by Amanda Wals
"Come on, dance with me." She called to Margaret, knowing full well that I was not a dancer by any stretch of the imagination. I chuckled to myself as the two of them playfully danced around the studio.
I went back to looking at the painting in front of me. Some of the lyrics stuck in my head on a loop, as the song kept going.
"All you ever wanted
All you ever need
Your brand new history"
This happened sometimes when I was painting, and focusing on snippets of lines that resonated with me just added to the mood I hoped to convey. The song repeated the lyrics over and over as it came to a close. Amy danced with Margaret, both of them smiling and laughing as I watched, smiling from behind my canvas. The sun shown through the window casting a long shadow from my baby sister's beautiful bikini clad body as I watched her move gracefully to and fro around the room. Sometimes the perfect song at the perfect time can say more than you ever can on your own, I thought to myself. Amy looked over at me as she danced, her eyes as blue as the sea, and smiled warmly. I smiled reflexively in return, and silently mouthed the words "I love you."
THE END
* * *
Under My Skin
* * *
Part One.
* * *
"The whole situation was just so fucked up, man." I rolled the nearly empty beer bottle slowly between my hands. "I know I should shut up about it, but I just can't believe she did that."
"You can't believe Whitney had a threesome?" Kevin asked as he raised his own beer and took a long swallow.
"No. I mean I can't believe she would do it behind my back. Cheat on me. I trusted her." I slumped back in the booth, leaving my beer on the table. I was buzzed enough for the moment.
"You could have joined in, ya know? Turned that threesome into a full-scale orgy." He smirked at me, setting his empty beer bottle on the table among the others that were scattered in front of us like over-sized chess pieces.
"I'm being serious, asshole." I cut him a dirty look. "I realize you think with your dick all the time, but for once in your life, try thinking with the supposedly bigger brain."
"Supposedly?"
"Well in your case, I have my doubts," I grumbled.
"Just trying to cheer you up a little. I mean, hell, I don't know what I would do. The situation sounds hot, but I know it sucked," he paused, "or, she sucked at least."
I ran a hand through my hair in frustration and tried not to reward his wisecrack with the chuckle he was hoping for. I was angry, and this clown was sitting here making light of the whole thing. Best friend or not, he was wearing on my patience.
A few hours before, I had walked into my girlfriend's apartment and found her on her knees blowing a guy while a girl knelt behind her with a strap-on. I stood there in a stunned silence, watching the girl sliding the dildo into Whitney's drenched pussy. The guy had Whitney's head in his hands and was intently guiding her mouth up and down his cock.
Finally, I gathered my bearings. I dropped the pizza I'd brought with me, turned and walked back out of the apartment. I had started my car and was backing out of the parking spot when I saw Whitney rushing across the grass in front of the apartment complex, having hurriedly thrown on some clothes from the look of it.
"Ryan!" She tried to flag me down, but I drove away without looking back. There was nothing to say as far as I was concerned.
After driving straight to my favorite bar, having determined I needed a drink, I had found that Kevin was already there.
"Another round?" Kevin asked as I swallowed the last of my beer and set it next to the collection of empties.
"I'd better not. Last thing I need is a DUI to really put the icing on the shit cake of my evening."
"I'm gonna have one more, lightweight. Be right back." He slid out of the booth and headed to the bar.
My phone started vibrating on the table next to me. Glancing down, I saw it was Whitney again. She'd done an admirable job of trying to drain my phone battery for the last couple of hours. We had been dating for nearly a year and it had seemed like everything was going well.
Until she cheated on me, of course.
* * *
At twenty-one years old, I hadn't had all that many girlfriends. There had been maybe a half dozen girls over the past few years. None of the girls I'd dated had been as serious as it had been with Whitney. I had come into the dating scene a little late. Growing up an overweight kid who would rather stay indoors and play video games than participate in sports, I'd never been one to catch the eye of the girls until the end of high school.
My freshman year of high school, my dad had walked out on his marriage leaving my mom, my sister, and I behind. There had been a lot of arguments between them before that, so it wasn't exactly a surprise when it happened. After the divorce, we didn't see much of him. He was around once in a while, but that quickly dwindled to a phone call on our birthdays or major holidays. Once he shacked up with some broad only about five years older than me even the phone calls stopped. The last I had heard, he had married her, and she was pregnant. That had been a couple of years ago.
My kid sister, Skye, had a harder time dealing with the divorce than I did. She had only been eleven at the time and began slipping into depression, having nightmares, and so on. Mom was lost in her own fog of bitterness and anger for a while, so I saw it as my brotherly duty to spend more time with Skye and try to keep her distracted. I spent countless evenings beating her ass at Mario Kart or whatever other games I could find that we might both like.
I mostly took the divorce in stride. I was just grateful for the peace by that point, after all the fighting that had been going on. It was no secret he had cheated on mom more than once and that made him a scumbag in my books. In retrospect, it was probably part of the reason why I considered cheating to be an unforgivable betrayal in a relationship. That and, you know, basic human fucking decency.
With mom struggling to pay the bills and raise two kids by herself, I felt guilty asking her for anything. As soon as I was old enough, I found a part-time job after school and on the weekends working at a big home improvement warehouse and gave part of my pay to help mom with bills. Even with my help, she still probably would have lost the house if it hadn't been for my grandfather sending her money from time to time. Hauling lumber and stacking it in people's trucks all weekend and most nights did a hell of a job burning off the weight and I soon found myself in much better shape than I had ever been.
Now that I had a slim, fairly muscular build, girls actually started to pay attention when I would get the nerve up to say hello to them. I was nearly six feet tall, with short brown hair and even browner eyes. I'd been told that I was attractive, but I didn't see it. We are always our own worst critics, after all.
* * *
Kevin returned to the booth with a couple of beers and snapped me out of my moment of reflection. No sooner had he slid one of the beers over to me, than my phone started vibrating again.
"You gonna answer that?" He asked as he laid a laminated number card on the table.
"Got nothing to say to her," I replied, glancing at the card and realizing it was well past midnight. I hadn't eaten since lunch. "What did you order?"
"Burger and fries. Don't worry, I got your mopey ass a burger."
I reached for my wallet, but he waved his hand dismissively.
"You cover lunch at work tomorrow and we're good." Kevin worked with me in the lumber department.
"Speaking of which," I looked at the time, "After we eat, I gotta head out. I have the mid-shift."
"Yeah, about that. I just talked to Scott and he's switching shifts with you. You'll close with me tomorrow." Kevin pointed at the extra beer he'd brought back. "And you, my friend, need more beer."
Fuck it, I thought and snatched up the bottle.
* * *
I woke to the sound of my phone ringing. My head was pounding. With monumental effort, I raised my head to look at the phone. Whitney's name s
howed on the screen. I tossed the phone to the floor where it slid harmlessly across the carpet and pulled my pillow over my head. She was the last person I wanted to talk to. Probably ever.
After trying for a while to ignore the headache and pray that sleep would come again, I turned my head to see that there were two bottles of water and a bottle of aspirin sitting on the nightstand. Written in black marker one of the bottles of water were the words "Drink me." Two of the aspirin were out laying on a napkin that had "Eat Me" written on it. Both were written in my little sister's unmistakable bubbly handwriting.
By the time I climbed out of the shower a few hours later, it was pretty obvious that work was out of the question. I had never been much of a heavy drinker and my ass was kicked. I called out sick at work, something I never did, and crawled back into bed. Besides, being awake meant thinking about Whitney. Sleep was better.
I didn't open my eyes again until I heard the door creak open. Skye walked in carrying a brown paper bag. She was wearing her dark blue uniform for the pharmacy where she worked part-time.
"Are you hungry?" She held out the bag.
I sat up and scooted back against the wall where a headboard should be if I had ever bothered to get one.
"Thanks," I replied taking the bag and pulling out a container of lo mien. I had a serious and well-known addiction to Asian food.
"Wanna talk?" Skye tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear, watching me shove noodles in my mouth with chopsticks.
"Not really." I had been able to keep it together around Kevin last night at the bar. I wasn't so sure of my chances at home.
My phone started ringing again and she knelt to pick it up from where I had tossed it earlier.
"It's Whitney." She said, holding the phone out to me. I took the phone from her and turned the ringer off.
"Wow. Ignoring the Witless Wonder. That's a new one."
"Yeah. That's over." I replied, setting the phone on the nightstand.
Skye stood a couple of feet from the bed giving me a peculiar look. She was a short girl, a couple of inches shy of five feet, with a slender build, dark hair that she kept in a loosely layered bob cut that ended just below her chin, and large, expressive brown eyes. Up until a knee injury years back, she had shown a lot of promise as a gymnast and continued to keep herself in shape. The scars from her knee surgery, which I thought were pretty minor, caused her to be quite self-conscious and she often hid them behind thigh high socks and stockings. She retained that graceful way of moving, almost fluid in motion, that you see in dancers sometimes.
I munched on my noodles and waited for the inevitable barrage of questions that was surely coming about why my relationship ended.
"Well, I guess that explains why you were slamming doors at three this morning and dropped a bottle of rum in the hall."
"Oh crap, did I break it?" I winced, not even remembering buying a bottle.
"Nah," She pointed at my desk where a half-empty bottle of Bacardi stood.
"Sorry for the noise."
"S'okay. I was just worried about you is all. Did you get sick?"
I shook my head, remembering that I'd seen a trash can next to the bed when I'd gotten up to shower earlier.
"Thanks, though." I motioned to the can.
"Better that than having to explain to mom why you had to rent a carpet scrubber." She gave me a half shrug and a small smile. Then the smile vanished.
"One more thing," She began in a tone that sounded suspiciously like our mother. "If you ever get that shitfaced again, you call me. I had to move your car this morning before mom got in and saw that you were halfway on the lawn. You know you could have been arrested? Or killed?"
"I know. I didn't mean to drink that much." I hung my head, feeling a bit ashamed. I knew better than to drive like that. It wasn't like me at all.
Skye stepped forward and ruffled my hair with a smirk. She was enjoying this a little too much, I thought.
"You really done with her?" She asked.
I nodded as I had a mouthful of food.
"Good."
"Good?" I said after a swallow.
"She's a whore."
"She's not a..." I reflexively started to defend her but caught myself too late. Damn it, Skye had me. Not that I wanted to admit it.
I glanced up at her to see the grin creeping across her face again that she quickly tried to mask.
"It's for the best." She shrugged, shifting her weight to one side. "I hated the bitch."
"You hate every girl I go out with."
"Not my fault that your taste in girls sucks," Skye replied as she retreated to the doorway.
"At the moment, I can't argue with that." I sighed.
"Look, I'm gonna take a quick shower and change. Do you want to watch a movie with me after?"
"I guess," I replied, not really feeling like watching a movie but feeling like I would be an asshole to tell her no after she brought me dinner.
She stood with her back to me, staring at the door frame where her hand was resting, thumbing a rough spot in the paint thoughtfully.
"What?" I asked.
"You okay with it? The breakup?" She wasn't looking at me.
"It sucks, but I guess it's better that I found out before I did something really goddamned stupid." I scratched absently at my eyebrow, trying to shake the urge to choke up.
"Like what?"
"Like ask her to transfer to Austin with me," I replied, "I had been thinking about it."
"You deserve better than her, you know." Skye continued running her thumb over the rough spot on the door frame for another few moments, not looking at me. Finally, dropping her hand from the wall, she glanced back my way over her shoulder as she vanished into the hallway.
* * *
Skye had always seemed to excel at everything she set her mind to. She had graduated high school in the top of her class, was one of the leads on the school's debate team and had been on her way to becoming one of the best gymnasts in the county until her injury in the seventh grade. Her accomplishments were frequently the topic of discussion at family gatherings where the extended family would sing her praises. Hell, she even got merit raises at the pharmacy.
We had been pretty close as kids, but less so by the time I was in high school. I was working a lot in addition to school and didn't have as much time to hang out as I used to. By the time my senior year came around, I was managing to go out on the occasional date as well.
She had made herself a holy terror in my life that year. She was a freshman at the time, and I felt like every time I would start talking to a girl, Skye would come along and interfere. There was always some crisis or something with her that required my attention when I was trying to get a date. It felt like she had turned cock-blocking into an art form and had annoyed the living hell out of me. Thankfully, she seemed to find her groove by the end of the year, and her personal emergencies had tapered off.
Skye was focused on her education and extracurricular activities to boost her resume. She didn't date much, if at all, to my knowledge. She certainly was more than attractive enough to catch male attention. I knew of several guys that had been interested in her, but she had always turned them down. She had even skipped her senior prom last year, which our mother had given her a good deal of grief over. As far as I knew, most of her social time was spent with her friends, Heather and Vicky.
Her hard work at school had paid off, and she had been awarded a full college scholarship. While I had to bust my ass studying to keep my grants and scholarships, she seemed to breeze through her classes. I secretly hoped that college was going to kick her ass a little and make her work for it, but I was proud of her.
* * *
I was just polishing off my dinner when she returned. She had changed into a pink pair of sleep shorts with black trim and an old black t-shirt with a Super Mario mushroom on it. Dropping the pillow she had brought with her on the floor in front of my TV, she bent over to retrieve the PlayStation controller fro
m the shelf beneath.
As she bent, her shorts stretched tight against the roundness of her ass. Noticing the way the fabric hugged to her enticing curves inspired thoughts I absolutely should not have been having. I forced myself to look away, tossing the remnants of my dinner in the trash can while chastising myself internally.
"What do you wanna watch?" She asked as the Netflix logo popped up on the screen.
"Anything that doesn't have to do with relationships," I replied.
She flopped down on her pillow and scrolled through the options for a while before finally settling on an old horror film we had both seen a dozen times. I liked the film but was too distracted to pay attention.
My lack of attentiveness was not lost on Skye and she spent the duration of the film gently weaseling the details out of me about the breakup. By the time I had finished telling the story, I think Skye may have been more upset than I was. There were some pretty colorful threats about what would happen to Whitney if Skye ever had the opportunity.
The conversation eventually drifted away from Whitney. We talked most of the night, leaving me with a sneaking suspicion that she was trying to keep me distracted. Intentional or not, it worked fairly well, and the world didn't seem quite so bleak by the time her energy finally gave out.
I couldn't help grinning at her asleep on my floor. She was laying on her stomach with her head to the side, mouth wide open. One of her legs was drawn up and an arm was stretched out above her head. If it wasn't for the soft snoring sounds coming from her, she could easily have passed for a corpse.
Chuckling to myself, I pulled my blanket from the bed and covered her up. Crawling back into bed, I shut my eyes and tried to block out the snoring from the floor.
* * *
When I got in from work the next afternoon, I found my sister and a couple of her friends lounging around the living room watching television. Heather was a cute redhead who had played softball in high school and had the athletic build to show for it. The other girl, Vicky, would be cute as hell if she didn't have such a serious spray tan addiction that gave her skin an appearance, not unlike the color of canned carrots.
