by Megan Hart
She grabbed up Missy’s money from the counter and filled a slushy cup three-quarters full before shoving it across the counter. She made change and slapped that down, too. Rage stiffened her fingers and hooked them into clumsy claws. The coins scattered on the counter before some clinked to the floor.
“Hey!” Missy protested, bending to pick up her fallen dimes. “What’s up your ass?”
Bess glanced around the small shop, but no other customers had come in. Tammy cracked her gum and looked away when Bess glared at her, and Eddie had already disappeared into the back room. Bess folded her arms across her chest.
“Sorry.”
Missy looked up as she shoved her money into the pocket of her tiny jean shorts. “Yeah, well, not all of us can just go throwing our money all over the place, rich girl.”
The way she said it was more insulting than being called bitch, but Bess did her best not to react. “I said I was sorry.”
Missy appeared soothed, or more likely couldn’t be bothered to care. She sucked suggestively on her straw, hollowing her cheeks and sliding her mouth up and down the plastic tube. “Mmmm. Nick, sure you don’t want any?”
Nick hadn’t been watching her display. He’d been watching Bess. “No, thanks. Can I get a soft pretzel with extra salt, though?”
He dug in his pocket while Bess reached into the hot case for an extra salty pretzel. She handed it to him wrapped in the tissue paper she’d used to grab it, took his money and made change. Sucking on her slushy, Missy watched the transaction closely. Her gaze weighed on Bess’s shoulders and they hunched until Bess forced herself to stand up straight and stare her sometime friend in the face.
Missy smirked. Bess’s answering smile seemed to surprise her. Bess turned to Nick. “So, Nick. I heard the Pink Porpoise is closing.”
The Porpoise was the most popular local gay bar. Bess had been to it once or twice because it was one of the few bars that let underage kids in to dance. It wasn’t the sort of place most straight guys went by themselves, even when they got a good band to play.
“Yeah?” He tore off a bite of mustard-smeared pretzel with sharp, white teeth.
“You didn’t hear that?” Bess wiped at the counter, forcing Missy to move. “I’d have thought you would have.”
Missy tugged on his sleeve. “C’mon, Nick. Let’s get out of here.”
Bess looked up. Nick’s brow had furrowed, but he was stepping backward as Missy pulled him. Missy waved her slushy toward Bess.
“See you later!”
Nick raised the hand clutching the pretzel and followed her out of the shop. The bell jangled as the door closed. Bess slapped the counter with the damp cloth she’d been using to wipe it, and muttered a curse.
“Did you just say…pissflaps?” Tammy cracked her gum and leaned on the counter next to Bess.
“Yes, I did.”
“Gross!” She made a face and angled her head to follow Bess’s gaze out the door. “He’s cute.”
“Apparently, my friend thinks so, too.” Bess dumped the rag in the sink and viciously washed her hands. Without waiting for them to dry, she pointed at the door. “Watch the counter. I’m going in the back.”
Before Tammy had time to protest, Bess went to the tiny back room where they prepped food and stored extra supplies. Eddie, elbow-deep in a box of slushy mix packages, looked up when she came in. His face flushed deep crimson, making the bright red scars of his pimples stand out even more. Normally Bess tried not to look right at Eddie, because it made him blush, but at the moment she was too pissed off to care.
She grabbed up her oversize cup of ice water with the lid and sucked angrily at the straw. The cubes rattled inside the plastic. Eddie blushed harder when she stared at him. “What?”
“N-nothing.” He went back to unpacking the box.
Bess had nothing to do back there, really, except get in his way, but she wanted to fume. She wanted to kick something, or break it. She wanted to slap Missy across the face and call the bitch out. Which, of course, she’d never do, because she really had no reason to.
Bess, after all, had a boyfriend.
Sort of. Or maybe she didn’t. Either way, it didn’t matter, because Nick wasn’t the sort of guy who went for girls like her. He obviously went for girls like Missy.
“Pissflaps,” Bess muttered, and wished she smoked or did something raw like that. She wanted something to do outside the back door, something that made her look cool, while she pretended she wasn’t angry and aching inside at a betrayal she had no reason to feel.
From behind her, Eddie chuckled. After a second, so did Bess. It sounded a little like breaking glass, and it hurt her chest right below her heart, but she laughed just the same. She caught his eye, and the sight of his grin forced another from her, and more giggling, until after a minute they were both guffawing.
“Your friend Missy’s…interesting,” Eddie said when their giggles had faded. “I’ve never seen Nick Hamilton come into the store before.”
“You know him?”
“Everyone knows Nick,” Eddie said, his laughter fading. He wouldn’t look at her. The pink of his cheeks had disappeared, but now crept back.
“I don’t.”
Eddie looked her in the eyes, a rare occasion. “M-maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
“Must be nice,” Tammy interrupted, sticking her head through the door. “Having time to fool around. But I’m getting slammed out here!”
Bess stood and dusted her hands on the seat of her shorts. “I’ll be right there.”
Tammy rolled her eyes. “You’d better. I’ve got three sundae cones and a jumbo tub to fill!”
As night manager, Bess could have told Tammy to suck it up and deal with it, but Tammy would take twice as long to do the same tasks Bess could do in a couple minutes. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”
She didn’t have time to think of much of anything after that because the store was swamped with hungry, grubby children and sunburned, cranky grown-ups begging for sweets. The last few hours before closing flew past, and by the time she was ready to close up, her mood had changed. She glanced at the clock as she shooed Tammy and Eddie out the back and locked the door, then made her way to the front to lock it, too. With any luck she’d have the bathroom to herself when she got home, and maybe a message from Andy. She’d left half a dozen for him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking up as the bell jangled. “We’re—”
“Closed?” asked Nick with a smile that turned her legs to jelly. “I hope so. I came to see if I could walk you home.”
CHAPTER 05
Now
The sheet beneath her cheek was smooth and cool. The skin beneath her hand, warm. Nick’s chest didn’t rise or fall. He wasn’t breathing. Was he? Could he? She spread her fingers over his nipple, but nothing pulsed beneath it. No heartbeat.
Yet he was alive. There. Solid and real, not transparent. She could touch him. God, she tasted him.
“Tell me what happened,” Bess whispered. She kissed him just above his ribs and let her mouth linger on skin still tasting so much of salt.
He said nothing for so long she became certain he wasn’t going to speak. His hand stroked down her hair over and over, hypnotizing her, and then stayed still. Bess pushed her fingers through the line of curls just below his belly button. The hairs tickled her palm. His body beneath her hand tensed.
“I don’t think I know.” He shifted and his hand took up its stroke, stroke, stroke again.
There were a hundred questions roaming in her brain, but not one to which she could put voice. If he didn’t breathe, if his heart didn’t beat, how could he be warm? If he was a spirit, how could he touch her? How could he fuck her?
Her own heartbeat pounded in her ears and her breath caught in her throat. A chill swept her and she turned to him, pushing closer, grateful for the warmth she couldn’t seem to explain.
And really, how important was it for her to know the details of this magnificent t
hing, this miracle? Would the knowing of it somehow change it? Make it better?
Or make it worse?
“You don’t have to tell me,” Bess said.
She curled her fingers over his hip bone to press the solid curve beneath warm flesh. She’d memorized every detail of his body with her mouth and fingertips, and had forgotten nothing, but touching him now was as new as if it were the first time. Everything about him was new and old at once, and overlaid with memory.
“I was gone,” he said simply. Three small words with such complication in their meaning. “But now I’m back.”
Bess nuzzled his side, then pushed up on her elbow to look at him. Nick’s fingers tangled in her hair before he let go. She leaned close enough to kiss his mouth, but didn’t. She waited for the puff of his breath on her face, and of course it didn’t come.
“I don’t want to know,” Bess told him. “It doesn’t matter. Does it? You’re here now.”
He put his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her down for the kiss. Mouth to mouth, lip to lip, tongue to tongue. Their teeth clattered briefly, and Bess pulled away to look again into his eyes. They were the same. She traced the line of his brows with her fingertip and buried her face into the solace of his shoulder.
“No,” he said after a few seconds. “I guess not.”
He held her for a minute while her shoulders shook with the sobs she tried without success to bite back. “Why are you crying?”
She held him tighter, her laughter mingled with tears. “Because…I just found out you were gone and I didn’t even know, and now you’re back. You’re here and I’m here, and it’s like…”
“It feels different, too,” Nick said. “It feels…deeper.”
Bess laughed and looked into his face. She touched it. Solid and real. “I’m going crazy.”
“You’re not. I’m real.” He put her hand on his crotch. His penis stirred beneath her touch. “Does that feel like you’re crazy?”
Bess rolled her eyes a little, but didn’t pull her hand away. “Same old Nick—”
“Thinking with my dick,” he finished for her. “Yeah. Some things don’t change.”
“And some things do,” she told him. Still in her shortie nightgown, Bess got up from the bed and went to the window. Her thighs felt a little chafed and she ached between her legs from the unaccustomed rough treatment, but though they hadn’t used a condom, nothing trickled down her thighs.
Apparently, just as he didn’t breathe, Nick didn’t ejaculate, either. There was heat, and she smelled him on her body, but no…evidence. This thought strangled her with the half laugh stuck in her throat. Bess rested her head against the cool window glass and closed her eyes, listening for the sound of the ocean she couldn’t see.
His bare feet whispered on the carpet and his heat reached her before his hand did. She didn’t shrink from his touch, but neither did she go to him. When she opened her eyes, he was looking out the window, too. He turned to her. He ran a hand down her hair.
“It’s longer,” he said.
He was the same, but many things about her had changed. “Yes.”
“I like it.” He tugged the ends and slipped his hand up to cup the back of her neck. “It’s pretty.”
She didn’t think he’d ever said she was pretty. The compliment nearly overwhelmed her with emotion, and she chewed the inside of her cheek until she got herself under control. “Thanks.”
“I mean it.”
Her laugh tasted bitter. “Right. Two kids and a lot of years later, I’m still the same.”
“You are to me.” His voice gained a hard edge that made her look at him.
Bess lifted her chin, then pulled off the nightgown and dropped it to the floor. In the bright and unforgiving early afternoon sunshine, she wanted to cringe and hide behind her hands, but she straightened her back and let him see her. All of her. The scars, the marks, the places where her body had changed. She’d kept in shape and actually weighed less now than she had then, but…she didn’t look the same.
She gestured at her body. “I’m not a girl anymore, Nick.”
His gaze traveled over her from head to toe, so slowly she wanted to squirm, but Bess kept herself still. When at last he raised his eyes again to her face, she braced herself for the look of disgust, or worse, mockery.
This time when he reached for her hand, she let him take it. He pulled her two small steps into his arms. Their bodies still fit as perfectly as they always had. Against her belly, his penis thickened, not quite erect. His hands found the curve of her ass and pulled her closer.
“I don’t know what you’re worried about,” Nick said. “To me you look the same as you always did.”
She laughed. “You don’t have to flatter me.”
He pursed his lips. “Yeah, ’cuz that’s really my thing. Flattery.”
“I have gray in my hair. And…” She didn’t want to catalog all her flaws for him when he could so easily see them for himself, but at his still-curious gaze, Bess couldn’t stop herself. “And crow’s-feet and laugh lines…you don’t see any of that?”
He shook his head. Andy had often claimed the same thing, but Andy was also the first to remind her that if she ate too many cream puffs her ass would spread. Bess let her head rest against Nick’s chest for a moment before looking at his face again.
“Tell me what you see.”
“You’re beautiful,” Nick said.
He’d never told her that, either. She wouldn’t have believed he meant it then, anyway, if he had. She believed him now.
CHAPTER 06
Then
Bess kept her bike between her and Nick, as though that small barrier there made any sort of difference. He was still so close she could smell him. Close enough for their arms to brush every so often. She tried ignoring the tingle that shot up and down her arm every time his bare skin connected with hers, but it wasn’t easy.
“You don’t have to walk me the whole way,” she protested when they got closer to her house. “Really. It’s late.”
“Which is why I should walk you.” Nick grinned.
They stopped under a streetlamp. His pirate bandanna held his dark hair off his face, but Bess remembered the way it had fallen across his eyes the night of Missy’s party.
“You really don’t have to,” she said.
It would be hard to explain to her aunt and uncle or cousins or any of the half-dozen other people staying in her grandparents’ beach house exactly why she was being escorted home by a young man. A townie, no less, and definitely not Andy. They all knew Andy. They all loved Andy.
She loved Andy.
“Fine. Okay.” Nick shrugged and pulled a pack of Swisher Sweets cigars from his pocket. He lit one with the lighter he pulled from his jeans pocket. The fragrant smoke swirled between them, and Bess, who normally would have coughed, sucked it in.
The circle of light was a wall around them, keeping out the night. Bess heard the low mutter of voices and the jangle of a dog’s leash, but she didn’t turn to see who was walking by. The soft and never-ending roar of the ocean was muted here, just three blocks back from the beach. She’d taken him the long route home.
“It’s a crazy house,” she explained, though Nick hadn’t asked her to clarify. “It’s my grandparents’ house and they let everyone in the family take turns with it. They could get more money if they rented it, but they said they’d rather know who’s sleeping in their beds.”
And who was shitting in their toilets, according to Bess’s grandpa, but she didn’t say that.
“Makes sense.” Nick nodded and sucked in smoke, his eyes squinted.
“They let me stay there,” Bess continued, half hating the eagerness in her voice and what she knew had to be a transparent attempt at keeping the conversation from fading away. “I get the crap room, but it’s a place to stay. So I can save money for school.”
Again, Nick nodded, though this time he didn’t add anything. Bess waited, watching the smoke so she
didn’t have to look at his face and see if he was looking at her. Or if he wasn’t.
“I go to Millersville University,” she said. “Do you go to school?”
“Nope.” Nick tossed the butt down and ground it with the toe of his sneaker. “Not that smart.”
She laughed at that. Nick’s smile said he hadn’t been kidding, and she stopped laughing. “Oh, c’mon. I’m sure that’s not true.”
Nick shrugged. “Being a smart-ass isn’t the same thing, Bess.”
The way his voice wrapped around the single syllable of her name gave her a thrill. “Being smart isn’t everything.”
“Says the girl who’s smart.”
“Like I said,” Bess repeated, looking away, “smart isn’t everything.”
Nick shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his feet. “How long have you known Missy?”
“For about three years. Since I started working down here.” Bess toed the gravel and leaned on the handlebars of her bike. “You?”
“Just met her. She’s Ryan’s girl.” Nick gave a low, amused snort. “Sometimes.”
“Yeah. Other times she’s everyone’s girl.” Bess surprised herself with that bit of mockery, but Nick didn’t seem shocked.
“Yeah,” he agreed, with another of the slow grins giving Bess a fever. “Not mine, though.”
“It’s not any of my business.”
Nick said nothing. Finally, unable to bear the silence, she looked at him. He wasn’t smiling.
“She tell you I’m queer?”
Bess’s mouth parted but she didn’t quite find the words right away. The longer she didn’t answer, the worse it seemed, until finally she said, “Yes.”