by Coralee June
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Blakely replied before looking over her shoulder at Rose then back to Lance.
“The funeral is this weekend in New Mexico, and I’m going to go with him. Is that okay? I know I’ve been gone a lot lately.”
“Of course. I have shifts here and a ton of homework. Be there for your man,” she offered with a sincere smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes. I wanted to dig behind the plastered facade to hear her thoughts underneath. Was she mad that Lance could go to a virtual stranger’s funeral but not their mother’s?
“Perfect. Wow. Okay. I should go call Sean, then,” Lance said with a smile while looking at me. Then, he got up from his spot at the bar and headed outside. Blakely followed his back with her eyes before turning her attention to me.
“Let’s keep our hands to ourselves this weekend, okay?” she asked before reaching for the tray of dirty dishes before I could even respond.
A delicate war raged in my mind, aching to reach out and wrap my arms around her or toss away my dismissal with a kiss. I watched her forearms flex as she picked up the full tray and spun on her heels to head out, but shouting stopped her in her tracks.
“What the fuck you say to me?” a balding man in his late fifties asked a scrawny college kid. I stood up as Blakely took a step back.
“I said back the fuck off!”
And then punches went flying. Blakely’s tray went crashing down, glass and leftovers coated her creamy skin with sludge as a hard body was knocked into hers. I reached for her wrist to yank her back, when a man’s fist connected with her chest, knocking her backward.
I saw red.
Not just the angry sort of red that demanded your attention.
It was a vibrant shade of pissed-off. I could have cracked a tooth with how intently I clenched my jaw. Curling my palm into a strong fist, I reared back and attacked her assailant, landing a hit right on bald guy’s jaw. His head snapped to the left, so I threw another punch, this time aiming for his pouch of a gut.
In the corner of my eye, I saw Blakely’s torso, concave as she clutched her waist. Someone pulled my hair. Whiskey spilled down my shirt.
The bald guy went sailing toward the ground, and the scrawny college dude pumped his fist in the air like he had a right to claim victory. What the actual fuck? I did all the work.
Storming over to him, I clutched his shirt through my vice-like fingers and pulled it tight, making sure to press the collar of the shirt around his neck like a noose. “Get the fuck out of here,” I growled in his face, saliva forming in a pool between my teeth and my bottom lip as I shoved him toward the ground.
He crawled away while keeping his eyes on me, too scared to give me his back. Pussy.
Within seconds, I was spinning around and picking Blakely up as adrenaline coursed through my veins like a parade. Thump, thump, thump went my heart as I cradled her and walked toward a side hallway. Rose and security rushed by to check on the other patrons, but I was worried about one person only.
Blakely.
She trembled in my arms as I set her down. Steady feet kissed the ground as her back braced itself against the wall. Her shirt was completely soaked through, and with every staggering inhale, the movement highlighted the fact that her clothes were sticking to her petite frame. Where her tank top dipped, I noticed that her cleavage was blooming a bright shade of red.
“Are you okay?” I asked before gathering a clump of her fallen hair, which was sticky from the alcohol, and pushing it out of her face.
Bright tears fell like icicles down her cheeks as she chewed on her lower lip and lifted her eyes to meet mine. “I’m fine,” she rasped before rubbing her palm across her chest. “He just knocked the air out of me.”
I looked around and noticed that a supply closet was nearby. Threading my fingers through hers, I pulled her with me to the door, opened it, and guided her inside. “Do you want me to look?” I asked. The room was stacked with canned goods, and a dim light hung overhead. She pulled her shirt down, ever so slowly until it was at the wire of her bra. I would’ve usually been kicking myself for such a perfect view, but I was too busy worrying if she was okay. The curve of her cleavage was starting to bruise, a grayish color peppering her flawless skin. I wanted to kill them.
“Does it hurt to breathe?” I asked. She tested my question out with a deep inhale, the air rattling in her chest before she whooshed it out. I breathed in the smell of her breath, getting drunk on mint gum and Diet Coke.
“Not really,” she replied before letting go of her shirt. Because it was drenched, the elasticity didn’t give. So instead of resuming its job of covering her up, the gaping trim still showed off the spot where a bruise was forming. It was like a beacon of pain, and I wanted nothing more than to make it disappear, take the throbbing on as my own.
She shook. I clenched my fist.
“Let me go get you some ice, okay?” I asked. I could hear loud voices on the other side of the door, and even though I knew she needed something, I wasn’t quite ready to leave. She was secluded. She was safe.
I had turned to leave when thin fingers wrapped around my forearm, stopping me. “Don’t go?” her stuttered voice pleaded. I turned back to look at her, and my heart sank. There was fresh, crisp fear burning through her eyes. The green hue was feral with anxiety. She bit her lip again.
I braced my hands on her shoulders, lightly holding her still. I wanted to crush her to my chest but didn’t trust myself to do so. “You’re safe now,” I promised. She would always be safe with me. She closed the distance between us and wrapped her slender arms around my neck. I felt her lips brush against my collarbone as she breathed me in as if to steady herself on my scent.
“Tell me a truth?” she asked. I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted to rip my brain apart for her to analyze if it meant that it would put her at ease. My mind flashed back to the Ferris wheel, where she willingly distracted me with stories. I decided to do that for her, too.
“I haven’t been in a fight since I was thirteen years old,” I admitted. “A guy was giving Lance a hard time. He had just started dating another boy, and you know how cruel middle schoolers can be. Lance has always loved people. Loved souls. He got his first kiss from a sweet girl in kindergarten and hasn’t stopped since.”
She nodded in understanding while keeping her face against my chest. She slithered her left hand down from around my neck until it was clutching the fabric of my shirt. “I was awful at it. If it weren’t for the teachers interrupting us, I probably would’ve had my ass beat.” Even though it was a painful memory, I couldn’t help but smile at it. I was so determined to take care of my best friend that I was willing to have a black eye and a bloody lip. And bruised ribs. And a bruised pride.
She hummed in appreciation, her lips vibrating against my pulse. “The first man that ever hit me was Mama’s boyfriend. I was six years old,” she said. Every bone in my body went rigid. “He looked like that guy out there, actually,” she continued. I felt my skin grow wet and cold from her tears; every exhale was brushing against the trail of wetness, making a shiver travel up my spine. I breathed her in as she continued, “He was drunk. Just like that guy was. He was aiming for Mama, but I was trying to protect her.” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “I guess I was always trying to protect her.”
I clutched Blakely tighter, confident that my firm hold would cut the circulation off in her torso. She pulled back to look up at me, her bottom lip trembling as she shook her head once again and released my shirt to wipe her face with her fingers. “Tell me another truth,” she pleaded.
“I hate the word nothing,” I whispered.
She blinked a couple of times while staring at me. I was a dumbass for letting that truth slip. “My chest hurts,” she finally said while taking another step back. Her foot dragged across the floor as she increased the space between us. I opened my mouth to say something—anything—but a loud knocking on the door stopped me in my tracks.
; “Blakely, baby? You in there?” Rose’s soft voice called out just before the knob turned. When the door opened, I sucked in a deep breath, but Blakely saved me from explaining why we were crowded together and in a room with the air so thick we could have suffocated on it.
“Hey, Rose. Sorry. I had a panic attack, and Decker got me away from the noise,” she explained. The vulnerability in her tone ate at me until I was nothing left but teeth marks.
“Oh, baby!” Rose said in her posh accent while her face wrinkled up in sadness. “I’m so sorry; my security team hauled those assholes out of here. Do you need anything?” she asked.
Blakely nodded. “Can I go home, please? Where’s my brother?”
“Of course, child. Your brother is outside looking for you. I have a spare change of clothes; wanna slip into it before you go?” We filtered out of the storage room as I felt Rose’s eyes on my torso. I looked down and saw wet marks from when Blakely clutched me close. Shit.
“I’m going to go find him,” Blakely said with a sniffle before wiping her hand across her mouth. She started walking down the hallway but paused to look back at me. “Coming, Mr. Harris?” she asked. I hated that I was Mr. Harris again. I didn’t want to be her teacher right now. I didn’t want to be her brother’s best friend. I wanted to be Decker. Protector. Healer. Savior. Lover.
“Be right there,” I replied stoically.
Rose’s voice cut through the static in my head, catching me off guard. “You got it bad, Deck,” she whispered, too low for Blakely to hear but loud enough for me to shiver with shame.
I didn’t respond, because what could I say? Yeah. I had it bad. But there was nothing I could do about it.
18
Blakely
Since the incident at the bar a few weeks ago, a lot of nothing had happened. Rose moved me to the hostess stand, which meant no tips. I wasn’t necessarily complaining. I felt safer at the front of the bar as it was near security. But still, I hated how shaken up I was. The bruise from my accidental attack had faded, but I still could feel the hit. It wasn’t his fists my memory kept conjuring up, it was Mama’s ex-boyfriends.
Decker went back to being nothing. I was starting to feel like that phrase was getting redundant. Even though we lived under the same roof, ate the same food, and participated in the same damn classroom, we only shared broken sentences and remorse between us. Even when Lance went to New Mexico for a weekend, we kept to ourselves, leaving the room if the other entered and disappearing into our seclusion for the sake of avoiding the awkward tension still simmering between us.
I still hadn’t met Sean. I wasn’t sure if it was because something happened during the funeral to make Lance wary or if he was embarrassed by me. Either way, Lance made an excellent effort to spend time with me, but every other night, he would disappear and not show up until the next morning. He planned nights with Sean around my work schedule, but I still felt lonely all the same. I wasn’t upset with him, and I probably wouldn’t even care if it weren’t for the awkwardness between Decker and me.
And today I didn’t want to feel lonely.
I slammed my locker door shut just as Maximillian walked up to stand beside me. “Hey, Bae,” he said in a cheeky tone. He’d started calling me that a week ago, and it made me cringe every time. We hadn’t been on a date or even hung out outside of school, but he was persistently flirtatious. “How are you?” I wasn’t sure what to make of him. Sometimes, I caught myself staring; other times, I wished he would tone it down some. Feelings were fickle like that.
“I’m feeling anxious,” I replied. One of the great things about Maximillian was that I could be frank with him and he didn’t take me seriously. It was like leaving breadcrumbs, but geese kept snapping them up off the floor.
Maximillian ran his porn-worthy veiny hand through his blond hair. (What? I have a thing for hands.) “Anxious, eh? How come?”
“Today is what would have been Mama’s birthday. I feel like I’m supposed to be counting pennies for a cake or planning a surprise party she pretends not to know about.”
Mama was big on birthdays—specifically hers. She would celebrate the entire month, blow our money on cakes and presents. It felt odd to be doing nothing today. I didn’t want to be celebrating her. I had a lifetime of bending over backwards to make her birthday seem special, which was always odd because she never did that for me.
I guess in many ways, it was a routine—cell memory. My soul expected to be stretched thin for the whims of a self-indulgent woman, and I didn’t know how to handle the nothingness that came after her death.
Maximillian’s face dipped into a sad expression that looked like pity and disappointment. Pity probably because he felt bad for me, and disappointment because it was hard to casually flirt with girls that were supposed to be grieving their dead mother.
“Do you want to do anything?” he asked on a stutter.
I pondered his question for a moment. Did I want to do anything?
Yes. Yes, I did.
I wanted today to be about me.
“I want to skip class. Maybe drink some beer. Dance on a table or some shit.” It was precisely the sort of thing Mama would have done. I guess, in some ways, I could pay homage to her while stealing some selfishness for myself.
Maximillian’s mouth dropped open in shock, but he quickly mastered his expression before leaning against my locker. “I’ve invited you out countless times, but now you want to get wild? On a Wednesday?” he clarified.
It was true. He’d invited me to a few parties on the weekend and dates during the week. I always had excuses or pretended to be too depressed to leave the house. I enjoyed Maximillian’s company, and I didn’t want to blur our dynamic with his hopes and my realities.
I’d make an exception just this once. “If you’re not game, no problem. I can have a good time by myself,” I replied with a shrug before shoving my messenger bag into my locker and slamming it shut. I wouldn’t need it today.
“Oh, no, no, no. I’m going with you. I’ve got just the place in mind, too,” he replied before putting his arm over my shoulders and hugging me close. “I’ll drive, okay?”
We walked down the hall, with Maximillian’s arm still wrapped around my shoulders and a wild grin on my face. I was looking forward to the day. When I had first woken up, Mama’s birthday had haunted me. It made me sick. Maybe it was wrong to spend the day getting drunk in her memory, but I wasn’t willing to sit around and mope.
The bell rang, and we continued to walk, and as we passed Decker’s classroom, I glanced inside. I was met with the dark, steel eyes. It was a brief flash, a slight moment in time that seemed to last forever but couldn’t have been more than three seconds. His eyes lingered on how Maximillian held me, and I saw the confusion in his expression. We should’ve been in class by then.
I watched his mouth open and close in indecision for a flash, but we were out of eyesight long before he could make up his mind. Decker probably knew we were up to something, but it would go against our promise to be nothing if he stopped and asked me about it. So instead, we made our way to the parking lot, leaving thoughts of our broody teacher behind.
Maximillian drove a Honda Accord. He was pretty popular around this place, so I was surprised to see that he drove such a mundane car. I liked it. It almost normalized him. “Where we going?” I asked while sinking into the seats, which smelled like AXE Body Spray. He adjusted the rearview mirror before flipping through the radio channels, pausing on a country-western station that blared music Mama would’ve enjoyed through the speakers.
“It’s a surprise. Just leave it to me, okay?” he said with a grin.
It felt nice to have someone take the reins for once, and I was okay with letting him make the decisions. “Okay,” I replied while biting the inside of my cheek. I sunk further into my seat and fought the first real smile I’d felt in weeks from breaching my face.
This would be interesting.
“You can’t be serious,” I said wh
ile staring down at the chocolate cake in front of me. We were at a bakery, and Maximillian was sitting across from me with his phone out, prepared to record the embarrassment.
“It’s a smash cake, Blakely. Eat it.” His order was full of mirth, and I stared longingly at the silverware he had tucked in his shirt pocket.
“It’s not even my birthday,” I replied with a chuckle before dipping my index finger into the moist cake and picking up a dollop of icing. “I don’t understand why I have to do this.”
There wasn’t anyone at the bakery with us, so it wasn’t too bad. Max had been doing a stellar job of distracting me thus far. I thought I wanted a wild night, but everything so far had been wholesome. He drove me to the aquarium, to lunch at his favorite fast-food restaurant, and now to this bakery, for me to do this smash cake. He was making today all about me, and it was healing in a way.
“It’ll be fun. I promise not to show the video to anyone else, but maybe it’ll help you get some of your frustration out. There’s nothing like stuffing your face with something yummy to help cool off,” Max said with a chuckle.
Rolling my eyes, I grabbed a handful of cake and shoved it in my mouth, making sure to smear the chocolate icing along my chin and lips in the process. Damn. That was a good cake. Maximillian was laughing as I dove in for another bite, this time forgoing my hands and just using my face. When I sat back up, I could feel bits of icing and cake stuck to my cheeks.
“Oh my gosh,” Max began. His words were short and choppy because laughter kept interrupting between each syllable. “You’re a mess.” I realized just then how playful this entire moment was. Decker might have made me feel capable and honest, but Max brought out a light-heartedness in me that I hadn’t experienced in a while. Life had been so sober with Mama’s treatments and the uncertainty at Lance’s house. It was nice to do something pointless and funny just for the sake of it.
