Between the Sheets

by Molly O'Keefe

  Shelby dug through her purse and handed her a bag of crackers. Evie took them, worried the edge of the plastic ziplock, but didn’t eat any of them.

  “Did we eat?” Mom asked.

  Shelby hadn’t expected anything different. Not really.

  She wiped her eyes and started the car.

  I have to do it myself, she thought. Trying to muster up the wherewithal to not only understand that she had to be her own comfort, her own counsel, but that she had to not need anything from her mother anymore. She had to separate the relationship in her memories from the relationship now; otherwise she would only be hurt.

  Shelby put the car in reverse and left behind the ruins of the factory. Not bothering to look back.

  Chapter 20

  Casey stared out the windshield at the school. It was Monday morning and the playground was empty. School looked weird with no one around it.

  Ty turned off the truck, and the silence was so thick Casey found it hard to breathe. Outside his window the sky was white-blue like ice.

  Here comes the father-type-person-and-son chat.

  “You know you can go in there and get in trouble again.”

  Well, Casey thought, looking at Ty, who was leaning forward, resting his crossed arms on the steering wheel. That’s a different tactic.

  “You can get into it with John again. You can piss off teachers, you can refuse to do whatever it is Mr. Root thinks you should do. Hell, you can take a swing at Mr. Root.” Ty rubbed a hand over his face. He’d been acting weird since Friday night. Distracted. But not in his usual way. He seemed sad.

  “You can do all that stuff, Casey. And you’ll get suspended. And I’ll ground you, and we’ll manage, but … nothing will ever change.” Ty looked right at Casey. Like right at him, and Casey felt hunted by that look. He stuck a finger through the tiny hole in the knee of his jeans, making the hole bigger on purpose, but Ty didn’t say anything. “Or you can choose. You can choose to not do those things. You can ignore John if he tries to get in your face. You can listen to the rest of your teachers like you listen to Ms. Monroe. You can always get in trouble or … you can try and stop.” He popped open the driver’s side door and cold air washed into the cab of the truck. “I wish you’d stop, Casey. For us. So we can catch a break.”

  Ty didn’t wait for Casey to say anything, he just got out of the truck, and Casey had no choice but to follow, feeling like his stomach had been hollowed out.

  Inside the office, Scott was sitting in one of the two chairs outside Mr. Root’s door. When Casey and Ty walked in Scott snapped up in his seat, watching them as they crossed the room.

  “Have a seat,” Ty said, and Casey slumped down in the chair next to Scott while Ty went in and talked to Mr. Root.

  The second hand on the clock over Colleen’s desk seemed like the loudest sound in the world. A minute thundered by and they didn’t say anything. In the silence, Casey imagined using his foot to kick all the shit off the front of Colleen’s desk. Those stupid bobble-head figurines. The Roll Tide flag. The pen jar. He wanted to shatter that jar. Watch those pens go flying.

  “How was your suspension?” Scott asked. Casey turned sideways, ignoring him.

  If he kicked hard enough he could put a dent in the front of that desk. He could get a couple of kicks in before someone came and stopped him.

  “John’s mom moved back with his grandparents. He’s not in school anymore.”

  Well, that was awesome news, but he still didn’t say anything.

  Colleen had changed the poster over the coffeepot. It was a picture of two cats, big gray fluffy ones with long whiskers that pulled their faces down so they looked like they were frowning.

  We are not amused. That’s what the poster said.

  Casey could rip that stupid poster off the walls. That poster and the fire drill instructions. Like they even needed instructions.

  If there’s a fire, run. Every idiot knows that.

  “I’m so sorry,” Scott whispered. “I’m so sorry I held you down and let John hit you like that. I’m—” His voice broke, and Scott swiveled away so they almost sat back to back. Casey looked over his shoulder to stare at the back of Scott’s head. “I feel really bad.”

  “Yeah? What about what John said about Ms. Monroe? Because that’s the stuff you should feel bad about.”

  Scott swiveled back around. “Did you look on YouTube?”

  Casey shook his head. What Ty said that night made sense to him, and he didn’t really want to look. He liked thinking about Mrs. Monroe the way that he did. “I’m not going to. It’s not my business.” Scott looked surprised by that and Casey felt very suddenly grown up. Very suddenly better than Scott. “He shouldn’t have talked about her that way.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “I’m totally right.”

  They were silent again, but Casey didn’t feel like kicking a dent in the desk anymore. Or tearing down the posters.

  “What do you think Mr. Root is going to have us do?” Casey asked.

  “Clean the fold-up chairs under the stage in the gym.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s what he always has kids do when they come back from suspension.”

  “That doesn’t seem so bad.”

  “There’s like a ton of chewed-up gum stuck to the bottom of them. You have to pry it off with a screwdriver.”

  Well, that was gross.

  “What did you do all week?” Casey asked.

  “Went to my grandma’s. What’d you do?”

  “Worked at Cora’s with Ty.”

  Scott’s eyes went wide. “That’s cool.”

  It was.

  He’d learned how to do shit. And Ty had treated him pretty good. And Cora gave him free fritters when Ty wasn’t looking and Brody showed him how to use the power tools.

  It had been about the best week of his life.

  And then on Friday, Ty had called off the party with all the scary biker guys and Casey and Rita sat up late and watched all the Iron Man movies back to back. And on Sunday they ate about a gazillion fritters after church. And even church wasn’t so bad. There had been a bell choir there, and when they played, he could feel those bells ringing in his chest.

  But Shelby and her mom hadn’t been at church, and that kind of bummed Casey out. Ty was bummed out, too; that was obvious. Casey suggested they get some fritters to take to Shelby and her mom, and Ty had looked at him like he was the smartest guy in the world.

  “Isn’t Ty your dad?” Scott asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why don’t you call him that?”

  I don’t know anymore.

  And right then Casey decided he would try. He’d pull up the bridges and he’d be an island, and he would try to stay out of trouble.

  To give them a chance.

  Friday night Ty walked across the highway to Shelby’s house. He tried the barn first but the door was locked, so he jogged up the cracked cement steps to Shelby’s back door, unsure if he was doing the right thing but sure that he couldn’t take another day of not seeing her. Another day of her brief answers to his texts.

  The rosebushes Evie had yanked out of the ground were still lying there like dead soldiers, and Ty took a second to pull them by their root balls into a pile. He’d come over later with a paper bag and clean up the rest.

  Casey said Shelby hadn’t been at school all week. And she’d sent out an email on Saturday morning that all the classes in the Art Barn had been cancelled for the week. Whatever was happening inside this house, it was big. Big enough to knock the most competent woman he knew off her stride.

  He knocked carefully on the back door, and within seconds, Shelby was there opening the screen.

  She looked like she hadn’t slept since last Friday night, or eaten. Or seen daylight.

  She was pallid and messy. And his stomach pulled up hard at the sight of her so undone.

  “Ty,” she breathed, and for just a moment he rested in the warmth of
the fact that she missed him, too. Whatever else was going on, she missed him. It was obvious. Everything about her screamed that.

  “Hey,” he whispered. “I just wanted to check on you. Everything okay?”

  “We’re …” She glanced backward, her face reflecting for the briefest moment a terrible grief. “We’re doing okay.”

  “Liar,” he said without any heat.

  Her lips pursed in a tight smile, an acknowledgment that he was right but she wouldn’t go any further.

  “We missed you at church on Sunday,” he said.

  “I … I got the fritters,” she said. “On the steps? I’m assuming those were from you?”

  “Casey’s idea, but I’ll take credit.” I’ll take credit if it means you’ll hug me, he wanted to say. I’ll take credit if you bend just slightly and let me help you shoulder some of this load you’re carrying.

  “Casey said you weren’t at school this week.”

  “I took the week off to interview some nurses to move in.”

  “Wow. That’s a big step.” He remembered that night on the phone, her misgivings about having someone in the house, how it might make her mother worse.

  “I should have done it weeks ago, but I didn’t.” The sound of voices trickled out of the house behind her and Shelby glanced over her shoulder. “Deena just arrived so I could take care of some paperwork and some Art Barn stuff. I’m sorry I had to cancel classes at the barn, but I just have to get someone permanent in here.”

  “How is your mom handling it?”

  She took a deep breath and he could tell that she was about to lie. She was about to say “fine” when nothing was fine.

  “Baby,” he breathed and cupped her neck in his hand, and for a moment she pulled away, she resisted what he was offering, but he held on. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

  Her laughter splintered and he could feel the tension in her bones. Under her skin. She was razor wire and unrest. She was dark sharp knives and billowing red clouds. She was full of awful.

  “Shelby?”

  When she looked at him, he saw a version of the woman he’d seen before—the night she came and yelled at him for working on his bike too late, and the night of their date, with that red mark on her cheek and all the heartbreak in the world in her eyes—she was that woman, pushed to the ugliest extreme.

  “You’re going to break, honey. You’re going to crack if you don’t—”

  She fell into him, against him. Gratefully, his body caught hers. His hands, as if simply waiting for the chance, curled around her back, her waist.

  It was a hug. Long, long overdue, and he was just settling into it, hanging his head against that perfect place on her shoulder, squeezing her into his body so not even air came between them, but then she pulled back and grabbed his hand, leading him off the porch, across the lawn toward the barn.

  “Shelby, wait.”

  “I don’t …” She shook her hand in front of her chest as if she were trying to shake something off and her manic energy was a cloud around her. Impenetrable and real. “I don’t know what to do, Ty. I just want to forget for a minute. That’s all. That’s what you promised, remember? You promised to make me feel good.”

  “God, that’s all I want to do, baby. But this is bad medicine for you right now.” Even he could see that.

  “Don’t say no,” she begged. “Please.”

  He couldn’t stand to have her beg, not for this. Not for something he wanted so badly he was nearly hard at the thought of her in that barn. Of what they did to each other in that barn. He let her pull him toward the dark building and watched as she unlocked it with a key she’d pulled from the pocket in the hooded sweatshirt she wore.

  Inside, in the gloom of the Art Barn, she pulled him into her strong arms and he went without a fight, because it had been a week since he’d seen her. A week since he’d touched her. And it felt like years.

  Kissing her, he walked her backward toward the couches, navigating the small tables and the shelf in the middle of the room.

  If there was a voice in his head telling him to slow down, he couldn’t hear it.

  He’d missed her. Missed her more than usual because he’d been sure that this weeklong silence was her way of breaking it off with him, and he was so damn relieved to have her back in his arms, her body tight against his.

  Her skin was cold but her mouth was wet and he sunk deeper into the contradiction of her, held harder to the sublime paradox of her. They hit the back of the leather couch and he toppled them over, controlling their fall, so she landed carefully on her back and he braced himself above her.

  Moonlight slipped through the high windows and they lay in cool light and thick shadow. The entire world reduced to black and white.

  He sat back on his knees between her legs and slowly pulled off her running shoes, dropping them on the carpet. Her yoga pants followed, the dark cotton of her underwear. She reached up to pull at his belt, but he stopped her.

  “Let me take care of you,” he said.

  “I don’t want that.”

  “Oh, honey. I think you need it.”

  “Don’t,” she snapped. “Don’t tell me what I need.”

  She wanted to work out her anger with him. That was all she wanted him for, and funny, the last time they were in this barn he had been totally on board with that. Completely happy being a simple tool to fix her complex desire.

  But now it felt off.

  Because he wanted more.

  Because he wanted to be more than just an angry fuck.

  In the truck, after the party, he’d told her that the two of them wanting each other wasn’t something to be scared of. That whatever was happening between them wasn’t a big deal, but then he saw her mother not remember who Shelby was. He saw Shelby broken wide open over the guilt and pain of her mother’s accident and he’d been ruined.

  At that moment Ty wanting Shelby had become profoundly a big deal, because he wanted to help her. He wanted more than just this nasty amazing sex in the barn, he wanted more than the freedom of her body. He wanted her to see him as more than a simple tool.

  I’m falling in love with her.

  “Are you saying no?” she asked, and he could see her closing up, shutting down, reaching for her things on the floor.

  If he let her go he knew it would be over, and he could hardly blame her because he had fucking signed up for this. It wasn’t her fault he wanted more.

  But he wanted more right now.

  So he could deny her and be pushed back out of her life.

  Or he could soak up this anger of hers, pull out the poison, and see what lay underneath.

  “Spread your legs,” he said, and she stilled. For a heartbeat no one moved, and then, very slowly she spread her legs, just a little. Just enough that he could see the pink of her. He slipped one finger from the hem of her tee shirt, which had ridden up to her ribs, across the soft, giving flesh of her belly and down, slowly, through the soft curls covering her until he found her warm, damp skin.

  She sucked in a quick breath as if she’d been touched by something cold. She wasn’t ready for sex. Not at all. Not her body or her head. She was a mess of mixed signals and crossed wires. Anger and grief made her think she wanted some kind of release, but her body wasn’t agreeing with that.

  I will do this for you, he thought, breathing soft kisses against the skin of her stomach, feeling against his lips the muscles trembling under the skin. Because that’s what you want and I can’t say no to you. But I won’t do this again.

  He slipped to his knees on the floor beside the couch and put his hands on her hips, lifting her, shifting her until she was positioned just the way he wanted. In front of him, with one leg beside his arm, the other resting over his shoulder.

  From the corner of his eye he watched her pull her shirt down over her belly—hiding her body from him, proving that she was so far away from the moment, light-years away from being turned on enough that she didn’t care about w
hatever imperfections she imagined she had.

  You’re beautiful, he breathed against the inside of her thigh because if he said it aloud she would deny it and pull farther from him.

  So he would show her. He would show her everything he felt that she was so scared of.

  Roughly, because he knew she liked that, he pulled her down, closer to the edge of the couch, closer to his mouth so that when he exhaled, he could see her curls move. He could see the ripple of goose bumps over the skin of her thigh.

  Open-mouthed he kissed each thigh, he licked the muscle and tendon that connected her legs to her body, bit the soft and trembling rise of her belly. He waited until she was panting, until she was lifting her body up to his mouth, giving herself to his care, and finally, with his callused and grease-stained thumbs, he spread her open for his eyes.

  He touched her with the tip of his tongue. Just the edge of his flesh against hers, and she sighed as if the relief were amazing. He could taste her and the salty-sweet beginning of her excitement. Slowly, he lapped at her, finding the soft spots, the hidden places, the hard knot of her clitoris. He circled it once, twice, until she jerked against him as if he were touching her with a hot wire. He eased off, found the beautiful, tender entrance to her body, and paid homage.

  She was moaning now, her fingers dancing over his shoulder, up into his hair.

  He loved that. Loved her fingers in his hair, and he quickly pulled out the rubber band that kept his hair back, and as if she’d been waiting for that, she pulled it into her fists, yanking at the small hairs, the sharp sensation rocketing along his nerve endings.

  Blood flooded his cock.

  He laid the flat of his tongue along her clitoris, pressing hard against it, and slipped one finger inside of her. There she was wet. There she was ready. She pushed down against him, using his fingers, his tongue, for her pleasure.

  “Tell me you have a condom,” she breathed. And he laughed. After Friday night he’d put one in his wallet, because he wanted to be prepared, because he didn’t want to miss another opportunity to be deep inside of her when she came, shuddering and crying.

  He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, setting it on her stomach, his mouth still busy between her legs. She found the condom and tore it open with her teeth. Oh God he loved that and he rewarded her with another finger, which sent one of her arms out wide against the leather cushions. A flush climbing up her neck, across her chest.