by Ella Fields
A bird was singing above my head.
Not my head, I realized, my eyes blinking open as my surroundings came into focus.
The tent. I blinked again and felt something warm beneath my hand.
Jackson’s stomach.
My cheek.
His chest.
The kiss.
All the kisses.
So many kisses, my lips were chafed, rubbed raw when I licked them.
Fear crashed in like a tidal wave, and I carefully pushed my hair off my face, my braid a distant memory thanks to Jackson’s hands.
Sitting upright, I combed my fingers through it, staring at the light that streamed in through the gauzy material of the tent, highlighting the forgotten snacks and the laptop on the floor.
I couldn’t look at him.
I couldn’t not look at him.
My ears seared as I touched my lips, sitting perfectly still as Jackson’s eyelids twitched, his lashes tiny curtains over his cheeks. They looked more angular in the harsh light of day, his lips more symmetrical and plumper after kissing mine.
But it was his mussed brown hair, the dark strands in disarray, that crumpled my shaking composure into a breaking ball of dust.
“Guys,” Dad’s voice sounded.
I jumped, and Jackson snorted, eyes opening and narrowed up at me. “What time is it?” His voice was rough and sleep stained, just as it usually was when he woke up; only now, it sounded different.
Unable to speak, I got up and dragged my hands through my hair as I paced the small space.
“Oh, good. You’re up.” Dad must have seen my shadow moving and opened the tent. “Mom just called, and she’ll be here in time for some brunch. Choc chip pancakes?”
I smiled, then coughed. “Yeah, sounds good.”
He smiled, pulling me to his chest to lay a kiss on my messy hair. “Happy Birthday, baby girl.” He sighed. “Fifteen. Slow it down, would you? You guys are making me feel old.”
I forced a laugh, noticing when I pulled away that Jackson was just staring at me.
“Birthday or not, you guys are cleaning this up.” He looked at Jackson. “You look comfortable.”
“I told you,” Jackson said. “The blow-up bed isn’t all that bad.”
“My back told me differently last time I used the stupid thing, but whatever.” He waved a hand, ducking back outside the tent. “I have some calls to make before we can head out when your mom gets here, so be sure to keep it down if you come inside.”
“Okay,” I said, watching the flaps of the tent fall and slowly stop moving.
I couldn’t bring myself to turn around, but I had to.
He was my brother. Granted, he wasn’t my real brother, but we shared the same surname. We’d taken baths together until we were seven years old.
For months, he’d made me listen to jokes he read from his joke book while he was on the toilet.
Fear slithered through my bloodstream and caused my limbs to tremble with guilt.
What had we done?
What we were even thinking, I didn’t know.
I mean, I knew what I’d been thinking. I knew what I’d been thinking since I noticed the jade green to his eyes more than a year ago. Since I began to watch his gait, casual and unhurried, as he walked down the school halls when we’d started high school. Since he’d gone to the dance with Ainsley, and I’d felt relieved when I found out he hadn’t even danced with her.
I’d noticed specific things about him for a while, and they only grew more specific over the past few months, each one more dangerous than the last.
I just never knew how dangerous until I feared he had feelings for someone.
I didn’t think. I never would’ve guessed that… that someone would be me.
My last thought gave me enough courage to turn around and face the reason for my heartbeat’s change of pace.
Jackson was out of bed, folding the blankets. “I’ll clean up.”
“I’ll help,” I said, moving for the food.
“No,” he said or, rather, snapped. I watched his back, the way it rose, then fell sharply. “Just… forget it, please.”
Sensing he was referring to more than the food, I straightened and glared at the back of his head. “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.” His tone was firm and unyielding.
Retorts, protests, thick and hot, queued to vomit from my mouth, propelled by the raging organ in my chest, but I swallowed them when he turned.
With his brows furrowed, arms tense around the folded blankets tucked to his chest, he said, “We have to.”
It wasn’t his words that had me nodding, that had me seeing what he was trying to say without saying it, but his eyes.
They pleaded, begged, but they also screamed of the ramifications that would unfold if we couldn’t do what he’d said, and forget it.
I could never forget, but it was because I knew he couldn’t either that I moved my chin up and down, then walked out.
It was wrong, but it couldn’t be undone.
Wrong and stupid.
It was wonderful, but it could never happen again.
Wonderfully stupid.
Willa
Fifteen
Hours of forbidden became months of torment, creating wounds I didn’t know how to heal.
Not when Jackson did everything he could to ensure I stayed away from him.
It was for the best, he’d say.
But when I’d stop listening and push harder, he’d snap. “Willa, back off.”
I’d brought this upon myself, I supposed. I knew he’d been right. That we should’ve left it well enough alone, and I’d been trying.
But I still wanted to be with him. I didn’t need to touch him or to kiss him again. Thoughts of doing so would make me squirm anyway, with both discomfort and something else that tingled in sensitive places.
He was my best friend, my brother, but I was terrified he’d become my biggest regret if we couldn’t find a way to salvage what we might’ve ruined.
Guarded looks and stiff limbs greeted me at every turn during school, daring me to say or do anything. I never did. Begrudgingly, I behaved.
“Willa needs her eyes checked,” he’d joked over dinner one night.
“Why?” Dad had asked.
A smirk at me, and then, “She missed the hoop by a foot in gym today.”
Dad chuckled, and Mom had shaken her head, trying not to laugh. Meanwhile, I’d smiled down at my plate, feigning embarrassment that for once, I’d wished was real.
It was business as usual in the Thorn household, that is, until Mom and Dad weren’t looking or in the same room.
Then it was cold shoulders and cruel silence.
For weeks, it dragged on. For months, I prayed that time would make what we did fade enough for him to forget his new favorite pastime; ignoring me.
I couldn’t tell Peggy. I couldn’t tell anyone.
I was left to suffocate alone.
Jackson’s sixteenth birthday was nearing when I wondered how much longer it’d be before what I felt faded. Crushes, those feelings were supposed to pass. And I was desperate to breathe without the burn.
Lately, Ainsley and Annabeth had been two constant fixtures by Jackson’s locker. And usually, he’d offer them that irritating smirk of his before leaving them to blush in his absence.
Today was different.
Today, he turned to Ainsley and leaned his shoulder into his closed locker, his lips moving as she stepped closer, gazing up at him with wonder.
Idly, I wondered if I ever looked at him the same way. The thought didn’t stand a chance at lingering as a tightening sensation exploded through my chest and worked its way up my throat.
I shouldn’t care.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to care.
But I did.
He’d been the one to make the first move. The one to propel us into this dark space where we were left to find the sun on our own.
I
couldn’t watch, but I still did, as he said something that made Ainsley giggle and sway even closer. She’d taken to wearing heels to school, her knee-high black socks covering her knees.
I looked down at my own that wrapped snug around the tops of my shins, my toes scrunching inside my black ballet flats, and sighed, blowing hair off my face as I forced my feet to class.
“But I told Mom I didn’t like them, and she gave me the angry eyes,” Peggy was saying. “Can you believe it? Like, it’s been years, lady. Lay off already.”
I smiled at Peggy and nodded even though I wasn’t listening.
Jackson and Ainsley walked outside, and I stood. “Jack, I brought some pudding cups.”
Jackson stopped, grinned at Ainsley, whose brows were puckering as she gazed back and forth between us. “Cool story, Wil. Better watch it doesn’t add another member to the family of zits on your chin.”
My stomach turned to lava, bubbling and roaring, rising to flood my face and ears.
I fell to the bench seat as he and Ainsley walked through the doors to sit outside.
Dash sauntered over and snatched one of the pudding cups. “His loss.” He winked, then tore the lid off on the way to Lars and Raven, who were sitting on the other side of the cafeteria.
One of the cheerleaders, Daphne, was watching me, and for some reason, that only made it worse. Tears pushed and demanded to be set free.
It’s only pudding, I berated myself. Don’t be such a baby.
Peggy’s hand fell over mine. “Hey, he’ll stop being a dick eventually. That’s just what brothers do, you know?”
I nodded, forcing a smile that barely moved my lips. Peggy had witnessed a few of Jackson’s snubbings. She’d also witnessed most of our relationship, so I knew she could understand, as much as anyone could without knowing everything, why it wasn’t so easy to shake off.
I wanted to tell her that he’d kissed me. That almost nine months ago, beneath a fairy lit sky, I’d kissed him back. I needed to tell someone, and he wouldn’t dare let me utter a word about it to him.
Hysteria sparked and pricked at my chest, pushing out a rough laugh. “I know. I don’t even know why I bother. It’s stupid. He’s stupid.”
Peggy took her hand back and opened a snickerdoodle. “Not stupid. You guys were like best friends. I’d be sad if Dash never wanted to hang with me, especially in public.”
Dash and Peggy had been best friends since they were toddlers, maybe earlier than that. So if anyone knew how I might be feeling, it’d be her.
And still, I said nothing.
It was too bad, really. Too bad that I had to deal with this alone. Too bad that I had to watch Ainsley flirt and follow Jackson around.
Too bad that I had to get over something that didn’t feel wrong at all, but every shade of right. For I knew I did. I just wasn’t sure how to.
As if he knew exactly what I needed, Jackson fixed that for me the following week.
It didn’t matter that I’d been his first. Not when I wanted to be all the in-betweens and his last too.
And where were the teachers when you actually wanted them to be around? Nowhere to be seen from my vantage point by the drop-off zone outside school.
They were kissing in plain sight. Ainsley’s head tipped back and Jackson’s angled down as his hand cradled her face the same way it had cradled mine.
Even as my stomach churned and my heartbeat slowed to a painful thump, I wondered if his hold was just as gentle, if his lips were as curious and hungry, and if his heart was racing or merely beating.
And I wondered why, out of all the places he could’ve picked, he chose to kiss her there. Mere feet away from where our driver would pull up to take us home.
When he’d eventually climbed inside the black Town Car, Lynne giving us small smiles in greeting, I decided I was through with wondering.
I knew too much to keep wondering. I had cold hard facts.
We were stepsiblings who never should’ve touched, let alone kissed until our lips were cracked and swollen.
Until my heart was cracked and swollen.
I should’ve felt sickened. I should’ve struggled with what we’d done. But I hadn’t. I didn’t. I hadn’t felt anything but desperate longing for a long time.
But now, it was painfully clear he felt differently.
Home was unable to provide reprieve. Everywhere I went, he went too. That was the crux of it really. What we’d done was as inescapable as ourselves.
The anger and injustice brewed throughout dinner, no longer a steady simmer but a boiling mess that couldn’t be unleashed.
Mom and Dad chattered, a few times trying to coax me into conversation, to which I just smiled and kept scratching at the food on my plate.
Jackson was all carefree attitude and smiles as though he couldn’t see the tension or feel it rolling off me from where I sat across from him.
Mom eyed me as she finished her wine, and I excused myself, blaming an unsettled stomach.
No lie, but only partial truth. Each step was weighted as I went upstairs and fell back against the closed door.
I stood there, eyes shut and my chest heaving, for untold seconds or minutes, and then I was storming across my room, unable to feel anything but this energy that was strangling every breath I drew.
Pasta jewelry and art cracked as it smacked to the floor. The framed photo I had of us on my dresser, where he was smiling, a fish hanging from the rod in his hand, and I was pointing at it, dented the wall before meeting the floor, the frame splitting and the picture tilting.
“Willa.” His voice penetrated.
But I wasn’t done. I was so far from done as I opened my desk drawer and threw the scrapbook album I’d made for us across the room.
Jackson moved in time to avoid having it hit his stomach, his mouth agape. “Bug, stop.”
I stabbed a finger at him, growling, “Get out.”
Biting his lips, his face pale with apprehension, he ignored me and came closer.
“Don’t,” I said. “Just don’t. I love you, and you, and you…” My voice cracked. “You treat me like that doesn’t mean anything. As if we were never friends at all, let alone more. You just keep throwing it back in my face. All the freaking time.”
His head was shaking. “Will—”
“Get. Out.”
He reached for me, eyes soft and glossy. “Bug.”
My heart seized and splattered.
“Jackson,” Mom interrupted.
He stepped back, his gaze remaining on me.
My chest was going to explode, my fingers curling and uncurling, nails scoring into my palms.
“You two haven’t been getting along for some time now,” she said, her eyes flicking back and forth between us. “Dad and I spoke about it. We think you’d be better off with some time apart.”
No.
I began to protest, but Mom raised a hand, taking Jackson by the elbow.
He didn’t move, his expression of shattering steel still on my face, until Mom said, “There’s only one other alternative if you can’t agree to this.”
Jackson relented then, and horrified, I widened my eyes at her. “What?”
Dad, my real one, was on his last tour, and then he was taking a job close to where he’d bought a house on the outskirts of town.
Mom sighed. “You aren’t yourself, Willa. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. I’ve been patient, but enough is enough.” Her eyes roamed my bedroom, creasing with displeasure. “It’s time to make some changes. No arguments.”
Jackson stared at me over his shoulder as she encouraged him from my room, then helped him pack up his own.
Unable to understand how I could feel so angry yet feel so guilty, I found myself stuck in the threshold of my doorway at midnight.
Sleep refused to arrive, and rather than tossing and turning, I got up to get a drink, but I couldn’t force myself down the stairs.
Jackson was still in his room and remained there until his bed was
set up in the basement. The basement wasn’t as cold and dreary as it once had been. It was carpeted, air conditioned, and even had a window looking up into the side of our yard.
Still, I’d done this. I’d had him moved as if he were some troublesome child who needed an intervention.
He wasn’t doing anything wrong.
It took some time, but a few nights later, sleep still a distant memory, I drained a glass of water and watched my hand shake as I set it down in the sink, knowing it was me.
I was the troublesome child with feelings and thoughts that shouldn’t exist. The one who kept getting away with being a nuisance.
Exist they might, but it was past time I locked them away. If Jackson had any, then he’d clearly done the same thing months ago.
“Hey,” he said.
It was almost midnight, but I wasn’t all that surprised he was still awake.
Turning around, I tucked some hair behind my ear, trying to say what I needed to. I refused to look at him as I did. “I’m sorry, Jack.”
His bare feet carried him closer, too close. Tipping my chin up, he forced my eyes to his. The touch alone was enough to make my heart kick. “Don’t cry.”
I sniffed, laughing a little. “So bossy.”
He smirked, but it fell after a second, swept away by the stark lines of his cheekbones and the shifting of his squaring jaw. “You don’t need to be sorry. I’ve been asking Dad if I could move down there for months.”
Months. I swallowed, backing into the counter to force his fingers off my skin. “You wanted to be away from me?” My voice was meek and accusing, but I didn’t have the strength to care.
Jackson’s brows lowered over his vivid eyes. “No. I wanted away from them. My room is next to theirs.”
“Oh,” I said, the word rushing out on a relieved breath while I dragged my eyes to the floor.
“You said something that’s been bothering me,” he said after a moment of crushing silence.
My head snapped up. “What?”
Looking uncomfortable, he scratched his head, chewing on his lip. “Um, in your room. The other night.”