by L.J. Shen
Silence.
“What’s your favorite band?” He changed the subject. He was doing it again—making small talk in the midst of an awkward, violent, insane situation.
I shook my head, plucking out a needle and a thread. I chose green, because I wanted it to stand out. I wanted him to look down at it and remember me in the following weeks. And I didn’t even know why.
“It might leave a scar.” I looked up at him, arching an eyebrow.
He stared at me with a desolate look, dark and feral, but somehow full of hurt and shame, too. There was something behind those arctic icebergs that begged to be thawed, I swear.
“Good. I might remember your insignificant existence in a couple years.”
I faltered. “Pass me your lighter.”
I needed to heat the needle to make sure I wasn’t going to saddle him with a bacterial infection from hell. Not that he didn’t deserve it.
He elevated his groin and fished out his Zippo, throwing it into my hands. I ran the flame along the needle, back and forth.
Vaughn stared at my face with an odd concentration that made me blush, despite my best efforts.
“The Smiths, right?” he asked.
God. What did he want from me?
I put the needle to his skin, taking a deep breath. Even though he’d bled a lot, and probably needed a bottle of water more than he did whiskey, the wound didn’t look too deep upon closer inspection. He was right. I could stitch it, but I wasn’t going to do a bang-up job. My hands were clammy and my fingers shook, but I needed to close his wound.
“Most of your CDs are The Smiths’.” He snatched the bottle of whiskey from the edge of the bathtub and took a swig.
It was the first time I’d seen Vaughn drink—not just alcohol, but at all. Which was bizarre.
I didn’t answer, sliding the needle to the base of his wound. He hissed, but stared directly at what I was doing, our heads touching as we focused on my hand movement. When the needle pierced his skin that first time, coming out of the other side, I let out a ragged exhale of relief. I hadn’t breathed for a few seconds.
Mortal, after all. Flesh and blood and insecurities and secrets.
I moved the needle again, whip-stitching the wound in careful strokes, convincing myself the blood wasn’t real, and the entire moment was a nightmare I was going to wake up from. It helped me keep my cool.
How Vaughn put me in these situations, I had no idea. But I had noticed the pattern. It was always him who came to me. He dropped trouble at my doorstep like dead mice, untamed cat that he was. And, silly girl that I was, I always opened the door and let him in.
Vaughn took another mouthful of whiskey.
“What do you do all day? You don’t have any friends.” He eyed me, his voice more bored than venomous.
Homework. Art.
“You don’t fuck anyone, either. Don’t try to lie to me. I have eyes and ears everywhere. You just drive around by yourself like a failed Uber driver.”
And there it was. The malice.
He groaned when I dug the needle in without my usual gentleness. I didn’t appreciate his line of questions. When he realized I’d hurt him on purpose, he smirked.
“Hold on to that virginity, baby girl. Prince Charming is just a fantasy book and a vibrator away.”
“Fuck you, Vaughn,” I snarled.
“I’m starting to consider it. You’ll be my pro bono case. Not full-on fucking, but feeling your lip ring on my cock no longer makes me want to vomit.”
“Well, it makes me want to vomit, so that’s still firmly off the table.”
I dug the needle harder again, and he laughed, drinking some more and placing the bottle back on the granite surface. It slid and almost slipped from his hand. He caught it at the last minute.
“Wanna know something?” He glanced into the bottom of the whiskey bottle.
No.
“You’re pretty.”
I stilled, the needle hovering in the air over his skin. I wished he hadn’t said that. Because if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have to live with the shame of my heart nearly bursting with sweet, smoky ache. My breath hitched, and I had to swallow and refocus my gaze on his wound.
He’s drunk, and in a tremendous amount of pain. He doesn’t mean it.
“It’s a slow-burn kind of beauty. The more I look at you, the more it sneaks up on me. You remind me of Robin Wright in The Princess Bride—the kind of pure, wide-eyed innocence no amount of black shit and piercings can tarnish. But that’s not why I don’t hate you.” He shook his head, his eyes trained on the side of my face as I stitched him. “Everyone in this town is fucking pathetic—slaves to materialistic bullshit and ticking the predictable boxes of school, college, football, cheerleading, jogging, fucking, falling in love, getting a job, blah blah blah. Money is cheap, dirty, and boring. Everything is a popularity contest, and you’re out of the rat race. I guess…” He threw his head back with a sigh, staring at my ceiling. “You’re real. Maybe that’s why, sometimes, even when you’re not around, it feels like you are.”
I feel that way, too.
Vaughn was always here, even when he wasn’t. I could feel him from miles away. I recognized his scent, his touch, the air he brought into the room when he entered. I could spot his dark soul in a carnival teeming with colors and smells. For better or worse, he was the most unique guy I’d ever come across.
I continued stitching him up silently, his gaze caressing my cheek.
“Hunter said he was gonna make a pass at you.”
I licked my lips, tugging at the thread before sliding the needle into his skin again.
“I put him in his place,” he finished.
I poked his skin with my finger lightly, pinching it back together. This was where I was supposed to tell him he was delusional—I was not his—but I decided to listen to the entire story before I bit his head off.
“We were at his house. He was drunk. He thought I was kidding when I said I’d fuck him up if he tried to mess with you. I beat him up so bad, he came after me with a steak knife. He was supposed to miss. But that’s the thing about shitty aims—when they want to miss, they don’t.” He laughed without a care in the world. Like he hadn’t just lost a gallon of blood.
I paused, moving my gaze from his wound to his face.
He got stabbed because of me?
“Is this a joke?” I frowned.
“Do I look like the joking type?” He cocked his head sideways, looking at me like I was an idiot. “You made this mess. Only fair that you clean it up.”
My eyes widened, a fresh dose of rage coursing through my bloodstream.
“We are not together,” I said, dumbfounded. “Never will be. You’re an asshole.”
“If you think that has anything to do with my controlling your every move, you obviously haven’t been paying attention.”
I thought about the public blow jobs I’d heard about until not too long ago, the internship he’d snatched from me, what I’d seen in the darkroom all those years ago.
His threats.
His cruelness.
His taunts.
I stabbed him with the needle, shoving it deep into his healthy skin, twisting it to make my point. He groaned, pinching his eyebrows together, but he didn’t retreat.
“Push me, Vaughn, and I’ll push harder. I’m not the same girl you threatened in Carlisle Castle. This time, I will hurt you back.”
He snatched my jaw, jerking my face close to his. The needle slipped from my fingers, clinking in the bathtub beneath him. Our breaths mingled, hot and heavy and full of thick lust—the metallic scent of his blood and sweetness of my breath, sugared from a watermelon slushie I’d inhaled before coming home.
“Don’t pretend my blood doesn’t turn you on. You sucked good and hard on it, and my cock will be next.”
“In your drea—”
It all happened so fast, the way our lips crashed together like fire and ice. Euphoric pleasure exploded between my legs, he
at spreading in my lower belly like lava as his lips opened on mine and his tongue slid into my mouth. I grumbled when our tongues touched, because I didn’t expect him to be so soft, so delicious.
My knees sank to the floor. Vaughn took my face in his hands and kissed me more roughly, biting the corner of my lips, pushing his nose against mine, devouring me with the same desperation I felt for him. I imagined it looked like he was trying to eat my whole face, and though it probably looked awkward, it felt perfect.
I was the willing, stupid prey.
I whimpered when he broke the kiss all of a sudden. He lurched back, like I’d bitten him. The look on his face was priceless—as if he’d just woken up and discovered me in bed with him. Like I was the one who kissed him, who invaded his universe repeatedly.
“Fuck.” His chest rose and fell with heavy pants, his eyes dropping to my mouth again.
It was the first time I’d ever seen him out of control.
“Not in this lifetime, Spencer.” I cleared my throat, trying to pick up the slippery needle from the bathtub with shaking fingers. I snapped the thread. I was done stitching him. “I’m going to clean the wound up now. Hold still.”
“Shut me down next time.” He took the whiskey bottle and gulped the rest of its contents in one go. His lips were puffy and bruised, and I realized we’d been kissing for a few minutes. I wondered if I looked like I’d been kissed, too.
“No. You make sure there won’t be a next time,” I whispered hotly, licking my lips. “Not sure you’ve noticed, but it’s the twenty-first century. Men are responsible for their own actions. Or are you one of the so-why-did-she-wear-this chauvinist brigade?”
“Turning me off with your clothes seems like a lifelong goal of yours, so no trouble in that department.” He scoffed, taking a fractured breath as I dug the needle deep into his skin again in retaliation. I was done mending him.
He captured my wrist in his hand, squeezing lightly to make me look at him. I did.
“I don’t want to like you, Lenora. I want to ruin you.”
“Then do it already!” I broke free from his hold and threw my hands in the air, exasperated. “Why don’t you put me out of my misery and just finish the fucking job if you’re so high and mighty?”
He had plenty of opportunity, power, and the means to get Poppy and me kicked out of school. Yet he never did. He never went the extra mile, always skating on the outskirts of making my life uncomfortable, though not unbearable.
“The former interferes with the latter.” His mouth twisted in revulsion as he turned to look at the wall.
My jaw almost dropped to the floor. Was he saying he liked me?
He turned his head back to me, a slow smile spreading across his lips.
“Oh, shit. Look at you. You bought it.” He shook his head, laughing. “Wrap it up, GG. I have somewhere to be.”
I went downstairs, got a bottle of water, and came back up, handing it to him.
“Next time someone busts you open, do yourself a favor and go straight to the hospital. Now drink this, and then clean up your mess. All of it. Every drop of blood,” I said as coldly as I possibly could. “Friendly reminder: I may be your assistant one day, Vaughn, but I will never be your bloody servant.”
I came to school every day for the rest of that week.
And on the last day of school, I really fucked it up with Len Lenora. (She is not your fucking girlfriend, ass face.) The air was swollen with mischief and ninety-five degrees. Humidity level: two fucking thousand.
That was SoCal for you. Palm-tree-lined hell.
Everyone was wearing bikinis and swim shorts under their miserable excuses for clothes. Guys skidded on the damp floors, shooting water guns and chasing each other in the hallways, making it difficult to believe they were the sperm that won. Someone had sprayed black paint over the mirrors in the girls’ bathrooms, resulting in hysterical teenyboppers who couldn’t get ready for the traditional school’s-out selfie. And someone else had too much free time, because helium balloons sailed idly across the ceiling, nasty rumors written on them in Sharpie.
Alice Hamlin sucked Vaughn Spencer off in front of her boyfriend.
Hunter Fitzpatrick gave the Lemke twins crabs.
Knight Cole is a virgin.
Lenora Astalis is a creeper.
Re. The. Fuck. Wind.
Even though I hadn’t spoken to her since I chivalrously bled all over her bathroom and hoovered her face into my mouth, I wasn’t down with the idea that some asshole who wasn’t me was going to ruin her last day of school. I still remembered how she tasted—like the black roses in Carlisle’s courtyard would. Delicious, sweet, and fresh, like raindrops on petals.
Like raindrops on petals? Get the fuck out, and take the vagina you grew with you.
I plucked my Swiss knife out of my boot and hurled it at the balloon. It burst noisily, the sound making people in the hallway yelp and jump. The rubber fell at my feet. I picked it up and walked the length of the hall, tucking my knife back into the side of my boot and fingering the material.
“Who’s responsible for this piece of fine art?” I wondered conversationally, looking around as people glued their backs to the lockers.
Some students aimed their phones at my face, recording my unexpected outburst, but no one spoke.
I stopped in the middle of the hallway, sneering. “Well, then, if no one speaks up, I guess it’s time to rate each blow job I’ve been given from freshman year till now. Ya know, for old times’ sake. Fair warning: some of you have failed.”
I took a black Sharpie from my back pocket, uncapping it with my teeth. I put the pen to a locker and started writing Stacee’s name over it when a voice behind me shrieked.
“Bruh! It was just a fucking joke. Chillax.”
Soren Kayden.
If the dictionary had pictures—which, for people like Soren, maybe it should—his blond-bearded, stoner-surfer face would be featured under the word douchebag, complete with his dumb, what-day-is-it-today? expression (Thursday, assclown).
He dealt Oxy and Vicodin so he could feed his gambling addiction and was shadier than a three-dollar bill. He’d once tried to fondle my selective-mute friend, Luna, hoping she wouldn’t tell anyone. Spoiler alert: she did. A week later, he had two implants for teeth because Knight had knocked them out, and I decorated the rest of him with shiners and a forehead scar in the shape of a dick.
I spun, shoving him against the opposite wall of lockers and snapping the torn rubber in his face. He flinched, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing at the red spot on his cheek.
“Ouch! What the fuck!”
“The fuck is you’re a piece of rotten shit.” I stepped on his toes, shifting all my weight onto them, so angry I could kill him.
I shouldn’t have come. Cutting a bitch was already on the menu because I was on edge about the move to England. Soren was just an easy excuse. I wasn’t Lenora’s savior. I wasn’t even her fucking friend. I cared about her ass a little less than I cared about Uncle Dean’s ingrown toenail. If anything, she was corrupted by soft living. Getting pushed around a little was just what the doctor ordered.
By me.
Not anyone else.
Only. Ever. Fucking. Me.
“Throw down at three o’clock!” someone hollered, cupping his mouth.
Knight and Hunter showed up behind me. Soren’s surfer friends rushed in, too, but they stood on the sidelines, too pussy to come at me or my crowd.
“It was a joke!” Soren cried, throwing his arms up defensively.
Arabella hurried to his rescue, blazing toward us in her nine-inch heels and planting a hand on his shoulder. The entire school gathered around us in a circle, glaring.
“Oh, come on, Spence. Since when do you get butthurt over harmless fun? All the rumors on the balloons are true, anyway.”
They weren’t.
Alice never sucked me off in front of her ex-boyfriend, Jason.
The Lemke twins gave Hunter crabs, not v
ice versa (file under shit I really need to throw into the recycling bin of my brain).
And Lenora Astalis was a lot of things. She was not a creeper, though.
Speaking of, Good Girl peeked out in the sea of faces staring back at us. She wore her hair up in a ponytail, her eyeliner extra thick today. Combat boots like mine, and black skinny jeans with a Stone Roses T-shirt. She looked only mildly interested in the scene, yanking her huge earbuds out of her ears and tucking her Discman into the waistband of her jeans.
Arabella followed my line of sight and plastered a poisonous smile on her pink lips.
“Creeper at three o’clock. What’s up, Good Girl? Is this a figment of my imagination, or did you suck Vaughn off and get a perfect ten, so now he’s your knight in Wal-Mart armor?”
Len’s eyes widened and sliced to mine. She thought I’d told people about our kiss. Maybe worse. Arabella called her Good Girl, but that was a fluke. Truth was, I hadn’t told anyone about her nickname or kissing her. Twice. I would erase both kisses from my memory if I could.
Lenora pretended to laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself. You don’t have brains, much less imagination, Arabella.”
“That’s not a denial.” Arabella popped her finger into her mouth, sucking suggestively.
“You want an official statement?” Len rolled her eyes, folding her arms over her chest. “Fine. I’d never kiss Vaughn Spencer, let alone do anything more with him. I’d rather die than touch him. Happy?”
A dispassionate smirk played on my lips. “Feeling’s mutual, Astalis.”
“Ouch, Spence. That means you defended her pasty ass for nothing. She doesn’t even want you,” Arabella taunted.
Anyone with half a brain could tell from a hundred-mile radius that she was trying to rile me up. That, in itself, didn’t bother me. It was Lenora’s words that pissed me off.
I’d never.
I’d rather die.
Fuck. You.
“Defend?” A smirk curled in the corner of my mouth. “I didn’t defend anyone. The mean-girl bullshit just gets old. And boring.”
“I-I’m not a girl,” Soren pointed out, stuttering.
I threw him a disinterested glance. “But you are a pussy.”