Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance

by C. M. Stunich

  “Please don’t,” I say, even though this morning didn’t go all that badly. Honestly, it went surprisingly well—minus, you know, the catfight with Erina. But at least I know now who has the video. It’s a relief to discover that the boys are innocent in all that. “Let’s just … hang out here.” I gesture toward the clear waters of the spring, and all its strange statuary. April mentioned that this was a place of reflection. Well, I can feel it.

  A butterfly flitters through the air near our picnic blanket and then settles on the arch near the water, folding its orange and black wings up as it comes to rest. Fuck. It’s a Diana fritillary again. My throat gets tight and I down another beer.

  The universe is very clearly sending me a cheeky hello. I’d like to send a very cheeky fuck you in response.

  “You know, Karma’s right. We’ll go back, and it’ll be a bunch of politics and bullshit. Let’s just hang here, get high, eat, and swim.” Raz leans in toward me, brushing his lips against my ear. “Besides, I don’t fucking feel like sharing your attention with Calix and Barron, not today.”

  A small grin splits my lips as he leans back, his eyes as red as a demon’s, his heart as dark as a devil’s. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with darkness, now is there? Light is only beautiful in contrast, the shimmer that chases away the shadows. Raz doesn’t have to be my sunshine; he can be my moonlight instead.

  “I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” Luke says as she studies the rainbow-colored tattoo on her arm. It reminds me of Barron, and my heart clenches. My eyes turn up to the butterfly again, just sitting there, taunting me. I see you, universe, and I’m trying. Can’t you see I’m fucking trying? “Besides, I know Abigail said these new wraps she used on us are waterproof, but should we really test fate?” Luke traces her nail around the edge of the plastic cover protecting her tattoo. Sonja glances down at her own ink, this small black heart on the left side of her chest, just above her breast. It has red stitches around the edges, and an arrow that makes the heart bleed where it punctures it.

  Darkly poetic.

  That’s how my heart felt after Calix punctured it last year, like it was bleeding and would never stop.

  “I’d rather not swim, but I’m content to stay here for the rest of the night. I can always go to the next Devils’ Day party, after you guys graduate and leave me here for two more miserable years.” April unbraids her hair, letting it hang in loose waves around her shoulders.

  “Good thing we brought the weed with us then,” Sonja says and then laughs, kicking over her book bag and spilling out several large freezer bags filled with green flower, pre-rolled joints, and chocolate chip cookies. I’m assuming even the latter is laced with THC. “The others are going to be pissed.”

  “Screw them,” Raz says, his eyes on me. “We don’t need them to have a good time.”

  “No, all you need is some of that mystical Karma pussy,” Sonja suggests, and Raz chucks a bag of snack cakes at her face. She laughs as she catches them, tearing the plastic open with her teeth and then gesturing his direction with a single cake. “But you get to deal with Calix and Barron tomorrow, when they’re whining about how you stole their girl.”

  “My girl,” Raz corrects, pointing at my name on his hip. He glances my way and I lift my beer in salute. We clink our bottles together as Luke rolls her eyes.

  “Don’t get too excited, okay? This is your first day trying things out. It doesn’t have to work. It might, but it doesn’t have to.” Luke gives me a sympathetic look. “It takes more than one day to know you’ve made the right decision.” If only she knew how many days it’s really taken. Three years, plus three weeks on repeat.

  Trust me: I know.

  We hang out as a group for a while before April wanders off to take a call from Thad, and Luke and Sonja end up sitting together on one of the stone benches, passing a joint back and forth and talking in low, husky tones.

  “They’ve got some chemistry, don’t they?” I ask, watching them as my head is muddled with drink and joints. Technically, the rule is to smoke first, drink later, because alcohol amplifies the effect of weed, but that’s okay. We’re here to have a good time today, right?

  “I’m surprised you’re not pissed about Luke lying to you,” Raz says, smoking a cigarette. He’s leaning back on his elbows, that chiseled midsection of his catching my attention. It’s impossible to ignore the fact that he’s unbuttoned his slacks, letting them hang far too low on his hips. “I would be, if Sonja had lied to me.”

  “How long have you known about them?” I ask, scooting a bit closer. We’ve kicked off our shoes and socks, tossed our blazers and ties. It feels nice, to sit and relax for a while. Dragonflies buzz across the surface of the water and music plays from Luke’s car stereo, just barely drowning out the chatter of the birds in the trees.

  “Since last year,” Raz says, turning onto his side so he can look at me. “Sonja sucks ass at keeping secrets. She kept telling us she was going to use Luke, string her along a bit, and then dump her. Actually …” Raz starts and then pauses, shaking his head. “Never mind.”

  “Oh, come on,” I say, reaching out and grabbing his red leather devil’s mask from the grass. I slip it over his head, using the opportunity to play with his hair again. But as soon as I take my hands away, he pulls it off, like he just can’t bear wearing it. Not today. I appreciate that more than he’ll ever know. “Just tell me. We’re past lies and bullshit now, right?”

  “Yeah, but when you hear this, we might just fall right back into it,” he says, glancing over at the water. But I know what he’s going to say: Sonja was going to let the boys use her relationship with Luke to fuck with us both. Little do they know it never works. Never. I went through that scenario several times, and we handled it well every single day. “If I promise to tell you later, can we forget about it for now? The point is, Sonja is full of crap. She likes your weird friend, and I can’t even judge her. I like you, and you’re just as weird. Maybe weirder.”

  “Me, weirder?” I ask with a laugh. “Luke paints tiny orc figures and sets up mock battles with them.”

  “Well, shit, why did you tell me that? It’s gonna be impossible not to make fun of her now.” Raz takes a drag on his cigarette and then stabs it out into the dirt.

  “You can’t make fun of her, period,” I tell him, reaching down for the buttons on my shirt. Raz watches hungrily as I undo them, nice and slow, lifting my eyes up to meet his gaze. “We once climbed into a tiger cage at the wildcat refuge.”

  “You’re shitting me,” he replies with a sharp-edged grin. “You and the uptight, morality officer over there committed a B&E to pet a goddamn tiger?”

  “That’s exactly what we did,” I reply, pushing my shirt over my shoulders. “So, are we going to swim or what?” I stand up and push my skirt down my hips, turning and walking backward toward the water. Raz shoves up to his feet with a grin, raising his brows in surprise as I chuck my bra and step out of my panties.

  “Oh, come on,” Luke groans. “Nobody wants to see that.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Raz growls, and I turn with a shriek when he comes for me, leaping into the water before he can catch up. I’ve just barely broken the surface to grab a gulp of air when a splash sounds next to me, my body bobbing with the waves as I look around for Raz. When he doesn’t come up right away, panic overtakes me, and I start searching for him, certain that the universe is going to pull one over on me yet again.

  Hands grab me and I let out a shriek as Raz yanks me under the water and presses a kiss to my lips before letting me go. When we both come up, he’s laughing, the sound echoing around the ancient statues and their moss-covered grins. Raz swims over to a small island and uses the cracked cement wing of a demon to pull himself out of the water.

  “Who do you think put all these statues here?” I ask, swimming over next to him and folding my arms on the mossy concrete edge of the little island.

  “Who the fuck knows or cares?” Raz asks, not giving two
shits that his dick is on full display for everyone else to see. My eyes catch on it, and I have a really hard time pretending that I’ve never seen it before. “See something you like, Karma Sartain?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I tell him, raising my eyebrows and then pausing to glance over my shoulder as Luke turns up the stereo loud enough that we can hear the music from all the way over here.

  “No? My dick seems to have some idea.” Raz reaches down and gives his junk a squeeze. Pretty sure I can hear Sonja gagging from all the way over here, too. He leans down to look at me, red eyes bright in the sunshine. “You want to find a private spot to, you know, talk? And then fuck. Preferably, we’d actually fuck first, talk, then fuck again.”

  “You’re the worst,” I groan, pulling off my sopping wet mask and leaving it on the island. I’m the only one wearing it, perhaps more attached to the idea of Devils’ Day than I pretend to be. Maybe I’ve always put too much stock in that party? Last year, I swore I wasn’t going to go, even after I’d put all that work into my dress. Calix showed up at my house when I was home alone, and he convinced me to go. Then, later, he found me at the spring and urged me to come with him to the treehouse.

  And it was exactly what I’d wanted to happen, even if I refused—still refuse—to admit it to myself.

  “Or maybe I am? I think I care too much what people think,” I murmur, not expecting Raz to really respond to that. He’s shown a lot more depth of character today than I expected, but I’m not going to crack him wide and find out all of his secrets on day one. Luke is right. We need more than one day.

  We need that.

  I want to develop a real relationship, not just start a new one every fucking day.

  But, like everything else on this journey, Raz manages to surprise me.

  “Not you,” he says, shaking his head and then slicking wet hair back from his face. Droplets of water bead on his lower lip and slither down the hard surface of his chest. It seems impossible to look away, like I’m the studying the face of some young Adonis, only … one that’s been carved of shadows and stuck here in this field of forgotten statuary. Beautiful, yes, but a demon, surely. “You don’t care what people think. You dye your hair weird colors and paint faerie murals on your house.” He looks askance at me, and I remember him confiding how much he wanted to dye his own hair. “Nobody in your family seems to care. Trust me, I’d know if you did. Mine does. They care so much about what people think that my dad’s going to freak the hell out when he finds out we’re together now.”

  “And what are you going to do about that?” I ask with a small sigh, kicking my feet in the water and appreciating the fact that we’re even able to swim in fall whatsoever, especially since it rained this morning. But while the water’s cold, it’s not impossible. No, the initial temperature shock was a small price to pay.

  “I don’t know,” Raz admits, shaking his head and sending stray droplets of water everywhere. The demon statue next to him doesn’t seem to mind. “He already hates me because … Well, Pearl told him some things.” He shrugs his shoulders again and looks at me like he’s afraid I’ll judge him. I just want the chance to prove to him that I won’t. “Anyway, he hates me because of that. He hates me because I couldn’t hack it at football. He hates me because I don’t want to be him. All of it.” Raz looks at me with an assessing gaze, like this is something he’s thought about before. Based on what he said at the cottage, I’m certain he already has. “There’s nothing he could do to keep me from you, now that I know.”

  “Know what?” I ask and Raz smiles, not a grin, but a smile. Okay, fine, it’s almost a smirk, but it’s close enough.

  “How you feel about me,” he says with another shrug. “I wanted you to like me, at first. But then you reported us for beating up that kid freshman year, and I figured you didn’t like me and never would.”

  “Why did you hurt that kid?” I ask, and Raz sighs, narrowing his eyes slightly.

  “He snuck his phone into the Devils’ Day party.” He glances my way, as if searching my face to see how I’m going to react to this. “He was threatening to ruin a good twenty students at the school, including me and Calix. He had videos of you, too, dancing in your bra around the fire.”

  “Everybody dances in their bra around the fire at the Devils’ Day party,” I reply easily, but at least I’m finally starting to understand some things that I’ve wondered about for years. “What about you and Calix? What did you guys do?”

  Raz laughs, harsh and loud, shaking his head and swiping his hand down his face.

  “What we always do: get fucked up, fool around, dance. But you know how it works: there are no phones allowed at the Devils’ Day party.” He pauses for a moment, staring out at the trees. They’re all around, rolling hills covered in foliage, not a building of any kind to be seen. We truly are in the middle of nowhere right now, and I’m loving every minute of it. “You know Erina has to pay for what she’s done, right?”

  “What are they going to do to her?” I ask, a chill working its way down my spine. Suddenly, it feels too cold to be in the water, so I climb out, scooting close to Raz’s sun-warmed skin and shivering until he wraps an arm around me. “And by they, I mean … Calix and Barron, right?”

  “Unless Calix is stupid enough to believe Erina’s bullshit then, yeah. They have to deal with her. And not just for the video, but because she won’t leave Calix alone. Much as I dislike the guy, he puts up with a lot from that bitch.”

  I remember the kid they beat up during freshman year. They hurt him—badly. Would they beat Erina up the same way? I can’t imagine it. It seems whenever the Knight Crew has trouble with a girl, they send Sonja. But Sonja’s here with us, so now what?

  I almost ask what Erina’s done to Calix, but then it occurs to me that Raz doesn’t want to talk about Calix. He was jealous of him for years. Best not to stir that fucking pot.

  “Didn’t you have an idea on what we could be doing right now?” I ask, watching as Raz’s lips curve up to either side in a cocksure smirk. He drags me into his lap for the millionth time that day, but it’s a much different situation with him naked beneath me. As I wiggle into a comfortable position, he groans and curls his fingers against the back of my neck, drawing our faces together.

  “Now, who’s being cruel?” he asks, leaning down to nip at the pulse point in my throat. “If I fuck you right here, in front of Sonja, she’ll never forgive me.”

  “Damn straight!” Sonja calls out, her voice echoing across the water. “Don’t make me witness something I can never unsee.”

  “We can kiss, at the very least, now can’t we?” I murmur, pressing my wet lips against Raz’s. We’re both wet and shivering again, just like we were when we climbed out of the creek at my aunt’s house. Even as I take the timeline in different directions, there are themes here. Raz and I are destined to be naked and vulnerable and wet together. A small laugh escapes my lips, but Raz kisses it away, his fingers tangled in my wet purple hair, his mouth a hungry monster I very much want to be devoured by.

  “You sure as fuck bet we can,” he growls back, our mouths pressed so close that I feel his words more than hear them. Raz uses his other hand to cup my ass as I turn toward him, straddling his lap, my wet heat far closer to his cock than it ought to be. The temptation is there, but it’s the resistance that’ll make it so much sweeter later.

  My hands come to rest on his wet chest, playing across the few small tattoos that he has, finding the edge of the plastic bandage covering his new ink. I tease the edge with my fingernail, breaking our mouths apart and pressing our foreheads together, so I can look down and see both of our tattoos at the same time.

  “Are you convinced this isn’t a Devils’ Day trick now?” I ask, and Raz chuckles, slanting our mouths together again. He tastes like danger and uncertainty, but also like passion and desire. He wants me, and I don’t just mean in a sexual way. There’s a craving in his eyes that says he wants to know more, le
arn more, see more. Raz has grown up in a gilded cage, and I so desperately want to show him the world.

  “Permanently inking my name onto your pretty little hip, that just about convinced me,” he whispers, sucking my bottom lip between his teeth, tasting me, savoring me. “You know what might work even better?”

  “I can take a guess,” I start, smiling coyly, but then Raz shoves me off of his lap and into the cold water. I emerge sputtering, briefly reminded of Calix pushing me off the bridge the other day. Raz leans down, putting his elbows on his knees and smirking at me, but in a more playful way than I’ve ever seen before.

  “You thought I was going to say sex, didn’t you?” he asks, shaking his head slightly, blond hair falling across his forehead. “But I want to prove something you.” He sits back up, cocking his head slightly to one side, his smirk falling into a self-assured smile. “I’ve had plenty of sex, but it didn’t mean shit. You mean something to me. I’m going to prove that to you by not fucking you today.”

  “You’re kidding me?” I splutter, folding my arms on the edge of the island again. “You don’t want to have sex with me?”

  “Don’t I?” he laughs, slipping off the island and into the water next to me. Raz grabs me with one arm, using the other to hold onto the moss-covered concrete edge, keeping us afloat. “I’ve never wanted anything more.”

  “But …?” I continue, wrapping my legs around his waist. He’s very obviously hard and ready for me. It wouldn’t take much for us to come together … but I appreciate the thought behind the sentiment.

  “But, I respect you enough to wait.”

  I shake my head as Raz releases me, turning and using a few backstrokes to move through the water before I come to a stop, treading in place.

  “Okay, who the fuck are you, and what happened to the real Raz?” I ask, but it’s Sonja who answers.

  “That isn’t Raz out there; it’s Theodore Rasmus,” she shouts, and Raz sneers, turning back to look at his bestie as she strips off her clothes, standing stark naked on the edge of the spring while Luke blushes furiously behind her.