Lily of the Valley (Flowering, #1.5)

by Sarah Daltry

  I fall asleep naked, dreaming of her and hating myself for it.

  Chapter 5

  By the time I make it to practice the next day, I’m a wreck. Yet as soon as I pick up my bass, I forget her. The music is escape.

  I help Neil write a lot of the songs and they come from both of our own issues. I don’t know much about what his issues even are, but we’re both angry and hate everything around us, so I feel like we get each other.

  The other two band members, the drummer and the guitarist, tend to fluctuate. Right now, we have Eric and Devon. This is Devon’s first practice and it’s a good thing he kicks ass on the drums, because Devon is one stupid ass name and I almost hate him for having it.

  The newest song that Neil and I wrote last semester works well with this group and we play it a few times before taking a break.

  “Here. I brought beer,” Devon says and passes around a six-pack. Okay, lame name or not, this guy might be okay.

  “I think I got us a gig,” Neil announces while we’re drinking. They’re the best possible words someone can say in band practice. The only words that come close are, “Here. I brought beer.”

  It’s a shitty opening gig, but it’s a gig and that means exposure. I’m not stupid and I’m not majoring in music. I play because I need to play. I need to feel that release, that washing away of the anger and the hate that comes from creating a song. I can’t deny that there’s a small part of me that hopes the music could be a literal escape, as well as an emotional one. I love the idea of being on the road, of not having roots, of not settling, and of letting the road be my only friend.

  Realistically, I can’t even call the guys in the band my friends. I just met Devon, Eric is pretty new and we just spent the summer at home, and Neil and I don’t talk much except about the band. Still, there’s something pleasant about hanging out here, drinking beer, talking about a gig, and not having to be anything. There’s no depth to the conversation, and I can’t talk to them about things that matter, but I also don’t feel trapped being around them.

  “You guys want to play anything new?” I suggest, since our last gig included everything off the CD we put out. We aren’t big by any means, but a lot of kids from school came to the shows we did in the spring. What’s funny is that most of those people who stand in the audience would never even look at me on campus.

  “Do we have anything new?” Neil hasn’t been writing much, I know, but I live with my grandmother and I hate my life. I have endless piles of new songs.

  “I worked on some things this summer,” I offer.

  “Cool. Let’s hear ‘em.”

  So we listen to what I put together this summer. I’m not one for being open about my feelings, but there’s a part of me in my lyrics and in the melodies. I don’t get too explicit in my songs, but no one listens to them thinking things are great in my life.

  “Dude, you are one miserable fuck,” Devon says after we listen to a couple of my recordings. Normally, this kind of comment would make me want to hit him, but it’s true. I wrote them over the summer when I was sitting in the cemetery. They’re more real than anything else I’ve ever done.

  The gig is about a month away, so we have time to learn a few new songs and tighten our older stuff. With Devon here, we need to get used to playing together all over again, and Neil’s right when he says we should pick no more than three. There’s a bit of pride that swells in me when I realize we’ll be playing three songs that I wrote entirely alone. I refuse to show it, though, because I know what happens when you feel good about something you accomplish. There is always someone or something waiting to tear you down.

  We practice a couple of our regular tracks and one of mine before we call it a night. It’s just me and Neil and I’m about to head out when he stops me.

  “They’re dark,” he says. “Your songs. They’re really fucking dark.”

  “Too dark?”

  “Hell no. Is there such a thing?”

  I laugh, but I’m nervous because I know what he’s about to ask. When he does, it doesn’t come any easier despite preparing myself for it.

  “So, are you, like, all right? I mean, you’re not gonna snap and kill someone, are you?”

  This is what I mean by the world waiting to tear you down. It’s a normal comment. One that is probably said hundreds of times a day all over the world. It’s not personal and Neil has no idea how deeply it cuts. But hearing it reminds me of what I am, of what I will become. If there is this kind of darkness in me, enough so that my writing worries even my co-songwriter, how long until it ruins me? How long before I’m sitting in my own prison cell, a product of nothing but hate and rage?

  I can’t answer Neil when he asks if I am all right, because I’m not. His question just proves it. Fuck, I think, and shrug. He says nothing when I turn around and walk out. There’s nothing to say.

  ****

  I call Alana that weekend; I need her. Again, I hate myself, because I know I’ll sleep with her. That’s how we both cope with anything that goes wrong. We call the other one and we fuck the problem away.

  She’s eager to visit, but she has to deal with some shit with her mom first, so I’m left sitting alone in my room for a few hours. I order a pizza and, after thirty minutes, I go to the lobby to wait for it.

  The girl doesn’t even notice me when she walks in. I don’t know who her friends are, but they’re caught in conversation. One is wearing all pink and is laughing about something a guy named Lyle said.

  “I told him it was ridiculous. Seriously, there is no way that it would work, right?”

  Strawberries looks at her pink friend and smiles. “He’s trying. Give him credit for that. If Don had anything to do with it, it would be a disaster.”

  “If Don had anything to do with it, it wouldn’t get done.”

  I watch them as they call the elevator. Their conversation is inane, but I feel guilty for criticizing. I also wish I was part of it.

  I consider apologizing, consider approaching her and inviting her to have some pizza, but her friend catches my eye while I stare. It stops the crazy ideas, because I know what her friend would say. She’d tell her to watch out for guys like me and then they’d go off to some happy place where Don and Lyle and all their perfect friends do perfect things. Strawberries never even notices me and they’re gone as soon as the elevator arrives.

  My pizza sucks and I don’t want to eat it anymore. I don’t want to waste it, either, so I bring it to the lounge and leave it on the coffee table. Someone will come along, probably drunk, and finish it, no matter how crappy it is or how cold it’s gotten.

  Now, I have nothing to do but wait for Alana and, for some reason, this is the one time it takes her forever. I go back downstairs, keeping an eye out for Strawberries, but she’s doing whatever girls like her do on Friday nights, and I head outside for a cigarette.

  It’s already dark when I see Alana walking up the hill. She’s smoking and her hands are shaking. Something probably went down at home.

  “Hey,” I call out.

  “Hey.” She takes a deep drag off her cigarette and I watch her twitching.

  “What’s up?”

  “It’s my mom. She met some guy and she wants me to meet him.”

  “Again.”

  “Again,” she says. Alana’s mom is always meeting someone and introducing Alana to him. There have been several times when the guys have taken a liking to Alana. Sometimes too much of a liking.

  “So say no. Jesus, Alana, you’re twenty. Why are you even still there?”

  “Some of us don’t get to be swept away by a white knight scholarship.” She throws her cigarette to the ground and lights another.

  “You could’ve. You chose to stay home. You said you needed to be there.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a fucking idiot. So sue me. Why the fuck are you lecturing me anyway?”

  I don’t say anything. I smoke my cigarette and let her finish hers. When she’s done, she wraps her arms
around my neck.

  “I don’t wanna fight. Help me forget,” she says and she kisses me while she moves her hands down my back and around to the front of my pants. When she gets like this, she’s unstoppable, and she’d probably have me naked on the sidewalk in front of my dorm if I didn’t pull away.

  “Let’s get upstairs first, okay?”

  She pouts, but takes my hand as I push the door open. Waiting for the elevator is frustrating, because I want to talk to her and fix whatever is happening for her, but I also want to give her exactly what she wants. As soon as we get into the elevator, she goes for my pants and plays with my cock while we ride up the four floors. Some kid is standing by the doors when they open and he sees Alana playing with my cock, which she’s gotten out of my pants and is stroking like mad. His eyes get wide and I just laugh.

  “Sometimes, why wait?” I say and I drag her to my room while she tries to get me naked in the hallway. Slamming the door, I strip and she follows, so we’re both ready in a matter of seconds.

  “Fuck me hard,” she says. “I want it rough.”

  Alana is the one who introduced me to experimentation like this, but I’ve had my share of practice with other girls. Still, I always seem to come back to her.

  I go into my drawer, where we keep a lot of the toys that we’ve found useful. I grab a small whip; I know how much she loves it. My cock is ready to burst and she sees the whip in my hand and grins.

  “Perfect,” she says. She spreads her legs for me and damn, I want in there. I can see how wet she is even from across the room. Alana moves her fingers to her pussy and starts to play, which makes me crazy. I know she knows what it does to me. I rush to the bed and flip her over, bringing the whip down on her ass. She continues to play with herself and cries out every time I hit her. I push her onto the bed and kneel behind her, still whipping her, and I adjust so my cock is right up against her cunt.

  “I’m going to fuck you now,” I tell her. “Unless you want me to wait.” I know she doesn’t want me to wait, but teasing her is fun, and she moans, spreading her legs even wider.

  “Give me that cock, Jack.”

  I’m not sure who’s going to argue with that. I toss the whip on the floor, entering her roughly and leaning over her so I can get my hands around her tits. I push into her as she tightens around me. Shit, I already feel like I’m going to come. Slowing my motions, I try to think of something else. Sadly, the first thing that comes to mind is Strawberries. I imagine having her bent over in this exact same position and, as much of an asshole move as it is, I fuck Alana even harder, thinking about the feel of another girl’s pussy. I come imagining how good someone else would feel beneath me, and I almost forget where I am.

  “Oh, Jack,” Alana calls out, and I’m thrown back into the present. I’ve done a lot of shitty things, but I have never been out of the moment when I’ve been with her.

  She didn’t come and I can tell because she’s looking hungrier than she did when she got here. She turns around and smiles, her head moving down to my cock. Alana’s an expert at giving a blowjob. Her tongue runs along my shaft and I lean back. I feel a little guilty about where my thoughts went, but I want to satisfy her. I hate when she doesn’t come. It just makes me feel worse.

  She gets me hard again in no time and then she wraps her legs around my waist, sliding herself down over my cock. I take one of her tits in my mouth and lightly bite the nipple. Alana grabs my head and holds me close to her chest, her fingernails scratching the back of my neck. She smells familiar, like cigarettes and toothpaste, but I can’t stop thinking about the smell of fucking strawberries. Alana’s orgasm comes and I try to focus on her, but every sound she makes leads me to think about what I could do to that girl down the hall. The night on the quad, I thought she was going to let me. I remember her hands on my back, the taste of her skin along her breasts, the noises she made as I kissed her chest. I lose it and come with Alana on top of me, crying out, “Oh, fuck, princess. That’s so fucking good.”

  Needless to say, it’s awkward. Alana and I aren’t dating, but she has those complicated feelings, and really, no girl wants to know you’re thinking about someone else while you’re buried inside of her.

  She moves to the end of the bed and closes her legs. Never modest, she’s still naked as she watches me. I don’t feel right, so I grab my boxers and t-shirt and sit on the other end of the bed. I have nothing to say, although I should probably apologize. But I don’t even know how to explain.

  “Who is she?”

  “She’s no one,” I insist.

  “Really? She’s no one? You just thought about her while you were fucking me, but she’s no one?”

  “I don’t even know her name.”

  “Another anonymous fuck, Jack? Why do you do stupid shit like that?”

  In case it wasn’t clear just how fucked up my relationship with Alana is, she’s the only person I tell about girls I fuck. There were a couple at gigs we played, although not as many as one would expect, and there were some random nights around town. It never happened at home because everyone knew who I was, but I’ve hooked up with girls who’ve flirted with me at work and one girl on campus when I was a freshman. That was a disaster, since she thought we were dating after we fucked one night. She was drunk after a party and I was there. That didn’t seem like much of a relationship to me, but she expected a lot. I let it happen for a couple weeks, but she seemed to take issue with the fact that I let Alana spend the night, and it ended. I don’t even know if she still goes here.

  “I haven’t touched her. Well, not like that. There was a brief ‘accident,’ as she called it, but clothes stayed on.”

  “So what’s so special about her?”

  She looks both sad and worried. I know she thinks this means something is going to break between us, but there is no future for me without Alana. I just don’t want to be in a relationship with her.

  “Nothing. She’s an uptight, generic bitch and I have zero reason to be attracted to her.”

  “And yet…”

  “Yeah. And yet.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Since when are you a pussy?”

  “I’m not, but she has a boyfriend, which she has done nothing but remind me about, and I have zero desire to get involved with the kind of girl who loves having a boyfriend.”

  Alana laughs. “Maybe you could be her boyfriend.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I could just fuck you again and stop thinking about some uptight little girl who means nothing to me.”

  “That works.”

  She lies back and spreads her legs and I undress so I can enter her again. This time, it’s all about Alana. I love watching her come and she does three times, each time more intense than the last. Her nails dig into my ass and she loses herself as her entire body shakes around me. She closes her eyes, but I watch her enjoy what I do to her. After she comes the third time, I hold her legs up, and fuck her quickly until I finish. I let go on her stomach and try not to notice that she gets that dead look in her eyes again.

  Ignoring the heaviness of what happens every time we finish fucking, I get up and grab some tissues. She doesn’t move as I clean her off and I don’t look at her face. I’m about to turn around when I hear her crying. It’s a little nasty, but I stick the tissues on my desk and sit beside her, pulling her up so that she’s leaning into me. She sobs into my bare chest as I hold her. There is nothing I can say, nothing I can do. I know what bothers her is bigger than me, but I also know I could make a small impact if I could just be what she needed. Sadly, I can’t.

  “You’re gonna leave me. Just like everyone else,” she cries.

  I lift her chin and stare into her eyes. They aren’t dead now, but are blazing with light. “I will never leave you. I don’t care what happens. I’ll fucking die before I leave you.”

  My words don’t comfort her, only make her start to cry harder. “Don’t say that.�
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  “I didn’t mean it literally. I just mean that I’m nothing without you in my life.”

  “Then why can’t you be with me? We have everything. You’re my best friend, you’re the only one I talk to, and you fuck me like you love me. So what makes me not good enough, Jack? Why?”

  “Nothing,” I tell her and it’s true. I do wish I could want to be with Alana in that way. It would solve so much, but I don’t want to be anything to anyone. I like the system we have. It works well and I have no reason to change it. I’m loyal to her as a friend and somewhat faithful as her lover. I have my hook ups, but I always tell her. I know she sleeps around plenty. Sometimes, we’ve even been with other people at the same time. In the end, though, it’s always her I want to see. That’s the closest thing I know to love, even if it’s not the right kind of love. Still, it’s a big deal for me and I hate hurting her.

  “Is it this girl?”

  “She’s nothing, Alana.”

  “But you were thinking about her.”

  “Because I’m an asshole. If there was ever going to be anyone, it would be you. But there won’t be.”

  “Why? I know your shit. I can handle it.”

  “I just don’t want anyone handling it. I don’t want anyone to live it alongside me. I just want to forget that any of it happened.”

  She kisses me. I don’t usually like kissing. It feels so … personal, but like I said, if there was ever going to be anyone, it would be her. Her lips taste like sugar. Although kissing is intimate and personal, I love doing it with her. She makes it both tender and hot. I try to control my body, but having her naked against me, her tongue slowly circling inside of my mouth, I feel my cock ready for more. She doesn’t miss a beat and with the slightest movement, she slips her hand between my legs and strokes, while she keeps kissing me deeply.

  “Pretend I’m her,” she whispers. “Fuck me like you would fuck her.”

  “I don’t even know her,” I reply.

  “But you want to. You want to fuck her, to break her, to prove that you’re better than her by ruining her, don’t you?”