by Nancy Bush
Nick started laughing and so did Rory. It was great! From the other room she heard a funny hiccupping sound and blocked it out. Mom was crying again. She wasn’t going to think about that now or wonder at its cause. She wasn’t.
She flung her arm around Nick’s shoulder and declared with forced cheerfulness, “We need a picture.”
“Do ya have a camera?”
“Yep.”
Rory ran upstairs to her bedroom. On the way there, her footsteps crunched on glass. She looked down and her heart lurched. One of her parents’ wedding photos was smashed on the hallway carpet.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she was besieged by nameless fears. Something dreadful was happening to her parents. Sometimes she didn’t think they even liked each other. Once more she blanked out her mind and continued to her room, though it was difficult with Mom sobbing quietly in the kitchen.
After retrieving the camera she stopped at her sister’s door, pushing it open a crack to peek in on her. Michelle was playing tea party with her dolls and glared at Rory. “You’re not invited, so shut the door!” she demanded.
“Sorreee.”
Back at the bathroom, Rory said, “Here,” and handed Nick the camera. He held it in front of them, as far as his arm could reach, pointing the lens their way. “Get in close,” he ordered. “Make sure we’re both in the picture.”
Rory squished up next to him, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder. Flash. “Better take another,” she suggested. “Just in case.”
Flash. “How about one more?” he asked.
“Sure.”
Flash. He handed her back the camera and grinned.
“You wanna be friends?” asked Rory.
“Sure. Why not?”
Rory managed to grin back. Nick was so cool. He hadn’t made fun of her once for being a girl. She grabbed his hand and pumped it hard. “Pleased to meet you, Nick… what’s your last name?”
“Shard.”
“Pleased to meet you, Nick Shard. Whenever I need help, I’ll call on you.”
“Same here,” he said, and they both grinned at the sight of each other’s battered face.
It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
DEAR DIARY — NANCY BUSH
Chapter Two
Piper Point High School
Tonight I’m going out with Nick. No big deal. We’ll probably just go to see a movie. I think Nick is bored. Why else would he ask me to go with him? He just broke up with Vicki Fischer. Never liked her. Never will, but she’s got big boobs and it’s hard to compete. Not that I want to. Nick and I are friends. Just friends and that’s the way it should be.
“Mom?” Rory called, pushing open the kitchen door. It was hot. Way too hot for June, but then, sometimes the weather in Piper Point could be unpredictable. She felt scratchy and sticky all over. “Mom?”
There was no answer and the house was so quiet she could hear the hum of the refrigerator. Rory could tell she was alone. It was just as well, she supposed, taking the stairs two at a time to her room. Mom wouldn’t appreciate her coming home from school at noon, even though she only had study hall and pep assemblies the rest of the day. The end of the school year was only a few days away.
Stripping off her hot sweater and jeans, she stood beneath the needle-sharp spray of the cooling shower, then quickly donned a pair of white shorts and a pink tank top. Later she planned to wear something a little more sophisticated. Why, she didn’t analyze. It was just Nick she was going out with, but she wanted to look better anyway.
Her hair lay hot on her shoulders, so she sat down at her vanity and wound it into a bun, staring hard at her own reflection as she did so. She really didn’t like looking at herself. All her flaws were there to see. She was too gangly; her arms and legs didn’t seem to fit the rest of her. Her nose was too pugged, her lips too wide, her eyes too direct. More than one guy complained about her sarcastic sense of humor, which Rory preferred to think of as wry, and she’d spent most of this year watching the boys hover around her sweeter, precocious thirteen-year-old sister, Michelle, who was also well-endowed, rather than take a second look at her. Not that big boobs were the answer necessarily, but it sure felt sometimes like they helped.
Rory leaned her elbows on the vanity top, propped her chin on her hand and sighed deeply. She didn’t really care whether she had guys looking at her or not, she reminded herself. The boys at Piper Point were all geeks, anyway—except for Nick—and Rory was no more interested in them than they were in her. She was nothing like Jenny Sumpter, Piper Point High’s brightest star. She didn’t possess Jenny’s long silky hair, or her deep brown mysterious eyes. Rory’s hair was too wavy, her eyes too big that they swallowed her face. She was just okay looking, and she was too smart to believe her mother’s assurances that she would someday be a real looker. She knew parental bullshit when she heard it.
Thinking of Mom, Rory frowned. Something was going on between her parents, the same something that had ebbed and flowed in waves of tension for years. Sometimes Rory thought they should divorce, but deep down she didn’t want them to. She’d do almost anything to keep it together and yet, the way they were with each other… it just was really hard sometimes. The last few months had been the worst. The atmosphere around her parents was thick and hostile. Her father was hardly ever home, and when he was, he was short-tempered, anxious and dissatisfied. Rory just tried to stay out of his way. And her mother had grown even more remote and there were lines of discontentment etched beside her mouth. The one time Rory had brought up her parents’ problems to her she’d been cut off by a sharp response. It was all too weird and unnerving to consider. Best to forget it.
Her bedroom was suffocating, so Rory walked down the hall to the bathroom she shared with Michelle. The window was open and she could see into the backyard. A shimmering layer of heat made everything seem unnaturally bright and artificial. She wished suddenly that Nick had skipped out, too, and the two of them could be on their way somewhere—anywhere—else, together.
Hearing a car pull into the garage, Rory thought: Mom’s home from some errands. But on the heels of that thought came another: Mom’s visiting her friend Sara in Seattle today. She couldn’t be home already.
Rory frowned. Yes, it was definitely today that Mom had said they were on their own for dinner. So who was pulling into the garage?
Some sixth sense warned her to wait. She listened to the soft drip of the shower and heard the hum of a bee hovering around the rhododendrons outside. Below her, she heard the kitchen door opened. Feminine laughter rippled through the quiet house. Sultry laughter, followed by her father’s low pitched voice saying something indistinguishable that had his partner giggling girlishly.
Rory froze. Who was with her father?
The heavy scent of an expensive perfume drifted all the way upstairs, rising with the heat. Rory heard murmured voices and then one clear comment by the unknown woman.
“Your house is so beautiful, Griffith. I wish I could share it with you.”
Rory didn’t remember moving. She couldn’t have said later how she got downstairs. She was drawn to that voice and the terrible messages slamming across her brain.
They were still in the kitchen. Rory heard a cork pop and the hissing fizz of champagne. More feminine giggles and deep masculine chuckles became louder as she drew nearer. Her heart was pounding so fiercely she was half deaf.
She stopped in the archway between the kitchen and the dining room. They didn’t know she was there. Her footsteps had been muffled by the carpet. Her father’s back was to her, but it was definitely her father: Griffith Camden, salesman extraordinaire, quick with a smile and a wink, full of laughter and outrageous stories, model father, loving husband. The woman was on the counter and he was pressed up against her, his pants a pool down by his ankles.
Adulterer.
The woman’s arms were draped casually around his neck, the champagne glass balanced in one hand. She was kissing hi
m and moaning, her legs curling around him. She was trying not to spill the bubbly liquid, giggling occasionally. As Rory watched, the glass kept tipping sending a sparkling stream to the floor as the undulating became more hurried, the lovers heedless. Her father’s arms tightened perceptibly around the woman’s waist. The woman’s hands clutched his shoulders as a scream erupted from her lips.
He slumped possessively over her, allowing the woman’s chin to rest on his shoulder, with her eyes closed, she turned her face toward Rory, a final moan signaling they’d finished. Her lids slowly blinked open and her gaze locked with Rory’s. She shrieked out, “Holy shit, Griffith!”
Her screech had an instant effect. Her father backed up and yanked up his pants. The woman slid off the counter and straightened her dress. Rory watched as her father fiddled with his belt and finally turned to look at her.
“Rory!” he choked out.
“Oh, my God,” the woman said.
“Get out,” Rory said to her. “Get out of my mother’s house.” There was no immediate reaction. Both her father and his blond-haired lover looked too shocked to move. Rory just stared at the woman. A full minute elapsed before she turned toward the phone. “If you don’t leave I’ll call the police.”
“Rory, stop it.” Her father’s face was white but determined. “Your mother knows about Eileen.”
Eileen couldn’t quite help the astonished look that crossed her face.
Rory stopped. “You’re lying.”
“She knows there’s someone else in my life.”
“You… bastard,” Rory said to him. She turned away blindly, stumbling. Her father’s hand on her arm was a mistake. She shook him off. “Get away from me. Don’t touch me.”
“Calm down, Rory. There’s no need to be so damn hysterical.”
“I’ll leave,” Eileen said quietly, heading for the door.
“Get—your—hand—off me,” Rory ordered through her teeth. She was shaking so hard she could hardly stand, but all she could think about was the feel of her father’s hand on her arm; a hand that had been caressing another woman just moments before. She yanked herself free.
“I’m going to take Eileen home, but I’ll be back. Don’t leave. We need to talk. What the hell are you doing home?”
“I don’t know. Catching my father screwing someone in the kitchen?”
“Rory…”
She ran away from him. Back upstairs. His anger was at getting caught, she realized dimly, not at the act itself. She heard the door leading to the garage slam. Long moments passed before the engine revved. From the side of her bedroom window she watched the car back out of the driveway and pull away.
She was seized by a pain so intense she felt incapable of moving. Tears burned, but she fought them back. So many things made sense now. Maybe her mother did know, maybe she didn’t. But she’d guessed. That’s what all the pain was about. Rory was suddenly swept by the strongest aversion to the opposite sex she’d ever felt. Cheating, lying, treacherous men. By God, she was never going to fall for one.
Never.
Nicholas Shard eased his mother’s BMW against the curb in front of Rory’s house. The car was ancient, he thought, amused. How long his mother had owned it, he couldn’t tell, but he liked driving it better than the new Mercedes sedan. After all, it had a stick shift which Nick felt impressed the girls.
Not that he expected to enthrall Rory. She was his friend, and she’d made it clear in a hundred different ways that she found most of the guys in the class stupid, boring and complete horn dogs consumed by lust to the exclusion of all else. Nick felt it was a gift of providence that she didn’t seem to feel the same way about him. Considering how he felt inside these days, he was sure she simply hadn’t noticed.
Grimacing, he thought about his recent split from his girlfriend Vicki Fischer. It didn’t help that Vicki was an unbearable tease. He’d started dating her in spite of her reputation. She was simply fun and bright and cheerful, as far as he could see. And he’d ignored the knowing jabs in the ribs by his friends and the sly winks and smiles, thinking them just as Rory described. But in the end he found out that Vicki enjoyed leading a guy on, then shutting him down. A kind of strange sport. He was glad he’d broken up with her.
This brought his mind back to Rory. She was the one girl he knew who didn’t play head games. He could trust her to be totally honest, totally fair. Thank God he didn’t have to suffer through several hours of torment wondering what his date was thinking, worrying how the evening would end. Rory Camden was a relief to be with, kind of like being out with the guys.
Pulling to a stop at the curb, Nick strode up the Camdens’ driveway, then glanced down at his tan shorts and beat up sneakers he’d worn without socks. Huh. Maybe he shoulda tried a little harder. So thinking, he smoothed the gray T-shirt emblazoned with a purple University of Washington huskie. He wondered if Rory was expecting to be taken somewhere special.
He raised his hand to knock and was surprised when the door opened in front of him. Rory, in a tank top and shorts, a canvas bag slung over her shoulder, her usually bright face strangely shuttered, appeared as if by magic.
“Ready?” she asked, not quite meeting his eyes.
“Sure.”
She strode toward his car without another word. Faintly concerned that he’d done something to make her angry, Nick followed after her. The way she moved caught his attention. Long legs propelled her forward determinedly, but the swing of her hips was entirely feminine. He could see no bra line beneath the pink cotton top, and in his mind he thought about how she must look from the front.
Hormones, he thought, gritting his teeth as the familiar, frustrating first heat of desire swept through him. Good God, he was with Rory, for crying out loud!
In the car he hazarded a glance at her profile. She was staring straight through the windshield, refusing to even look at him, and he noticed her eyes were faintly reddened. “What’s up?” he asked, uncertain how to deal with her like this.
“Nothing much.”
“You mad at me?”
She drew in a sharp breath and glanced his way. It was an effort for her to smile, but she managed it. “Nope. Where, er, are we going tonight?”
“What do you want to do?” His gaze skated over her shorts and top. Good God, she looked good. He’d never noticed before quite how smooth and golden her skin was. How firm, yet feminine, the muscles of her thighs were. How well shaped her breasts were and there was a raspberry pinkness to her lips.
He dragged his gaze away, conscious of a tightening in his own shorts. With an effort, he pointed out, “Neither of us is dressed for a fancy restaurant.”
“Good. I just want to go somewhere I can relax, where I don’t have to think. How about that horror flick everyone’s talking about?”
Nick glanced at her. “You want to relax at The Undead Beast?”
“Sounds good.”
“Okay.” He couldn’t read her mood. “But it’s only playing at the Movie Haus.”
“Even better.”
Nick drove automatically, all his senses attuned to the woman beside him. He was too conscious of her. Her scent was soft and light, the gentle movement of her breasts beneath her tank top sweetly seductive. His mouth was dry. Not Rory, he reminded himself uselessly. Not Rory.
He clamped down on his runaway emotions with a supreme effort, wishing fervently he could be different from the stupid, lustful clods Rory disdained. Unfortunately, he didn’t think he was. His mind was on a definite track. The next few hours, he realized fatalistically, were sure to be an experiment in torture.
Rory drifted into the Movie Haus her mind in a fog, realizing belatedly that Nick had purchased the tickets and popcorn without her even offering up a dime. The haze only cleared for her when she noticed there was only one employee working, an older woman whose nametag read: Helga. She had sold them their tickets and also served them popcorn from the concession counter, all the while her unblinking eyes fol
lowing their every move, a permanent scowl lining her face.
“Does she even speak?” Nick muttered as they headed through the curtains to the seats. They appeared to be the only ones in the theater as Nick led Rory toward the back row. Feeling she was being watched, Rory glanced back to see that Helga had followed them in with a flashlight, still staring at them, this time with her arms crossed. She might be the only employee, but she really needed more to do, Rory thought as she took her seat next to Nick.
Then the film started and Rory stared blankly at the screen where one unsuspecting female after another fell victim to the supernatural evil of the dreaded beast. The show was meant to be taken seriously, but it was too campy to inspire any real fear. And Rory could scarcely concentrate on a single frame anyway. Her mind continued to play another scenario over and over again. Sparkling champagne and thrusting hips. Lust and deception.
Her stomach was clenched in knots.
Nick shifted in the seat beside her. “All right, what’s wrong?” he asked, turning his gaze from the shrieking, terrible, bone crushing mass onscreen to examine her troubled face.
“Nothing.”
He laid an arm over the back of her seat. “Give me a break. You’ve been about as much fun as a case of the flu.”
Since Nick had just suffered through a real, heavy-duty bout of the flu, Rory had to acknowledge she must be a real drag. “I’m just preoccupied.”
The Movie Haus didn’t appear to have any working air conditioning. She tried to inhale but the air felt weighted, heavy and suffocating. She was hot, sticky and uncomfortable. Sweat beaded on her throat and between her breasts.
“Preoccupied about what?”
“Maybe you should just take me home.”
“And miss the end?”
Rory tried to smile and couldn’t.
“Is it school?” Nick asked.
“No.”
“Some guy?” he suggested with stirring aggression.
“Hardly.” She snorted.
“Then what?”
Glancing his way, her mouth twisted in remembered pain. Nick’s gray eyes regarded her soberly between thick black lashes. She rarely saw him looking so serious. He was usually easygoing, fun-loving, and brilliant without seeming to have to study while she, studious, cautious Rory, hid behind a wall of sarcasm.