I was so surprised, I didn’t know how to handle it. “This is part of something bigger, Angus.” There was truth to that, but I was aware I’d just cheapened John.
“Then tell me. Get in the car.” Angus softened his voice. He thought he was rescuing me.
I took a step back as the door flew out and open.
I could get in the car with Angus and leave. Angus felt like home. And he seemed to finally be offering himself to me. How ironic that after all this time it was the sight of me with John that did it.
It was everything I had wanted before Barton Springs. I could get in this car now and pretend the last two months had never happened.
Why the hell couldn’t I get in? At my hesitation Angus’s expression turned guarded. Then his attitude became smug with disbelief.
Behind me, someone was approaching, but I knew it wasn’t John. He fully expected me to get in the car with Angus. It was Alex.
“Nice car,” he said, a little drunk and slightly belligerent.
Angus held my eyes for a second before making a show of turning his attention to Alex, as if he were doing him a favor by acknowledging his presence. I realized too late I’d made a colossal mistake by not getting in the car, if only to get Angus away. Now I saw the old Angus was back and would cover his hurt by taking this opportunity.
“Want a ride?” Angus asked Alex nonchalantly.
“No,” I said, halfway knowing I was making things worse. It just made both of them want to do it more.
Alex was daring. And drunk. Since I’d planted myself in front of the door, Alex had to maneuver around me. I watched helplessly as he bent low into the car and the spaceship door closed behind him. Then they were gone.
John came up behind me on the sidewalk.
“Where are they going?”
“On a drive. They’ll be back.” I made it sound like it was all fine. John walked away, pretending he wasn’t extremely jealous and beyond annoyed that his brother would get in the enemy’s car. He wasn’t thinking about any danger. I forced myself to move so it didn’t look like I was standing vigil. They needed to come back. I couldn’t stand one more second of this.
I wasn’t sure if Alex was wearing a seat belt. I knew Angus would scare the shit out of Alex, because Angus was trying to scare the shit out of me. He and the Lost Kids loved to scare me by driving like they wanted to die. And while they had sharp instincts and reflexes, they made mistakes, as evidenced by their fancy cars that had taken a beating. Often they would take a beating too, but nothing they couldn’t walk away from or shake off in a couple of days.
Alex didn’t have that guarantee. If he wasn’t wearing a seat belt and flew through the windshield—which had happened to the Lost Kids before—that was it.
I began to count the seconds in my head. John was laughing with his friends, and I walked slowly over to join him, keeping the wet, black street in my peripheral vision. When I came to stand next to him, I felt him lean his body almost imperceptibly away from mine. At the five-minute mark, I felt his big-brother worry kick up. My worry was getting near hysterical. If something happened to Alex, it would be my fault.
Mercifully, I heard the hum five blocks away, and my heartbeat began to slow. To my surprise the car stopped farther down the block and Angus let Alex out there. Angus didn’t want to see me. It was also a threat. He wanted to leave me unsure.
Alex approached and seemed exhilarated rather than stunned.
“Hey!” Alex called to his friends. He ignored me as he passed, taking his brother’s cue. I watched Alex try to joke with his brother, to bring him around. John had no idea what could have happened. Thank God it hadn’t been John who had walked up to the car.
Angus had succeeded in making his point. These people didn’t hold a candle to us, and John ultimately couldn’t measure up to Angus. Regular people were vulnerable. Anything could happen to them at any time. And that would be me too, if I got caught and banished from the family. It was a reminder of how quickly all of this could go wrong. It already had. I had just chosen John over Angus.
“Ready?” John stalked ahead of me and unlocked his mother’s car. As if he just couldn’t go through with being a jerk, at least by his standards, he held open the passenger door for me instead of walking past. The high curb made it tricky to open the door all the way, so I had to squeeze in while he held it. I inadvertently brushed up against him. The last time we’d touched had been seconds before I’d seen Angus at the festival. Now those feelings came rushing back.
I knew this was about to end. If John didn’t end it right now, I would have to. But at this point we were still technically together. At least for tonight.
“Did you put your seat belt on?” John asked.
“Oh, sorry.” I drew it across me, and when I looked down I realized my shirt was stuck to me.
He quickly looked away and did a U-turn, going the long way to avoid passing near the park. We would only have about ten minutes together.
My confidence that we would talk dissipated completely when John turned on the radio loud. I turned my head and looked at him long enough that he should have looked back. But he didn’t. To make things worse, a slow, romantic song came on the radio. John immediately went to change it. “No, don’t,” I said, and he dropped his hand.
The stoplights seemed endless as the rain started up again and the music filled the car. I leaned my head against the glass and stared out the window, watching the streets of the empty late-night downtown go past.
“John?”
He looked over at me impassively. God, why couldn’t I get in his head?
“Do you remember how to get to my house?”
“I do.” Dammit. This was going too fast. Soon we were entering my neighborhood. He took the corners too quickly, but the neighborhood was dead quiet at this time of night. Large estates and greenery blurred by, his speed unsettling me.
“Don’t kill me, okay?” I only half joked.
“Do you even die?” he asked sarcastically.
John didn’t bother slowing to look for my house. After zooming past the twenty-foot-high hedges that went on for almost a block, marking the front of the property, John took a clean left at the exact spot and put the car in park in front of the gate. You couldn’t see anything of the house from the street from any vantage point.
“Hold on. Let me open the gate.” I could tell he was surprised. He’d thought he was going to drop me off here like the last time, like a driver. And that’s what I would have done if I hadn’t decided to do something completely insane.
No one was home. If he came inside, no one would ever know. I could easily tamper with the surveillance cameras later. I took my keys out of my pocket and used the remote. After a long pause the gate swung open like wings, revealing the property. All that glass. Seeing it from his point of view, the house was beyond grand. I felt like I was in a conversation with the house and it was asking me what I thought I was doing. It was just a house, I reminded myself. It wasn’t alive. But as we drove down the incline of the driveway and the house loomed large, I felt like I couldn’t look it in the eye.
“Come in. Please?”
She has got to be kidding.
He was so done with me, I was surprised I could hear him again.
“No one is home,” I explained.
“Where are they?” He turned to look at me. I saw him noticing my hair. I’d taken it out of its knot, and now it draped around me, long and tangled. I knew how different I looked from when he’d first met me.
“Telluride, I think.” I looked out the window. The lighting scheme in front of the house was soft and perfect.
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I wasn’t invited.” I shrugged.
He didn’t ask any more questions.
What am I doing? She has me so ridiculously under her thumb. I’ve had enough of this bullshit.
“Can you come in?” I tried again, knowing I was now overestimating my draw.
I sa
w him look up at my house. “No, I’d better be getting back.”
“Come in. Please. We’ll talk,” I said softly. I knew I sounded unsure.
“I can’t, Julia.”
“Don’t be mad at me. I didn’t know how to handle it. No one dates someone outside our group….”
He scoffed and looked over at me. “How do you just date each other? Doesn’t that get old? There aren’t that many of you.”
“It works out. There are enough of us. And we just aren’t…attracted to…you know…people.”
“But you are?” he pressed.
“You.”
“And you’re ashamed of this?” His severe annoyance was back.
“I’m struggling with it.”
I could tell my honesty surprised him. We were quiet for a long moment.
“Why? What do you think it says about you?” he asked.
“That I’m not one of them.”
“Is that so terrible?”
“I don’t know.” I nodded. “Yes.”
“Julia, I can’t do this when clearly he’s who you want. I can’t be your boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks who you’re ashamed of. I’m not going to play into that bullshit.”
“John! Jesus. That’s not how it is. At all.”
“It is, though. I saw how you looked at him at Barton Springs. I’ll never have that kind of money or be able to do the things he can do.”
“Stop.” I shook my head. “Even if I used to like him, I don’t now. Look. Since Barton Springs I’m on a kind of probation, and I’m not supposed to be doing this.” I gestured between us. “I’m not supposed to be doing anything out of the ordinary.”
“Why are you doing it, then?”
I laughed humorlessly. “Believe me, I tried not to. But then you…” I trailed off before I said something really bad. “Just, can you come in?” That hung in the air between us. Then I said, “I didn’t get in the car with him.”
He was still pissed. He knew that by going in he was just getting in deeper. After a long moment he surprised me when he opened his car door.
There weren’t really any words to describe what he felt when I unlocked the front door. To John the house was unreal, and kept becoming more unreal as I led him through room after room. What surprised him most was how truly beautiful it was. He thought its size was ostentatious, but other than that it was simple—but so deceptively simple, he knew it was on a whole other level of wealth.
John was quiet when I walked through the living room with the glass wall, facing the lake. He went over to observe the view. We had just been across the water in the park, but here we were a world away. The lights outside showed the rain falling hard. The rectangular pool was lit, and even from afar you could see the surface dancing. The house was never cozy, but this was as close as it got—this feeling of being dry and protected inside.
“I’ll show you the upstairs,” I said softly.
He followed me up the stone staircase to the long hallway that ran the entire length of the second story. He saw the black-and-white family photos arrayed on the white wall.
“Where are you?”
“Um, here’s one.” He came over to where I pointed.
“You and your mom and sister?” he asked, looking closely. Most of the lights in the house were off, and it was hard to see.
“Stepmom,” I corrected quickly. “Come on. My room is down here.”
My entire body relaxed once we were in my bedroom and I closed the door.
“This is your room?” He looked around. I could tell he was surprised it was as spare as the rest of the house. Both of us were trying to ignore the massive bed sitting right there and the fact that we were all alone.
“Yes. Why are you asking like that?”
“It’s just—it feels like a hotel suite. It’s so perfect. Clean, I mean.”
“I know. I’m a little crazy that way. You should see Liv’s room. There are clothes everywhere—on the floor, thrown around.” I realized I sounded fond of Liv.
How does she even have a hallway in her room? He wandered down the hall, feeling free to look in the bathroom and the small den. He paused in the walk-in closet. My shelves contained almost no colors, just perfectly folded cashmere sweaters and T-shirts in black, white, and gray. On another long shelf were about thirty pairs of jeans. Hung up on wood hangers were dresses and skirts arranged according to category and color. And then the shoes. Now I felt self-conscious.
“Did you freak out when you saw my room?” He was thinking I must have thought his house was the shittiest house I’d ever seen.
“No! I love your room. It feels like you. Seriously—I love it.” He didn’t look at me, adjusting to everything he was seeing and how it made him feel. About me. About himself.
“Come here.” I led him to a long window seat where you could look out on the lake. “This is my favorite place in the whole house. This is where I’m usually sitting when I’m on the phone with you.” He sat down, suddenly conscious of all the whiteness of the house and my room, and the dried mud on him.
That I wanted to show him my home and let him deeper into my life meant something to him. But he hated that he suddenly felt lacking in every way—that he didn’t have the money or abilities that matched mine and Angus’s. He stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets, ready to go.
“You want to leave?” I tried to cover the hurt I felt.
“I should be getting back,” he said.
I’ve refused to feel unworthy of her this entire time. I’ve fucking looked Angus in the eye and let him know he wasn’t better than me.
But I could feel it all starting to seep into John’s head. I’d made it worse by bringing him here. It was impossible for him not to feel like he didn’t belong.
“Don’t. You do not get to feel that way.” I moved over to him, reaching out to touch him. He knew what I was talking about. He moved away before I could reach him.
“I’m going to go.”
Dammit. I walked behind him in the hall. I hated what he felt.
“John,” I said. “Just wait.” He kept going. Now he wasn’t even trying to hide that he was pissed. I kept up, right behind him, taking the stairs just as fast.
John somehow made his way to the front door by memory. He started playing with the complicated lock on the stainless-steel door, which slowed him down.
“Listen to me!” I tried to sound authoritative. Then I pulled a low trick. I put my hands on him, under his shirt, on the smooth skin of his back. I knew him; he was too much of a gentleman to jerk away.
“Listen,” I said more quietly. John slowly turned and gave me a look that said, I’ll hear you out but you’ll get nothing back. His hands caught mine when they slid to his chest.
“I’m sorry for the Angus crap, and I’m sorry you would think for one second that I’m embarrassed to be seen with you.” He removed my hands, not wanting to have the conversation.
I grabbed his arm. I needed John to know it wasn’t him. “You are the most beautiful person. And you’re the kindest person I’ve ever met. The problem is, I’m not supposed to feel this way about you.” I shocked myself by tearing up. I pushed my fingertips against my eyes, as if that would stop it.
“Julia,” he said, pausing, and then he swore under his breath.
Instead of making a move to leave, like I was dreading, he bent his face to mine and kissed me softly. It took only a few seconds for the kiss to change. It deepened, and everything—two weeks of barely seeing each other, this awful night, our intense physical attraction to each other—began to find an outlet.
“Come with me,” I panted a few minutes later. John and I were in the entryway. Out in the open. Even though we were all alone, my instinct was to take him to the most private part of the house.
I led him through the kitchen to a back hallway with a pantry and a small wet bar and down some stone stairs.
“A wine cellar?” John looked at the hundreds of bottles of wine—useless
to my father in a matter of months. I violently pushed the thought of the June departure from my head. Through the two small windows, you could see the rain sheeting down. The lights from outside combined with the moonlight lit the room just enough.
“Is this okay?”
“It’s perfect,” John said.
It could have been awkward at that moment, but the inevitability that hung in the air gave us confidence and momentum. There was a table below the two windows, and John must have already made a plan in his head as he led me to it. He picked me up and sat me on the table, my knees moving to either side of him as he stood in front of me.
Minutes went by. We’d stopped kissing, both breathing hard. We got to the point where John carefully held my face and looked me right in the eye. “Are you sure?” I tried not to think of any other girl whom he’d asked the same question.
“Positive. I want to.” It was more than physical attraction. I wanted to know John as well as I could, even if he wasn’t what I was supposed to want. I didn’t want to miss this.
I wanted badly to make fun of him when he reached into his back pocket and pulled a condom out of his wallet. That would come later, when I questioned him about whether he always had it there or he thought tonight would be the night. I could have looked into his mind, tried to see what he was feeling, but I gave him space. Especially right now. I refrained from saying a word, knowing enough to understand this was probably going to be the most romantic moment of my life and I shouldn’t even think about pushing it away, as hard as it was to just be present and feel it.
John, with all of his stupid experience, took over, and it was easy to stop thinking. Most of our clothes were off and we were soaked with sweat, and afterward we lay next to each other. Feeling so close to him, I rolled over and pushed my face into the crook of his neck, wondering if he could sense my smile. I’d always remember how I couldn’t stop smiling.
I propped my chin on his chest and we looked into each other’s eyes. One of John’s arms was trapped under my body and I tried to sit up to give it back to him, but he said “Not yet,” and continued to hold me close. His breath was still ragged. I rubbed my top leg flirtatiously over his leg that was tangled with mine.
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