Paper Dolls [Book Two]

by Emma Chamberlain

  Her touch was always so much more than my own. She pushed my hand aside and entered me, shifting so that she was mostly on top of my body. With two fingers she pushed in and out and attacked my neck with her lips, her tongue, and teeth.

  “Averyyy,” I barely made out. My voice so airy now, it almost didn’t exist.

  How could she even think…

  I felt my eyes roll back into my head.

  “Olivia,” she whispered into my ear. “Cum for me.”

  That voice!!!

  She pushed inside me again and I instantly did as I was told, not that I needed telling. The tips of my nails pressed into her shoulders and pinched as I felt her voice travel all through me, intense pleasure racking my body and my brain. I moaned uncontrolled as she broke me without much of an effort.

  And she still had questions?

  I couldn’t even believe…

  She withdrew her fingers and turned my body, wrapping her arms around me. “I love you.” She hugged me so tightly that it came close to hurting me.

  “You just don’t know,” I said, breaking again.

  How could she not know?

  “I don’t think I can,” she choked out. “I can’t see what you see in me but I know you see it and I’m just happy that you do. I wish we could show each other exactly how it feels.”

  “I could feel you Avery. I could feel you when you weren’t even touching me. Don’t you see? When I kissed you it was because I couldn’t go another second without kissing you. Every second you were around I felt like a weak little leaf trying to cling onto a tree in the strong wind. It was like I knew you could help me but I couldn’t ask and I wouldn’t want to ruin your life just so that I could feel okay even just for one moment.”

  “Shh,” she soothed, stroking my face with both hands. “Vi, I have one superpower and it’s repression but after you kissed me I couldn’t. It was too much and I needed you just as much. You could never ruin my life. You are the best part of it.”

  “I wanted you soooo much, Avery.” I shut my eyes and felt her holding me, knew that I had her. “Every time I think you understand I see that you really don’t, you really have no idea how strong I felt you coming. It was like magic.”

  “I do understand but I have these demons in my head and they whisper about how much I don’t matter and then I see you and wonder how you could want me but you knock sense into me and I’m okay again. I’m sorry I can’t beat them yet.”

  “You matter,” I said. “You’re all that matters.” I wanted to shake her. All this time I thought for sure that all this doubt in her had come from her parents. More and more I was beginning to see that it was much more than that. Maybe she moved too much? Maybe she never got to keep close friends? I wasn’t the kind to need friends. Avery might’ve wanted them. It might’ve hurt her a lot to never be able to have them stay.

  I wanted to ask but I kept it to myself. I still only knew the basics about her life.

  Problems like this weren’t about just being abandoned once. This was deeper stuff. More stuff that scared me.

  “I loved my brother. Love,” she corrected herself and moved on. “Sometimes I just felt like he was more important. I feel stupid even saying it. It sounds petty.”

  She stopped talking and just lay there with me.

  “I bet he needed you,” I said, feeling sad. She idolized him. She put him up on a pedestal just like her parents and all his friends. “Usually it’s the ones who aren’t noticed who are the strongest. Hey, look at me… Everyone knows me as some sort of genius but with you all I ever do is cry. It’s pretty hilarious actually.”

  “That’s not all you do with me.” She let the pause hang in the air for a few moments. “You laugh too.”

  “You’re the only one who makes me laugh. Well,” I laughed. “You and Brian,” I teased. Ben used to make me laugh but I couldn’t tell her that now.

  “Ah, yes, your future husband. He is pretty funny but definitely not as sexy as I am.” She shook her head and pressed her lips to my cheek.

  “Definitely not,” I concurred. “I mean it though… Not many people can make me feel comfortable enough to want to laugh. I mean, really laugh. Not many people can make me happy, Avery. Even when you make me mad you make me happy.”

  “That’s quite a feat. You make me happy when you’re mad too. Realllly happy.” She pinched my side, not enough to hurt but enough to make an impression.

  “Confession?” I squinted. “When I saw how upset you were about that picture I got extremely turned on.”

  “Really?!” She laughed and shook me in her arms. “You realize that this means it really is fate and that our make-up sex will always, always be amazing. Not that our other kinds of sex aren’t but you know. Make up sex can be extra exciting.”

  “I wanted you to pin me against the wall and punish me.” I only wished I was joking. “It took everything in me not to piss you off a little more.”

  “Well, if you had I would have.” She wasn’t joking. “That’s why I left the closet. I thought that was probably the wrong reaction so I left.”

  “I dunno,” I sighed. “That sounds healthy,” I smiled optimistically. “But you know my past and, as much as it may seem like it, you know I am definitely not made of glass.”

  “I’ll remember that next time I’m really pissed off at you. Which hopefully won’t be anytime soon.” She rolled off of me and onto her back.

  “I really am sorry though,” I said, rolling closer to her and looking down. “As soon as I saw you were sad it changed everything.” I pushed her hair away from her face and made a sad face.

  “Stop apologizing. It was stupid and irrational for me to get upset. I wasn’t thinking. I just reacted to seeing it. My brain went immediately to the fact that you still had it, then to thinking that she was even hotter than I remembered from Facebook, and finally to the fact that I wasn’t hot like her.” She nodded her head to the side. “Stupid.”

  “Okay, wait,” I said sitting up. “Go back.” There was some stuff in there I didn’t know about.

  I got ontop of her, straddling her and finding her wrists and pressing them down to the bed. “When did you see Natalie?” I wondered. “What do you mean, hotter than you remembered?”

  I was hovering over her and trying to think back on when she EVER could’ve seen her. I couldn’t think of one time. She wiggled her wrists in my grasp, testing my grip. Just for good measure, I tightened my fingers and pushed harder since I had more leverage this way.

  “Um, I might have stalked you on Facebook when I friended you and saw a picture. Maybe.”

  “Facebook…” I thought. “Okay there might be like ONE picture of us on there but it’s not revealing or telling. You mean to tell me you saw THAT picture and it made you jealous?”

  “Olivia.” She huffed and squirmed under me. “I see you standing next to another person and I get jealous but not in a weird, crazy way.”

  “Oh, not like me, you mean?” She was really good at this, wasn’t she?

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant I’m not going to go nuts and kill someone because they touch your arm but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to grab you and hold you close to me when people are looking at you in that way. Checking you out. I can’t blame them. You’re the hottest girl I’ve ever seen but I do get the urge to make sure they don’t get any ideas.”

  Her leg rose and she bucked a little, testing my strength but I held her down, tightening my legs to her sides to try and keep her under me.

  “When Ben was standing with you at the elevator in the lobby of the lodge I wanted to throat punch him for even thinking about getting close to you. I might have if I’d let myself get close.”

  “What?” I felt my hands loosen off her wrists as I sat up more ontop of her. That was certainly something interesting to say. At that point Ben hadn’t tried to…

  I swallowed awkwardly and felt a little shaky.

  “Ben was into you,” Avery said.
/>   “No,” I said. “He was my teacher.” And a dork. The thought was absurd. “He thought I was smart. It wasn’t…” What Ben and I were wasn’t sexual at all. He was my friend. My only Huntington friend.

  “That’s part of why he was into you. I know him and he did say some things to me.” She sighed and looked straight at me. “That’s why I thought he sent you to interview me and that’s part of why I confronted him. He had some weird fantasy about you and me and …. “

  “Avery…” What else could I say?

  “I shouldn’t have said anything,” she looked away.

  “Baby, no, I wanna know. Things with Ben, they were always… Different.” That was the only way I could word it. “He seemed to care for me,” I said. “Platonically.” I added on. “And no one else noticed me or talked to me like he did. He was the only one before Nat and then you.”

  “Think about what your parents could do to him if they found out,” Avery explained. “He did like you as a person, as a student, but he also liked you as more. In a sexual way.”

  “Did he say that to you?” I asked, almost angry with her for her frankness. As soon as the words left me though I knew they were stupid. Ben was a creep. We’d found that out together. And Avery found out the hard way. “Forget I asked that,” I said. “I’d been meaning to tell you how much he meant to me before all this… There just never seemed to be a right time.”

  I crawled off of her awkwardly and walked to the closet and started to change.

  The bedroom was sad now.

  I didn’t want to be sad.

  I heard her groan from the bed and then she was closer. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to ruin it any more than it was already but he wasn’t subtle about any of it with me. I should just stop talking. Okay, I’m guessing this suit is for me.”

  “What did he say to you?” I asked, half-mortified, half-in-need of the answer.

  I dressed and turned to face her but she was looking off toward the ground.

  “It’s not important.” She started to strip down.

  “Avery.. It’s all important. Just like that picture on the ground was something you needed to know about.” I let my gaze fall down onto it and then back to her. Secrets were poison. What if I’d forgotten about that picture and she found it three weeks from now? That picture could’ve broken us.

  She stood before me, naked. When she met my eyes I could see that she didn’t want to say the words she was about to say. “He texted me after I confronted him about sending you to interview me. It was more like sexting. It was about a threesome… with you.”

  “He was probably using it though,” I urged, seeking some reason other than what she was trying to say. “I’d upset you. He must’ve seen. That didn’t really have to do with me really.”

  “He also told me that he would have tried with you but he was afraid that your parents would get him arrested if they found out. I’m sorry, Olivia.”

  “Oh,” I said quietly.

  That wasn’t something I could explain away or excuse.

  “That’s why he picked me. My parents weren’t a factor.” She shrugged and started to put on the suit but I stopped her.

  “Hey,” I said pulling her closer to look at me. “It might’ve been convenient that your parents were so absent but I don’t think that’s why he picked you.”

  Her nostrils flared and her voice shook. “I really don’t care. Whatever his reasons were they were twisted and fucked so, does it matter? He hurt both of us and now we’ve got each other so I don’t care.” She jammed her legs in the suit bottoms and pulled them up and then grabbed the top and clasped it, tying the string behind her neck.

  “This may sound weird,” I muttered, scared of what I might confess. “But I don’t think Ben set out to ruin you.” I didn’t have the place to be saying such a thing. I still didn’t really know all that they did or what their dynamic was or how it escalated. All I knew was what I had done with Natalie. If Nat was different and I had let that go on I might’ve ended up just like Avery with no voice and no say. “If he chose you at first it was because he wanted you. Everything after that was a mess that should never have gone on.”

  It was hard to talk about it, hard to find the correct words.

  “I’m not excusing him. He deserves no excuse,” I rushed to confess. “I’m just saying no one could look at you and think what you’re implying. Not even Ben.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m saying right now,” she grumbled. “I just want to forget about him and not worry. I didn’t want you to go back to class and not know. We’ve seen what he can do. I would kill him.”

  “I know,” I said, taking her hand and squeezing it.

  I was trying to have a conversation about her but she thought I was talking about him.

  It was too hard.

  “Come on,” I said, tugging at her. “Oh wait,” I let go for a second and bent down to pick up that picture. I had a lighter in my drawer. I pulled it out and held the picture up, lighting it at the bottom corner for Avery to see.

  I couldn’t stand the thought of it haunting her, no matter how much fun it was when she had jealousy. It wasn’t right.

  “You could have just ripped it up,” Avery laughed.

  “Ah, but then I’d be tempted to tape it back together as soon as you left,” I joked.

  We watched it burn until the flames got too hot and I shook it out. Just Natalie’s head was left.

  “Still too much?” I asked. It felt wrong to burn it, I will admit. Nat deserved better. Nat deserved for me to hand it back to her with a box of chocolates and an apology. But I was a shit of a person.

  “Just put it down,” Avery sighed and pushed me toward the door.

  “We can never have a normal day, huh?” I asked, sad for it. We were cursed.

  “We will,” she sang in a high pitch. “Now, let’s go get me wet before your parents ruin my hot tub plans, please.”

  “Yes my love,” I said obediently. Time had been ticking and we’d been stressing. None of that was right. It was time for Avery to get in the damn pool and enjoy at least three seconds of this stupid weird day.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Avery

  Ben. Natalie. They hadn’t stopped haunting us yet. Thinking kept getting me in trouble so I wanted to just swim and play. Enjoying the rest of my time with Olivia before I had to go home and sleep without her was a better strategy than talking about our exes.

  As soon as we stepped outside I ran for the pool, not even bothering with the stairs. I jumped, going in feet first just for fun. When I came back to the surface I saw her from the side shaking her head and laughing at me.

  “Stop staring and get in here.”

  “You’re lucky that thing is heated,” she joked. I watched her walk to the steps and walk in toward me with caution.

  “Only since you got in.” I jumped toward her and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her up. Her legs wrapped around me and I grinned at her, relieved that we were done with the heavy bullshit that always seemed to plague us.

  “Mmmm,” she hummed, allowing me to hold her. “I like you in my pool.”

  “I like you in your pool.” I nudged her nose with mine and kissed the tip. I reached a hand down to tug at the suit top. “You know I might pop out of this if I’m not careful.” I frowned and looked down. “My boobs are definitely bigger than yours.”

  “Oh no,” she pretended to be worried. “That’d be terrible,” she teased, looking down. I felt her dip her head down and then bite me just above the hem of my top. “Mmm,” she hummed, hugging me closer. “Please don’t be careful,” she practically hummed, right into my ear.

  I gasped as her words tickled me. “You’re so evil.” She stayed right there, torturing me a little. “Yes, it would be grand for me to be wandering around your pool with one boob out when your Mom and Dad walk out here.” I chuckled, still shivering when she exhaled onto my skin.

  “They’d instantly spring into denial,�
� she warned. “They’d start talking to me, asking me why I’d brought that stunning Greek statue into the pool and tried my worst to dress it, mind you. It’d be hilarious probably. Not really, but we’re trying to have fun now, right?” She tried to make light. I shouldn’t have brought them up.

  “You really think I could pull off Greek statue? Hmm.” I strutted a little in the water, forming my face into weird expressions that no classical statue would ever make. “How about now?” My eyes were bugged and my head was pulled back with my chin tucked.

  “Stop,” she laughed, splashing me. But then I felt her hand on my neck and her other roaming the surface of my abs. “Your muscles are sexy,” she breathed.

  “Yeah? You like ‘em? I guess I need to keep working out then.” I lifted her a little showing off my strength and laughing when she squealed. “I could probably bench press you. Would that turn you on?”

  “I wanna say no but the answer’s probably yes,” she laughed.

  “Honesty. I like it.” I walked her over to the stairs and spun around, sitting on the second one so that I was still mostly above water. “What are you thinking?” I prodded her a little, wondering if she’d moved on from our incident earlier.

  “Too many things probably,” she confessed. At the beach there wasn’t any sun but here at Olivia’s the sun was abundant. The sloshing of the water was the only noise, that and her breath. “I’m always thinking so much more than I say. Don’t you know me by now?”

  “That’s exactly why I asked you.” I drew little circles on her arm under the water and smoothed over them with my hand. “You’re my favorite mystery.”

  “I don’t feel mysterious though. It frightens me when you say that.”

  “I don’t mean that I don’t understand you. I just mean that you’re quiet and sometimes I don’t know what you’re thinking but I’m so obsessed with you I always want to know.” I lifted her chin. “You know, normal things like that.”

  “Mmhmm,” she eyed me skeptically. “Right now I’m thinking: you’re too smooth Avery Lockhart.” She paused a second and thought. “What did you think I was thinking?”