by C L Walker
I wasn’t going to be won over with lies, well, unless they were Micah’s.
They sound a lot better when spoken from his lips…
“You were saying?” I asked, growing impatient.
I looked over his shoulder as Micah walked around the corner, his eyes went immediately to Devin and a dark look crossed his face.
Sai was right in thinking that Micah did not like Devin, it had become more than apparent by the look of irritation that appeared on Micah’s face every time he saw him.
“Will you go to the party with me, I could pick you up?” Devin asked, before he turned to look behind him to see what I was staring at and when he turned back around his face was no longer joyful.
I pulled my eyes from Micah’s. “I’m sorry–” I said, but I looked away again without finishing when Micah winked at me from behind Devin. I squinted my eyes and regarded him with suspicion, that wink had been oddly flirtatious especially when paired with the boyish smile on his face.
“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” I said loudly, so Micah knew I didn’t find him amusing.
“I didn’t even say anything.” He sounded way too cheerful for my tastes before he disappeared into the library.
You didn’t have to!
I turned to Devin once more and found that he looked defeated. “I already have plans to go with Sai, he’s the only reason I decided to go in the first place because he thinks he needs me as a wing woman.”
He nodded and with Micah gone he seemed to brighten before my eyes. I had to give him credit for how quickly he bounced back. The guy was resilient, and I admired his courage in pursuing me even if I wasn’t into him.
But that aside, I was trying my best to make it clear to him without saying it out loud, that I wasn’t interested in being anything but his friend. I was hopeful that he would give up and be okay with being friends with me instead.
“That’s cool, I’ll see you there then,” he said.
“For sure!” I smiled because I couldn’t help but want to make sure I didn’t make him feel bad.
He smiled in return and put his fist out, so I bumped it with mine and laughed because it seemed cheesy.
“See you tomorrow.”
After I said bye, I made my way through the library and when I opened the door to the computer lab, I made my way to the back corner that Micah and I always sat in.
“Hey, princess,” he said.
“Hey, loser.” I took a seat to his right, next to the wall as it was my preferred spot.
He snorted as he shook his mouse to wake his computer up. “You aren’t holding yourself back anymore I see?”
“Nope.”
“Good for you,” he said. “But I’m sure it won’t last long.”
I stopped typing into the address bar and turned my head towards him slowly as I schooled my features into something that I hoped conveyed my disdain for him.
“Do you have to be rude every second of every day?”
He turned to meet my eyes. “Yes, but only for you.”
“You know what, that’s great, because all things considered I really needed a vampy boy calling me out on everything I do, exploiting my insecurities and generally making my life more complicated than it needs to be.”
He laughed. “I see you’ve had some time to think about this.”
“I have.”
He licked his lips and watched me for longer than was comfortable. “You could always ignore me.”
“Ha!” I said loudly. “You are the single most difficult person to ignore on this planet!”
I turned back to my computer and took a deep breath because I was nearing hysterics again over nothing.
“I didn’t realize I was on your mind so much.” I thought it best to remain silent on that one. “But that makes sense since you want me.”
I was shocked, the words he spoke and the confidence in which he spoke them was alarming.
“Who would want some asshole demon?” I hissed.
“Right? It totally says so much about you,” he said in a girlish tone to mock me.
“Did. You. Bring. Your. Piece. On. Stalin?” I asked because a change in subject was necessary before I lost my shit.
Rather than answer me he grabbed his backpack and pulled out a piece of paper and set it over my keyboard.
I looked it over and felt annoyed that his handwriting was nice. “Is there anything you are not good at?”
“Of course, there are things I’m bad at, don’t be ridiculous.”
I smashed my finger down on the backspace button and got rid of a sentence. “Especially at being human.”
He sighed. “I’m not bad at being a human just because I am a cursed one, I do everything you do and then some, so I’d say that actually makes me better in some regard.”
“You aren’t better than anyone!”
He put a hand on my shoulder to get my attention because I was beating on the keyboard instead of looking at him. “Sorry, that’s not what I meant.” He let his hand fall before he continued. “I meant in terms of my physical abilities, I naturally have one up on humans, but I didn’t mean that I’m better in general than you or in a way one human would say to another. We are all flawed.”
“I’d believe that if you hadn’t called me a weak human.”
“Well, comparatively you are weak, but I never said I was better than you.”
I turned away again. “You implied it.”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t. You are projecting your own insecurities because I have never once looked at you and thought you were beneath me.”
“Why do you always have to call me out on everything, I’m sick of it. You don’t know me, and you haven’t tried to understand me.”
“You have no idea how wrong you are,” he said.
“If I have no idea, it’s because you don’t tell me anything. You want to hold all the power and push me around like your little plaything.”
He laughed, it was deep, masculine and entirely too sexy, and it lasted for entirely too long. I had never heard him laugh like that, or for that long, and if it weren’t for the fact that I was pissed at him it would have made me smile.
“Oh, that’s good, too good.” He dabbed at his water eyes. “Sky, you don’t know yet what it means to be my plaything, but you will, that much has become all too obvious to me.”
My cheeks were on fire as I silently tried to decipher his meaning. There were three possibilities I could think of, so he was either going to do one of the following:
1. Bully me? But he already did that.
2. Eat me? Did demons play with their food before they ate?
3. Or… No… He couldn’t mean to make me his plaything in a sexual way, could he?
I gave him a sideways glance to find that he was staring at me.
“I just don’t think its avoidable anymore, you know what I mean?” he asked with a promising smile.
“No, I don’t.” I shook my head rapidly. “Not at all actually.”
“We tried though,” he continued as if I knew what he was talking about. “It was a nice effort, but things have gone too far.”
“Too far?” My hand reached for my neck which made him roll his eyes.
“Please don’t tell me that’s the possibility you’ve settled with?” He pulled my hand away from my neck and held onto my wrist.
“How do you know I was considering the possibilities?” I asked full of suspicion once again.
He slid his hand down from my wrist slowly, burning a path across my palm and over my fingers. “It seemed like the natural thing for you to do after I said something like that.”
“So, you said it just to get a rise out of me like everything else that you say?” I asked, the panic over his words evident in my tone. “You don’t like me and yet you’re implying that…wait what are you saying? You’ve said a lot of weird and contradictory things today.”
The bell rang clearly surprising both of us because we ha
d barely gotten anything done. We gathered our things and I kept looking over at him because I was waiting for him to respond.
He walked ahead of me out of the library and once we were in the hallway, he kept walking without looking back.
“Micah, answer me for once!” I shouted. “You can’t walk away, not again!”
“I meant what I said.” He turned to give me a serious look. “The lies will stop, and things are going to be very different between you and me.”
“I don’t know what that means but I’m not interested, and I don’t take kindly to threats. Whatever game you are trying to play it isn’t going to work.”
“It’s not a game anymore,” he said.
“Sure, ‘it’s not a game’ says the guy who won’t answer my questions for no reason other than to be intentionally obstinate.”
Are you sure you don’t like me?
‘Do you want me to like you?’
No.
What would he have said if I had answered differently?
“I just don’t know how to act with you most of the time…I don’t know what to say or where to begin.” We stopped and we held each other’s gazes as his words resonated with something inside of me. He opened his mouth to say more but someone yelled down the hallway and snapped us out of the daze we shared.
I turned quickly to make my escape because I couldn’t deal with how that look in his eyes had made me feel.
“Later, babe,” he called out.
I put my head down and zipped around the corner.
I clearly needed to double down because I was slipping, and I was afraid that before long I would be volunteering to be his plaything, whatever that meant.
Seventeen
Skylar
“How do I look?” Sai asked, and he twirled around once after throwing on the last piece of his party ensemble which was a fedora hat.
I looked at him with distaste. “Unless you plan on wearing a button up and suspenders, you’re going to have to lose the hat.”
“I knew it was too much.” He took it off and tossed it like a frisbee onto his bed. “T-shirt and jeans, it is.”
“Hey, your T-shirt collection is impressive, it’s even getting put in the yearbook this year. I’d say that’s an accomplishment. People will remember you for that.”
He smoothed down his mashup Deadpool and Star Wars T-shirt with a smug look. “What can I say, it’s a lady catcher.”
I laughed. “For sure.”
“What do you think people will remember you for?” he asked.
I considered his question and looked down at my thighs and felt a rush again over the fact that I was wearing a tiny cotton and polyester black skirt. “I’ll probably get ‘most subservient,’ or something equally unimpressive.”
“Being agreeable isn’t a bad trait in a person. But if you feel like you’ll fade into the background it’s only because you made it that way. People like you, that’s why they continue to talk to you and invite you to hang out despite your constant refusals.”
My eyes rounded as the conversation took a dark turn. “Let’s not get all serious here, it’s just the yearbook and I know I am well liked. Besides, you make it sound like I don’t talk to anyone at all and that’s not true.”
He smiled and ruffled my hair as if I was a child.
“I know.” He checked his hair in the mirror. “I just want you to have a little fun, so I sincerely hope that once you leave your mom’s place that you let yourself go, I mean go as in crazy, Skylar, be wild and daring. Leave this town with a bang so they will all remember who you are aside from the poor girl with the drunk mom.”
I stood up from where I sat on his bed and put my hands on my hips, renewed determination flowed through my veins and for a moment I felt like I was capable of anything. “You know what, I’m going to do exactly that.”
When I thought of stepping out of my comfort zone, I immediately saw an image of Micah in my mind with inviting eyes and a mouth that was finally shut. It was perfectly enticing, the sort of trouble I wanted to get into.
I always knew that there was something wild in him but rather than scare me, it compelled me to let go. If anyone were going to force me out of my comfort zone, I knew it would be him because he was already doing it every time we interacted simply because he pushed me to fight back.
Sai put his hand on my shoulder and brought me back to the moment as he said, “That’s the spirit, now let's go to a party and not be nerds for once.”
We arrived at Jesse’s at eight o’clock as the last light of day faded away. There were cars lined around a fountain in the middle of his driveway and the house was dark.
We were told to go through the back gate so that’s where we headed. When we reached the back yard, I was pleasantly surprised to see it was lit around the pool with paper lanterns that created a soft romantic ambiance. There were chairs, a couch and blankets scattered around the pool and beyond the deck on the lawn.
The loveliest part was the lanterns that were strung all the way down to their private dock on the lake that bathed the pathway in soft yellow light.
A bonfire was going by the water that caught my eye as people danced around the flames. I loved fire, it was beautiful and dangerous, a rare chaos that could be contained. It reminded me of Micah, although I wasn’t yet sure that his chaos could be kept in check.
“I know you guys said you’d be here, but I almost didn’t believe it, I haven’t seen ya’ll at a party in forever,” Jesse said as he approached us with a welcoming smile.
Bethany followed behind him and she smiled at Sai before she reached over and pulled me into a hug. “I’m glad you came, Skylar.”
I hugged her back awkwardly before I pulled away. She had always been nice to me, but she had never tried to talk to me in class either, in fact she rarely acknowledged me, so I found it confusing that she decided to go for a hug.
“Thanks,” I said in a tone that hinted at my confusion.
But then I remembered I wanted people to remember the real me, the one that had been so carefully hidden almost all my life. I was more than the girl who lost her brother and her dad, I was more than the girl whose mother beat her, and I was certainly more than the girl who was almost raped.
I looked down at Bethany’s dark green sweater dress that turned sheer just above her knees and thought that it looked warm and perfect for a night partying outside.
“Your dress is pretty,” I said.
She said thanks before she gestured towards a hat that sat on a table. “You need to put your name on a piece of paper and stick it in the hat. The boys will start picking in about an hour or so.”
I looked to the hat quickly and back again. “For what?” I questioned Sai with a look because I didn’t sign up for weird stuff.
He shook his head and affected an innocence that was beyond him, at least in that moment as he so obviously knew exactly what was going on.
“It’s our version of seven minutes in heaven except you have to kiss in front of everyone.” She smirked into her cup and her gaze flitted away from mine to Sai and she winked at him. “It’s innocent enough.”
Suspicious.
She walked away and I leaned in to whisper to Sai as I stared at the offending baseball cap that sat there suggestively next to a bowl of fruit punch that was probably laced with alcohol.
“I can’t do that.” It would be too embarrassing.
“Yes, you can.” He peeled my hands apart because I was clenching them in front of my body. “And you will.”
“But…I don’t want to.” I looked at him and the hat again. “Why did she wink at you? I feel like I’m being conspired against and I don’t like it.”
“Don’t worry about it. Make your mark and don’t separate yourself from everyone tonight.”
Oh, no.
That was not my idea of fitting in. I thought showing up to the party and engaging in small talk with my fellow classmates was enough. I couldn’t kiss any of them and not b
e awkward about it, it was impossible for me considering I had never been kissed.
“Who thought a kissing game was a good idea anyway?” I asked. “Certainly not me.”
“Obviously, everyone aside from you,” he said, and he stepped over to the hat and scribbled something on a piece of paper and threw it in.
“It’s only boys drawing, so are you trying to tell me something?”
“I’m trying to tell you that you’re playing. Senior year is almost over, it’s your last chance.” He grabbed my arm and started pulling me away and I struggled against him as I realized he had put my name in the hat.
“Not like this!” I shouted, and he and Jesse both laughed at me.
“You’ll get over it. Try having a drink and you’ll feel better about all of this,” Jesse said.
“If you have to drink for something to be okay then it’s definitely not okay.”
Sai pushed me across the deck and down a short pathway to the pool house that served as a bar where there were three tables set up inside that were covered in bottles of alcohol.
I tried to ignore the couple that was making out on the sofa, but they were really going at it. The girl licked the side of his face from his chin to nearly his eyeball and I had to cover my mouth with my hand to suppress my laughter and Sai did the same.
He cleared his throat and stepped over to the table and poured us both drinks. He handed me a red cup. “Soda for you.” He sipped his own drink. “Damn it’s strong. Two of these and I’ll be good.”
“Be careful, you haven’t had alcohol in a long time, and you don’t want to lose control of yourself in front of your new girl.” I looked at his cup with distaste, it was ninety percent rum with a splash of coke. He was getting straight to business.
“I will. I promise.”
I believed it because if there was one person that I trusted to always drink responsibly it was him. Well, he was responsible if you ignored the fact that he and everyone else at the party was underage.
I wanted to try drinking with everyone else, but I was scared to. I was scared I would go past the limits like my mother, because I didn’t ever want to hurt anybody. But it didn’t stop me from looking at the bottles reluctantly or from considering that maybe, just maybe I’d come back.
