He shook his head and grinned.
“Name’s Smoke.”
17
PREPPY
For a few moments before Dre realized I was awake I watched her. It had been so long since I’d seen her. Like REALLY seen her in the light, yet nothing and everything had changed. Her skin was clear and so were the whites of her eyes. She was a knockout as a strung out junkie, but sober, Doc made me feel warm and tingly in every part of my body, especially in the one that had stubbornly been refusing to so much as twitch. Even though she was wearing short sleeves she made the motion like she was pulling down on her sleeves to cover the scars on her arms which were now barely noticeable. It turned from a habit into a nervous quirk.
It was fucking adorable.
Dre was talking with someone but I can’t see who the fuck it was and I didn’t care. I was still checking out Dre and not believing she was really there. She still bites the side of her thumb too and if you looked at her from the wrong angle it almost seems as if she’s sucking on it which makes my useless dick twitch for the first time in eons.
Something about her having the same little quirks made me feel like I wasn’t so out of the loop, although I knew when my inspection of Dre landed on the sparkling diamond on her left hand that out of the loop is a fucking understatement.
I suppress a laugh, still not wanting her to know I was conscious just yet when I realize that she’s talking to Smoke and he’s wearing a full police uniform. Fuck knows what that was about but what tickled me as funny was that his name badge said Wiggum. I wait until he’s gone before saying, “Wiggum. Chief Wiggum is the police chief on the Simpsons.”
“Good, you’re awake. What were you doing on the water tower?” she asked, smoothing my hair from my face. I want to lean into her touch but instead I flinch, a little reflex I picked up courtesy of Chop and she withdrew her hand.
I flashed her the biggest smile I could, forgetting about my missing tooth. I must have looked a mess. “I…” I started, not really remembering why I was there in the first place, but when the memory hits and I recall the party. The ring. The backstreet boy I knocked out. THE KISS. I decide to go with the truth. Sort of. “I was looking for you.”
“Were you trying to jump?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest like she was both pissed and disappointed, but I couldn’t linger on that because the motion pushed her tits up over the neckline of her shirt and suddenly I hated the inch or so of cotton hiding what I knew to be perfect pink nipples from me.
“No, but I might have been screaming a little. Okay, a lot. Someone must have called the cops about the lunatic on the water tower and they hauled me in thinking I was going to take the long leap to nowhere.”
“But you weren’t?” she asked, like she was making sure.
“No, Doc,” I reassured her. She nodded and breathed out slowly, like she’d been holding her breath. “One of the officers must have gotten a little punchy,” I said, feeling the knot on my forehead. “Fucker.”
“King and Bear are in the waiting room. I’ll go tell them you’re ready to go home,” she said standing up.
I grabbed her wrist and she sat back down. “No, Doc. I can’t go back there. It’s too.” I stopped. “It’s just too…everything.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“With you,” I said, pleading with my eyes. “I want to go with you.”
“Preppy…” she started, looking down at her lap. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Because you’re engaged?” I asked sounding more bitter than I intended. “‘Cause married people can’t get engaged, unless the rules have changed. Shit, everything else has changed. Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“No, because I’m not even going to be here long. I’m going home to help my dad the second the house sells and the realtor thinks that could be really soon. And I’m not—”
“Okay, so I’ll only stay until it sells or until you go home.”
Basically, I’ll just be there for as long as you’re there.
“Preppy,” Dre said, sounding unconvinced. I was going to have to bring out the big guns.
“As your husband on record, don’t I have to sign off on the sale?” I asked.
Doc straightened her spine. “Wait, what?”
“Even if it’s on a technicality we’re married, right? The house would be considered our marital property, therefore I’d have to sign off on the sale regardless of whose name the house is in.”
“Fuck,” Dre mouthed when she realized I was right. It was adorable when she swore.
“Sounds good. Maybe later. Right now I’m just looking for you to say, ‘yes, Preppy, I’d love for you to come and stay with me for awhile.’”
“So…you’re blackmailing me?” Doc asked.
I smiled. “Abso-fucking-lutley.”
DRE
“That’s the kid you’re fucking?” Preppy asked, pointing to the screen saver on my phone. It was a picture of Brandon and me at my college graduation. I graduated in three years and had a big smile on my face. Brandon was holding up my diploma like it was a trophy.
For me, it kind of was.
“Excuse me?” I snatched my phone from his hand and pushed it into my back pocket. “He’s not a kid,” I argued.
“Oh yeah? Could have fooled me. He looks like Zac Efron or a Backstreet Boy circa 1997. I mean, come on, Doc, he doesn’t even have any facial hair. I bet he hasn’t sprouted any pubes yet either, looks a little too young for that. What kind of man doesn’t have any fucking facial hair?”
I glared at the short beard on his face.
“I mean what kind of man normally doesn’t have facial hair. My beardlessness was due to special circumstances.”
“Such as?”
“Such as shit I don’t want to fucking talk about,” Preppy said. He then started to whistle as he opened the back sliding door and stepped out onto the deck.
“See, I told you this wasn’t a good idea,” Ray said walking in the door and setting down a garbage bag of what I assumed was Preppy’s stuff onto the floor. “He won’t talk to any of us. He won’t tell us anything. Insists that everything’s okay. When people who are hauled into hospitals for attempted suicides, everything’s not fucking okay!”
“I can hear you,” Preppy said, coming back inside and grabbing the bag off the floor. “Thanks, kid.”
“So what were you two arguing about?” Ray asked.
“Doc’s fiancé. Where is he by the way?”
“You mean, Brandon?” Ray asked.
“He means Brandon,” I said with a smile. “And Brandon had to go home.”
“Oh yeah? And why is that?” Preppy asked.
“Because, he missed his boyfriend,” I said casually.
“Oh, okay, because his…wait. What?” Preppy asked.
Ray snorted. “Preppy, Brandon’s gay.” We both broke out into a fit of laughter while Preppy looked at us like we’d lost our damn minds.
“Hold the fucking phone. Brandon’s gay?” Preppy asked like he hadn’t heard it right the first time.
He leaned onto the counter on his elbows. “Fuck, I lost my hair, a portion of my fucking gut…and my gaydar?”
“Seems so,” Ray said, planting a kiss on Preppy’s cheek. She may not have noticed him flinch but I did. “I’ll check up on you kids later. Behave yourselves,” she sang as she closed the front door behind her.
“Don’t feel too bad. I missed the signs too when I first met him.” I laughed at the memory. “I actually thought he was asking me out when I first met him until we actually went out and his boyfriend met us after the movie.” I tried to ignore the thickness of the air around us. I tucked it away in the linen closet, trying to pretend like his every word didn’t make me feel something I didn’t want to feel. Relief. Lust. LOVE. “So back to your earlier question. The kind of man who likes a clean look. That’s who doesn’t have facial hair.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked, taking a step forward, crowding me in, sta
ring down into my eyes with an intensity that had me biting down hard on my lower lip. “Do YOU like a clean look, Doc? Or do you like it dirty. Beards. Tattoos…scars.”
Yes, I like it dirty. So dirty.
I was stunned into silence. His proximity was fucking with my brain and I was afraid that at any second I was going to blurt out something that would dig me a deeper hole than I’d already dug for myself. I opened my mouth to answer, but I couldn’t get the words out. Not like I needed to. Preppy answered for me. “If I remember correctly, you like it dirty. Real fucking dirty.”
He took another step toward me. “Remember that first time? In the field? By the train tracks? Remember how I pulled your hair while I fucked you from behind and stretched you open? Remember how it felt to have me moving inside of you? How it felt when you came and screamed in my fucking ear? I do. I remember. Thought of that scream every fucking day since. It was deafening.” He chuckled and pressed his teeth against his bottom lip. He groaned, the sound shooting straight to my pussy. “I can still fucking hear it now.”
So can I.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. “What are you doing?” I asked, trying to step out from under him, but he moved his arms and pressed his hands against the wall, caging me in. The warmth of his chest radiated onto mine and I tried to look anywhere but into his eyes, afraid of what I might see but there wasn’t anywhere else to look. Especially when his face moved closer to mine.
He pressed his knee between my thighs, parting my legs. “Me?” he asked, with mock innocence. “I’m just reminiscing with an old friend.”
“This doesn’t feel like just reminiscing,” I panted.
He stared deeply into my eyes. “No, not YET it doesn’t.” He grinned. “But it fucking will. Soon.”
“I…I can’t,” I stammered. I pulled my face from his hand but he turned me back by my chin.
“Oh, Doc, you remember how much I love it when you tell me no.” He lowered himself until his lips were a hair away from mine. My nipples peaked at the anticipation of feeling his lips against mine.
Maybe, just this once. I lied to myself. One more time just to remember how he felt when we…
A car door slammed in the driveway, throwing a bucket of cold water on the sizzling heat between us.
Preppy looked up and I jumped under his arm and away from him, again busying myself with folding towels. I cleared my throat and adjusted my shirt, trying to hide my hardened nipples underneath my thin tank top. “That would be the realtor,” I said, as casually as possible.
“Great,” Preppy said, blowing out a breath.
“And when he leaves we need to talk,” I said, trying not to sound affected by him.
“About what?” Preppy asked. The doorbell rang.
I adjusted my hair and right before I opened the door to let in the realtor and his clients I turned back to Preppy and swallowed hard.
“Our divorce.”
DRE
We never did have a conversation about a divorce, although we needed to have it at some point. Or maybe an annulment instead, but I was pretty sure if there were time restrictions on those type of things that we’d long surpassed it. We didn’t talk about what happened to him either.
Or much of anything else for that matter.
It had been a little over a week since Preppy moved in. He rarely came out of Mirna’s old room and I noticed when he did it was only at night. If he ever was up and about during the day the first thing he would do was shut the blinds and put his sunglasses on. I knew he was having trouble with light and I saw at the party what happened to him when the volume of life around him got too loud.
There were flashes of the old Preppy from time to time. A snide remark. Innuendo about my short skirts. The burning glare of desire in his sad eyes that made my knees weak and my heart want to burst inside my chest.
Several times a night he’d scream through his nightmares and when I tried to go in to help him I couldn’t. The door was always locked. I’d sit in the hallway with my back on the other side of the door and listen to him battle whatever demons he fought off in his dreams until the screams subsided.
When I couldn’t sleep I’d fire up my laptop and research conditions of people who’d gone through traumatic situations. Counseling and medication were the two recommendations although Preppy would NEVER agree to counseling and self medicating was more his thing.
I sighed and bookmarked the page, clicking over to the Logan’s Beach realty site to see if anything else had recently sold in the area and I was surprised that several homes in need of more repair and priced much higher had recently sold. I made a note to call East to ask if there was something wrong with our listing, especially since the potential buyers the realtor showed the house to never came back with an offer and there hadn’t been a single interested buyer since then. Although part of me was relieved it hadn’t sold yet, part of me was frantic to make it happen. With the auction date approaching time was running out for my dad. I had to think of another creative way to either sell the house or make a substantial amount of money and FAST.
“Dad?” I asked when my phone rang. “Dad is everything okay? It’s late.”
“Everything’s fine here. I was just checking to make sure everything is okay there. Brandon told me what happened with that boy and I was concerned that…” He paused and I heard his guilt dripping into the phone.
“You wanted to know if I was using again.”
“Yes,” my dad answered honestly.
“No, Dad. I’m not. I haven’t thought about it,” I said, and with that statement I was proud. “Although I had two glasses of wine with a friend the other night and guess what happened…” I said.
“What?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I whispered. “Except maybe a lot of laughter and me falling asleep before eight pm.”
My dad laughed softly. “I’m so proud of you, Andrea.”
I stood up and walked out into the backyard. The cool night air felt like heaven against my damp skin. After I slid the door shut I turned around and jumped back against the door, dropping my phone.
“Hello?” I heard my dad saying. I leaned down and picked up the phone. “Hey dad. Everything is fine, but I have to go. I’ll call you back in the morning.” I clicked the phone shut and slowly descended the steps. My eyes focused on Preppy who was sitting in the backyard under the light of the moon with his face tilted up toward the sky, moaning and rocking from side to side as if he were in pain.
Naked.
Very, VERY naked.
The brutal red and white scars slashing through his once beautiful tattoos made me want to run my hands over them as if I could heal him. I wanted to weep for him and kill the fucker who did this to him.
I stepped around him and crouched down so we were at eye level. His eyes shot open. His bloodshot and unfocused gaze met mine.
“Help me.”
“How do you want me to help you?” I whispered. I didn’t know what kind of episode he was having. Fuck, I didn’t even know if he was awake so I didn’t want to scare him by talking too loud.
He reached out and pushed the string of my tank top off my shoulder. His touch made my body shudder. He pushed off the other strap and then tugged at the hem of my shirt. “Please,” he begged softly, but there was nothing sexual about what he was asking. There was no desire in his eyes.
Only pain.
I slowly undressed, pulling down my panties and stepping out of them before kneeling down before him. “Come here,” he whispered, tugging me by the shoulders until I was straddling him. He was partially hard. Just feeling him against me made me want to throw caution to the wind and put him inside of my body but this wasn’t about me.
I wasn’t even really sure what it was really about but whatever it was, he needed it so I was going to do my best to give it to him.
He wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed his head against my naked chest. He breathed in and out slowly like he was trying to
steady himself and then I realized he was trying not to cry. A few moments later his shoulders shook.
“Let go,” I whispered, holding him tighter against me. “Let it all go,”
Preppy’s shoulders shook harder and I felt his warm tears against my skin. I felt my own tears start and once they did I couldn’t stop them.
So there we sat. In the backyard. Naked. Wrapped in each other’s arms until the sun came up.
I woke up in the grass, covered by a blanket.
Preppy was gone.
I trudged back up to the house and thought back to when I first met Preppy. I was vulnerable. Weak. Everyone in my life had tried to tiptoe around me while they worked their asses off to save me.
Not Preppy.
It pained me that I had to leave Logan’s Beach when the house sold. It broke my heart that Preppy and I could never have a shot at anything real, not once he learned about the secret I was keeping from him. But I smiled to myself anyway, because when I was weak Preppy saved me by giving me his strength.
18
PREPPY
“Did we fuck?” I asked Dre who dropped a fork. I knew we didn’t but I loved getting a reaction out of her. “I mean I don’t think we did. But I woke up naked on the porch. Wasn’t the first time I’ve slept outside, but I don’t remember actually going out there.”
“No we didn’t fuck,” Dre said. My dick twitched when she said FUCK and I made a note to make her swear more at me from now on because it was the first sign that my cock wasn’t useless after all. “I think you were sleepwalking.” She was irritated which made me believe that me naked on the porch was more than a simple case of sleepwalking.
“You have to be nice to me, Doc,” I said, scraping a chair against the tile as I pulled it out from the table. I pulled the other one out as well. I sat on one, propping my legs up on the other, crossing my feet at the ankles. I opened her laptop and pulled up the page she had bookmarked and pointed to it. “I have post partum depression.”
Preppy, The Life & Death of Samuel Clearwater: A King Series Trilogy Page 34