water dripped loudly on the concrete as he moved up the stairs. He wasn’t far behind. “That it’s true that you never loved me? That I never really wanted to be with you? Or that I don’t want you now? I’d like to know—which lie is it today?”
None of them. The words stuck fast in my mouth. I just couldn’t say them, which broke my heart all over again. He couldn’t trust me to tell the truth. More than that, I couldn’t trust myself, either. And how long before it fell apart? I gripped the cool metal railing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Katie,” he said, his voice barely louder than the wind. “Just try?”
He was so close. My resolve was weakening. I had to stop this. I ran the rest of the way up the stairs and didn’t look back. Ash didn’t follow me, and I didn’t know whether the ache in my chest was from relief or disappointment.
Chapter Ten
Saturday
On the drive back to my house, I played the wish game. The pointless one where you wished you’d done everything differently, but in the end, it only made you more miserable. I wished that instead of acting like a bitch whenever Ash was around, I’d tried being nice. I wished that instead of pushing him away from the first moment I saw him, I had wrapped myself around him and told him how much I’d missed him. And if wishes were horses, I’d be riding a unicorn right now.
I walked in the front door and threw my keys on the slim entryway table. In the living room, Ash had left the sheets and quilt in a tidy pile folded on the couch, like he always did when he slept over. Pain twinged around my temples and I shivered with a sudden chill. With a sigh, I went to the bathroom to take a shower.
It took one scalding hot shower to feel a little more human. A half-dead, exhausted, hungry human. After getting dressed in jeans and a baggy t-shirt, I wandered into the kitchen, hoping there was more food in there than I last remembered.
My hopes were dashed when I opened the refrigerator and ran down the list of contents. It was a short list, consisting of what I had brought with me when I came into town yesterday: a half bag of grapes and one lonesome carton of yogurt. On the counter sat a couple of stale bagels. I was going to have to break down and go grocery shopping for real food. Like doughnuts and ice cream. My stomach rumbled in approval.
I drove to the large chain grocery store on the outskirts of town. In spite of my gnawing hunger, I meandered slowly through the aisles. Early on a Saturday morning, it was still comfortably devoid of crowds. I tossed anything that looked good into my basket without really paying attention.
With no order to the whole process, my selections made it seem like I was hosting a slumber party for adventurous seven-year-olds. Ice cream freckled with shavings of chocolate. Frozen vegetarian corn dogs and edamame. Fresh pita bread from a Middle Eastern bakery, and creamy hummus swirled with blistering hot chili oil. My stomach had no common sense. I didn’t know why I listened to it half the time.
Sprays of wildflowers in a faux-wooden barrel sat next to the refrigerated case of organic yogurt. My mood improved just by looking at them. I grabbed a bouquet and carried it along with the overloaded basket of food to the checkout line. I was handing a wad of cash over to the clerk when a voice called my name.
“Katie!” Mrs. Siriano hurried over from the sliding doors of th
e entrance. She gave me an enthusiastic hug, crushing the bouquet in my hand to my chest, releasing their light floral scent. “I just heard you and Ash Townsend are finally dating.”
My mouth dropped open, but no words came out. I was too shocked to even attempt speech. I’m in town for one single day, and Ash manages to arrange it for everyone to think we’re in a relationship. That manipulative bastard.
She stepped back with a motherly smile. “I always thought you two would be an adorable couple. I never did listen to all that gossip about you. I know how much of a sweetheart you are.”
I coughed and croaked out, “Where did you hear that?”
“Devon!” she chirped. “She told me everything.”
“What did she tell you exactly?” I managed to resume speaking in a mostly normal tone. The best weapon against gossip is to know what they’re saying in the first place.
“Oh, just that you guys decided to stop beating around the bush, and start dating. I think it’s romantic—you guys spent years in love with each other but were too afraid of your feelings to do anything about it.”
It was perilously close to the truth, but one kiss didn’t mean anything like what she was assuming. My fingers tightened around the cellophane in my hands, the plastic crinkling around the stems of the now-wilted flowers. Or two kisses and a vow to never give up on me. I didn’t blame Devon for telling her mother. Ash was the one who had wanted people to talk when he kissed me in the alley. I plucked at the pale petal of a daisy. It was kind of sweet, in a twisted, conniving kind of way. Not that I admired those qualities or anything.
“Does his mom know yet?” Mrs. Siriano asked. “She has her hands full with her campaign starting soon, but I think she may want to know before someone else tells her. I know I would.”
And just like that, she brought me back down to earth. Unease lifted the hair on the back of my neck and the two thin scars on my wrist itched. His parents wouldn’t risk doing anything now—his mother couldn’t afford a scandal during her first campaign—but worry pierced me all the same. I really should stay away from Ash. Nothing good was going to come from us being together.
I glanced away, avoiding her brown eyes, so much like her daughter’s. “No offense, but it’s Ash’s business what he discusses with his parents.”
“Oh,” she said, in a way that made me feel like I had stomped on a puppy in front of her. “It’s hard, you know? I forget all of you kids are growing up, and don’t have to tell us parents anything anymore. But to me, you’re always going to be those awkward tweens, when everything was simpler.”
I didn’t know what to tell her. I never had a parent I could tell anything to in the first place. And things were never simpler, no matter what people liked to think. The bag boy handed the plastic bags of groceries to me.
“It’s nice seeing you again,” I said politely, and smiled widely to make up for my earlier rudeness.
She returned my smile with a contemplative one of her own as I walked out the door, causing my heart to sink. Ash’s mother was going to hear about us one way or another soon, but I’d likely just thrown down a challenge for Mrs. Siriano to be the first to discuss it with her, in all its gory, exaggerated details.
* * *
In spite of his insistence that he wasn’t going to leave me alone, Ash stayed away the rest of the day. And in spite of my insistence that was the way things should be, I caved by early afternoon and tried to call him—only to confirm the fact he’d changed his phone number like he’d said he would. I had no way to contact him if I did want to see him. I didn’t even know where he was staying for the summer. And all it proved was that if I had changed my mind at any point in the last year, I wouldn’t have been able to talk to him, either.
I paced and prowled around the house with a dusting wand, cleaning and organizing with a vengeance. On a bookshelf in the living room, a short, fat book was crammed in with the hardbacks. Its squat, tattered spine among the taller books made me twitch. It just seemed wrong in its utter wrongness.
I took the book off the shelf. It was one of my favorite horror novels, and no longer in print. I’d read it so many times I’d destroyed the cover; the binding stayed together with shreds of tape. I hadn’t seen it in years. A piece of paper stuck out from the yellowed pages. My father did stuff like this all the time, sticking random things everywhere. Photos, articles, unpaid bills. Mostly unpaid bills. I unfolded the thick ivory vellum. It was a program from my mother’s funeral service in 1996.
The forgotten duster clattered to the floor. One question answered. My father had known the whole time she’d died. He’d actually gone to her funeral, then spent my childhood telling me she’d run away, claiming he didn’t know where she went when she left or what had happened. More lies. I didn’t know why I was so surprised.
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek as I studied the dates. She had been only twenty-four years old when she died, which meant I was born when she was nineteen. The same age I was now. A tiny bit of grudging sympathy formed for her. I didn’t understand her choices, but just maybe, I understood her actions a lot more than I did before. It was too easy to run when life gets too hard, and I couldn’t blame having a baby for my runaway act.
My brain shut down and refused to cooperate any longer. It was all too much. Using the same sheets Ash had slept in, I curled up on the couch, attempting to sleep. And failed. The walls of the house were threatening to smother me when Helen called, asking me to come in and work that evening. I agreed, just to have something to do other than freak myself out about a dead woman I never knew. I changed into my work uniform of khaki shorts and a black polo t-shirt, and drove downtown.
After parking in a different spot than my usual one in the alley, I walked through streams of people going toward Jerry’s upstairs entrance. Several guys carried instrument cases, and one whistled at me as I walked past.
When I came in through the kitchen, Helen was at the grill. She grinned in greeting and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. Wisps of steam curled around her into the air. I grabbed my apron down from its hook.
“Thanks for coming in on such short notice.” She paused. “Again.”
“Have you ever considered a crazy thing called a schedule?” I tied the apron around my waist. “Then this really ridiculous thing could happen. I would look at it, and then simply show up when you wanted me to work for the next week. Since I know you’re probably going to ask me to come in. Again. And again.”
“You’re talking about dark magic.” She made the sign of the cross with the spatula. Better than smacking me with it. “Get out of here with your devil talk, and go up to the front. Jerry’s having a band play upstairs tonight, so prepare yourself for a headache from the noise.”
I went up to the counter and threw my bag in a basket underneath. I made myself an iced mocha and watched as people gravitated upstairs. Bass beats from a stereo thumped through the ceiling, and occasionally something louder and heavier, like a piece of furniture or a body, punctuated the rhythm.
Devon and Trevor came through the door, wrapped around each other. Her face brightened when saw me, and she led him by the hand to the counter, where they both took a seat. He made a point to look anywhere but in my direction. The abstract paintings on the wall must’ve become incredibly fascinating. I fought the urge to openly smirk. Poor thing, his nose seemed rather swollen. Wonder how that happened?
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you today.” She lowered her voice, and winked. “I’ve been busy.”
I gave her an uncomfortable, guilty smile. Any glee I’d gained from my mental gloating was gone. Trevor was worse than an asshole, he was on the road to becoming a serial sexual predator. My stomach churned, holding tight onto all the things I should say, but couldn’t. After filling a plastic cup with ice, I handed it to her to feed her ice-crunching addiction, and avoided looking directly at Trevor.
He stretched out his arm, bringing her close to him, and kissed her neck. She went into a
fit of giggles, and my nausea climbed at the high-pitched sound. I fiddled with the brochures and the business cards next to the register. When I glanced back at them, his tongue was stuck out like a giraffe going for the last leaf on the branch. Definitely not an image I wanted burned into my brain.
Feedback from an amplifier squealed down through the floor, signaling the start of the band’s warm-up. Trevor slid off his stool, and went through the beaded curtain without a word. What a completely expected dick move. Devon’s face froze with hurt, but she quickly covered it up with a sunny smile as she fished an ice cube out of her cup.
“So you and him?” I spun my straw around in my drink, watching the whipped cream melt into the coffee.
“Yeah.” She crunched down on a piece of ice. “We’ve been hooking up off and on over the last year, but right before summer break we got serious.”
I took a deep breath. This wasn’t the best time to talk about this—in fact, it may have been the worst time—but I had to at least try. “Aren’t you worried about his reputation?”
“He has one.” She shrugged. “So do you, and I know you didn’t do anything to earn it.”
I have one because of your boyfriend, I screamed in my head. And I wasn’t talking about his player reputation, but the one where he confused invitations with criminal trespass. The beaded curtain rustled behind her, and Trevor emerged. Devon’s eyes lit up as he came over to the counter. He bent down and whispered in her ear. I went back to lining up the brochures but couldn’t help overhearing the last bit. “…mollies upstairs.”
“I promise I really will give you a call this time,” Devon said as she hopped down from her seat.
“Be careful,” I told her.
