In the Garden of Discontent

by Lily White

  “You planning on kicking my ass?”

  “No.” I reached out for the joint he was smoking. “Can I have some of that?”

  Surprise rounded his eyes, but he pushed away from the wall and handed the joint to me. I inhaled deeply and coughed a little before inhaling again. Mom was right about that much, at least; the numbness made it easier.

  “I heard you’re Noah’s girl now?” Kyle’s finger ran up my leg. “That’s too bad because I was hoping we could pick up where we left off. You looked like you liked it.”

  Taking another hit, I held the smoke in and handed the joint back to him. My head felt heavy and dizzy in a way, my body relaxing as I made peace with what I had to do.

  It would be easy, especially with Kyle. He was looking for any way to get back at Noah, so much so that paying for it wouldn’t be too much.

  “That’s why I came back here,” I lied.

  His eyes locked to mine, tiny slits from what he was smoking.

  “Oh yeah?” His hand grabbed my thigh and slid up higher.

  I clenched my teeth but accepted it.

  “Except you’re not getting anything for free. You want to fuck me, that’s fine. But I charge for everything I do, and you can tell that to Emmett and James as well.”

  Kyle tilted his head in question.

  “What will your boyfriend think?”

  I spread my legs and let him shove a hand up the inside of my thigh, my jeans the only thing keeping him from touching me skin to skin.

  “My boyfriend doesn’t have to know. In fact, he’s not allowed to know and if he finds out, this deal is off.”

  He was quiet for a second, took another hit without pulling his gaze from mine. After exhaling, he smiled.

  “How much to suck my dick?”

  “Twenty.”

  His smile widened.

  “Do you promise to go kiss your boyfriend after just so he can taste what I leave behind?”

  My eyes clenched closed, and I fought not to punch him. “Yes.”

  Kyle moved away and pulled a twenty out of his pocket to hand to me. “Then get on your knees, Ens.”

  I shook my head.

  “Not here. Not where we can get caught.”

  One nod of his head. “I know a place.”

  Dropping the joint to the floor, he crushed it with the toe of his boot and waited for me to grab my bag before leading me out of the bathroom. We weaved through several more halls and out an exterior door, the sun shining down on my skin like it was marking me as a whore and a liar.

  Walking out past the gym and around a set of bleachers, Kyle led me to a patch of trees that were a little off campus and leaned up against one of them.

  I stood in front of him, uncertain.

  “Well, you gonna earn that twenty or are we going to stare at each other for the next hour?”

  Hating him, hating this, hating myself and especially hating my mom, I dropped my bag to the ground and walked up to him, my fingers working the button of his pants while my knuckles brushed the bulge of his erection.

  Memories flashed through my head that I fought not to see.

  A swaying light bulb overhead.

  A digital clock set in front of me.

  Thin, wooden walls that shook, and a cat piss floor where I would lay my head.

  I forced them all away, and I dropped his pants and reached into his boxers to feel what he planned to give to me.

  My fingers shook over the warm skin, but I dropped to my knees and stripped his boxers down, my head tilting to look up at him.

  “Suck it, little girl. Do this right, and I’ll make sure you have plenty of customers.”

  Swallowing, I gripped him in my hand and opened my mouth, his dick sliding over my tongue as his fingers curled into my hair.

  “Fuck...” he hissed above me, his hips moving back and forth, my throat closing with the threat of vomit, but I held it back, like I’d been taught.

  “Yeah, Ens, just like that. Son of a bitch, you take it deep.”

  Words whispered in my head, a thousand of them colliding together until they were branded over every inch of every bone inside me, a chisel tapping away, that thing inside me swallowing every word as it grew large and solid.

  Such a little slut...

  Pretty as a doll...

  A dirty fucking whore, but I like it...

  Thankfully, Kyle didn’t say anything. He was too busy getting off, too busy enjoying my mouth when I should be punching him in the face. Except as his movements sped up and I took it like a pro, he finally did speak, and I almost bit down, but doing so would ruin my only source of income.

  “Noah’s a lucky fucking guy if this is the shit he’s getting every night.”

  He finished after the last word left his mouth, a thick, salty taste running down my throat.

  Pulling away, I looked up at Kyle to see his sick grin.

  “How much to ride you?” he asked while pulling up his pants.

  “Fifty.”

  He laughed. “And in back? Do we get to choose the hole?”

  “A hundred.”

  I would drive the prices higher, making it so I only had to do this once or twice a week to make enough to pay my way.

  Kyle’s grin stretched wider.

  “It’s a deal, Ens. I’ll spread the word, but make sure it’s kept private. We wouldn’t want you getting too used up too quickly.”

  Aw, such a gentleman, this guy.

  Leaning down to snatch his bag up from the ground, he waited while I pushed to my feet and grabbed my own.

  Turning to him, I asked, “Why are you just standing there?”

  His eyes rounded, his surprise at the nasty tone of my voice obvious. “I was going to walk you back.”

  I shook my head.

  “Go on without me. We have an arrangement, that doesn’t mean we’re friends. I still hate your fucking guts.”

  “Harsh,” he laughed, but waved his hand out like it was no skin off his back. “You’ll like me eventually.”

  As he walked off, I listened to the crunch of leaves under his feet and refused to look at him. But then he stopped, the space around us going silent for a few seconds.

  “Hey, Ens.”

  “What?” I still refused to turn. Still refused to look at him.

  “Be sure to kiss Noah real deep at lunch. I’ll be watching to see how much he likes it.”

  I wished for a hole to open up in the ground and swallow him. Wished for a tree to fall and crush his skull. But none of those things happened.

  Something ugly was growing inside me, and all I wanted to do was run to Noah so he could wrap my secret with his to bury it in the ground.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Noah

  December 20, 1996

  Girls are weird.

  It didn’t take me long to figure that out since I was practically surrounded by them. I guess my mother was normal, a hard worker who deserved happiness. But Ensley?

  Fuck, I needed a cipher to figure out everything going through her head. One minute she was normal and the next so freaking distant that I was constantly afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing.

  Over the past few months since she returned to school, everything at night was the usual. She would sneak over to my house after tucking the kids into bed, would crawl through my window and check the alarm clock, would curl up beside me while I did homework or we watched a movie. She would sleep with her body wrapped around mine, tucked in place where she fit so perfectly.

  But she wasn’t the same. And I didn’t know why.

  To make it worse, she would remind me every night that she wasn’t my girlfriend, would stare at me with no uncertainty in her eyes, driving the point home by making me repeat the words back to her.

  As if they weren’t breaking my heart.

  As if they didn’t mean I wasn’t good enough for her.

  What was so wrong with me that she refused to see me as anything more than a friend? Had the sex bee
n that bad? Had that moment meant nothing?

  At school, Ensley was missing a lot of her classes, and she would walk up to sit beside me at lunch, a wretched expression on her face as she opened the bag I always brought for her and pulled out the food I knew was her favorite. Barely touching it, she would stare off into the distance not saying much.

  What worried me most was that she smelled like pot smoke. I knew Ens better than that, knew she didn’t use drugs, but I was afraid she was spiraling out of control while refusing to talk to me about it.

  She was going to talk tonight. Whether she liked it or not. I would confront her and corner her and hold her down if I had to.

  Like clockwork, she crawled through my window, her lips stretching into a smile as she walked across the room to check my alarm. Satisfied she’d wake up at exactly seven, she raced over to my bed to sit down beside me.

  I was leaning against my headboard wearing nothing but a pair of thin sweatpants. It was December, and still the Florida heat was creeping into my house. I hated this state because it was living at the gates of Hell, even in winter.

  “Hey,” Ensley said. It was what she always said the moment she saw me. Hey and everything was supposed to be okay, even when it wasn’t.

  Shoving my books off the bed, I dropped my empty notebook on top of them because I hadn’t been able to concentrate on the writing assignment that was worth a quarter of my grade. “Hey.”

  Grey eyes peered up at me.

  “We watching a movie tonight or what?”

  “Or what,” I answered because it was now or never.

  The only advantage I had on Ensley was my size. While she’d stopped growing at fourteen, I kept getting bigger, the weight training and basketball adding to my size with hard, lean muscle. I was head and shoulders above her now when we stood together, and I knew if I held her down, she wouldn’t be able to run off.

  Even if I felt like a bastard for doing it.

  I was quick to roll over and crush her down to the mattress, my weight subduing her while I dodged her little fists. Ens cussed up a storm while demanding to know what I was doing, but I didn’t stop until I’d pinned her wrists above her head and straddled her lap to keep her legs from kicking.

  “Asshole! Get off of me!”

  I stared down at her calmly.

  “No. Not until you tell me why you’ve been so weird lately, and also tell me who the fuck you’re doing drugs with.”

  Those grey eyes rounded into saucers.

  “Who told you?”

  “Told me what? That you’re being stupid and fucking up your life? You tell me every day you sit next to me at lunch, and I can smell it in your hair and on your clothes.”

  She shook her head and struggled to free herself. I just rolled my eyes because there was no way she’d overpower me. Ensley weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, while I was a good two twenty with the muscle I’d put on.

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  My demand was met with more cussing, more thrashing, but I didn’t let go. She would tell me if it meant I had to tie her down and torture the truth out of her.

  “You want to know what I’ve been doing? Is that what you want?”

  She was practically screaming, but I didn’t let it get to me. “Yes.”

  “Fine, then let me go.”

  “You’ll run.”

  “I won’t,” she answered through clenched teeth.

  “You promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you promise to tell me the truth?”

  When she nodded her head, I had no choice but to trust her. Ensley didn’t go against her promises. She rarely made them because she didn’t want to be held to them, but when she did, I knew she would stick by them.

  So I let her go and rolled back to my place on the bed only for her to practically dive off the mattress in her bid to put distance between us. She didn’t run, though. Not like I thought she would.

  Her eyes glared down at me, shimmery like she’d been crying, and when I thought she would open her mouth and scream at me for thinking I could force her hand, she just stared for a few minutes before tugging her shirt off.

  “Ens?”

  I hated how the minute she unhooked her bra and slid it down her arms, I was painfully hard to look at her. Embarrassment seeped beneath my skin, and I wanted to grab a book to cover my reaction.

  “Shut up, Noah. You wanted to know. You demanded to know, so I’m showing you.”

  Shoving her shorts off next, she dropped her panties and stood in front of me naked as the day she was born. I was ashamed to stare at every inch of her skin, my body primed and ready while confusion flooded my thoughts, wondering what her being naked had to do with anything.

  Before I could ask the first question, she crawled over the mattress to me, straddled my legs and locked her eyes with mine while reaching inside my pants.

  My lips parted on a burst of air the second her fingers closed around my shaft, her thumb rubbing a slow circle over the tip while her mouth tugged up into a smile.

  “You like that?”

  I nodded, all thoughts racing from my head. She was so beautiful. So desirable that I couldn’t think about anything other than how much I wanted her.

  “Yeah, you do,” she whispered, the words emotionless and cold. “Let me show you what else you’ll like.”

  Leaning over, she took me in her mouth, and I almost died in that moment, my head falling back against the headboard while my hands gripped the sheets beside me. Stroking my dick with strong fingers, she bobbed her head up and down, my hips jerking beneath her and my eyes clenched shut.

  The only sound was her mouth working me until I couldn’t breath, the beat of her hand on the shaft and the light screech of mattress springs beneath us. I thought I was going to be a punk again when my body jerked with the need to climax, but she stopped right then and lifted her head.

  “You have a condom? This can’t happen without one.”

  Nodding, I reached to the bedside table, pulled the drawer open and blindly searched for the box I’d bought after the last time this happened. I felt like an asshole for assuming we’d have sex again, but it was better to be ready if it happened.

  Ensley glanced at the condom as if it had slapped her, but then recovered a smile that was wrong somehow. Taking the condom from my hand, she ripped the package open and was sliding it down just as my thoughts caught up.

  “Ens, what does this have to do with-“

  She leaned forward before I could finish the question, her mouth covering mine and her tongue sweeping in. I could taste myself on her lips as she shuffled up my body, positioned me in just the right place and sunk down.

  “Ensley...”

  Her name was a prayer on my lips. Despite not knowing what she was telling me, I couldn’t stop enjoying the feel of her body. I was frozen in place for the first few seconds not knowing what to do or how to treat her.

  She just smiled and tilted her head.

  “Touch me, Noah. My tits feel really good.”

  Hands reaching up, she fondled her chest, squeezing them and pushing them together, red marks left on the pale skin from how roughly she was handling them.

  When I didn’t move, she reached for my hands and pulled them up to palm her breasts, forced my fingers to squeeze so hard I was afraid she’d be bruised.

  Then Ensley began to bounce on my lap, her head falling back as she rode me while holding my hands over her breasts, her body sheathing mine with tight, wet muscle, and all I wanted to do was stop her while begging she keep going.

  It didn’t take long for me to lose myself to the feeling, didn’t take long for my hips to jerk up with one hard thrust, my mouth falling open.

  “Fuck, Ens...”

  By the time the aftershocks were over, I lifted my eyes to find her staring at me without one ounce of emotion behind her eyes.

  She sounded soulless when she asked her next question.

  “Did you like that?�
��

  I nodded. But then shook my head. But then nodded again because I wasn’t sure how to answer.

  Still straddling me, she let go of my hands and leaned forward until her face was right next to mine.

  “Next time we fuck, you call me a dirty little whore, okay? Next time, you smack my ass while taking me from behind. You call me a slut and tell me how pretty I am, just like a doll, and you put your mouth wherever you want because I won’t tell you to stop. You laugh at me, Noah. Laugh and laugh and laugh because it’s so fucking funny that I’ll do anything you ask for a hundred bucks. And when you’re done doing that, you toss the money at me and tell me to get dressed.”

  Shock tore through me, violent and chaotic, my entire body tensing where I sat because I wanted to kill whoever she was talking about. “Ens-“

  “No. Don’t say my name. I don’t have a name. Just words. Slut, whore, toy, doll. Hell, call me a dog and ask me to bark, because I’ll do it.”

  She paused, her face so calm that it scared me.

  “You want to know why I smoke pot? To feel numb, Noah. To not have to think about what I’m doing. To not have to admit that the only thing I want is to be your actual girlfriend, but I can’t let myself do it. You don’t deserve me, not because I’m better, but because I’m trash, and you deserve more. So that’s why. That’s your truth. I’ve already buried it in the ground under your beautiful flowers.”

  She jumped off me and pulled on her clothes while I sat dumbfounded. Finally, catching my breath, I watched her walk across my room to the window, her hands throwing it open.

  “Where are you going?”

  She stopped, her head falling forward and her shoulders withering as if pained.

  “To earn money.”

  Spinning on her heel, she glared at me.

  “You deserve everything. Not me. So go find yourself a girl who can appreciate what you have to offer. But don’t try to stop me. Don’t try to get in my way and don’t try to fix me. Because then I’ll just shove you out of my life no matter how much it hurts.”

  “Ensley, don’t leave.”

  I was getting up to chase her, but she climbed from the window, only stopping when she was outside and out of reach.

  “If you still want me to sleep next to you, if I’m still invited, then turn the lamp on, Noah. But if not, I’ll stay at my house and I’ll keep doing what I have to in order to survive.”