Pretty Reckless

by Shen, L. J.

  I turn around and stomp my way back into the diner to get my phone and call an Uber. He clasps my wrist and jerks me back. I twist toward him and slap him in the face. It’s a knee-jerk reaction, and he doesn’t see it coming. He stumbles back—not from the slap but from the shock. His eyes burn my face as they drink me in. There’s a current dancing between us, and I’m afraid to move, knowing it could electrify me.

  “I will never touch someone who isn’t mine to touch. But you did. Don’t turn this around on me, Scully. You screwed around behind your baby momma’s back with the ice princess because you wanted to prove you could. But you know what? You are right about one thing. I’m selling myself short. Kissing you. Stripping for you. Humoring you. I’m done ghosting my wake-up calls.”

  With that, I try to dart back to Lenny’s, but he scoops me up from the ground like I’m a toddler, and this time, my back crashes against the wall. He grabs my throat and squeezes, kissing me so hard my lips bruise. I ball my fists and rain them on his chest, ripping his holey shirt farther and dragging my fingernails across his exposed skin.

  “I hate you,” I cry. “Marx, I do. I hate you so much.”

  His hands meet the back of my knees, and he hoists me up. I knot my legs around his waist. He cups my face and squashes it as if he is milking this kiss out of me.

  “Yet you’re still fucking kissing me. With the girlfriend. And the baby. And the sister who will always be better than you. You’re kissing your foster brother who hates you, Followhill. A whole fucking lot.”

  “Fuck you.” My tears are unstoppable, raining down hard and fast. My body shudders violently as the sobs rip through me. We’re swallowing each other’s words and secrets and lies with our mouths. My body moves with his. He groans into my lips as though it’s painful. As though he wants to pull away, but he can’t.

  He unbuckles his tattered rope belt and unzips his jeans, grabbing his cock through his briefs and grinding it over my slit through my Daisy Dukes.

  “Eat me,” I moan. “You don’t deserve to enjoy this. I’m the one who should be taking everything in this situation.”

  He drops down to his knees and tugs my Daisy Dukes and panties aside, stretching the denim against my skin and causing me delicious pain. He throws one of my legs over his shoulder and presses his nose into my slit, inhaling deeply.

  A feral growl rips from his throat, coming from somewhere deep and primal, and he bites my inner thigh.

  “Blythe might be pregnant, so good luck paying child support for two children at eighteen, asshole.” I groan. His tongue drags along my slit, then his mouth clamps on my clit, and he sucks on it hard. I moan. He grinds his straight teeth along my pussy, creating delicious friction. “Marx,” I mutter.

  He laughs a gruff, grown-up laugh that makes my bones quiver. I don’t know why this eighteen-year-old feels like more of a man than my almost forty-year-old principal.

  “Will you babysit?” he taunts me. I grip his silky, light brown hair and pull hard, wanting to inflict pain.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “She’s not pregnant,” he says between lazy strokes of his tongue, eating me so willingly and happily, I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. He is driving me crazy. No one has ever gone down on me, and when I asked him to, I was expecting him to laugh in my face and say no. I couldn’t deny myself it, either. All my friends get action at Lenny’s. I wanted to, too.

  “So why is she having a meltdown?”

  “Because she saw Vaughn before the game with Las Juntas fucking some other chick’s mouth under the bleachers.” After another flick of his tongue across my clit, he’s back to sucking on it hard. My thighs begin to shake around his beautiful head.

  “H-how do you know that?” My teeth are chattering. It feels too good to be legal. I want Penn to go down on me for the rest of our lives.

  “Because I was doing something similar at the time under the same bleachers. You know, to get rid of all the stress.”

  Yeah. I know. With Adriana, most likely.

  I throw my head back and squeeze my eyes shut as his lips clamp on my clit and suck hard while he rubs his chin over my opening. It’s messy and hungry and beautiful. He squeezes my ass, and my body breaks into small spasms, a wave of heat blanketing me from head to toe.

  My orgasm gallops through me like wild horses. I’m shaking all over. I’ve never come so hard in my life, and on someone’s face, no less.

  He sucks my clit between his lips one more time as I come down from the high before he rises to his feet. His whole face is glowing with my lust for him, his chin dripping my juices.

  I want to tell him that he is an asshole, but his mouth crashes down on mine, and he demolishes me with a kiss, forcing me to taste my sweet, earthy musk. I hate myself so much for letting him do this to me over and over again when he has a girlfriend. It makes me sick to my stomach. I touch his chest through the hole in his shirt and tug at his lower lip until I suck all of it into my mouth. I take everything he is willing to give me, and then steal some more moments, watching his gorgeous silhouette under the starlit sky.

  “This is the last time,” I promise. To him. To myself. It’s not about Adriana; it’s about me. I’ll never be a cheater. And taking someone who doesn’t belong to you knowingly—that’s cheating.

  He tears his lips away from mine and grins. “You really thought me going down on you is you winning?” he mocks, dragging his palm across his chin and sucking the rest of my juices from his finger.

  I stare at him, stunned. What the hell happened to the fourteen-year-old kid who gave me a precious sea glass, the equivalent of a rare diamond?

  “Oh, sweetheart, we’ll be over when I say we’re over.”

  She’s a work of art

  And as such

  There’s nothing more devastating

  Than watching her break

  “We can grab Starbucks on the way back home.”

  That’s his peace offering after eating me out against a filthy auto-shop sign with his girlfriend not even one hundred feet away.

  Penn offers the olive branch in his taciturn tone the morning after Lenny’s while I’m sitting at the kitchen island with my family, sipping coffee and messing on my phone. Since I haven’t slept a wink, analyzing the entire timeline of our relationship, I decide to play along. This is what I’ve come up with so far:

  Him having a girlfriend was speculation until yesterday, not a fact. When I asked, he dodged, and I never asked again. While it is true that my research should have been more thorough, he went home with Blythe so openly, I didn’t think about it too much.

  Yesterday, I was disoriented and shocked, which is why I let what happened, happen. But it won’t happen anymore. I can’t have an affair with the guy who lives under my roof and hates me for screwing up his possibly dead sister’s life.

  He may have taken all my important firsts so far, but he is not going to take the big V-card.

  Penn grabs his varsity jacket and motions for Bailey to move it. They’re going to the library together. They’ve been spending a lot of time together. I’m jealous of Bails. I’m jealous of Penn. But most of all, I’m jealous of the fact they are capable of forming a real relationship.

  All eyes dart from newspapers and iPads and shiny chrome magazines to us.

  “No thanks, I’m going to Blythe’s.”

  Her name makes both of us pause. Penn nods curtly, clearing his throat. Dad is looking back and forth between us, reading between the lines.

  “Penn, don’t pork Daria’s friends,” he drawls.

  Melody gasps. “Jaime!”

  “What? I’m not the one doing it!”

  “Yes, sir.” Penn plucks a donut from the open white box in the center of the table and takes a bite. “Happy not to touch anyone Daria is affiliated with. Her personality might be contagious.”

  I roll my eyes, knowing I am being watched, and that Dad—the only person on my team in this house—will flip his shit if he finds out
Penn touched me.

  “Hate you, bro.” I smile sweetly.

  “Indifferent to you, sis,” Penn says midbite, ruffling my hair as he ambles out the door with Bails. It makes my heart flutter in my chest like a butterfly, but at the same time, I’m also sick to my stomach. Penn really is like a brother to Bailey.

  A brother who also had his fingers and tongue in her older sister’s privates.

  I spend the day stalking Adriana on social media. She is gorgeous, and her baby daughter, Harper, is adorable. Harper is fair-skinned with green eyes, just like Penn. There are a ton of pictures of Addy and Harper together, and two of them with Penn. He always looks at them like they’re the apple of his eye.

  Apples. He hasn’t given me apples in a while. Does that mean he thinks he’s already conquered me?

  At night, another crisis ensues. Mel doesn’t come to check on me for the first time since I was born. She doesn’t tuck me in bed, kiss my forehead, and tell me she loves me. Probably because she doesn’t.

  Maybe she’s given up on me after the ice-cream parlor stunt. Perhaps, she wants me to pack my stuff and move to college. I’m her glowing, shiny failure. Blackhearted and empty.

  I tell myself that I don’t care, but inside, my guts rip to shreds and bleed all over my stomach.

  I take my little black book to my mother’s in-house ballet studio. She turned a part of our basement into a well-lit workroom when we first moved here, and since then, she’s spent a considerable amount of time here, mostly with Bailey. I can still hear the echo of their laughter crawling up the basement stairs every summer evening while I was holed up in my room, climbing the walls.

  Mel never invited me here, so now I come here on my own, inviting myself.

  The night I found out Via ran away, I stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror in the studio wearing full ballet gear. I ran my gaze along my leotard-clad body, knowing I was too clumsy, too curvy, too Daria to be a ballerina. Melody found her joy in other girls. Girls more athletic, and disciplined, and regal. Girls like Via. I got jealous, and I started acting up. Instead of pulling me in and telling me that I was irreplaceable, Mel let me go.

  So I drifted like a balloon in the sky, waiting for someone to anchor me back down, but no one ever did. It’s been years since she stuck her nose in my life and figured out what was going on. Me and Principal Prichard are doing things we shouldn’t be doing. I have a journal where I confess all the horrible things I do to people. My friends are backstabbers who hate me, and I haven’t laughed in my family’s presence in over four years.

  Four years.

  Four unnoticed years.

  A tear escapes my eye, rolling down my cheek. The door opens, and Penn walks in. He is quiet, somber. He is always quiet and somber. And present. I can feel his presence like blood flowing in my body. Vital and warm and full of my DNA. The problem with Penn is that he has a girlfriend, but he feels like mine when he’s around, and that’s dangerous.

  “How did you know I was here?” I wipe the tear before he can see it.

  He rubs the back of his neck. “I thought it was a wine cellar and was counting on some booze.”

  I roll my eyes, sniffing.

  He plops down on the floor. Yanking me by the hem of my shirt, he motions for me to sit beside him, then he knocks his knee against mine. “Talk.”

  “With the enemy? No thank you.”

  I drink him in. The curl of his dark blond hair falling across his forehead. His sulking scowl. The love bites across his neck that I didn’t do. I imagine Adriana nibbling and kissing and biting him, then stand, unable to calm myself down. I jog toward the door.

  He gallops behind me, tugging me back to him.

  “Talk, Daria. Fucking talk.”

  “Why!” I throw my hands in the air. “So you can hold it against me the first chance you get? So you can laugh at me with your friends? The prissy girl with the first-world problems? So you know how weak I am? Why should I talk to you? I’m nothing to you. I’ve always been your nothing. The bitch who drove your twin sister away. Don’t pretend otherwise just because we shared a few sloppy, illicit kisses. Don’t act like you give me a sliver of thought when I’m not in front of you. I’m not Adriana.”

  His lips curl in revulsion. I think I really pissed him off this time around.

  He takes my face in both his hands and brings my nose to brush his.

  “No,” he hisses. “You’re not Adriana. I agree.”

  He pulls back from me, digs in the back pocket of his low-hanging skinny jeans, and takes out a single house key with a blue plastic string tied around it. He throws it into my hands. I catch it.

  My eyes widen. How did he…?

  “Stole it from your pompoms.” He looks away, walking to the other side of the room, pacing like a tiger in a cage. This is big. Huge, maybe. He keeps me everywhere he goes.

  I chase him across the dance room, planting a hand on his shoulder. He turns around. He looks ragged and heartbroken, and I think it’s because of me. I want it to be because of me. What kind of person does that make me?

  “What’s eating you, Daria Followhill, queen bee, cheer captain, and the most popular girl in the county?”

  My family.

  My friends.

  My secrets.

  My insecurities.

  My errors and mistakes and past.

  And you. You bury me so deep in feelings I can’t even explain.

  “Melody stopped coming to my room. It used to be our thing. Every night since I was born, she would give me a kiss good night. I think she stopped loving me,” I tell him, and when I do, I realize it’s not a lie. It’s a numbing notion inhabiting every cell in my body. My mother doesn’t love me anymore.

  I made someone programmed to adore me unconditionally forget all about me.

  “She loves you.” He slides the back of his hand against my throat, staring deep into my eyes. “But you hate yourself, so it doesn’t matter.”

  I snort.

  “I love myself. Look at me. I’m Daria Followhill.” I motion to my body with my hands. He shakes his head. He’s not buying it.

  Wordlessly, he pushes me toward the mirror in front of us. Standing behind me, he jerks my chin up so I have to look at myself. At us. He’s over a head taller than me. Broad and muscular like a Greek god. His face is sharper, more symmetrical than mine. His charisma is blowing up this room, and I’m standing here, casing most of his body yet barely drawing any attention to mine.

  “When I look in the mirror, I see an orphan. A football player. A student. A grieving brother. A guy whose dream is to attend Notre Dame so he can escape the shithole that’s his life and break the poverty cycle. I know who I am. But who are you? Tell me what you see, Daria.” His breath fans across my hair. “Help me get into this beautiful, awful head of yours.”

  My hand travels to my stomach, and I grab a thin tire of fat.

  “I’m too curvy.”

  My hand flies to my face, a finger rolling over my nose.

  “My nose is too small, and my eyes are too big. And my hair always looks hella dry.”

  “What else?” he asks. His hand travels to my pajama shorts and snakes into them, his fingers tracing my slit through my panties. “Confide in me, my hideous little monster.”

  I snort out a laugh, shaking my head. I want to tell him to stop. That he has a girlfriend and a child and I’m not like that. A Jerry Springer-style homewrecker. But for the first time since yesterday, I feel seen.

  “I’m the most jealous and petty person I know,” I admit.

  “That’s because you live inside yourself.” He kisses my neck, and I let him. I’m so weak and pathetic. “What else?”

  “My soul is black, Penn. When I see competition, I smash it before it grows. I’m so vindictive.”

  “No, Daria, you are so human. That’s what you are.”

  My toes leave the floor as he tugs my panties aside, his hand shoved deep inside my shorts, and he starts fingering me with tw
o fingers, his thumb playing with my clit. I moan and roll my head over his chest, closing my eyes and letting myself drift somewhere only we exist. My ass grinds against his erection, and I love feeling how hot he is for me.

  “Your insecurities are the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” He bites my earlobe softly, and when I open my eyes, I see that he is still staring at us in the mirror.

  Of course, he’d feast on my weaknesses. Why wouldn’t he? It makes him stronger in our screwed-up relationship.

  My knees give out, and my hips buck forward as he fingers me faster and deeper, then a door whines open upstairs, and heavy footfalls descend the basement stairs.

  “Marx.” I gasp, turning around and pushing Penn away. I look left and right helplessly, my eyes landing on the en suite bathroom of the studio. I shove him inside and slam the door behind him at the same time the studio door flies open and my dad steps in.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  I’m so busted. I pull my shirt down to cover a very prominent spot of lust on my shorts. My body shivers from the impending orgasm.

  “Everything okay?” My dad frowns. “Went to get a glass of water and heard some talking.”

  “I’m alone!” I exclaim.

  Real smooth, idiot.

  I push my hair back, clearing my throat. “All alone, as you can see.”

  My smile is so tight it might tear through my skin. Dad jerks his chin toward the bathroom.

  No. Please, no.

  “Open the bathroom door, Daria.”

  “Dad…”

  “Now.”

  I walk over to the bathroom and open it, stepping aside. He is still by the door all the way across the room, but he has a good view of the majority of the bathroom.

  “Open the bath curtain.”

  “Are you serious right now?”

  “Don’t stall. It’s all fun and games until there’s a boy in the house who wants to get into my little girl’s pants.”

  I know it’s foolish, but my heart is dancing in my chest at the reminder that he actually cares. Bracing myself and taking a deep breath, knowing he is about to see Penn, I open the curtain in one go. But Penn isn’t there. I bite down on my lower lip to hide my shock, then turn around back to Dad and shrug.