Seven Sins

by Piper Lennox

  Blinking, I find my voice and tell her sure, of course. Whatever she says.

  Okay, new rules. No more smelling her. I don’t care if the floor or hammock chair kill my back, I’m not getting in her bed again.

  No more jerking off in the bathroom when she leaves for her little sunset walks. It’s happened three times in two days. I told myself it was helpful, getting the urges out of my system, but now I know it’s only made it worse.

  And, most importantly—no more touching her.

  I don’t like that I feel a jolt every time it happens. Like Juniper’s a wall socket set to deliver the maximum shock, and I’d still happily stick my fingers inside.

  God, I’d love to stick my fingers inside.

  Okay, one more rule: be more careful with how you phrase shit.

  This time, my dream doesn’t have one ounce of symbolism. I’m sure the interpretation book would say otherwise, but as far as I can tell, it’s one-hundred percent sexual.

  And it’s one-hundred percent focused on Van.

  We’re in my bed. The weight of his body presses mine deep into the mattress.

  Pleasure swallows me in waves as he moves inside me.

  “I’m so…relieved, I guess.” With the underwater slowness of dreams, my fingers trace the craters of his moon tattoo. The lights sway behind him. “I thought you wanted to destroy me.”

  Van’s hips drive harder, his face like stone. Every muscle cuts through the shadows. Pressure builds inside me until I almost cry.

  His mouth rests by my ear. “Who says I don’t?”

  I wake before the dream, or my dream-self, can finish.

  “Hey.” Van climbs through the aisle up front and braces one arm against the bathroom door, the other stretched to the kitchen cabinets. I used to think the Transit was pretty big, until I saw how easily he filled it. “You all right?”

  I pat the bed around me. It’s the first time I’ve had to reassure myself I’m really awake after a good dream.

  Was it a good dream?

  “You were tossing and turning like crazy in the rearview, so I pulled over.” He moves like he’ll sit on the edge of the bed, but chooses the floor instead.

  “Why?”

  “To make sure you were okay, I guess.”

  I hope my smile doesn’t look as sad as it feels. “A dream can’t hurt me. But thank you.”

  He nods, tonguing his cheek and messing with the cabinet under the bed that won’t close all the way. There’s more he’s not saying; I’ve sensed it ever since we packed up and switched drivers for the night.

  “Sun’s coming up,” he says, after a long silence. Both of us look through the window at the first stretch of dawn, colorless and dim. “You wanna go somewhere pretty, take pictures?”

  “No. But we could skate.”

  His laugh, rooted deep in his chest, hums its way up to me like a song I never forgot.

  So much for my new rules. That was a losing battle the second she started writhing on that mattress while I was flying down the interstate.

  Probably a nightmare, I’d told myself, and watched the rearview like a hawk.

  No…like the dog waking up inside me again, seven years older and foaming at the mouth just to know Juniper Summers was within our reach. Too bad someone couldn’t load up a rifle and put that pup out of its misery.

  Sorry, boy. We can’t have her.

  She doesn’t want either one of us.

  When I parked and shut off the ignition to go wake her, she moaned.

  And as soon as the dog heard that? Chain: busted.

  There was no way to corral him back where he belonged, because now he was meshed with the rest of me. Fuck the new rules.

  My cock strained against my zipper, but that was nothing compared to whatever was going on in my chest. Force of habit made me fish out my inhaler. With every blast, I knew this wasn’t the asthma at work.

  It wasn’t just horniness. God, I wish it had been. Handling that would have been so easy—walk back there, mount her like the animal I now was, and fuck her till the feelings were gone.

  But this....

  I unlocked my chair and swiveled, getting to my feet with one thing in mind: holding her.

  I wanted to invade her dream. If she wasn’t thinking about me in that magic, messed-up head of hers, she was about to be.

  Except she’s not magic.

  Just messed up. Maybe even more than me. Guess I’d find out, whenever I finally got all the pieces of her story.

  For a second, I just hung my head and sighed. Damn my common sense. Life was so much easier when I didn’t use it.

  Before I could change my mind, I woke her up.

  Now, while she gets her phone out to find some trails, I tell myself I made the right call by not climbing in that bed.

  Trouble is, it doesn’t feel right. Not one damn bit.

  There are no mountain bike or skate trails nearby, and the land surrounding us is flat. “Good enough,” Van declares, when we find a park with some skate ramps.

  “Will your boards be okay on concrete?”

  “Not as fun,” he says, throwing open the back and passing me the gear, “but yeah, you can use all-terrain boards in regular skate parks. It’s the reverse that you don’t want to try. Trust me.”

  “Personal experience, I assume.”

  In response, he lifts his shorts to show me a series of scars. It looks like someone scattered scalding nails across the back of his thigh.

  “Very personal,” he says. “This goes all the way up to my ass.”

  My laugh makes him smile.

  His smile makes my heart trip.

  With only one helmet, we take turns. The arrangement is more than fine for me: not only am I terrified to try anything but the kiddie ramp, I also enjoy watching Van too much.

  I’ve yet to watch him skate without a camera of some kind in my hands. It’s completely different, not having to worry about angles and glares, or getting to the bottom of trails in time.

  I’m not thinking about how he’ll look to the rest of the world. Just how he looks to me.

  He moves so gracefully, so impossibly sure of himself in this place he’s never been, that you’d think he poured every inch of this concrete by hand. Even the quick jerks of his limbs, last-second decisions when he’s got less than a second to make them, seem calculated years ahead of time.

  I sit cross-legged at the edge of the largest bowl and scream, almost laughing, when he suddenly launches himself over me, up one side and down the other in an upside-down U. He gets so close, I feel the breeze on every inch of my skin.

  “Relax, I wouldn’t squash you,” he calls as he glides in circles below. When he spins to face me, he adds, “Wouldn’t want blood on my favorite board.”

  “Looks like it gets enough of your blood already.”

  “Just for that,” he says, unclipping himself and flipping the board into his hands, “I’m not holding you steady down the kiddie ramp next time.”

  “I’m sure I can manage.”

  Van smiles up at me as he walks closer. I’m convinced it’s the rosy sunlight softening those features and making those blue eyes sparkle, because I’ve never had him look at me like this.

  Yes, you have.

  When Van was still my guardian...my protector. My first and only friend in a world I wasn’t ready to face alone.

  He tells me to try a drop-in at the shallowest, most gradual section of the bowl. It must be the way he’s looking up at me that makes me nod.

  I fall immediately, and not at all like Van falls. When he careens back to earth, you almost think he meant to.

  No, I fall more like a bag of sticks, everything stiff and frozen in terror.

  “Juni!” Van vaults himself down from the ledge, landing right at the bottom of the slope where I tumbled. “Shit, are you okay?”

  I wince and inspect the damage with him. A broad scrape skids down my leg.

  “How’s it feel?” Van grabs my canteen, opens
the top with his teeth, and rinses off the blood.

  He holds my leg still by wrapping his hand around my calf. I wonder if he can feel my pulse: how it’s now blurring out of control from his touch.

  “Not as bad as I thought,” I admit, wincing when he picks a small rock from my skin, “but still painful.”

  “Your first badge of honor,” he says. He sounds proud. “Everyone gets a little road rash, sooner or later. In fact, I’d say the sooner, the better.”

  “Why? Separates the men from the boys?”

  “I know you’re joking, but...yeah, kind of. You never know how bad you really want something until it knocks you down, and you have to choose whether or not you get back up.” The glint of his smile blurs my thoughts, too. “Come on, let’s get you back to Eloise.”

  Van helps me to the parking lot. After I insist I can bandage myself, he jogs back to gather our stuff.

  I pick out another tiny rock and hold my breath until the sting passes. Yes, I can bandage myself—but I would’ve liked to let him do it. Somehow, he’s gentler.

  I just didn’t know what I’d do if he got that close again.

  Once the wound is dressed, I stretch my leg. It still hurts, but I’m not even thinking about the fall.

  I’m thinking about that rush I got, just before it happened. Small, and cut short…but too good to ignore.

  “Wait,” I call to him, “I want to try again.”

  All my muscles ache, the result of performing so many tiny motions I never naturally do, and I’m pretty sure I’ll have a hundred new bruises by this time tomorrow. But I can’t stop hearing what he said.

  Yeah, so I got knocked down.

  Doesn’t mean I have to stay there.

  Van hands me the board and helmet. I like that he doesn’t do it warily, or with a resigned sigh. He’s excited for me.

  “Okay,” he coaches, wetting his lips as we kneel on the ledge, “when you got to that part last time? You leaned back. Don’t do that. It’s just like on the trails, you can’t fight the terrain.”

  “But I was going way too fast.”

  “So?” He motions to the curved concrete below us. “When you drop in, you’re using this part to gain speed. It’s designed to do exactly that. You just have to let it.”

  My heart’s pounding again, but it’s only partially because of him. Am I really about to try this insanity a second time?

  “Think of it this way,” he adds, sitting on the ledge and dangling his legs over the side. “You’re not on a board—you and the board are one unit. You flow with it, and it flows with you.”

  “Wow. That was so vague and useless, thank you.” Fixing my helmet strap, I nod at him. “You’re not allowed to call me a hippie ever again, with talk like that.”

  Van smiles with his mouth closed, like he’d call me a smartass if it wasn’t obvious I’m just stalling.

  I shake out my hands and take some deep breaths, then step onto the board and wiggle it forward until it’s at the edge, balanced like a diving board the way he showed me.

  In case all the dramatics sound excessive—they definitely are. We’re about four feet up, and the slope is so gradual you could safely roll a baby carriage down it.

  But I’m still terrified. Especially now that I’ve been hurt.

  On the other hand, I know what to expect now. I know just how badly I want this, even if I don’t know why.

  I bend my knees, brace myself, and drop.

  Van always says that time slows down when he’s skating. This must be what happens to me now, because the two seconds I’m on the curve feel like ten, or twenty: more than enough time to remember his advice.

  Don’t lean back.

  Flow with it.

  My stomach’s in my chest by the time I reach the bottom. I blink and lean myself into a stop, in utter disbelief that I’m here, upright and whole.

  I turn back to look at him, but he’s already jumped into the bowl to run towards me.

  “Fuck yeah,” he grins, then lets out the whoop my lungs want to echo, but still can’t.

  I double over. “Did I really do that?”

  “You sure as hell did.” Van grabs both my wrists, dangling them from his fingers to shake me like a puppet. “You feel that buzz in your arms? Your heart going absolutely nuts?”

  “I do.” I also can’t stop smiling, and my stomach feels like it’s levitating. “This is the rush you were talking about, I’m guessing. It’s incredible, not gonna lie—but I wouldn’t call it godly.”

  “Yeah, well. Skate parks aren’t conducive to that, if you ask me.”

  We’re quiet a moment, catching our breaths. Staring.

  “But when Olympus is closed,” he says, as he undoes my helmet for me, “you settle for whatever hill you can find.”

  The brush of his fingers against my throat weakens my resolve, but doesn’t break it.

  Even the way he pushes my hair out of my face, after he removes the helmet and tosses it aside like it means absolutely nothing compared to what’s in front of him, isn’t what undoes me.

  It’s the look he’s giving me again.

  Calming, pure blue. Unwavering.

  Every bit as devoted and protective as it used to be.

  Van spreads his hand across my jaw and neck, the other holding my waist. He lowers his head and kisses me, fast and deep and graceful, until the sun finishes rising over the bowl.

  Until it’s just us left, the rest of the world forgotten, in this small concrete crater we’ve claimed as our own.

  Twenty-One

  By the time she slid to a stop at the bottom of that bowl, I knew I was going to kiss her.

  Actually, that’s a lie. I knew it the second she fell.

  “Um...Van,” she exhales, when we finally stop kissing. Technically, she stops it. I could keep going for hours. Days. Colorado is overrated, anyway.

  Her hands were in my hair, but now they slide to my chest and push me back as she catches her breath.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “You can feel how hard my heart’s beating under your hands,” I tell her, “and if you were to move a few feet south, you’d find even more proof that hell yes, I want to do this.”

  “Come on, Van, I’m serious.” She steps back. I want to pull her against me, but I also like the way she’s touching her lips right now. Like she just woke up from another dream, and wants to make sure she’s real.

  “Don’t kiss me just because...because some physical urge is outweighing the rest.” She shrinks, but just briefly. When her shoulders straighten and she looks me in the eye, it’s the sexiest thing she could do to me. “Don’t kiss me if you don’t mean it.”

  “Oh, I mean it.” I press my laughing mouth to her serious one until she smiles. “I want you. Now. And I’m so fucking tired of pretending I don’t.”

  “Didn’t seem like you had to pretend very hard.” I hear her swallow. “Especially whenever your friend was over, back in the Hamptons.”

  “I don’t even remember that girl’s name. And I never touched her. Didn’t you hear me, all those nights I went looking for you?”

  Juniper catches her lip between her teeth, and I know in about five minutes I’m going to catch it between mine. “Only when you were drunk.”

  “No. I was always looking for you. Every minute. Being drunk just gave me an excuse to do it loudly.”

  She shakes her head at me, but laughs again. I grab the gear and follow her out of the bowl.

  We close ourselves up in the Transit. I’m worried she’ll climb into the front and gun it out of here, letting the engine give me the rejection she’s too sweet to say out loud.

  Instead, she sits cross-legged on the floor, staring at me. I sit across from her.

  I get it. She wants to know what changed.

  Truthfully? I’d like to know, too.

  On the surface, nothing’s any different now than it was a few days ago. But underneath, every old emotion I’ve got is unraveling, ne
w ones tangling together until I can’t tell which leads where.

  But I know I want her. All of her. And I’ll follow that thread as far as it goes, hoping it’ll sort out the rest for me.

  “My mom called me Sully.” I say this quickly, syllables crashing together so bad it takes Juniper a minute to realize what I’ve said. Part of the hurry is so I won’t chicken out. Most of it comes down to the fact I don’t want to mention my mom, of all people, when I’m also thinking about undressing Juniper with nothing but my teeth.

  “Sully,” she repeats softly, smiling.

  “Yeah. Or Sull. She was the only one who didn’t call me Van.” I hitch my thumb at the window. “She’d always point out the sky to me when I was a kid, like, ‘Sully, baby—look how blue.’ She liked when there were no clouds at all.

  “The funny thing, though? My mom was basically colorblind. Got in a car accident when she was a kid, hit her head pretty bad, and never saw colors the same again.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “She was too young to remember,” I shrug. “A few months later, she was living her life like she always had. Kids are resilient.”

  “Yeah.” She takes a breath. “I guess so.”

  “Anyway.” I nod at the window. “She couldn’t even see the color blue. It was like…grayish-green to her, or something.”

  Juniper laughs behind her hand. “Why’d she tell you to look at how blue it was, then?”

  “Probably just to be funny.” I laugh too. “That’s what I always think about, though, when someone tells me what I should believe in, or how I should act. They don’t see the world how I see it. They can’t.”

  “But to her, that was blue. Does it really matter if she didn’t see exactly what you did?”

  “Blue is blue, Juni. Shitty things are shitty. And I’ve got all these people saying, ‘This situation, or what that person did to piss you off, or whatever you’re angry about today—it’s not that bad. Calm down.’ Sometimes it feels like the whole fucking world is seeing things wrong, but telling me I’m the one who needs his eyes checked.”

  “Even me?”