Recovered

by Jay Crownover

  “He is. He was also the only guy in Loveless I ever considered having sex with, but it never got that far. He met someone else. Someone who needed him far more than I did, so, yes, Cable, I am the virgin sacrifice. Are you happy now?”

  I tossed my head back so that I was looking up at the ceiling. No, I wasn’t happy. That was how this whole mess started a million years ago.

  “Not really. I don’t sleep with virgins. It’s pretty much the one and only rule I follow.” Anybody deserved better than what I had to offer for their first time. I wasn’t patient and gentle. I wasn’t soft or delicate. I wasn’t the kind of memory any girl wanted for something that was supposed to be a big deal. I never wanted to be anyone’s first or their last. I just wanted to be a moment they would think about with fondness and a smile.

  I was telling her she was off limits, not that I’d ever had a shot at getting a piece of her. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a piece I was after. It was the whole damn thing. All of her, and that was why I pushed. I didn’t deserve anyone as good as Affton, and even the greedy, selfish part of me that thrived on knowing she wasn’t immune to me knew it.

  She shook her head and turned back toward the hallway. “That’s okay, because I would never sleep with an addict . . . recovering or otherwise.”

  Ouch. That sentence stung, just as she intended.

  “Tomorrow I’m ready to sit down for a few hours and start studying for the GED test.” It was as much of a truce as I could offer.

  It was her turn to shrug, and she did so without looking at me. “I think I’ll wait to see which Cable I get tomorrow. I’ve learned there are a bunch of them hiding in the darkness and some are easier to deal with than the others. Right about now, I’m missing the Cable who pretended I didn’t exist. He was obnoxious, but he wasn’t mean.”

  She disappeared down the hallway, and I watched her go until she was out of sight. She was right that there were a bunch of different versions of me vying for control. There was the me who wanted to be reckless and wild, the one who got drunk and played with pretty girls in bikinis. There was the one who scared me. The one who couldn’t talk about the night that things changed, or face the fact that life would never be the same because of his choices. There was the resentful me who was still pissed it took an accident and bloodshed to get my parents’ attention. There was the lost me who couldn’t figure out what was next. He was the one who was around the most. He was the one who pushed Affton away because he couldn’t figure out how she fit in his new world, but he knew that he really, really wanted to find a place for her in it.

  If she was as smart as I thought she was, she would be prepared for the different versions of Cable who wanted her. Because every single part of me did want her, even the parts that we both knew were going to be hell.

  Affton

  IT WASN’T THAT I was afraid of sex or even disinterested in it. The truth of the matter was I was just as curious and confused about all the intimate workings between a boy and a girl as any girl my age. Well, any girl my age who hadn’t already jumped off that bridge one or two times. I was the last one standing, and the older I got, the lonelier my place on that bridge became.

  There were too many other things that occupied my time and my attention when I was in school for hooking up to be on the agenda. I wasn’t the kind of girl who could get naked and romp around with someone casually. I was too intense for that. I was too careful with my time and my affection to hand it out to whoever offered me a good time. That’s why Hayes had been the one and only person I’d even considered sleeping with.

  He was adorable in a big, burly kind of way. He was really handsome with his dark hair and light green eyes. I appreciated the fact that he was soft-spoken and thoughtful. I liked that he had a kind heart and an honorable streak a mile wide. His dad was the sheriff, and he took the responsibility of being the sheriff’s son very seriously. He was also stubborn and determined. He asked me out no less than five times before I finally relented and agreed to go on a date with him. I was attracted to everything about him except that he was a hometown boy through and through. I told him upfront that I was leaving, and once I was gone, I would only be back to see my dad. Hayes just smiled and told me there was no harm in spending time together before I left. I believed him when he said he had no intention of holding me back, and eventually, I trusted him enough to entertain the idea of having sex with him. No one wanted to go away to college untried and naïve. No one wanted to be the girl who didn’t know anything about sex and seduction when she was finally on her own and free to experience all that life had to offer without the watchful eye of a parent hindering her.

  Unfortunately, things never got that far with Hayes. As it turned out, he was as much of a sucker for a lost cause as I was, and when a new girl showed up at school sporting all kinds of punk rock pointy edges, it hadn’t taken long for his attention and his affection to shift from me to her. I barely felt a single sting when he was gone, so I breathed a sigh of relief that I hadn’t slept with him. In zero time, I was back to being engrossed in school, college prep, spending time with Jordan, and taking care of my dad. In hindsight, there was also a lot of wondering and worrying about Cable taking place in those hours. He always took up space and distracted me, even when he was locked away.

  With Cable, I felt more than a sting when he pulled away and when he pushed me to the point of no return. He made me burn. I felt the familiar fiery heat of anger, but there was also a smoldering warmth of something else that lingered beneath the surface. I’d never been so acutely aware of another person before. I swore I had every line of his long, lean body memorized, and I could tell his mood by nothing more than the shift in his eye color. Being around him also made me hyper-aware of my own body and the way it responded to his nearness. I was constantly trying to cover up the way my nipples tightened around him. I was continually baffled by the heavy throb between my legs and the way my blood rushed to all the most sensitive parts of my body when he looked at me with those dark eyes, made even darker with desire. I was attracted to him despite knowing what a mess he was, despite the inevitable train wreck any kind of involvement with him would end in. I was into him when he made it nearly impossible for me to even like him, and I was worried about him when he made it abundantly clear he didn’t want me to be.

  He was confusing.

  How he made me feel was perplexing.

  How I reacted to him was terrifying.

  I’d never felt so out of control, and I despised every second of it. All I wanted to do was hide in the fancy guest room with covers over my head and my sanity intact, but I wasn’t given any kind of respite after a sleepless night. That night I spent wondering just how Cable’s, ‘I don’t sleep with virgins’ rule came about, because as soon as the sun came up, he was knocking on the door, sweeping into my room unannounced. He plopped down on the edge of my bed ignoring my groan, his weight making it impossible to pull the covers up to my chin.

  He had a bowl of cereal in his hands and a smirk on his face as he watched me struggle to make sense of why he was in my space so early, hell, why he was even in my space at all, when he had done his best to send me running last night.

  “You want to come out on the water with me this morning?” He shoved the spoon in his mouth and lifted his eyebrows at me. “You never know when I’m going to get called in for a piss test, so there’s no time to waste.”

  I groaned again and rubbed my tired eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “Surfing. You want to come with me this morning?” He sounded so reasonable and normal. I didn’t trust him for a second.

  “Why do you want to take me surfing? You’ve been gone every day for weeks and all of a sudden you’re craving company? I asked you once already to show me how to surf, and you ignored me.” I sounded surly and short. All he did was grin even bigger at my irritated tone.

  “You’re gonna help me get my GED. I figured I could help you learn to do something. Maybe teach you how to do some
thing fun since you seem to be allergic to it.”

  I wanted to yank the spoon out of his hand and smack him in the forehead with it. “I’m not allergic to fun. There just hasn’t been a lot of opportunity for it this summer.”

  “I’ll give you that. I wouldn’t want to be stuck being responsible for me either, but what about before this summer, Reed? We went to high school together, remember? I know you were never around any of the parties. You never showed up for any of the school events. You barely interacted with anyone. When did you have fun?” He sounded genuinely curious, but every time I gave him the tiniest bit of myself, he ended up taking so much more.

  “Not all of us have parents who own an entire town, Cable. Some of us don’t even have parents . . . just a single, hard-working dad who does his very best to put food on the table and keep the lights on. There isn’t a lot of time for fun when you have to pay your own way in life.” I was sure that if I took a single step out of line, if I veered even slightly off the path I’d set for myself, everything would end up crumbling down around me. I didn’t have the time to fail. I didn’t have the confidence to get back up if I fell . . . so, I never wavered, and I never wandered. At least I hadn’t until this boy and all his tragic, tormented ways sent me spinning.

  He gave a little grunt and pushed off the bed. His gaze took me in from my messy hair to where the covers caught around my waist. His eyes shifted to the dark brown that was almost black as he gave a little shrug. “Fair enough. I’ve never had to struggle to find time for fun. The invitation is open if you want to join me. I’m headed out in ten minutes.”

  He left the door open when he left the room, and I could hear him in the kitchen actually rinsing out his bowl. I wasn’t sure what version of Cable this was, but if he was willing to give me the truce I’d asked for, then I wanted to keep him around as long as I could. I figured it wouldn’t kill me to spend the morning with him out on the water. I was, after all, in a beach town and had yet to have a single moment that felt restful or relaxing. There was no vacation in this summer vacation.

  I kicked off the covers, rushed to brush my teeth, and pulled a comb through my hair. I pulled the pale locks up into a high ponytail and frantically searched through my suitcase for the one and only bathing suit I brought with me. It was a floral-patterned two-piece with a halter neck and boy short bottoms. It was far more modest than the teal number the girl he’d been frolicking around with in the water a few days ago had on, but I still felt uncomfortably exposed as I pulled on a pair of cutoffs and my Chucks before dashing down the hallway. I caught him as he was pulling open the massive glass doors.

  He gave me a once over and inclined his head toward the deck where there were two surfboards resting. His was black and white. It was a familiar sight propped up against the railing, but the one next to it was baby blue and looked brand new.

  “You ever done this before?” He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and squinted at me through the flame of his lighter as he asked me the question.

  I shook my head in the negative and slid a pair of cheap, gas station sunglasses over my eyes. “Nope. I don’t come from vacation homes on the beach type of people. The only reason I know how to swim is because my mom moved to a shitty apartment complex with a pool when she and my dad split, and my dad insisted on getting me lessons.” He insisted because he knew my mom never really kept an eye on me and he was worried I would wander off and end up in over my head . . . literally.

  He slid on a pair of obviously expensive sunglasses and blew out a puff of smoke that made me wrinkle my nose in distaste. “You don’t talk about your mom much.”

  I shrugged and took the blue board when he handed it off to me. “It hurts to talk about her.” Because he was so close, I felt him stiffen when he realized just how much it cost me to confront him that day at his car.

  “I know all about that. Having something that hurts to talk about.” I could still see him on his knees, shaking and breaking apart in the counselor’s office. That night didn’t just hurt him when he talked about it; it destroyed him.

  I followed him down the steps to the beach below, the sand immediately sticking to my shoes. He chuckled as I grumbled and bent to take them off. I looked up at him over the top of my sunglasses and told him, “Your shrink thinks it would help if you actually talked about that night. Dealing with the fallout all on your own isn’t doing you any good.”

  We got closer to the water, and he dropped his board on the sand and indicated I should do the same. He put his hands on his hips, and his cigarette bounced against his lips when he asked me flatly, “Who did you talk to about your mom?”

  I mimicked his pose and turned my head so that I was looking out over the water. “No one. It made my dad upset, and telling your friends that your mom was a junkie who overdosed isn’t exactly easy. My best friend, Jordan, knows the basics, but I never told her how bad it got or how much it hurt each time my mom left rehab early and went right back to using. That’s not exactly a topic you bring up while studying for finals or talking about prom.”

  He made a noise of understanding in his throat and plucked his cigarette out of his mouth so that he could toss it into the water. “That’s how I feel about everything that happened that night. It’s not a conversation I want to have with anyone. Talking about it, going over all the details, it’s not going to change anything. Someone is still going to be dead, someone is still going to be paralyzed, and I’m always going to be the bastard who’s responsible.”

  Without thinking about it, I moved closer so I could put my hand on the center of his back. He was so warm, and the contact sent an electric shock through my arm. “Talking about it won’t change what happened, but it might change how you feel about what happened. You don’t have to shoulder all of that guilt and regret alone, and if you keep trying to, you’re going to end up right back where you were.”

  That was a place I hoped he never visited again. I had serious doubts he would survive if he ended up back there.

  His muscles shifted under my fingertips, and he cocked his head to the side so that I knew he was looking right at me even though I couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark lenses. His voice was low and vibrated with emotion that dragged the tone even deeper as he asked, “What if I don’t want to change how I feel about that night? What if I know I deserve every sleepless night and every single minute it haunts me when I’m awake?”

  I sighed, but it turned into a gasp as he reached for my free hand and pulled me around so I was facing him. He did that yesterday as well, brought us eye to eye. There was no hiding from each other when we were this close, even with the barrier of our sunglasses. He was forcing his way through my walls and showing me the wreckage that lay in waste inside of his.

  “You’re going to have to learn how to deal with those feelings because you are going to have them for the rest of your life, Cable. You can focus on what you can do now, on the ways you can do better and be better, or you can stay caught up in what was done. That’s never going to change but you can. The choice is ultimately yours.”

  His mouth flattened into a tight line as he let me go and fell back a step. “Never been one to make the right choice even when it was right in front of me, Reed.”

  I blew out a breath and pleaded with him, “Try, Cable. All you have to do is try.”

  His broad chest rose and fell as he exhaled hard enough for me to hear. “What if we make a deal?”

  This was the Cable I was most familiar with. The one who manipulated and never gave anything without taking something in return.

  “What kind of a deal?”

  He reached up and pulled his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose so that I was confronted with something unreadable in his dark eyes. “One that benefits us both. When you’re ready to talk to someone about your mom, you come to me. When I’m ready to talk to someone about that night, I’ll come to you. No judgment, no recrimination.”

  It sounded so easy, even if nothing with him ever was.
But he needed to talk, and I’d already given him the sorry ending to my story.

  “Okay. That’s a deal I can work with.”

  He dipped his chin in agreement and pushed his sunglasses back up his nose. “Good. Now we can get to the fun portion of the day if all those consequences I earned don’t come calling. Are you ready to do this?”

  I was so far from ready to learn any of the things he seemed so hell-bent on teaching me. But I’d always been a good student, and I wasn’t about to let fear of the unknown stop me from absorbing whatever it was that I was supposed to be learning while I spent this time with him.

  Cable

  SHE WAS GOOD.

  Not that I was surprised. Affton Reed was the type of girl who was good at everything she attempted. She listened to everything I told her to do before we got in the water. She copied everything I did to a T, and it only took one or two tumbles off the board before she found her balance and could stand for almost the entire curl of the smallish waves we were playing on. She didn’t get frustrated. She didn’t freak out when she went under. She simply shook the water out of her eyes, braced herself, and climbed back on the board to try again. She was graceful and agile. The truth was, if she dedicated some of her time to having fun, she would be good, better than I was. I meant it when I told her she was better than most without even trying and it was annoying, but it was also inspiring and enticing.

  I was so used to people constantly trying to be something. Trying to be popular. Trying to be liked. Trying to be badass. Trying to be a family. Affton didn’t bother to be anything she wasn’t. She was unapologetically who she was and who she was just happened to be an incredibly attractive, competent, and considerate girl. I was sure a lot of that came from having to take care of herself after her mom went sideways, but it was remarkable how capable she was. It was a daily struggle to present myself as something close to a normal human. And here I was, all kinds of twisted up and confused over a chick who made life, and all its ups and downs, her bitch.