Nick held out the joint as he blew out a large cloud of potent, yet sweet-smelling, smoke.
“Um, no thanks!” I yelled, trying to be heard over the music.
The next thing I knew, Nick was yanking the steering wheel to the right and slamming on the brakes. My arms shot out as my seat belt tightened, and I braced myself against the dashboard until the car came to a jerking stop on the side of the road. Nick, with the joint in his mouth, turned off the music, unbuckled his seat belt, and faced me.
“Katherine,” he said slowly, “I saw that video. The entire student body saw it. The entire town saw it. My dad saw it, hell, even my grandma saw it. How many hits did that shit get on YouTube before it was taken down? Hundreds of thousands.
“The world is a sick place,” he continued as he took another drag from his joint. “People see a tagline like ‘Watch a virgin get her cherry popped,’ and they’re going to look. Then they’re going to judge. You got judged and the judgment wasn’t in your favor. I know what getting judged feels like, I live it every day, but the difference between you and me is I don’t give a shit.”
I pressed my lips together as my chin started to tremble. Why was he doing this to me?
“You’ve got a month until summer break and then another year you’re going to have to spend inside that hellhole, and believe me when I tell you, those assholes are not going to let you forget that your naked ass was de-virginized on the Internet by the son of a senator of this great fucking state of ours. They are going to shove that shit in your face every chance they get.”
My chest constricted. Why did everyone insist I keep reliving this? Enough was enough. I was there, I knew what happened, and I was there for the fallout too. Yet it just kept coming, leaving me feeling like I would never outrun this. Leaving with Nick had been a mistake. I should have just stayed in school.
“Thanks,” I whispered through trembling lips. “But I don’t need to be lectured on what I already know.”
“You can let it break you,” he continued, ignoring me. “Or you can let it make you stronger. You can walk back inside that school tomorrow, look into the eyes of every motherfucker staring you down, trying to break you, and instead of hiding, instead of running, you can smile at them, telling them you don’t give a fuck what they think.”
He held out the joint again. “Cheers, Potter. To not giving a fuck.”
I stared at him for a moment, at his dark, unwavering gaze, his striking cheekbones, the firm line of his lips. But most of all, I drank in the sincerity in his voice. Because of that, this time I took the offering and slowly brought it my lips.
“Small drags at first,” he said, “not like a cigarette.”
I let out a shaky laugh. “I’ve never smoked a cigarette.”
The corners of his mouth lifted and he shook his head. “Why am I not surprised?”
One deep breath later, I had the tip of the joint between my lips and took a small inhale. Hot smoke filled my mouth then slid down my throat, burning softly as it exploded into my lungs.
“Hold it in,” Nick said and I did as he asked.
“Blow it out,” he said when I felt I might explode from lack of oxygen. As I released my breath, smoke exploded from my mouth, tickling the back of my throat and forcing me to cough the rest of the way through it.
When I was done coughing up my insides with my hand over my throbbing chest, I glanced up at Nick through watery eyes.
He grinned. “One more time, Potter.”
Feeling light-headed, kind of like I’d had a beer, but different, I found myself smiling at him.
And I did it, one more time.
~~~~
“How are you feeling?”
At the sound of Nick’s voice, I squinted through the glaring sun, then rolled my head to the left, felt the itchy blades of grass below me tickle against my cheek as I smiled at him.
“I feel weird,” I admitted. “Relaxed and kinda stupid and sorta hungry.”
Nick burst out laughing. “Sounds about right.”
Maybe an hour or so ago, Nick had driven straight into an empty field with no trees, no homes, nothing but grass and wildflowers and sunshine. At first we’d sat on the hood of his car, not speaking, just smoking until we grew warm and lethargic. Then Nick had hopped off the car and yanked off his tie and his button-down shirt, revealing his surprisingly heavily tattooed chest and arms, then kicked off his boots and his socks and rolled his pants up before stretching out in the grass. I followed suit, toeing out of my loafers and knee socks, losing my tie, and untucking my blouse. Then I lay down beside him, closed my eyes, and lost myself to the sun and my thoughts for a while.
“I’m eighteen,” he said, startling me. “I was held back in kindergarten.”
I wrinkled up my nose. “Huh?”
Nick grinned. “You just asked me how I was able to get tattooed.”
I drew my brows together. “I did? I thought I was only thinking that…”
“Beginner’s mistake.” He laughed and I laughed with him.
“I’ve kind of always wanted one,” I admitted. “But my mother says tattoos are for prostitutes and criminals.”
Nick snorted. “Right. And yet the same could be said about country clubs.”
Smiling, I turned away and closed my eyes again. If only I could stay like this forever. Relaxed, smiling, not worrying about the thoughts running through the minds of my peers while they stared at me, whispered about me, judged me.
I didn’t want to ever go back to school. Or home, for that matter. In fact, running away seemed like an infinitely better option. I could change my name, color my hair, get colored contacts, and somehow obtain a fake birth certificate and Social Security card. It had to be possible; it happened in movies all the time.
I cracked an eyelid at Nick. “So, did you really show Chelsea your… um…” I trailed off, feeling my face grow hot with embarrassment.
“My dick?” he finished, sounding the complete opposite of how I felt. “Yeah.”
I stared at him. “Why? I mean, you had to know you were going to get in a lot of trouble for that.”
He gave a halfhearted shrug. “It’s not as if they’re going to kick me out. My father paid for the new music program, not to mention the entire remodeling our freshman year. None of the shit I do ever gets put on my permanent record.”
Before I could respond, Nick sat up in the grass. “Your turn.”
With my palms flat against the ground, I pushed myself into an upright position. “My turn for what?”
“To answer a question.” He plucked a long, thick strand of grass from the ground and popped it into his mouth.
My stomach flip-flopped. He was going to ask about the video. Other than my sudden Internet popularity, I wasn’t at all interesting. My life revolved around schoolwork and hanging with friends and shopping, and that was it. I didn’t have any cool stories to tell, at least nothing that Nick would be curious about.
“You can stop looking like you might puke, Potter. I was only going to ask why the hell you were with Matthews in the first place. Everyone knows what a first class douchebag the guy is.”
My shoulders slumped as I released a heavy sigh. Nick might not be asking about the video but he was still asking about… him. Trevor Matthews—short, spiky brown hair and a pair of chocolate-brown eyes, the face of movie star and a body to match, and my former boyfriend. Or rather, the jerk who had never been my boyfriend at all but instead was following through on a bet with his friends as to how long it would take to get me in bed. Something that had ended up being videotaped, without my knowledge, for proof of his success. But even as horrible as that was, he had to take it one step further and post it to YouTube, then send the link to every e-mail in-box at school. Every. Single. One.
“He’s good-looking,” I admitted in a small voice. “And really popular.”
Nick frowned and I dropped my gaze, realizing how shallow I sounded. Suddenly all the humiliation and pain I’d been fe
eling flooded back in and I hurriedly swiped at the first two tears that fell but it was a lost cause. There was too much emotion built up inside of me; I was overflowing with it, bursting at the seams, but I was finally alone. Even if Nick was here, he said he wouldn’t judge me, and I didn’t know when I’d get another chance like this, to just let go, to let all this pain go.
“I was stupid!” I screamed as I scrambled to my feet, glaring down at Nick through waterlogged eyes. “Okay? I admit it! I was a fucking idiot! Are you happy now?”
Nick shot to his feet. “At least you realize it now!” he yelled back. “Before you end up married to a man like Trevor or worse, like his father!”
“Married?” I yelled back as my tears turned to angry sobs. “No one of any importance will ever marry me now! No good school will accept me! I’ve failed my family!”
“Fuck your family!” he roared. “Fuck my family, fuck your family, fuck Trevor and his asshole friends! Fuck those stupid bitches that you thought were your friends! They don’t matter, Katherine! You’re going to turn eighteen next year and hopefully you’re going to get the hell out of Dodge, get as far away from these people as fast as you can! I know I am! You think I want to inherit my father’s money or his business? FUCK NO! My entire life I’ve begged him to let me take guitar lessons, to let me go to music camp, to let me do something, anything music-related but he always shot me down! But am I going to let that stop me? FUCK NO! As soon as I graduate, even though I don’t have a clue where I’ll go and how I’ll get there, I’m out!”
Shaking from head to toe, tears streaming down my face, I clenched my hands into fists and slammed them against my thighs. “I want out!” I screamed. “I want out, too!”
And I kept screaming, yelling and screaming until I was no longer forming coherent words but instead just shrieking, sobbing, and screaming at the top of my lungs.
Strong arms wrapped around me, fighting with me to keep still, but I continued to thrash, continued to scream and cry, unable to stop what I’d begun. Nick wrestled me to the ground and into his lap, keeping both his arms around me as he dropped his face against my shoulder and squeezed me tightly.
“Breathe,” he whispered. “Just breathe, Katherine.”
I don’t know how long we stayed that way, me thrashing and screaming in his lap, him holding me tightly, softly hushing me like a mother would their crying child. Eventually I slumped in his arms, crying softly now, my voice hoarse, my throat burning. Finally exhausted, I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.
~~~~
“I always knew,” Nick said quietly as he reached across the small space between us and pulled a piece of grass from my hair. Lying beside me on his belly, he put the strand in his mouth and smiled at me.
“Knew what?” I asked.
“That you were different from them.”
Caught off guard, I blinked several times. “But I’m not,” I protested. “If I were, this never would have happened to me.”
“You are,” he replied. “I’ve known it since third grade.”
My eyes went wide. “What?”
Lifting his head, Nick spit out the mangled grass. “Mr. Adholm’s class,” he said. “You raised your hand during one of his many longwinded speeches on the importance of the yearly Forbes employment list and said, ��But those can’t be the most important jobs in the world. What about the people who make stuff? Or fix stuff? Those jobs are important too, aren’t they?’”
My lips parted. I’d gotten in trouble for that statement. Nothing too severe, just a talking-to after class and a phone call to my parents, who’d given me another talking-to. Other than that, it was forgotten.
“Life isn’t worth living,” my father had said, “if you have nothing to show for it when you’re gone.”
Money. He’d meant money. All he ever talked about was money.
“My mom was a ballerina before she married my dad,” Nick continued. “Everything about her was soft and beautiful. She always told me that it didn’t matter if I was a plumber or a banker, that as long as I was happy, she would be happy.”
I didn’t say anything. I remembered, back in middle school, when Nick’s mom had accidentally overdosed on prescription pain pills. Everybody remembered. Nick disappeared for the rest of the year and when he’d returned the following fall, he wasn’t the same person.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered hoarsely. “I remember her, she was so beautiful.”
“She was,” he agreed. “But my father crushed her. Turned her into a tired and bitter woman.”
He shifted slightly, lifting off the ground and pointing to his chest where he had several large sparrows tattooed. “This was my first one,” he said, placing his hand overtop the sparrow on his heart. “For my mother. The ancient Egyptians believed that sparrows would catch the souls of those who had died. Later, sailors began the tradition of having a sparrow tattooed on them in hopes that if they died at sea, the sparrow would carry their spirit to heaven.” His dark eyes bored into mine and even in the fading sunlight, I could see an intensity burning from within them. “A sparrow is also a symbol for finding your freedom.”
He reached for me again; this time his hand landed on my cheek. “Don’t let what happened to my mother happen to you,” he said forcefully. “Don’t let them break you down.”
I swallowed hard. “I won’t,” I whispered.
“Promise me,” he whispered back, bringing his face close to mine.
Tears welled in my eyes. After weeks of feeling so incredibly alone, shunned and hated and laughed about, this boy, this man that I’d known all my life yet had never really known at all, had somehow reversed all that damage within a matter of hours, leaving me feeling stronger than I had this morning, maybe even stronger than I’d ever felt before.
“I promise,” I choked out a mere heartbeat before Nick’s lips met mine.
It was such a sweet, simple kiss, only lips against lips and no pressure for more, but in shock, my brain stalled out and then as soon as it had rebooted again, I was pushing Nick off me, rolling away from him and jumping to my feet.
“Is that what this was about?” I screamed. “You think I’m easy? You thought if you took me out of there that I would sleep with you?”
Slowly, Nick pushed himself to his knees but made no move to stand. “No, Potter,” he said. “I wasn’t even thinking about sex. I just wanted to kiss you, is all.”
“Why?” I demanded tearfully.
His brow shot up as did the corners of his mouth. “Why?” he repeated, shaking his head. “Because you’re beautiful and smart and you just spent the entire day with me, talking and crying and sleeping in my arms and, fuck, I just wanted to kiss you.”
“Oh,” I said softly, suddenly feeling very stupid.
Sighing, Nick got to his feet and began brushing all the grass off his pants. “It’s getting dark,” he said. “Probably should take you home before your parents send out a search party.”
Panic rose in my gut. Home? “No!” I cried out, reaching forward and grabbing his arm. “Please, not yet. I can’t… Not yet.”
Again he cupped my cheek, but made no move to go further. “All right,” he said softly. “Then where to?”
My thoughts spun, but ultimately came up empty. “I don’t know,” I said, feeling defeated.
Nick looked contemplative for a minute. “How about we go get you that tattoo you always wanted?”
I stared up at him. “But I’m not eighteen.”
He grinned. “Let’s head into the city,” he said and held out his hand to me. “I know a guy.”
~~~~
“It doesn’t even hurt,” I said proudly, smirking sideways at Nick from the passenger seat of his car. Snorting, he glanced over at the side of my exposed thigh where my brand new pink lotus, roughly the size of my fist, could be seen in the moonlight.
Nick had told me that my name, Katherine, stood for purity, and one of the symbols for purity was a pink lotus. The artist, an abs
olutely terrifying man named Spider, covered head to toe in tattoos and piercings, had done an exceptional job on the flower. It was full of bright reds, pinks, and greens, and I was unquestionably in love with it. In fact, I couldn’t stop staring at it.
“You were twitchy,” Nick said around a mouthful of fries. “But you sat really well.”
Grinning, I popped the last bite of my double bacon cheeseburger, and as my mouth flooded with the greasy goodness, I erupted in giggles. My mother absolutely forbade me from ever eating fried food. Almost everything in our house was either gluten-free or cage-free or sodium-free. Everything was free, free, free; but most of all, everything was free of taste.
“Hey,” I said, leaning forward to turn up the radio. “I like this song.”
“Really?” Nick teased. “No boy band love affairs for you?”
I shot him a look before leaning back in my seat. The window was down, my stomach was full, and for the very first time, I felt strangely alive, exhilarated in a way I’d never known before.
Free.
Nick started humming along to the song and soon he was singing loudly, quite beautifully, overpowering Tom Petty’s voice with his own much deeper, smoother one.
I watched him drive and sing, followed with my eyes the strong lines of his features, traveling along his cheekbones, his lips, his jaw, landing on his Adam’s apple as it bounced along with his voice. He really was a very good-looking guy. I’d just never really given him a second look, or thought for that matter, before. He’d always kept himself so far removed from everyone at school and in our parents’ social circles.
Before I knew it, the car had stopped and Nick was staring at me.
“Where to now?” he asked, still studying me, his eyes eating up my face in a way that had my belly fluttering with anxiety, and not of the unwanted variety.
Stories for Amanda Page 32
