by Dean Murray
Our table had been uncomfortably empty all week, with only the four of us. I knew Callie was happy for Alec to join us. Josh looked up from his lunch with an indifferent shrug. Danny was on his phone, and not paying attention.
“You can join the nomad table,” I suggested with a nod towards the chair next to mine.
He glanced at Callie and Josh, and must have seen something reassuring because he sat down and threw me a look that made my head spin. “This might be my favorite one,” he said.
I pretended not to notice the way I blushed under his gaze. “Good. Glad to have you.”
Josh grunted something, and I wasn’t sure if he was agreeing or disagreeing with me. Callie, I swear, squealed in delight. She was certainly happy to have adopted Alec into our lunch circle. That close knit group was practically family. Well, it used to be. Maybe it could be again. Alec was nice, funny, and easy on the eyes. With him here now, lunch might not be as miserable as it had been.
He couldn’t have come along at a better time.
CHAPTER 3
I was becoming me again—washing my hair regularly, wearing makeup, and all that. Thanks to Alec. He has been in my life for only three weeks now, but already, the boy had a way of getting through to me like no one else could. Not even Callie. Who would have thought? The super-hot-new-boy and me? The idea was as preposterous to me as it was to everyone else. I wasn’t the kind of girl that guys like Alec typically went for. Sure, boys thought I was cute in an I-don’t-care kind of way, not in an I-get-regular-mani-pedis-and-got-fake-boobs-for-Christmas kind of way, like Brigit and Heather and their bobble-head cheerleader groupies.
And Brigit got turned down hard by Alec, or so I had heard. From the daggers she was shooting in my vicinity, I assumed the rumor was true.
I faced another direction and took a swig of beer.
It was also because of Alec that I found myself here, at a beach party. By beach, I meant a narrow strip of sand along one edge of Big Pine Lake just outside of Boone and by party, I meant a bonfire, a throng of teenagers, and alcohol. It wasn’t a big lake, but it was a large crowd.
Most of them were familiar to me in one way or another, either from seeing them every day in the halls at school or having partied with them in the past. Most looked surprised to see me. Some smiled, like they were glad I was back. Others shot me the usual awkward stare, but I had gotten better at not caring about those.
“There’s Alec.” Callie nudged my shoulder, and I followed her gaze to the water’s edge, where he sat in the sand, forearms rested on his knees, beer bottle dangled from one hand, a cigarette in the other. Though not the most attractive habit, he more than made up for it with personality and raw good looks. In a green button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, tattered jeans, his favorite Sketchers, and a grin that might even manage to drop a nun’s panties, he was easily the most alluring guy here. Hovered around him and a few boys I didn’t recognize—friends of his, I assumed from the way they carried on—was a girl that seemed to agree. She wasn’t even subtle as she raked her eyes all over him.
He was oblivious. Well, knowing Alec, he wasn’t oblivious, but he also didn’t return the interest. I smiled into my beer bottle.
The whole school thought we were an item. I had to admit, there were times I wondered myself. Like when he sat beside me every day at lunch and made me laugh the entire thirty minutes, the times I passed him in the hall between classes and he met my gaze with a flirty wink, and the other times he waited for me, leaned against my locker like some Calvin Klein model. People stared. They whispered and speculated. I was used to being the center attraction for the gossip circus, and Alec, well, he didn’t really seem to care.
Then there was the way he looked at me sometimes. That way that really made my heart race and my palms sweat. He didn’t have to say anything, just look. Or touch. Like a few nights ago, when he brushed aside the hair covering the scar on my forehead and nearly put me into heart failure. “You don’t have to hide it. Not from me,” he had said, and I thought he might kiss me then. But he didn’t, and ever since I have wondered what it would be like to kiss Alec, and have wished for it to happen.
So, even if everyone else thought we were together, and there were times I thought we were headed down that path, the truth was I didn’t know what we were or where we stood. I mean, he was a friend, albeit a really cute, ornery one that I wanted to kiss.
But when he dragged me off to the mall to do “girly stuff” when Callie had the flu, drove me to Josh’s to watch the NFL playoffs on the big screen, convinced me to skip school to teach me how to snowboard, and graciously accepted the detention we both received the following day with a suave, “It was worth every minute”, I really wanted to kiss him.
That was why my stomach twisted into a knot when he spotted me now, and fixed me with a hellish grin as he parted the sea of bodies on his way over to me.
“I was wondering when you were going to get here,” he said as he drew closer.
“We had to go to the mall first,” Callie volunteered before I could find my voice. “Shopping, hair maintenance, you know, girl stuff.”
Alec grinned, and I knew he had recalled our adventure last week. The funnest afternoon spent in a mall. Ever. “As a matter of fact, I do know.”
“Who are those guys you were hanging out with over there?” Callie tried to look around Alec. “Any cute ones?”
Alec shifted to block her view. “No.” He turned Callie and me around, stepped between us, and placed an arm around each of our shoulders as he led us away. “Those guys are no good for you. Besides, if I brought you two over there, those girls would probably try to rip your hair out.”
He was being silly as always, but I knew I hadn’t missed the alarm on his face when Callie had shown interest in his buddies. He didn’t want us to meet them, and there was more to it than girl fights and hair pulling. I didn’t have a guess as to what it could be and, knowing Alec, I doubted it was anything serious, so I set that mystery aside for dissection later.
Brigit stared at me like she was casting a spell of immediate and painful death on me, and that was a tad more significant at the moment. I wondered what exactly Alec had turned down to deserve that much hatred from her. Brigit was well-known, and it wasn’t because of her outstanding virtue or stellar grades.
Callie must have seen her too, and asked, “So, Alec, what exactly happened with Big Tits Brig?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He feigned innocence, but the grin on his face gave him away.
“Was it a lap dance? I heard she’s known for those,” Callie said.
“Don’t forget quickies in the boys’ locker room,” I added. That had been last year’s scandal.
Alec looked down at me with huge eyes. “Definitely no quickies.” He glanced at Callie reluctantly. “Perhaps an offering in the vicinity of a lap dance.”
Callie and I laughed. As she wiped tears from her eyes, Callie said, “I wish I could have seen the look on her face. You just shot her down?”
“I’m not interested in her.” There was something about his tone that made me turn my head toward him. He gave my shoulder a squeeze and shot me a look that all but said, It’s you I’m interested in.
I nearly choked on my next breath. Callie gave no indication that she noticed the exchange between Alec and me, but she picked that moment to excuse herself. She called to Josh, who she had conveniently picked out in the crowd, and took off, leaving Alec and me alone.
We stared at each other in silence for a moment before Alec took my hand, and slipped his fingers between mine. “Come with me,” he said.
Either I was rendered brain dead or his smile was impossible to resist, or maybe both, because I couldn’t utter a word as he pulled me after him through the mass of bodies. The crowd thinned as we walked away from the bonfire, until it was just us, hand in hand as we walked along the beach. We passed a few couples who had ventured off for seclusion and I tried no
t to think about what they were doing out there, hidden in the shadows. Or what Alec was up to.
“Where are we going?” I finally asked him.
“Getting away.” He pulled me closer. “I don’t really want to be around a lot of people.”
“Oh, okay.” That was it, the best I could come up with. I had venture off with Alec. Alone. I hoped I was ready for this.
We wandered up on a battered playground at the edge of the beach, surrounded by woods. It separated the lake from the park’s campground. This time of the year, there would be no campers, which left the rusty slide, death-trap swings, splintered picnic table, and half basketball court all to us. A lone street light atop the pole holding the backboard supplied a dim light. The hoots and hollers of fun on the beach barely reached my ears.
We were so...so alone.
Alec picked up a stray basketball and palmed it. He held it out to me, and asked, “You ever play?”
“Of course.” I took the ball and dribbled around him. What he didn’t know was that the orphanage had an old court, and I have played since I was five. My basketball career had sputtered out in junior high, when everyone else shot past me, and I was suddenly shorter than, well, everyone. I still had a mean shot and a wicked cross over though.
“Ever play HORSE?” he asked.
“Who’s never played that game?”
“Let’s play. We can make it interesting if you’d like.” There was a challenge in his voice.
“What are the stakes?”
He eyed me doubtfully. “I assume playing for clothes is out of the question.” He hesitated to read my reaction—which was utter shock and terror—and chuckled. “Thought so. I’ll think of something I want.”
“And if I win?”
He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that.” As if to prove his point, he slapped the ball out of my hands, shot and sunk a basket. “I’m pretty good.”
I ambled over to the bouncing ball, and nodded my head appreciatively. “Not bad.” I dribbled as I worked my way farther from the basket, and took a shot from behind the three point line. It went in with a gentle whoosh, and I looked at Alec triumphantly. “So am I.”
Half an hour later, I sunk the final shot to clinch my win over Alec—HORSE to HORS.
“I wish I could say that I let you win, but I didn’t.” He pretended to be more wounded than I knew he was. “You know, we never did agree to the terms. So what do you want?”
Damn, I wished we had agreed to the terms first. The occasion called for a flirty response, something I was so not qualified to provide. Then, a genius idea came to mind. Or, well, I hoped it was as ingenious as I thought. And I hoped I could manage to pull it off smoothly. My pulse thundered as I watched Alec dribble to a corner of the court to take a practice shot. Without his eyes on me, I felt brave. Well, braver.
“We could go ahead with the playing for clothes idea you had earlier.”
The ball sailed from his fingertips and his eyes slanted to mine, shining a startling green in the dim light as a small grin spread on his face. The ball dropped through the hoop and bounced, forgotten, on the blacktop.
He moved toward me gracefully, certain of his actions, and my heart nearly stopped beating from the way he looked at me. “Looking forward to it,” he said with a grin.
I must have missed something. “You lost,” I said. “Which means it will be you losing an article of clothing. Not me.”
“That’s not how you play strip-HORSE. I sunk four shots and that’s...” His eyes trailed over various parts of my body as he calculated. “Enough articles of clothing to make me happy. And you, having sunk five shots...” He looked down at himself to count the number of items he wore, “leaves me naked, apparently.”
I gulped. That was so not what I meant. Here I thought I was being cute and flirty by suggesting he remove a shirt or something. Nope, here I was in way over my head.
“You don’t do this a lot, do you?” he asked.
Have I ever played strip-HORSE, or strip-anything for that matter? Definitely not. Traipsed around an abandoned playground in my skivvies with a naked boy? Haven’t done that either. I felt like a deer in headlights as I retreated several steps. “Do what?”
Alec stepped forward to keep up with me. “You don’t go out with a bunch of guys.” He sounded torn between laughing at my obvious nervousness and taking pity on me.
I shook my head. My foot scraped across a rock, and I knew I had backed off the basketball court.
Alec still followed. “You don’t pick up on hints very well,” he continued. “Bluntness might work better for you. Fortunately, I’m good at being blunt.”
I bumped into the picnic table. With nowhere else to go, I took a stance there as he drew closer, and tried to remember how to breathe.
“See the thing is, Kris, I kind of like you.” He stood in front of me, splayed his hands on the table, one on each side of me, and leaned close. Really close. He smelled of cigarettes, beer, expensive cologne, and bananas for some mysterious reason. The intoxicating blend that was so perfectly Alec.
Somehow, through the sensory overload, I found my wit. “Blunt nudists aren’t really my type.”
“What about sexy blunt nudists?” I pretended to consider the revision and he chuckled, “You’re not at all what I expected.”
What was that supposed to mean? “What did you expect?”
He looked at me like my innocence was adorable. “For starters, not to want to do this so badly...” The words reached my ears as a whisper as he dropped his head to mine. He paused, a breath away, as if to make sure it was okay to proceed. I tipped my chin up as he closed the distance and finally pressed his lips to mine.
He was much more skilled than I was. Dully, the thought occurred to me that he had probably kissed a lot of girls, but that didn’t matter because I was the one he was kissing now. He kissed me slow and sweet, and didn’t push me faster than I was ready for. I relaxed into him, fully enjoying the moment, and, when he pulled back, a smile was left on my lips.
I opened my eyes to find him looking down at me in wonder.
“Wait a minute…” He placed his hands on my waist and pressed me against the table gruffly, startling me, but in a good way. “Let me see something.”
Our second kiss was a bit more heated than our first. I let him claim and explore me as he wanted and, when the metal from his tongue ring clanged against my teeth, I nearly combusted. My back arched beneath his weight, his hips ground into mine, and his fingers dug into my skin as he kissed me fiercely at first, then slowed, as if he remembered it was me, the all-too-inexperienced Kris, he was manhandling.
We were both winded when he pulled back and our eyes locked. He looked at me like he saw me for the first time, or saw something he hadn’t anticipated. Maybe I was actually a decent kisser, and he was as amazed as I was? Whatever it was, Alec was pleasantly surprised.
He took my hands in his, and pulled me from the semi-reclined position he had pushed me into. “Nothing at all like I expected.”
Why did he keep saying that? I shifted to see his face better. He stared over my shoulder, beyond me and the playground, but I didn’t think he actually saw anything. His eyes were dark and full of a turmoil I didn’t understand. In that moment, I glimpsed a part of him that ran much deeper than his playful, flirty exterior, and I knew that Alec had secrets.
“You alright in there?” I asked him.
His eyes shifted to mine and he grinned. “You ever do something you didn’t want to do?”
My throat constricted. “Like...kiss me?” Did he regret it already? It had only been thirty seconds ago.
“No, I wanted to do that.” He shook his head like he thought I was crazy for thinking that. “Are you kidding me? No, I’m definitely not talking about that.”
“Taking your clothes off?” I teased. “Because I won’t make you.”
His eyes twinkled when they leveled on mine. “Not talking about that eit
her.”
I didn’t press. He would share what he wanted, when he wanted, and with whom he wanted. I knew how it was. Only one person knew my secret, and he was the secret. If Alec wanted to tell me his, he would.
“Let’s get out of here,” he finally said.
“And go where exactly?”
Alec lifted his eyebrow and shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “There are a few places I would like to go...” The look he gave me fed the fire inside of me that his kiss had started. “But what I’m going to do is drive you home,” he continued slowly, like it took a tremendous effort to say the words, and smiled shyly. “That’s how much I like you.”
“You like me so much you’re going to take me home?” Part of me was curious to know what else he’d had in mind. A bigger part of me knew I wasn’t prepared to find out.
“Hey, this is huge for me. Don’t make me question myself.” He slipped an arm around my shoulders, and led me back in the direction of the party.
I managed to find Callie, seated suspiciously close to Josh, and I wondered if they had finally realized what everyone else has known for months. I wanted to ask, but stuck to informing her of Alec’s intentions to drive me home, and promised to call her in the morning with more details. She grinned at me, and I knew we were going to have a nice long chat tomorrow, full of juicy stuff, and this time, I would have something to add.
“Ready?” Alec asked when I found him waiting at the mouth of the trail that led to the parking lot. It was a narrow poorly lit path, bordered by a tall rock wall on one side, and a flimsy wooden fence on the other. It wouldn’t do much to prevent someone from stumbling off the side of the cliff that got freakishly high as the path ascended to the parking lot. Being as afraid of heights as I was, I secretly hated this trail.
I jutted a thumb over my shoulder. “Didn’t you come with friends?”
“No, I met them here. I drove myself.”
“Ah, I get to ride in style tonight.”
Alec had a silver Mustang with black accents, a black leather interior, and a big engine. It was much nicer than Callie’s Civic or the junker Gran let me borrow from time to time. I loved it, loved riding in it, and wanted one just like it, though I knew that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Or never. I had given up trying to figure out how Alec managed to afford it. Won the lottery? Rich family? Drug dealer? Hit man? I was afraid to ask.
