“Some of it. That was a little extreme for even me, though. I would have been just as happy to go and get a pizza,” she says.
“Seriously? Then why’d you agree to come all this way?”
Her long, dark hair is pulled loosely back, and several thick pieces have fallen free. Is it weird that I can’t help but stare at her?
“Honestly?” she asks, peeking out from under one of the rogue chestnut strays. “I just wanted to hang out with you.”
A scorching, sticky breeze kicks up and I can no longer fight the urge to touch her. I reach across the bench and pull her tiny body in close to mine. She doesn’t flinch, or otherwise acknowledge my touch, but I watch her tan skin prick with goose bumps in response. My lips form an automatic smile.
“What?” she asks.
I shake my head, not willing to risk embarrassing her and killing the perfect mood.
“So, do you have any hidden talents or hobbies or anything?” she asks.
My mind drifts to the photo album stashed in the bottom of my nightstand drawer.
“I play a little bass,” I say.
Maybe someday I’ll show her the book that my mom says is a ridiculous waste of time. Pretty much everything outside of school is a waste of time to my mom, especially since I’m the only child. Before I was born, Mom was a professional organizer. Yeah, they have those. And since she quit working, I am her project. She has completely immersed herself in making sure that I have an ideal upbringing, and not letting anyone upset her perfect plan. Every detail is carefully thought out by her. Where I’ll go to college, what I’ll major in-who I should date.
“Ah, that explains it,” Quinn says. She reaches for my palm and lightly runs her fingertip across the calluses on mine.
She looks up and notices that I’m still watching her. Her posture straightens.
“I think they still have fireworks on the pier at night, if we hurry, I bet we could catch them.”
Fireworks.
“Quinn.” I sit up so that our faces are so close I can see the tiny patch of freckles that dots the bridge of her nose, I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed them before. Her hazel eyes are wide, daring me to look away.
I wrap my hand around the base of her neck, my fingers catching on the baby fine hairs. I hope she doesn’t notice how my palm shakes with a nervousness that I haven’t felt since my first kiss when I was eleven. She doesn’t wait for me to slowly close the space between our faces, and instead, meets me halfway. Her left brow is cocked in the sultry, confident way she so effortlessly pulls off.
“Go for it.” She smirks in such a sexy way that I can feel all of the blood in my body rush below my waist.
When my mouth meets hers, I swear that from that second on, she has me. You always hear people talk about how there are moments in your life when you just know that things will never be the same. I always thought that was all horseshit. But here, now, with the feeling of her soft, incredible lips moving with mine, I know that it happens.
Chapter Four
Quinn
Savannah is a good four hours away from home, but the miles fly by quicker than I want them to. I’d be perfectly fine with this day lasting forever. Well, assuming there was more pizza and less thymus gland. This was like a date. Like a real date. As in-doors opened; hand on the small of my back as we cross the street kind of thing. I’ve never been on one of those before. The type of guy that takes a girl on a day trips don’t typically go after girls like me. They date my best friend, Sydney. And if they do ask me out, it’s most likely because they want to sleep with me. I really hope that’s not what this was about. I don’t think it was. Hell, what do I know?
Ben downshifts to slow the car as we approach a split in the highway. There is something incredibly sexy about a guy driving stick, I can’t explain it, but it fascinates me.
“You’re going to want to merge onto I-16 up here,” I say.
“Are you sure?” His eyes are fixed on the dash mounted GPS that clearly shows him heading South on I-475.
“Unless you want to end up in Florida, I’m positive.”
“Most girls don’t know much about directions,” he says. He takes my word for it, and takes the I-16 split.
“Stereotypical, much?” I laugh “And anyway, I’m not most girls.” I settle deeper into the leather seat.
“Yeah, I’m sort of getting that. Can I ask you something?”
I sit up a little straighter. “Sure.” Gulp.
“Are you seeing anyone? Is that too forward? I mean, there isn’t like-”
I laugh softly at his properness. “No, there isn’t anyone. I mean, there was, but we broke up a few weeks ago.”
My ex, Daniel, and I broke up before he and the rest of my class left for Cabo. It wasn’t some messy, dramatic high school break up. Honestly, this is going to sound ridiculous, but the main reason I couldn’t stand to be around him anymore, was because he claimed to be this major germaphobe. You know the kind that is constantly doing annoying shit like using paper towels to open door handles, and forever has the bottle of hand sanitizer? Fine, if that’s your issue, but I started to notice that he never washed his hands when he left the bathroom. From then on, I couldn’t see him as anything but a fraud. I wonder what kind of diseases you can get from a skeevy Mexican bathroom when you don’t wash your hands.
“Was it serious?”
“It was seriously a mistake. How about you?” I wince as I ask him. Is this where the truth will come out? That he has someone back in Kentucky? That this is all a game? Who am I kidding, he doesn’t owe me anything. I barely know him.
“Come on, I’ve lived here less than a month, even I don’t move that quickly.” We both laugh, and it’s easy and relaxed and magnificent.
I remember the last time that I made this trip home from Savannah. It’s been several years now, Carter was still at home and Mason was so young. Mom picked us up from school early. Mason was strapped into his car seat in the back next to a laundry basket full of the first things that Mom had grabbed before hauling ass out of town with us three kids.
It’s strange how the times I’ve felt closest to my mom are the times that she and Dad aren’t speaking. I feel like she’s “ours” again. I know it’s probably just part of her manic spiral, but she seems freer, and those are the times when I feel like I can relate to her the best.
We spent a week in a rental right on the beach that probably cost three months of my dad’s salary. Carter and I raced up and down the length of the pier over and over while my mom cheered us on with Mason clapping away her lap. We ate ice cream out on the deck while we watched the sun sink into the sea at the end of each day.
On the way home, I sat in the front seat with Mom. I remember watching the mile markers zoom by, hoping that she’d fly right by our exit-keep on driving. Even if it were just me, and mom and the boys. Even if we had to cram into a tiny apartment like my dad always threatened if she were to leave with us. We’d be happy, and Mom would be free. I dozed in and out, my head on her lap. I remember waking every few minutes, but not stirring because she was stroking my hair like she did when I was very young and had a bad dream.
When we pulled into the garage at home, I pretended to still be asleep and let Mom carry me upstairs to my room. I wanted to hang on to the magical, sun kissed closeness that we all shared that week.
I have a similar feeling now, as I watch the miles pass by with Ben sitting next to me.
“I sort of guessed that you weren’t with anyone right now, I mean, they way you kissed me back there”
His voice brings me out of my nostalgic fog and I reach over and playfully swat his arm.
“Excuse me! But I do believe that you sir, kissed me.”
Another mile down.
I look away from the right side of the road, and instead, wrap my hand around the back of Ben’s neck as he drives and just enjoy the ride.
Chapter Five
Ben
“What time are your pare
nts going to be home?” I ask.
Quinn is insistent that I vanish before they show up. I’ve always been pretty good with parents, but she’s been adamant since the day we met.
She shrugs her tiny shoulders. “Not sure, Mason has an awards banquet tonight.”
“Whoa, doesn’t the kid ever get a break? What about the off season?”
She rolls her eyes. “There is no off season for Mason. He is on three different teams. He has a pitching coach, a batting coach. It’s all ridiculous.”
Quinn dips her finger into the generous layer of cupcake icing. “It’s Mountain Dew butter cream.” She licks the glob off of her index finger.
“It was incredible,” I say. You’re incredible, I want to add, but I don’t know if we’re quite there yet. We’ve been basically inseparable for the last few weeks. If we aren’t at her house or mine, we’re out exploring Atlanta, trying new food and laughing our asses off.
She, as usual, scoffs to dismiss my compliment, and takes the empty cupcake wrapper from me to throw away.
The deck boards creek as I lay back and stretch my frame out. Without hesitation, Quinn curls up beside me, and lays her head on my chest. My breath catches for a second at how freaking amazing her closeness feels.
“Does it ever make you sad?” she asks, cryptically.
I pick up my head so I can look at her.
“Does what?”
“The sunset,” she answers, resting her cheek on the back of her hand.
I glance up at the pink and orange haze settling against the blue-gray horizon.
“Sad? Nah, I think it’s peaceful.”
“Not to me. I’ve always found it depressing.”
“How so?” I ask, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She purses her lips and looks pensive, as if selecting her words carefully.
“I guess because it’s the end. I hate endings.”
“Not all endings are bad though. I think of sunsets more as a clean slate.” I say. I wonder how big of a tool she thinks I am for that response. “Besides, they’re beautiful…like you.”
She lays her head back down, facing away from me. She mumbles the words so lightly that I can’t even trust I hear her right. “Beautiful things never last.”
“What?” I ask. She doesn’t repeat herself.
“Nighttime was never a peaceful, fresh start growing up. Nights always meant a new fight. One glass of wine would turn into a bottle, one bottle turned into two and two turned into two angry drunks breaking shit. My dad worked too much, or he didn’t work enough. My mom hated California, or she was appalled at the idea of leaving. It was always something. I’d sit next to Mason’s bed for hours, hoping he wouldn’t wake up and hear them. If he did, I’d sing to him to try to mask the noise,” Quinn says.
A nervous chuckle escapes her lips. This is the first time I have heard her say more than a few words about her family. I wonder if she even realizes she’s doing it.
“Eventually, my mom would start stomping around the house, throwing clothes into a suitcase. It happened every time. Her automatic reaction was to bail, without even saying goodbye. Sometimes she’d just leave for a night, and sometimes it would be weeks before we would see her again.”
I watch her hand move to her face and wipe her eyes. She won’t look at me so I can’t be sure but I think she may be crying.
“At least during the day, we had friends and school to keep us busy. But when the day ended, it was too slow, too quiet. There was too much time to think about what was really going on. I’d watch those sunsets and wonder where my mom was. Why she didn’t want to be with us. Why we weren’t good enough for her. When she’d be coming back, or if that would be the time she just didn’t come back at all.”
I lay there silent and still, knowing that whatever I say will undoubtedly be completely inadequate. Sure my parents fight, but it’s usually over petty things, like my dad forgetting to call to say he’ll be late, or my mom spending too much money on scrapbooking crap. The kind of things Quinn is opening up about, I have zero experience with.
“I’m so sorry,” I finally say, feeling like a jerk that I don’t have something better to offer her.
She finally sits up to face me and shrugs indifferently. “Don’t be, it doesn’t matter.”
Yes it does, I want to tell her. But her expression is guarded and uneasy.
“Look, no one knows any of that– I don’t even know why I just spewed all of it. But if you could, like, not tell anyone-”
“I won’t, Quinn,” I cut her off.
I don’t know why she just decided to confess things that she’s never told a soul-to me of all people. But now that she has, it’s like a switch has been flipped, and everything in me just wants to protect her from that kind of hurt.
“I’m pretty sure that my dad is having an affair,” she says softly while shaking her head. My brows pull together as I try to think of something to say. What are you supposed to say?
“Its fine, I mean, it’s not, but I don’t expect sympathy or anything. I just needed to tell someone. I hear him sneak out sometimes late at night.”
“Are you going to say something to your mom?”
“Are you kidding? I don’t have any proof, and even if I did, it wouldn’t make a difference. They are both completely accepting of their unhappiness. I am so damn scared that I am going to turn out like that.”
“You’re not, Quinn.”
She glances over her shoulder, away from me.
“You want to go for a swim?” she asks, motioning to the L-shaped pool across the yard.
“No,” I say.
She fumbles with her hands in her lap. Jesus, I don’t know if I am even close to what this girl needs in her life right now, but I know that I need her.
“Do you want-”
I cut her off with my lips to hers. Her hands instantly tangle themselves into my hair as she falls into me.
This girl I’ve only known for a matter of weeks has managed to shake me like nothing else before. This is most definitely not part of The Plan.
Chapter Six
Quinn
I’m in the middle of my fairytale, lying beside Ben on the deck. My teeth nip the back of my hand as I bite down to keep from squealing like some lunatic fan girl. I could lay right here forever, feeling safe and wanted.
A gruff throat clearing brings me crashing back down to reality. Tipping my head backward on the wood board, I see my dad, his face twisted into an irritated scowl. My mom is beside him with her face half submerged in her requisite wine glass.
“Who’s your friend?” my dad asks. Ben doesn’t miss a beat and jumps up. He brushes his long bangs out of his face and extends his hand.
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Mr. and Mrs. MacPherson, I’m Ben.” His voice is casual, not kiss-assy.
I feel short of breath. I have been dreading introducing Ben to my parents. I’m never sure what to expect from Mom, and Dad is always an ass. Please don’t scare him off, I silently plead.
“Leland,” my dad says, shaking his hand quickly. “This is Quinn’s mother, Patricia.” Dad turns away and struts back inside the house with his signature John Wayne swagger, and the proverbial stick up his ass.
“Quinn.” Mom downs the rest of her Pinot Grigio like a champ-in one quick gulp. “We need to talk when your friend leaves.” She flashes a forced smile at Ben before traipsing inside the house after my dad.
“Sorry about that,” I say. “I lost track of time, I guess.” Ben catches my chin between his thumb and index finger. The heat fills my cheeks.
“No problem, it was good to finally meet them.”
“Liar,” I say. He grins back at me. “I’ll walk you out.”
Ben follows behind me, his strong arms wrapped securely around my waist as I lead him around the side of the house. This simple gesture may be insignificant, I bet he isn’t even thinking about it, but I have never felt safer.
Ben leans against the side of his car with his legs
slightly straddled. He hooks his thumbs through my belt loops and pulls me toward him. His warm, clean scent overwhelms me, and I press my face to his chest to capture as much of it as I can.
“When am I going to see you again?” His finger gently tips my face to meet his. I tangle my fingers into his thick hair that curls at the nape of his neck.
“When I get out of school tomorrow?” The level of stupefaction that overtakes me when he is this close is immeasurable. My face must be ten shades of red right now.
“Quinn.” I hear my mother call. I can’t see her from the driveway, but I know she’s standing with her arms crossed tightly, and her foot tapping impatiently.
“You’d better get inside,” he says. I feel like so adolescent right now. Leave it to my parents to completely ruin this perfect night.
I push my bottom lip out into my best pout. Ben leans in and bites it gently before kissing me goodbye. I have to fight the urge to skip away all asstardedly.
For the record, I was right-Mom is toe tapping away on the porch. Her eyes are glazed over and sleepy looking. Already.
“What?” I say. Crap, she looks pissed. I quickly do a mental inventory of all of my wrong doings, and what they could have possibly caught me doing. I haven’t missed any summer school. I haven’t broken my stupid curfew. It can’t be about the pills. There is no way Mom is lucid enough to know what she takes on any given day. Color me stumped.
“I thought we told you, no one over if we aren’t home,” Mom says.
That is what this is about?
My eyebrows pinch together. “You seriously meant that?” I ask. “What am I, ten?”
“Rules are rules, Quinn. Although that’s not something you have a real firm grasp on here, lately.” She polishes off glass of wine number-who’s-counting.
What kills me about my mom is how she has completely rewritten our family’s history. In her mind, the childhoods she subjected my brothers and me to never actually happened. I guess it helps her with her guilt, but it really sucks for the rest of us. She expects us to be perfect after all we had to endure, when frankly, she’s really lucky that my brothers and I were still allowed to live under the same roof as her after the stuff she has pulled over the years-much less break her silly rules.
Grounding Quinn Page 2
