Nine Years Ago
I should’ve touched her.
I took a drag off the cigarette and dumped Damon’s lighter back into the cup holder, blowing smoke out the driver’s side window.
But no. She wouldn’t have wanted me to.
I rubbed my temple and closed my eyes. She was killing me. Had been killing me for years.
Real monsters don’t wear masks, William Grayson III. A smile pulled at my lips. She was unpredictable, though, wasn’t she? I couldn’t stop thinking about last night and the lock-in.
I took another drag and blew out the smoke as I squeezed the steering wheel under my fist.
“Is this pissing you off?” Michael asked next to me, and I could hear the humor in his voice as he relaxed his ass in the passenger side seat of my truck.
I looked over, seeing him stare at my white-knuckled fist wrapped around my steering wheel.
“Nothing pisses me off,” I mumbled, seeing his head tilted back and his eyes hooded. “Except when I drive, it’s Damon and me up front,” I pointed out. “On the rare occasion you let me drive for the night.”
“The only reason you’re driving is so we can cart the keg to the church,” he told me. “If you didn’t have a truck—”
“Then I might be useless?” I finished for him.
He laughed.
But he didn’t argue, did he?
“That three-pointer from the wing sure wasn’t useless,” Kai joked from the back.
I shot him a look in my rearview mirror, but his face was buried in some booklet.
I shook my head and turned my eyes out the window. I had my talents. At least I was on for the game last night.
“About fucking time,” Michael grumbled.
I blew out a puff of smoke and followed his gaze, seeing Damon finally jog out of the cathedral and across the street.
Switching the cigarette to my left hand, I started the engine again.
“Get out.” Damon opened up the passenger side door and jerked his thumb at Michael. “Now.”
But Michael just sat there, looking amused.
Damon cocked an eyebrow. “I will put you in my lap if you want,” he told him, “but I’m sitting there.”
I laughed under my breath. Michael knew the rules. When he drove, which was almost always, Kai rode shotgun. When I drove, Damon and I were the ones in charge.
After twiddling his thumbs for a moment, Michael finally gave in. He hopped out of the truck, both of them trying to stare each other down like it was a pissing contest.
“I was almost hoping you’d put up more of a fight,” Damon taunted.
Michael teased back. “Make ya hard, do I?”
Damon smiled and climbed in, while Michael circled the truck and got in behind me.
“What took you so long?” I griped, shifting the truck into gear. “What the hell do you do in there so long?”
“He’s in there every Wednesday night,” Kai pointed out. “They got some meeting of the over-eighteen female chastity club or something?”
“Come on,” Damon whined. “That’s way too easy for me. They don’t have to be eighteen.”
“Or female,” Kai added.
I snorted as Damon whipped around and threw a playful punch at Kai. “Bastard.”
Kai just laughed, trying to shield himself.
I shook my head, pulling away from the curb and steering back onto the street.
But then Damon shouted at me. “Wait, wait, stop.”
I slammed on my brakes, seeing Griffin Ashby, the town’s mayor, dart in front of my truck.
Shit. That was close.
He looked over at us, dressed in his gray suit and yellow shirt and tie, narrowing his eyes on Damon as he crossed the street. Damon stared back, but when Ashby’s gaze twisted into a scowl, Damon stuck up his middle finger, taunting him.
Ashby looked away, stepping up onto the sidewalk and disappearing into the White Crow Tavern.
I hit the gas, taking off down the street. “What is it with you and him?”
Damon sighed, taking a cigarette out of his pack and sticking it between his lips. “I ruined his daughter.”
“Arion?” Michael asked. “Thought you said she had the brain power of a Pringle.”
“Not that one,” Damon mumbled, lighting his cigarette.
Ashby’s other daughter had to be only fourteen or so. I’d never seen her and Damon together.
But his gaze was turned out the open window now as he smoked, and if I knew anything about Damon, it was that if he was vague, it was on purpose.
Heading up into the hills, I drove down the darkened highway, the sun having set an hour ago and the sky nearly black now.
Kai flipped a page in his booklet. “What is that?” I asked.
“Course catalog.” He flipped another page, harder this time. “A fucking course catalog.”
“Come to Westgate with me,” Michael said.
“Or UPenn with me,” Damon added.
I smiled. “Or Fiji with me.”
“You’re coming to UPenn with me,” Damon told me.
Fat chance.
I flicked the ashes out the window and took another drag. College was months away, but decisions needed to be made soon. If I weren’t a Grayson, I’d never be able to get into Princeton, but the fix was in, and I was off to Jersey next summer whether I liked it or not.
I couldn’t think of anywhere I wanted to be less, but I also couldn’t think of anywhere better to be. That was my problem. As my dad said, “Until you can make a decision, we’ll make it for you.”
Apparently, a beach bum in the Polynesian islands wasn’t a lofty enough goal.
Kai tossed the catalog down on the seat next to him. “My father wants me on my own. He thinks we all need space.”
“From all of us, or just Will and me?” Damon asked, humor lacing his tone.
Yeah, Katsu Mori didn’t think much of us. Damon was trouble, and I was… nothing. At least Michael was ambitious. He was a leader, and Kai’s father respected that as a viable influence for his son.
But Kai just joked back. “Don’t be like that,” he cooed to Damon. “He was really flattered you approved of his taste in women when you adjusted yourself right in front of him at the sight of my mother.”
“In a bathing suit, Kai!” Damon pointed out, looking at Kai over his shoulder. “I mean, what the fuck? Jesus.”
I shook with a laugh, remembering that day last summer we were all at Kai’s house.
“And you all think I don’t have any shame,” Damon said. “If she weren’t your mom…”
“My father would still rip your dick up through your stomach and out your mouth?” Kai retorted.
Damon quieted, settling back into his seat and sticking his cigarette into his mouth. “Daddy’s boy.”
Kai shook his head, but I saw the smile fade as he looked out the window.
“Maybe we’ll stay in the area and go to Trinity instead,” Michael said, “so we can all be close to Kai’s mom.”
I snorted, all of us laughing as Kai rolled his eyes.
I took a puff off the cigarette, realization starting to dawn. It was months away, but it was coming. Different schools. Different states.
New people.
And that’s what scared me the most. People change us. Others become important, while others become less, and soon, we’d be gone.
She’d be gone.
I turned my eyes out my window, the inevitable sitting on my shoulders like a house.
“Okay, Devil’s Night…” Michael cleared his throat. “Probably the catacombs, but keep the cemetery in mind,” he told us. “I’m thinking about changing it up this year. There are some tombs, and that Bell Tower through the woods. What are you guys thinking for your pranks?”
I couldn’t think of anything yet. Nothing good anyway.
“I’m kind of thinking about getting out of town,” Kai answered. “Meridian City. The Whitehall district, maybe. Or the opera house? Maybe book a floor at a hotel?”
“The whole point is to be here with our people,” Damon told him. “On our turf.”
Kai was silent, and I saw him open up his course catalog again, mumbling, “Just an idea.”
I watched the both of them, kind of enjoying how they hardly ever got along. Kai was ready for tomorrow. Damon never wanted to leave today.
I had no idea where the hell I was half the time, let alone where I wanted to be.
An idea occurred to me, though. “The Cove,” I said. “After hours.”
Damon nodded. “That might be an idea.”
I looked over at him. “I heard a rumor the place might not be open much longer.”
“Even better.”
“Too much of a liability,” Michael interjected. “Drunk people get stupid, and stupid people on roller coasters will piss me off.”
Come on. It would be fun. Just us and a few others—invitation only.
But as usual, my ideas were tabled.
“I’ll think of something,” Kai told him. “Something that lets us end the night in one piece, and between the sheets with something pretty.”
“Hell yeah,” Damon replied. “That’s all you had to say.”
I shook my head, remembering what our real priorities were. I rounded the bend, climbing toward the cemetery, but just then, blue and red lights flashed in my rearview mirror, and I spotted headlights charging me from behind.
“Ugh, fuck,” I growled. “That son of a bitch.”
Dammit.
Pressing the brakes harder than necessary, I jerked my truck over to the shoulder and halted, hearing the gravel kick up underneath.
“Will…” Kai started.
“I’ll hold my tongue,” I assured him, already knowing what he was going to say. I pulled the weed out of the center console and slipped it to Damon. “Get rid of this.”
“Dude, what the hell?” Kai barked.
But I ignored him. “Get rid of it now,” I told Damon again, turning off the engine. “And don’t toss it out the window. His dash cam…”
“Goddamn it,” he grumbled, stuffing it into the glove compartment and slamming it closed.
“Lock it.” I threw him the keys.
“You think he knows?” Damon looked at me as he quickly locked my glove box.
I peered into my side mirror, seeing Officer Scott walk up to my side with his flashlight beaming.
“I think Em is smarter than that,” I said.
She wouldn’t complain about last night and the lock-in. Tattling would dent her pride. Not sure how I knew that about her, but I did.
“Think he knows what?” Michael pressed. “What did you guys do? Dammit. You’re always pulling shit when I’m not looking.”
“We didn’t hurt her,” Damon assured.
“Just made her pee her pants a little,” Kai added.
I bit back my smile just as Scott tapped on my glass.
I rolled down the window and flicked the butt of my cigarette out onto the highway, missing him by just a hair.
He stopped, turning his eyes toward the cigarette burning its last embers and back to me, flashing his light inside.
“Here to see that picture of me again?” I teased.
But he wasn’t laughing. “License and registration, please.”
I hesitated a moment for good measure, and then reached into the console, pulling out my registration and insurance card holder, and then my license out of my wallet.
I handed him both. “I promise you, they haven’t changed since last week, Scott.”
He didn’t seem to hear me as he flashed his light on my license like he hadn’t seen it a dozen times in the past three months, and then my registration and insurance as if he didn’t already know that they don’t expire until my next birthday.
“You know how fast you were going?” he asked, studying my insurance card.
“It wasn’t fast.”
“Have you been drinking?” he inquired, unfazed.
“No.”
He paused, still looking over my material. “You on drugs?”
“Sometimes,” I replied.
Damon snorted, and Michael cleared his throat to cover up his laugh.
Scott straightened and took a step back, looking down on me. “Step out. I want to look around the truck.”
And I couldn’t stop myself. “Well, my glove compartment is locked, so is the trunk in the back, And I know my rights, so you go’n need a warrant for that,” I sang.
Everyone started laughing, Damon shaking next to me, and Kai hunching over in my rearview mirror, his head in his hands to cover it up.
I always loved that Jay-Z song. At least I was good for a few laughs.
Officer Scott looked down at me, chewing the inside of his lip like he’d just love to have a reason. This was the kind of guy who would discharge his weapon on someone, claiming the cell phone in their hand looked like a gun.
The laughter calmed down, and I turned my eyes on him again.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m an idiot.”
I bid him to come closer, softening my voice.
“I know how you see me,” I said. “Ignorant, arrogant, frivolous… I want to be good. Honestly. Goal-oriented, a hard worker, honest, righteous…” I paused. “Like Emory. Your sister, right?”
He narrowed his eyes on me, and I could see his shoulders tense.
“You know,” I continued, “it’s amazing that given the years your family has been in Thunder Bay, I don’t know her as well as I’d like.” I turned to my friends. “You hear that, guys? A girl I don’t know.”
Some laughter went off inside the truck.
I turned back to him, seeing the threat start to register.
We were starting to understand each other.
“All the hours we walk the halls together at school,” I taunted. “All the hours on that bus to away games and back. All the late nights at basketball practice and her at band practice.”
“Plenty of time to get to know someone,” Kai added. “Turner didn’t even need five minutes to get Evie Lind pregnant.”
“Some of us have better longevity,” I joked over my shoulder.
“We know you do.” Michael patted my shoulder.
Hell yes, I do.
I turned my gaze back on Scott, seeing the corners of his eyes start to crinkle in a glare.
I hooded my own. “I promise you…” I growled low, “however much you don’t like me, there is still so much more to come if you don’t…” I pulled my license and card holder out of his hand, whispering, “stop pulling me over.”
I was normally a happy boy, but his hard-on for me was fucking with my patience. He didn’t pull over Michael, Damon, or Kai constantly. He messed with me because he assumed I didn’t have a brain.
They thought that because I liked being nice, that I didn’t know how to be mean.
And believe me, I was capable.
Snatching my keys from Damon’s hand, I started the truck, cast Scott one last look, and took off, pulling back onto the road and cranking up the music as the wind blew through the cab.
“Be careful,” Michael said after a minute. “That was entertaining and all, but men like him are short-sighted. I don’t think he’s going to have the sense to stop. Watch for his next move.”
“Fuck him.” I fisted the steering wheel. “What the hell’s he going to do to me?”
No one said anything more as we pulled up the drive and through the open gates of the cemetery. My interest in Emory Scott had nothing to do with her brother, sadly. I wish it were that easy.
But I wasn’t averse to killing two birds with one stone, either. How much would he lose his mind if he couldn’t find her one night, and then found her with me?
The thought made me smile.
Winding around the avenues, I spotted cars ahead and flashlights and headed toward them, pulling up behind Bryce’s black Camaro.
We hopped out of the truck, Michael and Kai grabbing a cooler out of the back and all of us walking over the grass, past trees and hedges, and up to the rest of the team already gathered around the grave.
“Hey, man,” I greeted Simon and tipped my chin at the others.
More “heys” went off around the circle, and Michael and Kai set down the cooler, some of the team immediately digging in for a beer.
I looked down. “What the hell?”
Marker flags were stuck in the ground, lining the grass-covered gravesite, making a rectangle the width and length of a casket.
“They’re digging him up,” Bryce said, cracking a beer. “They’re actually doing it.”
I glanced over my shoulder, frowning at the newly finished, brand-new, piece of shit McClanahan tomb, complete with the arrogant columns and pompous stained-glass windows.
“He wouldn’t want this,” Damon said.
I looked back down at Edward McClanahan’s grave, the old marble headstone green with age, rain, and snow, the years of his life barely visible anymore. But we knew his age. Nineteen thirty-six to nineteen fifty-four.
Eighteen. Young, just like us.
He’d be eighteen forever.
His surviving relatives wanted his legend to die, and the notoriety of the family name with it, so they built themselves a tomb, thinking they were going to hide him behind stone walls and a gate.
“They’re not moving him anywhere,” I said.
Michael caught my eye, a knowing smile curling his lips. Pulling the cell phone out of my pocket, I turned it on and started recording, documenting our annual pilgrimage to McClanahan’s grave every year since freshman year.
Damon threw me a beer, and the rest of us cracked ours open.
“To McClanahan,” Michael called out.
“McClanahan,” everyone joined in, raising our cans in the air.
“The first Horseman,” Damon chimed in.
“Give us the season,” another said.
Michael, our team’s captain, looked around. “Offerings?” he teased.
Jeremy Owens reached behind him on the ground and whipped out a pink tulle dress with a cheap silky bodice. It looked like a ballet costume.
“Close enough.” He tossed a replica of McClanahan’s girlfriend’s Homecoming dress on the grave.
Simon took a swig of his beer. “All I want to know is what that bitch looked like splattered all over the rocks.”
“We’ll never know,” Michael told him. “Only that when push came to shove, he did what he had to do. He sacrificed for the good of the team. For the family. When it comes down to it, would any of us do the same? He was a king.”
Not was a fucking king. Is a fucking king, because to us, he was a living, breathing part of this town.
“Give us the season,” Kai chanted, raising his beer.
“Remind us what’s necessary,” someone added.
And then everyone chimed in.
“For the team.”
“For the family.”
I moved the camera around the circle, taking everyone in.
“Give us the season,” they called out.
“Give us the season.”
And again.
And again.
Some poured a beer onto the grave, and all over her dress, the candles spread out in devotion flickering in the light breeze.
We didn’t explain this to anyone ever. It was kind of like the people who didn’t really believe in God but still went to church.
There was something to be said for tradition. Ritual.
It was good for the team.
The basketball team had been coming here for decades at the beginning of every season. We would never not come.
An hour later, a small bonfire burned inside the ruins of St. Killian’s, the keg already half-empty and laughter and shouting coming from down in the catacombs.
Damon sat in some dilapidated lawn chair, staring at the flames as two girls talked and kept an eye on him from near the sanctuary.
Waiting.
“I wish he’d gotten to grow up,” I said, tossing a stick into the fire. “I wonder what he’d be like now.”
“McClanahan?” Damon asked.
“Yeah.”
He waited, the flames glowing in his eyes. “He wouldn’t be special if he didn’t die.”
“He was special before that.” He was a captain, like Michael. He was a leader, selfless, a fighter…
No one really knew what happened that night.
“He wouldn’t be special,” Damon repeated. “Everyone changes. We all grow up.”
“Not me.”
He breathed out a laugh. “You’re going to have to be someone someday.”
“I’m going to be Indiana Jones.”
He just smiled, but kept his eyes on the fire. He never tried to drag me into reality as hard as Michael and Kai did. I had no clue what I wanted or who I wanted to be. I just wanted my people, and I wanted the girl of my dreams.
The girls giggled again, and Damon’s eyes flashed up, seeing them.
“Are you coming?” he sighed.
I followed his gaze, eyeing the legs and hair and how easy it would be to have some fun and get off, but…
“I don’t know,” I told him. “You ever think of doing this shit in the comfort of your bed?”
I was tired of playing in the catacombs, but Damon didn’t like to play alone. He needed me.
I liked someone needing me.
“Why does no one ever get to go into your room?” I asked. “Not me. Not Michael. Not Kai. Definitely no girls. Can’t we all go somewhere comfortable?”
“You wanna see my bed?” Damon teased.
“I’d like to make sure it’s not a coffin.”
He snorted, but still…he didn’t answer the question. What was he hiding in there anyway?
I looked up at the girls again, but my gaze went right through them like they weren’t even there.
I didn’t want that tonight. I didn’t want to play here.
I’d rather relive last night, even though all that girl and I did was fight.
I smiled to myself. She’d fallen asleep with her glasses on last night. I took them off. I loved the way her tie was always tightened half-assed, her cuffs were too long and never buttoned, and her skin was my fucking religion lately. Especially the skin on her neck.
I hated school, but I was dying for Monday. She was gone when I woke up this morning, and I wanted to see her look at me after last night.
Would anything have changed? Would the sharpness in her eyes have softened at all?
“You’re not good enough for her,” Damon said, breaking the silence.
I stared at him. How did he know what I was thinking?
“You’ll never be good enough for her,” he pointed out. “Best you hear it now.”
“A friend would help me get what I wanted,” I told him.
He fell silent, and I studied him.
“You don’t want me to have what I want, though,” I said. “You don’t want Michael or Kai to have what they want.”
“I shouldn’t have everything I want, either,” he argued. “Getting what you want risks losing what you already have, and nothing can come between us.” He looked up, meeting my eyes. “Nothing will be as perfect as this. I don’t like change.”
He turned away again, gazing into the fire.
“Michael is always in so much control,” he continued, his voice growing harder. “I’d love to show him what he really needs. I’d love to see Kai troubled and confused. Really fucking unhinged, so nothing I have can ever escape me. They act like they don’t need us. I wish they knew that they did.”
I knew what Damon did to sink his teeth into those around him.
“You wanna fuck me, too?” I said in a low voice, a soft smile tilting the corner of my mouth.
He grinned, still not looking at me.
But surprisingly, he replied, “Sometimes.”
I stilled.
“Sometimes I think about her watching us,” he went on. “I think she’d like it, but she’d hate that she liked it.”
With Damon, he didn’t see the person. He was attracted to control. Making people do things they wouldn’t normally do. It was all about the turn of the screw. Like a fish hook, he burrowed his way into heads and stayed there, long after he’d gone.
And his friends were the most valuable thing to him. He’d die for us, but the scary part was, that might not be the worst that could happen.
“She’ll never be to you what we are,” he told me, “because she’s too scared, too proud, and too boring.” He stopped and finally turned to me. “She’d never love you like you deserve, because she doesn’t respect you. You’re too shallow to her.”
And I felt my insides fold in on themselves, over and over, creating this hole in my gut, because I knew he was right, and fuck him.
What would she see in me?
And why the hell did I care? I was William Grayson III. The grandson of a senator. The best shooter on our basketball team, and she’ll be coming to my company in ten years, begging for a grant to fund her stupid theory on the viability of rooftop farms with their own micro-climates or some such shit.
I didn’t need her.
I dug my keys out of my pocket, not caring where Kai and Michael had disappeared to. Everyone would find their way home.
I turned around. “I gotta go.”
“Will.”
But I didn’t stop. Heading outside, I jumped into my truck and sped out of there, charging back onto the highway, and I didn’t care if that asshole pulled me over again.
I rubbed my hand over my face, shaking my head as that whole conversation replayed in my mind.
Emory Scott hated me, but she hated nearly everyone. So, she was making me work for it. So what? I’d be disappointed if she didn’t. She didn’t respect Michael, Kai, or Damon, either. It shouldn’t hurt.
But it did.
I always liked her. I always looked for her.
And over the years, passing her in the halls and feeling her in the classroom next to me, she got hot as fuck in ways no one else seemed to notice but me.
God, she had a mouth on her. I loved her attitude and her anger, because I was always too warm and I needed the ice.
It made me smile.
But I also saw things no one else did. The cute way she’d trip over a sidewalk slab or walk straight into a mailbox, because her eyes were lost in the trees over her head instead of watching where she was going.
How she’d push her grandmother in her wheelchair down to the village, both of them smiling and eating ice cream together. Emmy would hold her hand the whole time they sat.
The way she worked so hard, all by herself, without anyone to keep her company on her creative projects around town.
There was so much there that people didn’t see. She shouldn’t be alone all the time.
But Damon was right. She’d never be on my arm. She’d never let her guard down.
I turned, going past her street, and straight to the village, stopping at the gazebo she had started building before the school year started. Some project she’d convinced the city to let her build in the park at the center of the square.
She seemed to be here working if she wasn’t at school or band practice. I stopped along the curb outside of Sticks, looking up into the park and the beams rising up toward the sky but no roof yet.
She wasn’t there.
It was Saturday. She’d probably been there all day, but I’d missed it.
Pulling back onto the street, I drove past the cathedral, about to head home, but just then, I saw her.
She pulled the hood of her hoodie over her head, her long brown hair spilling out as she gripped the bag over her chest.
I kept driving but kept glancing behind me, watching her.
Her glasses made her eyes hard to see, but she had them buried in her phone anyway.
Damon was in there two hours ago. Was she? How long had she been in there tonight?
I thought she was Jewish. If not, I was going to feel stupid for the Yom Kippur gift I left in her locker.
I continued driving, watching her disappear in my rearview mirror, and I wanted to go back to find her, but I knew she wouldn’t take a ride from me.
She wouldn’t take anything from me.
I was nothing, and she knew it, and in ten years, she’d be amazing, and I’d be nothing.
She would never need me.
Within minutes, I was descending the steps of the catacombs, hearing whispers below and knowing which room Damon liked best.
I leaned on the door frame, seeing him toss his shirt onto the floor before lifting his mouth off the girl he had laid on the table.
His eyes met mine, the other chick still in her clothes and straddling a stool in the corner.
Damon smiled, standing up straight. “Get your ass in here.”
