“You’re an idiot. Just come closer.”
She hesitates, the moment stretching longer than I’m comfortable with. Finally, she rises to her knees, shuffles closer until her legs touch mine. When she sits back down, I take the joint between my lips, pull hard on the end, and hold it deep in my lungs. One second, two, then I lean forward, rest my forehead to hers, and say through my soft, burning exhale, “Suck in slowly.”
She nods, her lips forming a perfect O. The sound isn’t there, but the rising of her chest is, and I pull back, watch her breathe in a ribbon of Mary: the source of my hazy escape.
When she releases a breath, smoke filters from her lips and floats high, high, high through the air, the wind taking it away. Her eyes are closed, and she whispers, “Again.” And through my own high, I do as she says, this time moving closer. Her hands are on my legs, the weight of her tiny frame pressing down on me, and without pre-empt, without thought, I touch my lips to hers. She makes a sound, as if she’s choking, as if she’s surprised by the touch, and believe me—no one is as surprised as me. Because there’s something strange about our connection, about the softness mixed with strength. And it’s more than just her hands, her lips, her breaths—all of them on me. I have pins and needles again, only this time, they’re not in my head, or my heart; they’re lower, in my gut. My stomach twists, and I pull back, take another hit. I don’t share this one with her. I need it all for myself. Because my mind’s starting to go places I can’t control.
My eyes drift shut when I feel the effects of Mary fill my blood, and I roll my head back, let it hit the rear window of the cab. Her hands are still on my legs, and the touch is warm, too warm, and too damn powerful, and I feel it everywhere. Everywhere. The stirring below feels magnified, and I reach out, find her wrist, tug, and murmur, “Come closer, Red.”
“Mmm.”
My eyes open slowly, one first, then the other. Aubrey’s watching me, her head tilted to the side, blink, blink, blinking. “What?” I ask.
“Are you too high to know what you’re doing?”
I shake my head, lick the dryness off my lips, and tug on her wrist again. “I always know what I’m doing.” The girl doesn’t budge, and I meet her resistance with a smirk. “So stubborn,” I murmur.
“So cocky,” she slurs. “You got one more for me?”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“I always know what I’m doing,” she retorts.
I smile around another pull of the joint, feeling the heat of the butt between my fingers, then I push off the rear of the cab, move closer to her while holding my breath. I release slowly, just a tad, before closing my airways. The girl sucks in a breath, but there’s not much to inhale, and she pouts, sounds off a quiet, little whine. I do it again. And again. And she’s getting annoyed, frustrated, and with every one of her whines, I’m getting more turned on. I blow a ring of smoke between us, close off my airways again. “How badly do you want it?” I manage to get out. I don’t know when I went from insults to whatever the hell this is, and right now, I don’t care.
The girl takes the bait, challenge accepted, and climbs onto my lap. Her hands are on my shoulders and her mouth is barely touching mine, and she whispers, “Logan…” And then…
Then she licks the seam of my lips, and that’s when I lose it. The dizziness caused by my held breath makes me part my mouth, exhale into hers, and I don’t know if she takes the smoke in because I’m too busy kissing her.
Slow and soft, every touch, every connection is intensified by the high, and my hands are on her waist, and Aubrey Whatshername has unbelievable curves. And just like that, a second, maybe two… she’s gone… off my lap and too far away that I can’t bring her back. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“We both…why? What the hell just happened?”
She’s yanking at the blanket, trying to cover herself, as if it’s the first time she’s realized that we’re both almost naked. “Do you think you could drive me home?” She’s refusing to look at me, but I watch her, confused, trying to figure out when the hell it all went wrong.
“Not right now,” I tell her honestly. “I’m too lit. Wait a little for the buzz to fade, and I’ll take you wherever you want.”
She nods, starts reaching for her clothes.
“Red?”
“What?”
“You’ve been in your underwear for ages. I’ve seen everything—”
“But it’s different now.”
I shake my head again. “Trust me, it’s not.”
“Of course, it’s not,” she whispers, and I don’t understand what the fuck she means. I hoover the rest of the joint and flick it out onto the grass. Knees bent, hands at my sides, I lean back against the cab, eyes barely open, and get lost in the weightless euphoria. Minutes tick by, one after the other. I don’t break the silence. I don’t know how to. She’s leaning against the side of the bed, her legs out, blanket completely covering her. Eventually, she says, her voice low, distant, barely audible, “Earlier, you asked me what I was running from…”
“Yeah…?” I close my eyes because I don’t think I could stand to look at her.
Rejection is a bitch.
Denial is worse.
“I wasn’t lying when I said nothing. I literally had nothing there. My dad passed away when I was nine.” My eyes open then, as if on their own, and I make sure to focus them on hers while my heart beats wildly beneath my chest, building pressure on my ribs, and I don’t know what more she has to say; I just know that I want to hear it. “He was in a car accident. He crashed head first into a tree. Died on impact.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, my voice breaking.
She shakes her head. “He was drunk. It was pure luck there was no one else on the roads.”
“Did you guys get along?”
Her eyes are red when they meet mine, and I regret giving her the weed because now I don’t know if she’s opening up because she’s high or because she wants to. She clears her throat, looks down at her hands, and continues to speak as if she hadn’t heard me at all. “After he died, everything changed. His mistakes became mine, and my mom—she left her job, moved us to Raleigh, pulled me out of public school, and homeschooled me. We spent so much time together that I think—I think that’s part of the reason we couldn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things. So when it came time for high school, I begged her to let me go, and she caved. But high school… high school was horrible. For the first year, I was a complete outcast. It was like everyone knew about my dad, and people couldn’t see past what he did—or at least that’s what I assumed. But, maybe I was just weird, you know? Like there was something about me that just couldn’t fit in with everyone else.” Her voice is distant, as if the memory had been cast away, put aside.
I should tell her I know what that feels like.
She adds, “And then sophomore year, Carter showed up at my school, and he didn’t seem to know anything about me. He was only there a few weeks before we started dating. He was my heart, my world, my everything, because I had nothing. I had no friends, no hobbies, no extracurricular activities. And maybe that’s why I fell so hard for him...”
“Did he…” I clear my throat. “I mean, did he die or something? Is he okay?”
Aubrey smiles, but it’s sad. “He broke up with me a month before graduation. He said that I was too needy, too clingy, that I loved him too much, that he didn’t feel the same way I did, that he never did…” Aubrey shrugs, and that one simple movement is as painful as this Carter guy is pathetic. “That weekend, he went to a party and slept with someone else. He broke my heart…” She sniffs once. “He broke me, Logan. And that same night, I went online, found this town, found a house, sent through applications and used every cent of my grandmother’s inheritance to start this new life where I was back at the beginning. Alone and afraid. And at the start, every day was like that first year of high school all over again.” Her chin rises, h
er gaze penetrating mine. “And then Joy walked into my work, and within minutes, she asked if I wanted to be her friend. No pretenses, not a single clue about me. She was just willing to be that one person for me, and now… God, I left that stupid party with you. And I just kissed you. What the fuck kind of person does that?”
“Aubrey…” I start slowly, carefully. “What happened between Joy and me has nothing to do with you. What she did… I mean, it’s over, so…”
“You say that now,” she whispers.
“And I’ll say it forever. There’s no going back. And it sucks—what all you’ve been through to get here, to now, but honestly, it’s just bad fucking luck that it was Joy who walked into your work that day. You deserve better friends. You sure as hell deserve a better ex. And that means a lot coming from me considering that before you followed me out of that party, I’m pretty sure I fucking hated you.”
She laughs once: the sound of heartbreak, relief, and something else I can’t put my finger on. “So… the whole kiss thing, can we please never bring it up again?”
“If that’s what you really want.”
She’s quiet a moment. Then: “What do you want, Logan?”
“Trust me. What I want and what I think should happen are two completely different things.”
“So… what do you think should happen?”
“I think we should get dressed, and I take you home, walk you to your door and leave you for the night.”
She nods, swallows. “And… what do you want to happen?”
“I want… I want to know what your body feels like beneath mine. I want to know what it feels like to be deep inside you, and I want to hear what sounds fall from your lips when I make you come.”
Her breath catches, and the blanket shifts as her legs do the same. “I think…” She exhales loudly. “I think I should get dressed, and you should take me home and walk me to my door.”
5
Logan
I don’t realize how late it’s gotten until we’re sitting in my truck in her driveway. The clock on the dash reads 2:18., and neither of us has made a move to get out. Maybe she feels the same way I do… that the night feels unfinished. The problem? I don’t think either of us knows how we want to end it.
“I have a question,” she says finally.
“I don’t know if I have the answers, Red.”
“Did you… I mean, when you kissed me… were you thinking about Joy?”
“Fuck no.” When I turn to her, she’s shaking her head.
“I don’t mean kissing Joy instead of me, but… was it, like, revenge?”
“Double fuck no. Honestly? I haven’t thought about Joy once since we got to my place and you rode on the back of the four-wheeler.”
Her smile is slow, real. As real as she is.
“Was it revenge for you? To get back at your ex or something?”
“No,” she says with a giggle. “I’ve already had my revenge.”
“You slept with some—”
“No,” she cuts in. “I went to his house in the middle of the night and keyed his car.”
I scoff. “Amateur.”
“No!” She giggles harder, louder. “I didn’t key it for keying’s sake. I actually wrote something.”
“Yeah? What’d you write?”
“Pathetic Dick.”
I bust out a laugh, let it fill the space between us. “You must’ve been there for hours.”
Her laughter joins mine. “No shit. The Cs were the hardest… getting that curve right was tough.” I shake my head, grip the steering wheel to stop myself from reaching out, gripping her hair and pulling her mouth to mine. “I have another question,” she says, and I lean back against the door, get comfortable.
“Sure, but after this one, I get to ask you some things.”
“Do you…” She bites down on her lip, her cheeks blooming the same shade as her hair.
“Do I what, Red?” Please, please, please ask me to come in.
“Do you um… do you talk dirty… like you did before, during umm… when you…”
“When I’m sexing?”
“Yeah,” she says, refusing to meet my eyes.
I shrug. “Sometimes.”
She nods. “My boyfriend—”
“Ex,” I interrupt.
The corner of her lip tilts, but she doesn’t give in all the way. “Right. Ex. One time, he asked me to do that… to spice things up, I guess. And um…”
“Oh no…” I chuckle. “What did you say?”
“I don’t…” She’s giggling again. “I don’t want to say it.”
“Say it, Red!”
“I said…” We’re both laughing, the silent, unconfined type that makes you lose your breath, hold your stomach. “I said…”
“Red! You’re killing me!”
“I said…” And with her teeth clenched, she grunts, “I’m going to fuck your dick off!”
I laugh so hard, the loudness scares even me. I’m slapping at the dash, trying to catch my breath, while she sits up on her knees, grasping my arm, trying to get me to quit laughing at her. But she’s cackling, too, the same way I am, and my cheeks hurt, my eyes are watering, and goddamn, this girl is something else.
“Quit laughing at me!”
“I can’t,” I wheeze.
“I mean it, Lo.”
“So do I!”
And then, maybe to get me to shut up or maybe because she wants to, she kisses me. Rough and hard at first, then it switches… slow, soft, purposeful. Her hands are in my hair, and my hand’s on her waist, the other on her jaw, and she’s so imperfectly wild but perfect for now.
“Red,” I say against her lips, “I have two questions.”
“Mmm,” she responds. Kisses me again.
I tug on a strand of her hair. “What shade of red is this?”
“Scarlet. Next question?”
Without moving, I mumble, “What do you want to happen next?”
Her smile widens against mine, and I think I have the answer. Her lips move across my jaw and toward my ear. She whispers, the warmth of her breath causing a shiver up my spine, “I want to fuck your dick off.”
Aubrey
I wonder if I should tell him that I saw him first.
The very first night he hooked up with Joy, I saw him first.
We were at a party.
I pointed him out to her.
He caught us watching him.
And he saw her first.
Part 2
6
Aubrey
In sneakers and running shorts and a cap pulled low on his brow, the kid’s a pint-sized thief dressed for business. He’s wringing his hands, standing on the other side of the counter. He seems innocent enough, and for a second, I almost let him go. But these punks have to realize that shoplifting might be a thrill for them, a joke, but this shop is mine; the profit is my livelihood, and the product they take comes out of my back pocket. I’d caught the kid trying to leave the store with a small notebook in his pocket. Twelve dollars. Not a lot in the big scheme of things, but it’s also my dinner. So…
Sorry, kid.
“Cops or parents, dude.”
“You can call the cops,” he says, squaring his shoulders. “Just ask for Misty, please.”
“Misty?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I stop writing down Misty and look up at him. “I’m not a ma’am.”
“Sorry, miss.”
Pencil to paper again, I ask, “What’s your name?”
“Logan.”
My pencil snaps in half, my surprise unmistakable, and I fake innocence, grab a pen instead. Pens are safer, sturdier. More resilient to my emotions.
“Logan…” I trail off, unable to finish my train of thought. It’s been three weeks since that one night with Logan Preston, and I can’t even get his name out without losing my breath. “Last name?”
“Preston.”
I drop the pen, rub my hands across my face, and make
a sound that could only be classified as a grunt. The kid’s full of shit. I know it. He knows it. “What’s your real name?”
The boy sighs, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “Lachlan Preston.”
Of course. I really should have put two and two together considering the evidence and the uncanny resemblance, but the second he said Logan, my mind fled, head-dived right into a sea of memories. I take my cell phone from my back pocket, find Logan’s number from when Joy entered it “in case I couldn’t get a hold of her,” and use the store phone so my number doesn’t show up on his. Logan answers on the third ring, and I forget who I am and what I’m doing. I also forget to breathe. “Hello?” He pauses a beat. “Who is this?”
I anticipate the next few words to be random girls’ names:
Tricia the Teacher.
Bella with the Boobies.
Maybe Lesbian Girl.
All names from the text messages he’d gotten that night. I know, because he let me read every single one.
“Hello?” he says again.
“Hey, um… it’s uh…”
“Aubrey?”
“Yeah,” I say through a sigh.
Silence passes a moment. A really looong moment. “I was wondering if you’d ever call.”
He was wondering if I’d call?
“How are you?”
I clear my throat, my thoughts, my memories of his hands and his teeth and his mouth and his tongue and—
“Aubrey? Are you there?”
“Yeah. Sorry.” I dig the tip of my pen into the notepad so hard it tears the paper. “Listen, I’m calling from work—Penultimate on Main Street—and I think I have your little brother here.”
Lachlan stands taller again, his palms on the glass counter. “Who did you call? Which one?! Please not Lucas or Leo. Please?” The kid’s in panic mode, his face red. I show him my phone—Logan’s name on the screen—and he flops back on his heels. “Oh, thank God.”