I RUN MY hands down my thighs, the flesh of my nipples hardening as the air touches them.
“Bravado” plays on my phone, and I close my eyes as I sit at the end of my bed in my underwear, feeling the weight of his text sitting on my bed next to me.
Now , he orders. Let me see your stomach.
I’d ignored the text from Callum last night, figuring I’d make up some excuse that I fell asleep or something. There was no way I was texting anyone pictures of myself.
I promise him that my clothes will look better off in person.
Eventually, he’ll want me to prove it.
My mind drifts, the words coming again—against my neck in a whisper tucked away and hidden in tight spaces and dark places.
Just the two of us.
Now, he orders. Let me see your stomach.
But it’s not his voice. I drop my head, breathing hard. It’s not his voice I hear at all. My clit throbs, my nipples harden to pebbles, and I rub my thighs together, aching. “Goddammit,” I murmur.
I push off the bed and yank my school skirt out of my closet. I pull it on, followed by a bra and a white blouse, before diving into my bathroom to straighten my hair and put on a little makeup.
I stare at myself in the mirror as I spread the lip gloss.
He’ll feel good. He’ll feel good when he stands behind me, his naked torso against my back. His eyes will peer over my head as his strong, muscular arms slip around my waist, and he’ll take in the view of my body in the mirror, my shirt off for him. I can’t wait for him to touch me. He’s dying for it.
I dab some toothpaste onto a toothbrush and brush my teeth, imagining his hands gliding over my thighs and between my legs, and then I swish some mouthwash, locking on my gaze in the mirror.
You want him. You’ll look so good together, and at night, under the sheets, he’ll feel good, Clay. You’ll love it. His golden skin and narrow waist. His broad shoulders and big eyes that make him look so innocent until he smiles and you can see the danger. Everyone wants him.
But as I rinse out my mouth and look up at him and try to see him on top of me, I see a taunting little dare looking up at me instead. Her amused eyes locked on mine as she lies on the weight bench.
A body smaller and softer than Callum’s and lips I can feel between my teeth, because sometimes I want to bite her until she bleeds.
God, she pisses me off.
I open my mouth, letting the mouthwash fall out as I lean on the counter. My belly suddenly pooling with heat down low, and my mouth waters, nearly tasting her.
Liv. I breathe out, staring into the sink. Attention-seeking, rebel-without-a-clue, bitchy annoyance. I grip the edge of the counter.
I should just leave her alone. She’s none of my business.
But confident people don’t need to be loud, and it’s not my responsibility to make her disdain for everyone around her easy. I won’t stop pushing back until she runs from this place.
Shutting off the light, I grab my phone off the bed and fix the stuffed octopus propped up against my headboard. I have dozens tucked away in my closet and under my bed, but I only keep one out in the open.
I saw one in an aquarium in Orlando when I was about six—so beautiful and graceful—but I don’t think I was obsessed until my father joked that they were actually aliens. My mother laughed about it, but as I grew up, I discovered there is a significant portion of the human population who really believe it. After that, I was hooked. The ability to do what no other creature can. Being that different from everything else around it. The allure of its secrets.
I don’t know—they just called to me.
I slip on my flats, take my school jacket and backpack, and leave the room. Stepping into the hallway, I look right, seeing my parents’ door closed at the end of the hall, but then I glance at the room right before it and make my way over.
Henry’s name decorates the dark wood, spelled out in an arch in my little brother’s favorite shade of blue. Sometimes I’ll open the door. His smell still lingers. But I never go in. I like thinking he was the last to walk on the carpet or open the drawers of his dresser, even though I know my mom is in there frequently.
I’m just glad she’s kept everything the same.
I touch his name, inhale and push down whatever is bubbling up in my chest, and head downstairs.
Detouring into the kitchen, I snatch a bottle of water from the fridge and the container of chicken salad Bernie, our housekeeper, fixed for me, sticking them both into my backpack.
Putting on my blazer and heading through the foyer, I take my keys off the entryway table and move to the door, but I glance out the window panel on the side and see my father’s car in the driveway. Morning dew glistens over the hood of his slate gray Audi.
I stop. I thought he was in Miami.
I drop my bag and twist around, a smile pulling at my lips. He’s home so little anymore, business taking him to D.C., San Francisco, and Houston, but mostly, Miami. It seems like he’s there more than home the last few months.
One of the double doors to his office is cracked, and I squeeze the handle, peering my head inside.
“Hey,” I say.
He sits behind his desk, light brown hair disheveled, tie loosened, and one leg of his wrinkling gray pants and shiny black shoe propped up on his desk. A stream of cigarette smoke snakes into the air above his head as he blows out a puff.
He pulls his foot off his desk, smiling, “Morning.”
I saunter in, doing a playful little walk with my hands behind my back like I’m up to something, and swing around his desk, sitting on the arm of his chair and pull out a fresh cigarette from the marble box near his computer.
“When did you get in?” I ask as his arm goes around my waist, holding me steady.
For most trips, he flies, but Miami is close enough to drive.
“Just a couple of hours ago,” he tells me, taking another drag. “Is your mom up?”
“I don’t think so.”
He watches me as I take his lighter off his desk. “Early start today?”
It’s actually not as early as I usually leave. I think he just doesn’t know my schedule anymore. Or what time school starts, or that we have service on Tuesday mornings before first period, or really anything else about me.
That’s okay, though.
I light the cigarette before leaning back into his shoulder. “Tuesday morning Mass,” I tell him, rolling my eyes.
He chuckles. “It wasn’t my idea to send you to a Catholic school.”
“Noted.”
I take another puff, inhale, and then blow out smoke.
My dad shakes his head. “I’m a terrible father.”
I laugh, holding up my cigarette. “Years down the road, I’ll cringe when I think of the debutante ball, and I probably won’t even remember my friends’ names,” I tell him, “but I’ll smile when I remember sneaking cigarettes with my dad.”
His mouth tilts up in a half-smile, and the both of us take another drag at the same time, enjoying the morning silence for another moment.
“How are your classes?” he asks.
“Easy peasy.”
“And your classmates? Is everything…happy?”
I turn away, watching the end of the cigarette burn orange. What’s he going to do if I say no?
Parents ask these questions, because they want to appear to care, but they don’t want a problem. Not really.
“I should get going,” I tell him instead, hopping off the chair and snuffing out the cigarette in the crystal ashtray.
I slip around his desk and hear the wheels of his chair move.
“You already got into Wake Forest,” he calls after me. “Slack off a little. Enjoy your senior year.”
But I can’t. The biggest events of high school are just ahead of me. The fun is just starting.
“I’ll be leaving again tomorrow morning,” he informs me.
I stop at the door and turn my head. “Miami again?”
“Yes.” He nods. “But I’ll be back Monday afternoon.”
Suspicions settle in, and I know just as well as my mother does why he’ll be gone again. Over the weekend, when almost no one is in the office.
No one says anything about anything, though. We’ve splintered off since Henry’s death, cultivating our own lives that consist of as many distractions as possible.
This house is just where we collect our mail.
“Travel safe,” I tell him, his guilty eyes looking at me like he needs to say something.
But I’m gone before he has a chance.
• • •
A long time ago, I realized that it isn’t my responsibility to fix my parents. My father can face the fact, at any time, that Henry would hate knowing how quiet the house is now. No smiles or food fights or watching Mom cry at the same part during White Christmas during our re-watch every single holiday season.
He can face the fact that, while one child is gone, he still has another. That I could be out doing who-knows-what while he’s off in Miami or Austin or Chicago. I could be getting into drugs. Getting pregnant. Getting arrested.
Does he care? If he did, he’d be here.
I used to think it hurts him too much to be in the house, but we could’ve moved. Maybe it hurt him to be around my mother. In that case, he could’ve taken me with him sometimes.
But he just leaves, and it didn’t take long to get the message. Neither of them want this family anymore.
And honestly, I can’t blame them sometimes. What’s the point? You work for years—educating yourself, building, planning, working, loving—and leukemia sweeps through and ravages your ten-year-old son to death.
What’s the point of any of this?
I enter the church, lockers slamming shut in the school hallway behind me. I stop, scanning the room.
She sits right off the aisle, about halfway down the pew, and something swims in my stomach, a small smile spreading my lips.
The truth is…there’s no point to any of this. If being a lifelong Catholic school girl has taught me anything, the idea of heaven is as much of an abhorrence as the idea of hell. Who the fuck wants to be in church forever?
My mother has her shopping and her all-too-important schedule, and my father has another woman, both of them running as fast as they can from themselves, because they now realize there’s no point in denying the sins that keep you feeling alive.
I stalk down the nearly empty row, drop my bag, and look at her. She turns her head, sees me and rises, grabbing her backpack, but I slide into the seat, grab her wrist, and yank her ass back down.
“Sit,” I growl through my teeth, feeling heat rise up my neck as she crashes back into the wooden pew, her jaw flexing.
There’s no point in denying myself any of this. I’m a bitch, but only to her, and only because it feels so good. Fuck it.
“Do something for me?” I ask her, keeping my voice low as students fill the rows around us, and the altar servers light the candles. “Move your ass a little faster than my grandmother down the field this Friday, or is that too much trouble?”
Liv doesn’t look at me, just stares ahead as she lets out a quiet little laugh. “I haul ass down that field.” Relaxing back into her seat, she hangs her elbows over the back of the pew, and her shirt creeps up a little. I spot the switchblade she keeps hooked over the waist of her skirt, but hidden on the inside, that only I seem to know about. So far anyway. She goes on, “I’ll never understand how a princess who can’t pass a ball for shit and brags to anyone who will listen about being a Swiftie,” and she does air quotes, “‘even before she went pop’ is our team captain. Oh, wait. Yes, I do understand. Daddy is useful. When he’s there.”
My father didn’t get me that position. She can think what she likes.
But I grin and turn toward the front of the church, my arm brushing hers.
“Swiftie?” I say. “Aw, you stalk my Twitter.”
That was like four years ago when I said that.
But she just mumbles, “I couldn’t care less about your Twitter and your twenty-eight followers.”
“At least I don’t lose a dozen every day,” I retort.
Yeah, maybe I stalk her Twitter, too. And I don’t have twenty-eight followers. I don’t have as many as her, but it’s more than twenty-eight.
“The world just doesn’t like tattooed feminazis with hairy armpits,” I tell her, my gaze catching the dimple on her cheek as she smirks, “who pass judgments like all the other constipated Captain Americas on social media who act like they really know anything when they’re just angry their life sucks donkey nuts.”
The dimple grows deeper, her matte red lips pursing to keep her amusement at bay. My heart thumps, and for a moment, I can’t look away. Sometimes I get lost, looking at her . The shape of her nose that I’m kind of jealous of. How soft the lobe of her ear looks. The way she chews the corner of her mouth sometimes.
“Is everything okay?” someone says, snapping me out of it.
I turn my head, seeing Megan Martelle standing over us, holding a stack of collection baskets. Her blue eyes flit between Liv and me, knowing very well that this isn’t a friendly conversation, but lucky for her, this isn’t any of her damn business.
“Fine, thanks,” I reply, my tone a big enough hint she’d have to be blind to miss.
But she looks to Liv instead. “Liv?”
Excuse me? It’s not the name. It’s how she says it. Like they know each other.
Liv must give her some gesture or something, because Martelle gives me one last look and then slowly leaves, continuing down the aisle toward the back of the church without another word.
What the hell is she thinking? Does she want to become my next hobby or something?
I reach down and pull my backpack closer before turning my eyes back to Liv to see if she’s watching her leave.
But she’s staring at me instead, amusement in her eyes.
“What the hell are you smiling at?” I demand.
She never loses her cool, and it pisses me off.
But she just replies, “You have a tattoo.”
Her gaze drifts to my hand, and I squeeze my fingers together, covering it. All over again, I feel the needle carve into the inside of my middle finger on my left hand.
Fair enough. I’d mocked tattooed feminazis, an umbrella term I tossed her under, when, in fact, she doesn’t actually have any tattoos. Not even the one of her family’s little Sanoa Bay gang—the snake and hourglass that she wears on a bracelet around her wrist. Her brothers all seem to have it inked on them somewhere.
Her eyes hold mine, maybe waiting for a response or daring me for one, but the light coming in from the stained-glass windows catches the coppery glint of the strands in her dark hair, a lock hanging over her eye as the rest spills around her shoulders. A dozen or so little braids decorate her hair, none of the ends secured with rubber bands. She looks like a warrior girl in one of those futuristic dystopian movies.
And all of a sudden, nothing is hot anymore. It’s just incredibly warm.
I squeeze my fingers tighter, the lines inked on the inside of my finger making the four quarters of an inch on a ruler, very few ever notice the lines, and those who do probably just assume I’ve leaked pen on myself.
Within that inch we are free. One inch.
“Clay?” she says, her tone different.
I don’t realize I’m staring off until I bring my eyes back into focus and see the black of her Polo shirt. I lift my gaze, seeing a worried expression on hers.
Her eyes shift to my hand on the pew in front of us, and I notice that it’s shaking.
“You okay?” she asks.
I inhale hard, angry at myself. Why would I not be okay?
She grabs my backpack. “You need one of your little blue pills?”
But I snatch the pack out of her hands and glare at her. “If you let her touch you,” I bite out, changing the subject. “She will live to regret it. I don’t even have to leave this seat to ruin her life.”
Liv looks back at me, and I want to get closer—get in her face—because I want a reaction.
“She won’t be able to take it,” I growl in a low voice. “I will keep going until she can’t take it.”
I can ruin anyone’s life from my phone. It would be fun. And easy.
“You’re not embarrassing our team,” I finally tell her.
Megan was flirting yesterday. There’s no way in hell that’s happening.
She holds my gaze and then draws in a breath, another fucking air of delight written all over her stupid, fucking face. “I don’t like women who chase me anyway,” she says. “When I want them, they know.”
A tingle spreads up my spine, and when I expect to feel anger at her boldness, something else comes over me instead.
When I want them, they know. How do they know? What does she do?
But she rises from her seat without elaborating. “Excuse me,” she says, and takes her bag, trying to leave.
But I stomp down the kneeler, grab her wrist, and yank her to her knees. She sucks in a breath as she catches herself on the pew in front of her, and I pick up my backpack and rise.
“Sit your ass down,” I grit out.
I don’t stay to see her reaction. I spin around, ignoring the spying eyes from those around us, and leave the chapel just as Mass begins.
When I want them…
I blink long and hard. Jesus.
