by L.J. Shen
Fight. Always fight.
That was what I told him the last time we asked, but there’s an ocean between that Daria and the one I am today. And I won’t be able to truly explore who I am unless I take a step back. He and Via will never be able to heal while I’m still in the picture.
I take a deep breath, pressing my index to his lips on a smile. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”
“Dar…”
I raise myself on my tiptoes and kiss his lips. It’s a chaste, nervous kiss, but it tells him what I think he needs to know. That he is forgiven. That I hope he forgives me. And that it is time to move on.
“So? What’s happening now?” Gus asks behind us. Penn closes his eyes and shakes his head, forcing himself to turn around and face Bauer.
“We won the championship. You have your ass to save and a scholarship to start praying for. I call a ceasefire on a few conditions,” Penn says with his hand on his hip.
Gus tilts his chin down.
“First things first, from this moment onward, you do not initiate any communication with Daria and Via, dead or fucking alive. I don’t care if it’s good or bad, you get out of their lives forever.”
Via bursts into tears beside us again. I think they’re happy tears. I think she’s relieved he cares enough to warn Gus off.
“Fine. I won’t,” Gus growls. “How do I know if everyone else here is going to keep silent?”
Colin steps forward. “We don’t let anyone leave without giving us a secret. That way, we all have leverage on each other, and nobody wants to get screwed over.”
“That’s the dumbest, most brilliant idea I’ve ever heard.” Knight nods. “Unless, of course, my giant dick confession doesn’t count.”
Vaughn flicks Knight’s head and rolls his eyes. Colin and Nelson run off to the chain-linked gate, closing it so no one can slip out without giving away a secret.
Adriana, Esme, Blythe, and Via gather around me. Via is the first one to pick up one of the printed pages of my diary and ball it in her fist.
“Let’s clean this up in the meantime.”
Penn holds her hand, removing it from the page.
“No,” he says. “The snake pit needs to die.”
On the drive back to my house, it’s just Via and me.
The snake pit is in flames behind us, eighteen gallons of gasoline later. The idea was Penn’s, but it was Vaughn who backed him up and cited fire as the best way to burn things to the ground so that it’s nearly impossible to rebuild them.
Via taps the steering wheel and looks around her, clearing her throat and trying to figure out what to say. I’m too tired to talk. Sitting there for four hours hearing about other people’s admissions—how they killed their neighbor’s dogs, made out with their stepdads, cheated on tests, stole valuables from their friends, and so forth—left me even more drained than I previously was. But Gus is off the hook, and so is Penn. Las Juntas won, and All Saints will have to deal with whatever consequences occur. It’s just sad that there were so many casualties in the process.
“Wanna grab something to eat?” Via asks me. Being nice to me is new to her and vice versa. I haven’t eaten in days, but I can’t even entertain the thought.
“No thanks. I’m just tired.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Silence. More tapping on the steering wheel. I look out the window, and it’s pitch black as we enter El Dorado, the gated community where I live. Lived, anyway. I won’t be staying here for longer than the next few hours. My next chapter will begin tomorrow morning, and Daddy will help me settle in for my first week in my new town.
“So what do you think Jaime and Mel are going to do to me?” She chews on her bottom lip, still looking at the road. I smirk at her worry.
“Probably nothing. Melody loves you, and Dad loves her, so your ass is covered.”
“She loves you, too, you know.” She parks in front of the mansion, and I get out before we share a moment. I’m not ready for moments with Via. I just want to survive the next few hours without more hiccups than necessary.
I push aside the fact Penn’s car is already here and try not to think about it. Going into his room to say goodbye will only make things harder for both of us. Once upon a time, we may have had a chance to get our happily ever after, but in this fairy tale turned nightmare, we both did too many awful things for the prince to claim his princess.
We walk into the house, and the minute Via pushes the door open, Melody pushes her out of the way, borderline violently, and launches toward me in a suffocating hug.
“Marx, where have you been, Lovebug? I’ve been calling and calling. I wanted to spend tonight together.”
I blink at her differently, taking a step sideways to dodge her hysterical behavior. Kids will be kids, and we all did shitty things. But Melody is an adult. More than that, she’s my mother—and I’m still not done being mad at her.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Did Via take you somewhere against your will?” Mel twists her head and stares at Sylvia accusingly. Well, well. That’s a change of tune. Too little, too late comes to mind, though. None of this makes any difference anymore.
Via turns ghostly white, her eyes widening at me. Technically, that’s exactly what she did. But I’ve met my drama quota for the next three decades, thank you very much.
“No. Everyone was hanging at the pit, and I bummed a ride with her. It’s, like, one in the morning. I’m going upstairs to sleep.” With that lukewarm endorsement of Via, I go up the stairs and into my room.
In bed, I stare at the brand-new drywall in front of me and blink away the tears. After the aquarium got shattered, they replaced it with a sturdy, ugly thing to replace the beautiful, fragile one. The story of my life, I guess. I am finally digesting everything that’s happened to me in the past six months, and the overwhelming notion of loneliness grips my body.
I’m moving away from my family. My parents. From Bailey. I’m turning my back on Vaughn and on Knight without saying goodbye because I know they won’t let me go. They’ll promise to protect me and fight my battles at school, and a part of me still wants that to happen.
But I can’t.
I have to make it on my own.
The door creaks open, and I close my eyes and smile. He closes the door behind him and leans against it—things I hear rather than see—and my heart swells in my chest.
“My dad’s gonna kill you if he finds out,” I whisper.
“Still worth it,” he retorts, taking my taunt as permission to saunter deeper into my room. My bed dips, and when his body presses against mine, I’m shocked to find out he is naked except for his briefs. My eyes snap open, and I suck in a breath.
“Whoa,” I say. My hands shoot out to trace his collarbone, chest, washboard abs, and his V without even meaning to. Then they trail his bulging triceps, his tennis-balls of biceps, and all the delicious veins wrapped around them. Every inch of bronzed skin. “Escalation, Scully.”
“Skull Eyes.” His lips are already locked on mine when he speaks, and he is moving smoothly, thrusting his briefs against my clothed groin, even though I’m still in my jeans. “It’s done. So much dirt has been spilled tonight, yours is a drop in an ocean of sins. Don’t get on that plane tomorrow. Don’t fucking do this to us.”
Rather than answer him with my words, I answer him by thrusting my groin back against his erection. He moans and unbuttons my jeans, yanking them along with my panties down my legs and balling the fabrics, throwing them over his back. He then spreads my thighs and dips two fingers into me, curling them and taking them out, sucking on them hungrily.
“I’ve loved you in secret, and I’ve loved you openly in front of both our worlds, and if you think I’ll stop loving you if you put an ocean between us, you’re dead wrong.”
I cry out and arch my back when his fingers re-enter my body, chasing his touch as he fingers me mercilessly. My legs quiver around his arm, and I’m about to come when he stops and lowers him
self down, throwing my legs over his broad shoulders. He sweeps his tongue up and down the length of my entrance, flicking against my clit every time he does.
“Oh, Penn. Marx, Penn.”
“Marx.” He laughs into me, thrusting his tongue deeper, penetrating me before licking me faster. “My favorite fucking word.”
He licks between my legs until no more air is left in my lungs. The desire is so sharp, the pleasure so profound, I stop breathing and brace myself for the storm that is the brewing orgasm inside me. When it finally crashes down on me, greater than any physical feeling I’ve ever experienced, he rises on his forearms and enters me in one go, filling me to the brim. I arch farther, clutching his back. He shuts up my moans with a dirty kiss that tastes and smells like me.
“Your dad killing me might be inevitable, but there’s no need to make it happen prematurely.”
I laugh as he starts moving inside me without a condom or a care in the world. I’m on the pill, but he doesn’t know that. I’m having crazy thoughts. Like maybe he is doing this on purpose. Like maybe he wants to chain me down to this place. Like maybe I should stay. And it makes my heart laugh through the tears because it’s too late.
We move seductively, kissing and biting and breathing each other in. I can taste the goodbye on my tongue, and it’s bittersweet. Wonderfully tragic.
I caress his face, his jaw, his lips. I will miss you.
I study every inch of his beautiful face. I will never forget you.
His hands roam and mine caress. This was so much more than first love. It was first hate, too.
And when he empties inside me, I don’t even mention what we did was irresponsible and wrong. I know he is doing it to keep me in his messed-up, desperate way. So I just kiss him long and deep and hard.
“I’m staying the night,” he tells me, hugging me close to his chest. Our hearts are beating in unison. I squeeze his hands under mine.
“My dad really is going to kill you.” I chuckle, bumping my shoulder into his. “Come on. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Promise?” he asks.
“Promise,” I lie.
I breathe your name
Hoping to fill my lungs
With more than just air
The ER doctor unwraps my hand from all the ice packs and observes the red-blue thing that’s swollen to five times its usual fucking size.
“How’d it happen?” The middle-aged, white-haired man scrunches his nose. I know, asshole. It looks nasty, but you ain’t a sight for sore eyes, either.
Via flinches at the question because she already knows the answer.
How did it happen? Let’s see. This morning, I woke up with my dick still smelling like the girl I love. Instead of going to the bathroom to brush my teeth and take a piss, I launched straight into her room to wake her up with an orgasm and my face between her legs, only to find out she wasn’t there anymore.
The stack of suitcases by her door was gone, and so was the girl herself. The only things she left behind were her new and ugly drywall, the sea glass necklace I gave her, and a rusty, tin heart turned human, which she manages to somehow, against all the odds, break a thousand fucking times, over and over again, to a point where I’m still not sure how it is beating.
“He was…he got angry. Lost his cool and punched a wall.”
“A concrete wall?” the doctor asks. Is he a wallanitarian or something? Why does he give a fuck about the wall?
Via nods. I still hate her, but no one else was in the house to drive me to the ER. I sure as hell couldn’t drive myself with the state of my hand, and now it’s pretty clear that I’ve broken a few fingers by the way they hang off my hand. Perfect timing. A day after the last game of the season.
The doctor is talking, explaining to me what happens next. I sit on the white bed in the white room in a hospital that looks more like a fancy hotel and don’t even pretend to listen. My thoughts drift to the house I’m coming back to. A house that is going to feel so empty without her.
Twelve hours later, we’re discharged, and my hand looks like it’s gloved and ready for boxing. When we pull in front of the Followhills’ mansion, I don’t want to go inside. But I don’t want to be that pussy-ass broken guy who can’t deal with the fact his girl just doesn’t want him anymore.
The minute we get in, Melody runs toward us. Her face looks like what my wrapped hand did a few hours ago. Red and swollen.
“Where’ve you been?” She charges at both of us. She’s obviously back from the airport, which means it’s done.
Good, Skull Eyes. Fucking perfect. Watch me rip out all my shirts and walk around shirtless for the remainder of my life.
I’m so tired of the lies and the secrets that I straight up walk past her and open the fridge, taking out a pitcher of iced tea with my healthy hand.
“When I found out your daughter left, even though she promised me she wouldn’t, I got a little creative as far as how anger management goes. In other news, you probably need some work done on your garage wall.”
“Penn.” She gallops toward me, shaking her head. Via is retreating to her room, still staring at us, wide-eyed. She knows better than to assume I’ll fess up to any emotion while she’s around. That shit between us will be much harder to fix than the wall.
As soon as Via’s not around, Mel hugs me. I let her, solely because she is partly Daria in DNA, and I’m a glutton for punishment. I can still smell her daughter on her clothes, which doesn’t make any sense. Knowing Daria, she didn’t hug her mother goodbye today.
“Where is she, Mel?”
She shakes her head in the crook of her neck.
“She doesn’t want anyone to know. I’m sorry. She wouldn’t even let me come with her to help her settle in.”
“But she let Jaime?” I ask.
She is nodding now.
“Did you get your closure?” I want her to say no. I want her to tell me that I’m not the only one here feeling like every breath is a fucking nail jammed straight into my lungs. If this is what love feels like, it’s complete bullshit. I want my money back because Shakespeare was right all along. True love truly sucks ass.
“No.” She bursts into tears. “She barely even told me goodbye. Did you?”
“Not by a fucking long shot.”
The next few weeks are pure torture. The days crawl, time slithers on the walls of a house that’s not empty, but not alive, either. Somehow, all those days add up to a month without Daria. A month in which Jaime comes back, acts like nothing is wrong, and every time he gets a call and it’s from her, he closes the door to his bedroom behind me and shoots me a don’t-even-think-about-it look.
Regretfully, I’m starting to fucking lose it. After caving in to modern society, I open Instagram and Twitter accounts only to find out that Daria is officially not active on any of them. She hasn’t deleted her Instagram, but she doesn’t post there anymore, so the old pictures of her with her cheer team and friends keep me going. I stare at them for hours every day as I do constructive, emotionally healthy things, like figuring out what time zone she is in by making a sheet with all the hours she calls Jaime and Mel.
Yes. About a month after she went away, Daria caved in and started speaking to Mel, too. Bailey always talks as though she’s been keeping in touch with her, too, so I guess it’s just the Scullys Daria wants out of her life, and I can’t even fucking blame her. We stormed into her life and ruined it completely in less than six months. If there were an Olympic medal event for being the biggest cunts, Via and I would have been the pride of this nation.
If my calculations are correct, Daria is still somewhere in the US. She calls very early in the mornings or in the early evenings, which gives me East Coast vibes, but it might be Midwest, too. Heck, maybe she just likes to get up super fucking early, and she is around the block. No one knows. No one will tell me. And I’d be climbing the fucking walls if I hadn’t fractured four of the five fingers on my left hand.
One evening, Jaime
sits me down and tells me that we’re going to Notre Dame to check out the facilities, flirt, and say yes. He booked us both first-class tickets and all. I guess that means he is over the fact I had my tongue and dick in his daughter’s privates. Ain’t he a fucking champ.
“I don’t want any illicit behavior while we’re on campus. I catch you smoking, drinking, or fucking—simultaneously or individually—I swear you’ll be finding a different sponsor to subsidize your next four years because it’s not going to be me.” He waves his finger in my face.
I push the brochures across the coffee table and nod.
“Clear, sir.”
“Jesus.” He flings himself back on the couch, throwing an arm over his face. “You’re about as lively as a puppy that’s been run over by every truck in the state. At least try to pretend that you’re here.”
“I’m here, sir.”
“But you’re not present.”
What do I say to that? This bitch is Hare Krishna now?
“And stop calling me sir. You’re like a son to me.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that, sir, since I feel very strongly about your daughter and not in a sisterly way.”
He exhales, levels up, and slaps the coffee table to grab my attention. I’m still the same lax, drooped-over-the-couch motherfucker I was a second ago. Life just seems to have an aftertaste of nothing when Daria is not around, and whoever said time heals was given LSD or something. Because it wasn’t time that healed them. The more time that passes, the more I want to rip my own fucking skin from my body and let my heart pack a suitcase and go looking for her. It doesn’t escape me that I was crushed about Via—but never had the balls to actually go and find her. With Daria, it’s a different story. The Followhills can beg all they want. Come graduation, I’m packing my bag, breaking the piggy bank, and going to look for her.
“Penn,” he warns. I throw an actual pen—the one I’ve been using the past ten minutes to write all the shit about our bullshit trip down—and stand.
“Just give me her number. I won’t call. I’ll text.”