Scratch

by Rhonda Helms

  “I can pretty much keep myself alive,” I said with a shrug and took a swig of lukewarm water. “I like floating more than anything else.”

  Megan and Bobby were clinging to each other and pushing away, giggling a lot, doing that flirt-shove thing that gives you an excuse to touch the other person every three seconds.

  Daniel remained silent until I dared to glance at him. The sun glowed across his skin, the crown of his mop of hair, the defined muscles along his shoulder and collarbone. My core pulsed in response. There was no denying to myself how much he heated me up. Even just looking at him made me throb. My fingers itched to touch his bare flesh.

  “Wanna go float?” he asked me, the corner of his mouth crooked in that smile that dared me to let go of my inhibitions.

  I couldn’t deny I wanted to. Besides, even if the water made my shirt bob up, I was wearing a one-piece that covered me fully. I nodded.

  He dropped his recapped drink inside the cooler and slipped into the water on the opposite side of the boat from Megan and Bobby, like he’d been born in the lake. When he rose from beneath the surface, he shook his head and laughed. “It’s brisk,” he admitted.

  I drank the sight of him in, droplets sliding down his throat, where I wanted to press my lips. My heart raced madly. Maybe a dip in the water would help cool me off. Help me regain my senses.

  My cheeks burned in awkwardness as Daniel watched me slip my shorts off. He wasn’t leering, just . . . keeping his gaze on me. Like he was afraid if he blinked, I’d back out and change my mind. Could I blame him for that? My heart squeezed, and I dropped the shorts to my seat and stretched my legs over the side of the boat, then just plunged in.

  I was submerged, the water chilly and pulsing all around me in one long, quiet moment. I floated back up to the surface and shoved my hair away from my face. Daniel trod water in front of me, his powerful arms working across the rippling waves.

  The boat floated along, and my body eventually warmed. We were on one side, blocked from seeing Megan and Bobby, who had gotten suspiciously quiet on the other side of the boat. Better that I couldn’t see whatever they were up to.

  “When I was a kid I would stay in the pool for hours until I wrinkled,” Daniel said. Somehow while we treaded water he’d moved closer to me, and I could feel the moving water beneath the surface pulsing against my own legs. “In fact, in elementary school I wanted to be an Olympic diver. I had no fear.”

  “I can just imagine.” A tiny Daniel, diving into the pool, his scrawny body plunging the surface as he practiced relentlessly. “What made you change your mind?”

  “I look terrible in Speedos.” His grin widened and he gave a cheeky laugh.

  I laughed in response. “I used to pretend I was a mermaid. I’d sit on the bottom of the pool and press my legs together and make believe they were a tail.” How many hours my sister and I had lived in our neighborhood’s pool. She’d refused to go in without her goggles and nose guard, uncaring if it made her look goofy.

  I paused my thoughts, waiting for the sting of memory to sweep over me. But here in the quiet lake, with no one else around but Daniel, who smiled patiently at me, there was only a small, bittersweet ping. Maybe I was starting to heal a little. Maybe eventually I could get to the point where I didn’t hurt at all.

  You haven’t even told him about her, a tiny voice spoke in the back of my mind. Or about what happened.

  That made the smile fall from my face.

  Daniel dunked underwater, then popped up only a few inches from me, and I startled backward, jarred out of my melancholy. “Boo.”

  “You scared me,” I admitted.

  “I know.” His face turned serious. “I really want to kiss you again.”

  I swallowed, my pulse buzzing in my veins. Right now I wanted him to kiss me again too. In this place of light and sun and water and warmth and happy things. To ground me in the moment.

  He snaked an arm out and brushed the side of my hip, his thumb caressing my naked thigh. My breath panted in response, and I let my leg kicks slow to a leisurely pace, just enough to help me float without sinking. I needed that hand of his on me.

  “I want that too.” My voice was so soft, a breath above a whisper, that I almost wondered if I’d said it out loud at all.

  Daniel reached a hand over, grasped the side of the boat for stability and wrapped the other one under my ass to press me flush against him. It was instinct to wrap my thighs around his waist, to slide my hands along his damp flesh, tangle my fingers in the locks at his neck.

  His body was burning hot between my legs, and I was suddenly very, very aware that the only things separating us right now down there were two thin scraps of fabric. His pupils enlarged, and I could barely see his irises. He swallowed, tilted his head closer to me.

  I met him halfway with my mouth. Water throbbed against us, pushed and pulled at our bodies. But Daniel was my anchor, keeping me safe, keeping me floating.

  My legs tugged him even closer, almost against my conscious thought. He was hard and ripe and straining against his swim trunks, and a delicate shudder of arousal made its way across me as I opened my mouth to welcome him deeper in. His tongue plunged right inside, swept along my lips and teeth and tangled with my own tongue. I dug my fingers into his hair and breathed him, inhaled him.

  We bobbed together in the water. His chest rose and fell with small pants against mine that made me even hungrier for him. My nipples were pebbled from arousal and the cool water. I ached everywhere, forgot everything, knew nothing but him in this moment.

  “Hell, yeah!” a light voice said from behind me with a saucy giggle. “Casey, you dirty little girl!”

  Shit. I disentangled myself from Daniel and pulled back, mortified at being caught making out. Right here when Megan and Bobby were apparently back in the boat, both of them peering down at us, swigging a beer and watching us like we were a TV show.

  Bobby winked at me, and I swallowed, straightened my shirt. Daniel’s hand pressed on my lower back, on top of my T-shirt—not pushing but not letting me forget about his presence either.

  He helped boost me back into the boat, and I slipped but found my seat again. How quickly I’d forgotten everything around me. I grabbed my water bottle and swigged, desperate for something to focus on other than the scorching memory of Daniel’s body. Of me wrapped around him like that.

  Megan went to open her mouth, but I lifted a hand.

  “Not a word,” I warned her in a hushed whisper, right as Daniel pulled himself into the boat.

  She frowned, and I shook my head. I didn’t need to be laughed at, teased about this. The emotions coursing through me right now were too heavy and volatile.

  Bobby shrugged and swilled the last of his beer, tossing the bottle at his feet. He grabbed another, burped as he popped the top off and chugged more. He winked at Megan when he reached the end of the bottle.

  “Those are some lips you have there!” she said with a laugh.

  “You just wait,” he teased in return.

  Ugh. Maybe I should be having a beer to make it through this awkwardness. But my water would do fine. Besides, my stomach was unsettled. And it didn’t help that Daniel was silently peeking over at me every few moments.

  I finally gave in and glanced at him. His eyes twinkled, and he reached a hand out toward me. I bit back a nervous sigh and touched his hand.

  He pulled me closer to him. I was still slicked with water, so I moved easily. A breeze brushed across us, hardening my nipples. His eyes darted down for a split second, then he looked back up into my eyes. “I’m not sorry,” he said. “I’m not sorry I kissed you. Though I don’t want you to be uncomfortable with me about it all. We can just hang out on here if you want. No pressure.”

  Tension leaked from my limbs, my back. He wrapped his arm around my back, his fingers brushing my opposite upper arm. The flesh tightened in response.

  Megan and Bobby were chugging beers. She swayed in her seat and laughed, giving a d
elicate burp behind her hand. “Holy shit,” she said. “I think I’m buzzed.”

  Daniel raised an eyebrow at me, silent solidarity, and I quirked one back.

  “I hope you can drive a boat,” I whispered.

  “We’ll figure it out,” he promised.

  Megan stood and faced us, her dark brown skin almost entirely naked except for her scrap of bikini. A few water droplets snaked down her flesh. She was beautiful in her assurance, and for a moment I wished I could be like her. So self-confident. Comfortable. “You’re wearing too many clothes,” she told me, wagging a finger near my face. “You should take that shirt off.”

  Bobby’s hand smacked her butt, and she jerked a little, then laughed. “And you should take that bikini off,” he said with a low growl.

  “I’m fine,” I told her. Despite the fact that my bathing suit covered my scars, I still didn’t want to take it off. Thin layer or not, it protected me from feeling so . . . naked. So exposed to Daniel or anyone else.

  “C’mon,” she pleaded, thrusting a hand on her hip. “You’re gorgeous. Look, I’m wearing just my suit. You should too.” She bent down and grabbed another beer, probably her third in twenty minutes.

  Yeah, she was buzzed. A low hum started in my head, discomfort wrapping around me. “No, thanks,” I told her, my voice getting a slight edge of frostiness. “I want to leave it on.”

  Daniel’s fingers stopped stroking my arm; I barely noticed.

  She snorted and rolled her eyes. “It’s just the four of us. What’s the big deal? These two guys are wearing only trunks. I have on a suit. You’re dressed like a nun.” She stepped toward me and reached for my shirt hem, but I backed away, my legs pressing against the seats behind me. No way was she going to take it off.

  My jaw ticked, and I held the hem down. “Stop it.”

  Bobby tugged at her hand, but she shook him off, turning her slightly unfocused eyes to me. She swayed as a small wave knocked the boat on the side, gripping a rail. “God, why do you have to be such a prude? What, do you think I’m a slut or something for not covering up like you? What exactly are you trying to prove here—how much better you are than everyone else?”

  “Seriously? That’s so not fair.” This was not happening. I didn’t know how to deal with drunk and angry Megan, a side of her I’d never seen before. If I could, I’d swim my ass back to shore right now and leave her here.

  She trembled with visible anger. “You know what’s not fair? How uptight you are and how you make everyone else feel like sinners because we like to have fun.” She spun around and plopped herself on Bobby’s lap.

  My eyes burned, and I blinked, blinked again. I was not going to cry. Screw that. Where had all of this anger come from, and why was it suddenly directed at me? I hadn’t done anything to deserve it. I crossed my arms in front of my chest and drew in several ragged breaths.

  Daniel tugged me closer and stroked my hair away from my face. “Hey,” he whispered. “She’s drunk and not thinking straight. Try to shake it off.”

  “I just wanna go home,” I whispered hotly. My eyes were filling with tears, and I swiped at them. I didn’t want to lose it right now. And I didn’t want to watch Megan anymore, hear her talk to me like this.

  All that vitriol in her voice about me. Trying to force me to be more like her. But she didn’t know me, not really. She didn’t know what I’d been through, the depths I’d crawled out of to even be here today. Screw her.

  Daniel squeezed my hand. There was so much understanding in his eyes that it hurt my heart even more, and I had to look away from him. He didn’t understand either. No one knew, and that was my curse to bear.

  He slipped into the driver’s side of the boat and after a few fumbling attempts, got it turned around and driving back to Megan’s parents’ house. We sailed across the water, bouncing and bobbing along waves, but our earlier levity was gone.

  Back to the party and the lightness and the people who knew how to have fun.

  Back to people completely unlike me.

  Chapter 11

  This movie sucked.

  I leaned back on the couch and dug into my Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Well, at least it was good. Bananas Foster, one of my go-to flavors whenever I was blue. The heroine in the made-for-TV movie stared up into the hero’s eyes, and they slowly kissed. I shoveled another bite.

  Megan hadn’t returned to our apartment last night after Daniel and I had immediately left the party—I hadn’t heard one peep out of her, but I assumed she was crashing at her folks’ house. Despite my anxiety, I’d somehow gotten through today’s classes. It helped that Daniel was a quiet source of strength, distracting me with questions about philosophy after class.

  Now I was home, alone, and it was quiet. Uneasy.

  A few minutes later I heard a key scrape in the door, and my body tensed instantly. She was home. I plopped the carton of ice cream on a coaster on the table and tucked my feet under me, hugging a pillow to my stomach. I had on pajama pants and a T-shirt, my comfiest night clothes, since it was already after ten on a Monday night.

  Megan came inside and dropped her bag and the cooler beside the door. She glanced over at me, her face unreadable. “Hey,” she said in a low tone.

  I nodded and turned my attention back to whatever this dumb movie was. All of my emotions from yesterday afternoon came welling back up in my stomach, which pitched violently from nerves. But I wasn’t going to drop that protective wall and show her how badly she’d hurt me. I’d be damned if I did.

  She shuffled over to the kitchen, picked through the fridge. I kept my gaze firmly on the TV. I heard a sigh, and then she sat down on the chair adjacent to the couch, a Diet Coke in hand. It cracked open and she took a long drag. “That was really shitty of me,” she said, shame pouring into her voice. She pressed the can to her forehead, rolled it.

  I wasn’t going to speak, had planned to just sit here in stony silence so she knew how angry I was. But the words bubbled out before I could stop them. “Why would you say those things to me?”

  Megan put her drink down on the end table with a thud, and a few sprinkles plopped out on the wood surface. “I overreacted. Way overreacted. I’d had too much to drink, and I was nervous about Bobby and trying to impress him, and . . .” She paused. “You know, I could give you a litany of excuses about why, but what does that matter? The point is, I was flat-out wrong. And I’m ashamed of myself for what I said. The way I treated you. You didn’t deserve it.” These last words were delivered with a slight tremble that made my heart wobble in response.

  I tried my best to hold on to my righteous anger, to not let myself feel. But the swell of tears stung my eyes again, despite my best efforts. I hugged the pillow closer to me, swallowed hard. This was why I didn’t like to open up to people. Because people could hurt you badly when you dropped your guard.

  She sighed, shifted in the seat. “I just . . . I feel like you’re not being honest with me about stuff. Like you’re always hiding things. And I don’t understand why. I was trying to force you to stop hiding, but it was the wrong way to go about it. I should have just sat you down and talked about my concerns instead.”

  I blinked. “What concerns?” Yeah, I wore a T-shirt when swimming, but that wasn’t that weird, right?

  “There are big, black holes when it comes to you. I feel like maybe something awful happened in your past, but I’m afraid to ask because it’ll seem like I’m prying into your business.” She kept her earnest gaze locked on me, and I wanted to look away but I couldn’t. “I don’t understand you. You’ve never once undressed around me or worn anything less than a tank top and shorts. When you leave the bathroom you’re already fully dressed. It makes me feel awkward, like you’re uncomfortable in your own body.” She shrugged. “Obviously I’m not uncomfortable with my physique at all, and I know you’re not like me. But it’s just . . . so different.”

  I cleared my throat and loosened my death grip on the pillow. I wasn’t ready to talk about an
y of this. I just wanted to move forward with my life, but my past kept dragging me back into the darkness.

  “Look, I’m not saying you have to walk around naked, but I just don’t—”

  “I have a couple of bad scars on my abdomen,” I blurted, attention focused on the delicate threads woven on top of the pillow. Green, pink, purple, blue. Small flowers and paisleys, rows of them. “I was badly injured when I was thirteen. It took a lot of surgery to fix me, and I don’t like looking at them. So I keep them covered.” My cheeks and throat burned so badly it was like I had a sunburn. I swallowed more and counted the flowers on the pillow.

  “What happened?”

  I shook my head. Not going down that road right now. The memory—nightmare—was locked away in a small, hidden recess in my head. The downside was that in order for me to move forward, I had to lock away everything, including all those good times in my childhood that hurt too much to think about.

  When I’d first moved in with my grandparents, Grandma had tried to get me to talk with her and Granddad about my parents, about my sister. She’d finally stopped prying when I gave in and said I’d talk about it with my therapist. But every once in a while I still saw her slant me a sad look. Like she knew what a Herculean effort it was to pretend I’d been born at age thirteen. Like tragedy hadn’t swept its cruel hand through my life and destroyed everything.

  Megan sighed, and the sound drew my attention back to her face. That same sadness was pouring from her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I didn’t mean to hurt you. I hope you can forgive me.”

  I couldn’t help but see how earnest she was. She still was trying to reach out to me, even though I kept pushing her away, kept her at arm’s length for my own comfort. I couldn’t give everything back to her that she wanted, but I could accept her apology. “Thanks,” I finally said.