Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One)

by Rachel Dunning

  THREE

  RYAN GOSLING DREAMBOY

  -1-

  Blaze Ryleigh a.k.a DJ Heaven-Leigh

  I wasn’t oblivious to the sinewy Ryan Gosling Dreamboy that had been staring at me all night. He just wasn’t my priority. David Beckham himself could’ve been standing dead center in that dance floor with his cock screaming to the stars and I wouldn’t have noticed.

  The set was all there was. Win or lose, all or nothing. That’s how I treated it in my mind. Because that’s how it felt to me.

  Melodramatic? Maybe. But after three years of fighting, losing, and getting older, melodrama starts taking on a whole new meaning: Life itself.

  And I don’t agree with that.

  But now the set is over, and now I notice him. I notice him good.

  Golden hair styled to look like a cocky, confident wave, now ruffled from all night dancing and sweating. Eyes the color of cloudless skies. Muscles tight, hard. Tall—over six feet for sure. My head only reaches to his shoulders and that makes me all nice and warm thinking about it. Not sure about his age, but looks about the same as mine. Twenty or so. Twenty-three? I’ve never been good with figuring out dudes’ ages.

  And then there’s the ink. That didn’t make me hot at first, not at all. Because I have my own ink. And I know what it means to someone who decorates himself so completely they way this guy has. It’s an expression of self.

  At least that was my first impression of it: Until I saw the naked babe riding a tiger’s head on his forearm. Then I did get hot.

  There’s just one problem: I’m so freaking tired that whatever thoughts I have of hooking up with him for a drink or something are gonna need to be relegated to just getting his number and calling him up later—much later. Not to mention that I probably stink real good. (Then again, probably so does he after pulling an all-nighter like this.)

  His pupils are not cooked, which means he’s either at the bottom of his downer, or he never rolled in the first place. I’m hoping it’s the latter. The former would be a deal-breaker for me. Completely. I just can’t go that route with anyone.

  Not after Savva...

  We get outside and the cold wind is a blast of relief on my skin. Maybe in ten minutes it’ll be too much, but not now.

  Before Xavier told me Declan’s name, I’d already named him in my mind: Mr. I’m-So-Inked-and-Hard-and-Hot-I-Drop-Babes’-Panties-All-Over-Town.

  My eyelids are too heavy to even try and start up a conversation with him. And it’s been so long since I’ve been with a guy that I wouldn’t trust my ice-breaker topic choices in my current state of mind either. The only thing on my mind now is a bed. Or any surface for that matter. Even this icy sidewalk or the lumberyard next door would do.

  I see his two friends: The Huge-as-a-Mountain black dude and the Snake-On-The-Neck skinhead dude. Huge-as-a-Mountain Black Dude’s eyes go wide when he sees me, like he’s looking at Brooklyn’s very own socialite. The skinhead’s reaction is typical of someone who’s been rolling all night. That is: “Hey, whoa, awesome! You rock!” And then he hugs me. Like, truly hugs me as if this were a sixties Free Love party.

  Declan starts with the intros: “DJ Heaven—”

  “Blaze,” I interrupt.

  “Sorry, Blaze...what was the last name again?”

  “Ryleigh.”

  “Ryleigh, that’s right. Damn, I’m tired,” he says.

  You’re telling me, dude.

  He continues: “Blaze Ryleigh. This monster here is my best friend, Trevor Perkins—everyone calls him Trev. And this skinhead here is Skate. We promise he’s not a member of the Aryan Nation, although he’s really got that look going for him”

  Trev’s one bad looking emm-eff. Shorter than Declan by a little, but wider. Seriously wider. At one stage during the party, he had his shirt off, and I saw a sick tribal tat spanning his left pec. I shake his hand and, even in my bleary state, can’t help but stare at that same massive chest.

  “You’re incredible,” he says. “So good.”

  “Thank you.” I don’t even have an emotion about the statement. Maybe it will all sink in after a few hours of Zs.

  Declan: “So, we’re giving Blaze here a ride home.”

  Trev’s eyes bulge. Skate says, “Awesome! Right on!”

  Skate here looks pretty buzzed up, and someone who’s not part of the scene might mistake him for something dangerous with his own solid build and shaved hair, snake tattoo curling all around his neck. But his gray—just slightly blue—eyes are warm. Just another dude rolling his problems away on a weekend, I think.

  “So, we parked a little way away. Ten minute walk.” Declan points up the road. “I can get the car so you can rest, or you can walk with us.”

  I ponder both options. The thought of anyone else coming over to me in what is already too bright a day (it’s cloudy as hell, but my eyes can’t take it), and then telling me I was so “Awesome!” is too grueling to ponder. More grueling than a ten minute walk. Then, of course, there’s the stench from Newton Creek currently making me feel ill... “I’ll walk. The smell from the creek might just make me puke.”

  “It is pretty skanky,” says Declan.

  Trev says, “Skate, c’mon.” He flicks his head back. Then he steals a glance at Declan. Skate doesn’t move. Trev grabs his arm and pulls him. Skate almost trips over, then starts walking. Before Declan and I even get going, they’re already ten or fifteen yards ahead of us.

  The intention is clear.

  “Want me to take your backpack?”

  For a moment I clutch the bag instinctively. Then I give myself an internal laugh. The bag feels like it has rocks in it. Now that the adrenal rush is slowing down, my whole body is aching. “Uhm, actually, yeah, if you don’t mind.”

  I hand him my backpack and we start walking.

  My eyes blink in rhythm to my footfalls. Music plays in my ear. I remember what it used to be like, coming home tripping or rolling after a night like this, music slamming so hard in my cranium that I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep until three in the afternoon. And even though the sound is as loud in my head now as it had been then, I know that when I hit the sack I’ll be out like a blown speaker.

  “So, seven hour set,” Declan says, “that’s...wow. That’s freaking unheard of.”

  “Did I really mix for seven hours?”

  He clutches the strap of my backpack, turns to look at me. “Yes, seven unbelievable hours of unbelievable music!”

  “Th—thanks.”

  “No, I freaking mean it. Hot—HOT!—music.” He looks up at another gutted warehouse, on our right.

  I sneak a look at his ripped bicep, his chest popping out under his tank. Trev is pure size, smoothed out and even. But Declan is ripped and solid. Unadulterated strength.

  I decide to change the subject about the music, because praise makes me uncomfortable. “So when did you start getting your sleeve done?”

  He stretches out his right arm, looks at the top of his forearm, then the bottom. I see some of the images close-up now. The gaping mouth of a tiger, bright orange, on the forearm. The voluptuous nude on its head. Riding it like she’s in charge. Higher up are vines, so that the tiger’s head and its rider are riding through the vines, surrounded by them.

  There’s a name in between all of that. I don’t quite make it out.

  “Well, it all started out with this one—Priscilla—that was my mom’s name.” He pauses, looks at it for a bit. “That was almost four years ago.”

  Was her name, I note...

  “Then I figured she should be remembered with beauty, so that’s when I got the leaves and the vines and the tiger’s head done. The naked woman”—he laughs—“well, that’s the male in me coming out. That’s like Superwoman or something. I don’t know. It just looked cool. Or maybe it’s symbolic. Who cares. It just seemed bad-ass. And, well, I kinda wanted to be a bad-ass in those days. Fuck the world and all that shit, you know? The tiger—it’s a Fuck the World kind of thing. C
harge against it no matter what. Something like that.” He turns to show me the inside of his arm. LIVE IN THE NOW, it says, surrounded by intricate tribal lines of different colors, wrapping up all the way to the top and around his shoulder.

  Did I really say that his tats didn’t turn me on?

  “They’re...beautiful.”

  I don’t ask him how his mom passed.

  He stops and takes my left wrist and starts turning it. It makes me feel naked. All the ink on there has a meaning, starting from the joy I felt when getting my first one with Savannah, on my shoulder—the one Patryk had designed for me—and then the ones I got later. After she was gone.

  Declan looks at the red rose covering my shoulder, surrounded by glowing green leaves. Blood falls in a single line from its stem. I added that later. After Savva.

  He lingers on the intricate lace bracelet underneath it, around my lame excuse of a bicep. When he looks at the darker, deadlier pieces lower down, he says, “This must’ve been a heavy time in your life...”

  He’s looking at the skull surrounded in bright red and orange flames, a knife going through its head. I think of Savva...

  He turns the arm over, sees the leafless tree, the wolf behind it. The wolf which, when I got it done, I took as being death and failure. Always lurking, always watching, inevitably there. So, make the best of your time. Because you can’t outrun the wolf.

  In my discomposure from the all-night exertion, and maybe because of hunger and dehydration as well, the emotions burgeoning within me are too strong to fight down. Savva’s lifeless body and blue lips stare at me now, a dirty needle in her arm, dark and blackened eyes looking up at me.

  I twist my arm away, as gently as I can, but he notices the discomfort.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  I say nothing, only turn my head so he doesn’t see the tear almost breaking out from me.

  Silence follows us as we walk. Trev and Skate have since disappeared. My pace picks up and soon I’m a foot or two ahead of him.

  The rift in the air between us is solid. I didn’t ask for it. He didn’t mean to pry. It’s bullshit that my lip is trembling. It’s bullshit that I can’t talk to him now because I’m afraid I’ll break down in tears.

  And I know it’s because of my physical state—that I’m dead-tired, and famished. I know I’m not like this usually, that I have it mostly under control on good days.

  Savva. Patryk.

  I try to explain this, but my lips are frozen by terrible memories. Wind sings across my ears like a banshee howling the approach of death.

  The bitch of it all—the absolute crummer of it—is that I actually wanted to give him my number. I wanted to tell him to come by and maybe we could drink coffee or a beer or something. I saw him checking me out all night. All night. He’d be worth at least one good hook-up.

  Maybe more? I’m not so good with boys, but, yeah, probably more.

  Damn it!

  “We’re here,” I hear him say from behind me.

  I see Trev and Skate inside a desolate parking lot which is surrounded by a chain fence.

  It’s now or never. I have to tell him it’s OK while we’re still alone.

  I have to—

  I can’t talk. Somehow I have to fix this—

  I stop. I turn and snatch his forearm. I look over at Trev. He seems to have a sixth sense about something happening here. He grabs Skate by the nape of the neck and starts wrestling him down like little boys at a schoolyard, effectively giving me and Declan some “privacy.” Or as good as it can get.

  My chin trembles.

  Oh god I can’t believe I’m about to do this... But I can’t talk now. All I could do is...

  I stretch my hand up to behind Declan’s neck—damn he’s tall!—and pull him down.

  He goes with it. His arms wrap around the small of my back.

  Our lips meet.

  Our tongues touch.

  Before I know it, he’s dragged me left—away from any possible view of his friends—and rams me up against a concrete wall.

  He pushes up against me, pressing at me with his crotch.

  And suddenly I’m awake.

  -2-

  The wind picks up, rushes at me from the left. My hair swings all over my face and gets in between our lips. It also wraps itself around his head. My eyes flutter back. My skin freezes up and I shiver, but inside...a fire burns.

  I try pull him closer, which is just not possible. My head’s up against a concrete slab of a wall and he’s pushing harder and harder so that even the back of my ass hurts.

  My eyes are half open, his are closed. The way he kisses me is passionate. Needful.

  He wants me, I think. He wants me more than air.

  A million thoughts howl through my mind. Buffalos on a stampede. It’s the J train rattling the rafters on Broadway Junction. It’s TNT. Hard House. This had meant to be just a sign to let him know, Hey, it’s cool, I saw you checking me out. This is just to let you know I’m interested...maybe. And what it turned out to be—

  He bites my lower lip, licks it. His hands are all over my tank, side and back. And then they’re on my head—his left hand on the shaved side, the other weaving through the long side.

  His eyes are closed. Shut tight.

  He pecks my lips. His tongue eases out, just licks me once, then he buries his tongue in me again.

  Me? I’m lost. I’m in an ocean. I’m wrapped in a Leddra Chapman song or Kate McGill singing indie rock at a café with only fifty true die-hard fans, swaying and sipping Bourbon, carried off in a cloud of intoxicating music.

  I...I’m adrift in this boy’s grip, his smell of sweat and male cologne.

  I try kiss him back but I’m definitely the one being kissed. It’s all him, he’s in control of this now. I might’ve started it, but that was just the sparkplug. And now I’m merely going along for the ride.

  His sublime lips move onto my cheeks, my neck. His tongue cuts like a small razor across my neck. My eyes fire wide open. On my right I see colorfully clothed people, far away, strolling away from the party.

  A car rushes by, playing Chill.

  The gutted warehouse looms over us.

  Gray skies cover us.

  And none of it really means shit, because one hundred percent of my sensory perception is busy with the moisture he’s currently placing on my left ear, under my hair. No doubt he’s seen the three small star pieces I have there, because his tongue’s going pleasurably wild on each of them.

  My heart whirs like a pinwheel.

  Then an entirely new thing takes over me. And I have no name for it just yet. It’s like a blanket, warm and fleecy, but filled with a chemical of some sort that causes a slight irritation on my skin. It enters from my toes, and I feel it embracing me, taking over me, warming me up and—and this is what I feel most about it—making me feel weaker...

  What fuckin bastid emotion is this? I think.

  My legs start trembling. This blanket-thingy is all over me. I lose all strength in my body. My arms flop around Declan’s back like a puppet without strings.

  And in some part of my mind that I’m not entirely certain of yet (bastid!) I sense something deep and fundamental about this golden-haired boy that I’m holding onto right now. And so I hold him tighter. I hold him like Winslet and DiCaprio. Pattinson and Stewart.

  Suddenly (BASTID!) everything in my mind makes sense in some incomprehensible, intangible way. Suddenly, letting him go feels like letting go of some essential anchor pinning me to reality itself. As if the gutted warehouse and Chill House car and the colorful people and even the sidewalk upon which we stand are all somehow hinged upon this moment’s embrace in an entirely weird and super-cosmic way.

  Abruptly, holding onto him feels like the thing I’ve been working toward all my life, like the culmination of every dream I’ve ever had is made complete by the emotions of this moment, this kiss.

  In a heady moment, all makes sense. There are no questio
ns, no noises, no doubts.

  Just this.

  I wrap my arms around his neck and tighten. Moisture slams me in the most romantic of places. I rock back on my heels and lift my toes, hang on him. And for the first time in forever, I just let go.

  -3-

  “Yo, Deck! Let’s go, bro!”

  It’s Skate’s voice, or, better, his accent. Because Skate and Declan have a tinge of Southern Brooklyn to them. Trevor doesn’t. As to voice tones, Trev’s is the deepest, Declan second up.

  Declan moves away from my lips, holds me in place by my shoulders. Stares at me. The moment of eyes locked feels like an eternity. His own eyes tremble. They question me. They look at me in a way that says, Blaze, wtf? WTF!?

  I’m sure mine look the same to him. We explore each other’s depths, asking, but getting no answers. Wondering.

  An infinitely small twitch appears above his left eyebrow. He smacks his lips.

  A nervous “Hah!” escapes me. I lick my own lips.

  Should we kiss again? Should we just say Fuck the World and stay here for the rest of the day, my back pressed against this gray wall? Declan’s hands all over me?

  I know this is what he’s thinking, too. Because it’s what I’m thinking. And I can feel that, at least in this very moment, there’s a connection.

  “I’m so glad I didn’t roll tonight,” he says.

  See? Because that’s what I was thinking as well, and I even know why he says it, although he doesn’t explain it:

  I’m so glad I didn’t roll tonight because now I know that this euphoria I’m feeling is the real deal and not some chemical screwing with my brain.

  Skate again: “Deck. Dude! I’m hungry!”

  I try say, I guess we should go, but my throat catches. He says it instead. “I think we better...”

  “Yeah,” I croak.

  He turns from me, taking my hand with him. Don’t let it go, I catch myself thinking.

  Our fingers stay locked as he strolls ahead of me in slow motion, his hair splaying left and right from the wind. I move my own hair back, still not believing any of this.

  I’m in another world. As if the rules of something as integral as gravity, or the fact that the sun rises in the East every day, have been changed. As if I’d been playing basketball, but am now suddenly thrown into a baseball diamond, and I’m next at bat. And I don’t know shit about ball, but I’m on the team...