by Megan Hart
“You didn’t say anything,” she pointed out.
Nick gave her a small smile. “It’s different. Is that what you wanted me to say?”
Bess sat, the earlier, luxurious languidity fading. Now the room seemed too cold, and she got up to push the floor vent closed with her toe. When she turned back to the bed, Nick had sat up.
Bess gathered her clothes to begin dressing, but before she could even step into her panties, Nick was on his feet, his hand on her wrist. The suddenness with which he’d moved startled her, and she cried out. His kiss swallowed the small noise.
Bess froze under Nick’s mouth, but his kiss gentled and soothed, urging her lips to open. His tongue dipped inside and stroked in and out as his fingers slid between her legs to do the same. Bess gripped Nick’s shoulder, her clothes falling forgotten to the floor.
He backed her up a couple steps until her butt hit the edge of the dresser. This was the Nick she remembered, the one who touched her in all the right places. The one who didn’t use pretty words. His fingers slid inside her and she gasped, then again when they withdrew and he slid her wetness up and over her clit.
He curled her fingers around his prick and they stroked him to full erection together. His kisses got harder, his grip tighter, but she loved it. She always had. She loved how he made her body respond.
He nudged her thighs open wider and guided his penis inside her. The dresser was just the right height, and Bess used one hand to hold herself steady, the other to grab Nick’s shoulder as he pushed forward. The mirror rattled and so did the small glass dish of earrings and change she kept on top of the dresser. Nick grabbed the hand gripping his shoulder and slid it between them. As he’d used his hand over hers on his cock, he did the same now with hers on her clit. When she was circling it with her fingers, he let go and used both hands to grip her hips so he could thrust into her harder and faster.
Harder. Faster. Each time Nick fucked into her, Bess’s fingers slipped on her clit until all she had to do was press them to her body and allow him to move her. She tipped her head back, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she tried hard not to moan too loudly. The edge of the dresser cut into the back of her thighs and Nick’s hands squeezed so fiercely she wanted to writhe.
She came like fireworks, bright sparks of pleasure against the dark sky of her emotions. His name caught in her throat and snagged her tongue, scraped past her lips and left a taste like blood. Her fingernails dug into the wood of the dresser. She opened her eyes. Her orgasm manifested itself in her vision with more bright streaks of color, swirling as she blinked.
“I love you.” The words whispered out of her just as he closed his eyes and tipped his head, grunting in his climax. She wasn’t sure he heard her. After a second, she wasn’t sure that mattered.
Nick thrust and shuddered. When he looked at her again, slowly blinking, then smiling, it was as if her heart started beating and she hadn’t noticed it had stopped.
“Not everything’s different,” he said. “Some things are the same.”
He kissed her then, but it didn’t take away the taste of blood.
CHAPTER 32
Then
The summer was more than half over. Normally at this time of year Bess would be counting the days until she could hang up her polo shirt and leave Sugarland behind. Leave the beach. Get back to school. To her life. To Andy.
This year had been different in so many ways already she shouldn’t have been surprised that her feelings about staying and going were different, too, yet when she flipped the calendar from July to August the tears rose in her throat. Bess sniffed them back and stabbed the pin into the corkboard to hold the calendar in place.
Usually the board would be abristle with tacked up photos, copies of her schedule, messages and pay stubs. This summer all she’d stuck into it was the calendar, each day crossed off in red ink when it was done, and a few takeout menus that were probably out of date.
And why?
Because of Nick.
The days she’d have spent hitting the boardwalk with friends were spent with Nick. The nights she’d have spent going to the underage clubs or simply hanging out with her family…the same. Nick had consumed her summer. And summer was almost over.
“Bess?” Her aunt Carla’s voice drifted down the stairs. “You want to come have something to eat?”
“I’ll be right there!” Bess swiped at her face to rid it of any tears that had managed to slip past her defenses. Aunt Carla had eyes like a hawk.
This week’s beach-house crew consisted of Aunt Carla, Uncle Tony and their three daughters. Angela, Deirdre and Cindy were typical beach bunnies, heading out to the sand as soon as they got up, and spending every day broiling themselves into wrinkles and skin cancer. They stalked the boardwalk at night, on the hunt for cute boys, and pretty much ignored Bess unless they wanted some free diet sodas from Sugarland.
Aunt Carla, on the other hand, had made a mission out of taking the place of Bess’s mom. It didn’t seem to matter that Bess spoke to her parents once a week, without fail, or that she’d been working at the beach for the past three summers and going to college for the past three years, and therefore hadn’t actually lived at home with her parents since she’d been eighteen. Aunt Carla had a habit of mothering everyone, so Bess shouldn’t have been surprised her aunt was doing it to her. But considering she allowed her own daughters to stay out until all hours, Bess thought it was a little unreasonable of her aunt to expect Bess to check in with a daily schedule.
The food was good, though. Unlike most of the other family members who came for vacation, Aunt Carla didn’t believe in eating out for every meal. Not even at the beach. Breakfast and lunch were casual, but she cooked dinner almost every night. Tonight it was steaks on the grill and baked potatoes, corn on the cob, green salad and fresh biscuits.
Bess’s stomach was already rumbling as she followed the good smells up the stairs and into the living room. Uncle Tony snored on the recliner. Bess heard the muffled chatter of her cousins in their room, along with the blare of a radio. They’d be getting ready to go out right after dinner, while Uncle Tony and Aunt Carla read books on the deck or went for a walk along the beach.
Bess, on the other hand, had no plans.
She hadn’t seen Nick in three days, not since Eddie had interrupted them behind the shop. Nick hadn’t been home that night when Bess stopped by after work. He hadn’t come by the next day, either, and she hadn’t gone to his apartment again. She wasn’t stupid, or so desperate she had to chase him down wherever he might have gone.
All right, so she wasn’t stupid. After three days without Nick, desperation didn’t seem so…desperate.
“You look pretty, honey.” Aunt Carla, her curly blond hair piled high on top of her head, beamed as Bess came in. “Can you grab that bowl of coleslaw? I thought we’d eat on the deck. Tony! Get up!”
Uncle Tony, snorting and blinking, lumbered out of his chair. “Huh? What?”
Aunt Carla rolled her eyes as Bess grabbed the bowl of slaw. “Tony, dinner. Call the girls.”
Bess took the bowl to the picnic table out on the deck, where her aunt had already laid out plates and silverware. The napkins fluttered under the weight of a large shell. She put down the bowl and looked through the glass doors, behind which she could see her aunt, uncle and cousins getting the rest of the food and bringing it out. She could see herself, too, with clouds and sky behind her. Her reflection shimmered, like an illusion. Blink, and see the family inside. Blink again, see the girl standing in front of the window. It was a mind-fuck, truly, and she turned away from the sight of her own ghost.
That’s when she saw him, on the sand. Nick, hands in his pockets, staring up at the deck. Bess had raised a hand to him, her heart skip-thumping and her lips spreading into a grin, before she realized it. He didn’t wave back.
“Bess, honey?” Aunt Carla’s voice hovered so close to Bess’s ear she jumped. “Is that a friend of yours? Why not invit
e him up for dinner? We have plenty.”
Bess had gripped the railing to keep herself from waving again after Nick hadn’t. Now he’d turned to face the ocean, his arm swinging back and then releasing. Bess watched the small stone skip out onto waves placid with the low tide.
“Oh…no.” She shook her head. “No, that’s okay.”
It was bad enough she hadn’t seen him for three days, but now to know he was stalking her at her house but ignoring her? Bess turned her back firmly and smiled at her aunt, who gave a dubious look over Bess’s shoulder, but seemed appeased enough to let it go.
There was no room in Bess’s stomach for dinner, not around the stone lodged there. She forced herself to eat anyway. Tiny bites of steak, a half a potato, a nibble or two of corn. It had been weeks since she’d had anything this good, and she cursed Nick for being the reason she couldn’t enjoy it.
“You’re going to waste away to nothing,” Aunt Carla chided as Bess helped her clear the table.
The cousins had already escaped to freshen their lipsticks and style their hair. Uncle Tony had retired to the master bathroom with his newspaper. Bess didn’t mind helping with the dishes, actually. She had no place else to be.
She read for a while in her room. The book, a tattered paperback about twin boys with a secret, had been part of the house’s library for as long as she could remember. Bess had read it every summer for as long as she could remember, too, but this year the familiar scenes had, for the first time, ceased to thrill or chill her. Part of it was her age. Tittered commentary about freak-show hermaphrodites and severed fingers kept in ring boxes had seemed shocking when she was younger, but cable TV had shown her more disturbing things.
She tossed the book onto her desk. Her bed was lumpy. Her sheets needed washing, and her comforter, too. Her pillow had flattened. She grumbled, she sighed, she contemplated soothing herself with the familiarity of her own hand, but couldn’t muster the enthusiasm for it.
She didn’t bother with shoes or even a bra. Nobody would see her breasts bouncing in the dark, and she wasn’t planning on walking very far. She just needed to get out of the room. Grabbing up a zippered sweatshirt, Bess let herself out into the carport, then followed the sandy path through the dunes to the beach. The flicker of the television made dancing shadows in the windows of the house, and the night wasn’t so black she couldn’t see. A fire burned in front of the house a few down from hers, and she heard the rise and fall of laughter over the sound of the waves, but down by the water’s edge she could be as anonymous as she wanted.
Except she wasn’t alone down there.
Nick sat at the edge of the wet sand, his arms locked around his legs. He had a six-pack of beer nestled next to him, and his bandanna next to that, like maybe he’d used the cloth to cover the beer when he was walking. He didn’t look at her when she sat next to him. The cold sand made her shiver and she pulled her sweatshirt closer around her.
“I’m sorry,” he said before she could speak, and those two words thoroughly stole any answer she could possibly have given. “I was an ass.”
Bess ran her fingers through the soft sand and found a smooth stone, a rough shell. She rubbed the edges of each and then allowed them to clack together in her palm when she closed her fingers overtop.
“I don’t understand why you got so mad, that’s all. It’s not like Eddie is anything but a friend to me.”
“He doesn’t like me.”
Bess laughed softly. “You don’t like him, either. So what?”
Now he turned to look at her. “He’s tried to tell you not to be with me, hasn’t he?”
Bess bit her lower lip for a moment before answering. “Yes.”
“And he’s your friend.” Nick cracked open one of the beers. “Maybe I’m afraid you’ll listen to him.”
“Oh…Nick.” Bess put her hand on his shoulder. “I make my own decisions. Don’t you know that by now?”
He drank and set the beer back into the sand. When he kissed her, she tasted the bitter, yeasty tang on this lips and her stomach suddenly rumbled. His hand came up to slide beneath her hair and cup the base of her skull as his tongue toyed with hers.
“Would you really care?” she asked when he pulled away. She pitched the question low so he could ignore it, pretend as though the rush and tumble of the waves had hidden it.
“The summer’s not over,” Nick said.
It wasn’t the answer to the question she’d asked. “We have another month. I go back just after Labor Day.”
Nick drank again. Set the beer down. This time, he didn’t kiss her.
“Four weeks, and you’ll be gone.”
“Yes.”
Does that bother you? She wanted to ask, but fearful of not hearing the answer she preferred, did not.
“Are you going to tell your boyfriend then? When you go back?”
Bess shook her head.
Nick snorted under his breath. “Yeah. Probably not.”
“Were you sitting here all night?” She moved a little closer to him, and though he didn’t pull away, neither did he put his arm around her.
“No. I took a break. Went to get the beer. Came back.”
“To see me?” She sounded too hopeful and hated herself for it.
Nick looked at her. “Maybe.”
“Would it kill you,” she said stiffly, “to just say yes?”
“Yes,” Nick said. “I came to see you.”
He’d given her what she wanted, but it didn’t satisfy her. “This isn’t any of Andy’s business.”
“Because he’ll break up with you.” Nick sounded smug.
“Maybe I’ll break up with him,” Bess retorted. “Maybe I already have, Nick, and just didn’t tell you.”
He looked at her again, assessing. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
“Because if I didn’t have someone else…if I was suddenly available, you’d run so far and so fast I’d never hear from you again.” She believed this.
Nick looked out to the ocean. “That’s not true.”
“No?” Bess got on her knees in front of him, heedless of the fact she knelt in cold wetness. “Look at my face and say that.”
Nick stared, then smirked. “That’s not true.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not good enough. Tell me that if I didn’t have a boyfriend anymore you would still be interested in me.”
“Bess,” Nick said with a sigh. “I’d still be interested in you.”
She blinked against the sudden up-and-down tilt of her emotions, and reached for him. His arms went around her. She kissed his mouth, soft at first and then harder. She straddled him, forcing his legs to straighten to give her a place to sit. She took his hands and put them beneath her sweatshirt, under her cotton T-shirt and on her bare breasts.
Nick moaned into her mouth. Bess licked his lips with slow flickers, teasing him to move forward to capture her kiss. She threaded her hands through his hair and held his head to keep him still.
She looked into his eyes, flashing with silver in the night. She kissed him again. “A month can be a long time.”
His palms cupped her and her nipples rose, tight and turgid against them. She rocked her crotch forward on his belt. Her legs closed around his waist, squeezing.
She wasn’t quite sure how she unzipped his jeans and how they wriggled her out of her shorts, but she knew exactly when she slid onto his erection. Nick moaned into her mouth. His hands on her bare ass were chilly, but she didn’t care. She just wrapped her legs tighter around him and rocked.
A shout went up from the bonfire and something flat skidded into the sand a few feet from them. Their mouths unlocked and both turned to face the guy running to grab the flying disk. His footsteps threw up sand, which stung Bess’s hands and shins, but he barely gave the two of them a second glance.
This excited her no end, fucking on the beach, and she dug her nails into Nick’s back when she came, with her face buried against his neck to muffle her shout. He pulsed
inside her harder than she’d ever felt, but it wasn’t until she’d moved off him that Bess remembered the condom.
Or rather, the lack of one.
She said nothing about it, just gathered up her clothes and wriggled back into them while Nick zipped and buttoned. She sat next to him again, but this time he put his arm around her. The night wind had turned colder and she undid her sweatshirt to give him some.
“What are you so afraid of?” she whispered, when it seemed as if the night was going to go on forever, like the ocean, and neither of them would say anything again.
“I’m not afraid of anything.”
He was lying, and they both knew it. Bess rested her head on his shoulder and took his hand, linking it with hers in his lap. She timed the rise and fall of her breath to his.
“Do you trust me?” Nick asked after a moment.
Bess didn’t hesitate to answer. “Yes.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said. “I’ll fuck you over like I fucked over everyone else.”
“I don’t believe that.”
His fingers squeezed hers. “I don’t trust you, Bess.”
She tried not to be hurt. “Do you trust anyone?”
He shook his head after a second. “No.”
“You can trust me, Nick.” She kissed his hand and tucked it between both of hers. “You can.”
He laughed low, under his breath. “Yeah. Because everyone else has been so trustworthy. I trusted my mom when she promised not to get high again, or not to bring home strangers she’d fuck to get a hit. I trusted the social worker who told me my aunt and uncle would take good care of me. I trusted Heather when she said she wasn’t going to fuck around on me, too.”
“I’m not any of those people.”
Nick got up and strode down the beach, Bess a few paces behind him. She caught up to him, taking his hand though he tried to pull it away. She stopped him. Turned him until he looked at her.
“I’m not those people!” she cried, not caring if the shout carried.
Nick turned his head and spat into the sand before looking back at her. “I don’t want your fucking pity.”