My drunken heart’s beat speeds up with the pronunciation of love’s name, chipping away at my tolerance one pulse at a time. This is my home, my safe haven from hearing things about Dusty I don’t want to believe. But his disloyalty personified rests on my bedroom floor, sheltered under my roof, taken care of by my mother.
“Can we not talk about him?” Rebecka says. “He’s my brother. I don’t want to hear any stories about his dick or where he sticks it.”
Valarie laughs. “He hasn’t been sticking it in me.”
“No, that would be Ben,” Mixie says.
“And Johnny Morris,” Kelly accuses, pointing a finger. Valarie smiles a guilty smile. “I knew it, you slut!”
Four of us sit in a loose circle around the girl who thrives on gross attention. All of our faces are shadowed under the small lamp on my nightstand. It’s freezing outside, but it’s warm enough in here to suffocate.
“I slept with John once,” Valarie clarifies.
I don’t know Johnny personally, and he’s never tried to talk to me, especially after what happened to Brandon Miller last year, but his promiscuous reputation is well known throughout the entire school. It doesn’t really shock me that one of these girls has slept with him.
“Why did you do that? I heard he had the clap,” Becka asks. There’s a trace of repulsion in her curious tone.
“I don’t know. We just did it. He wasn’t even that great.” Valarie pushes herself up on her forearms. “Your brother is better. But he’s weird lately.”
I curl my green painted toes and bring my knees up to my chest, protecting myself from her words.
“Because you dropped the L-bomb,” Mixie says, rolling her dark eyes as if love is a joke.
I bite down, clenching my jaw until it feels like my teeth will crack.
“I don’t love Thomas,” Valarie says. Her tone of voice is final, but there’s a dash of uncertainty in the way she says his name.
“Sure,” Kelly mumbles, taking another drink from the bottle. She winces, scrunching her small nose before tipping it back a second time.
“I don’t,” Val replies, raising her tone defensively. “I was so fucked-up when I told him that crap. Which is whatever, because, who cares about Dusty?”
I do.
And caring for Thomas Castor is knowing what he’s about, but accepting him anyway.
Love is skewed.
Love is being strong when he is weak.
Love is obsessive and offensive and not any good, but he’s mine.
I want to tell Valarie that is what loving Thomas is, not drug-filled sex and empty moments.
Even though I hate she has those to talk about at all.
On the verge of breaking teeth, I drop my forehead to my kneecaps and will the drilling pain in my chest away. I force my nervous hands to stop shaking. I beg for my rigid arms to stop aching.
Please, stop turning, I plead to my sick stomach.
“I don’t love him,” Valarie says more seriously now. “That kid can’t be loved. He won’t let anyone near him.”
“I guess he’s kind of like you in that way, right, Val?” Kelly says softly.
I lift my head in time to see Kelly scoot beside Valarie and embrace her. I considered their friendship to be one made out of convenience and superficiality, but looking at them now, it seems like they may care about one another after all.
“I heard you kissed Oliver last weekend, Leigh,” Mixie says, leaning back against the wall right under my bedroom window. “He’s cute. Kind of quiet.”
The sudden change in topic is jarring, and I have to release the hold on my jaw to reply.
“We were playing spin the bottle,” I say meekly. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
“Except you almost sucked his face off,” Becka says, laughing. “I swear, Bliss, I didn’t know you had that in you.”
“Really?” Val laughs. She sits up and crosses her legs in front of her. “Was it your first kiss?”
I smile and look at Becka. “Kind of.”
SNEAKING OUT of my house isn’t as hard as I thought it would be. The stairs don’t creak as I take them two at a time, and the door doesn’t squeak when I open it and slip onto the porch. Outside looks different when you’re not supposed to see it. The air feels colder, but fresher … like it’s never been as clean as when it’s stolen this way.
I’m vulnerable walking on the side of the house, but the rush I feel as I slip past our gate and onto the driveway is thrilling. The neighborhood is dead to the world, except for the dog next door. She barks as I pass, but stops as soon as she sees it’s only me. When I make it to the end of the driveway, I look down the street and see the Lincoln.
There’s a hoodie folded in the middle of the bench seat when I get in, and I slip it right over my head. I hug the soft cotton to my chest and hold my frosty hands in front of the warm heater vents. My boy looks as soft and warm as his sweater feels, like he literally rolled out of bed to come here.
I lean over and kiss him on the lips.
“You’re not wearing any shoes, sunny side,” Thomas says, pulling away from the curb.
I shrug and sink into old leather. I won’t need shoes where we’re going.
Our feet are up on his front seat, the heater is high, and the radio is playing on low. We talk about nothing. We talk about everything. He lights up, slowly filling the car with dank smoke. Trouble asks if I want a hit, but I say no and eat another Skittle from the stash of junk food he brought me.
“I’ve liked you a lot this week, Thomas,” I say, picking at a string on the blanket. It’s the one from his bed. I love that he brought it since we can’t actually be in his room.
He chuckles. “I always like you, Bliss.”
“Valarie says you don’t let anyone love you. She said you’re hard to be close to.” I find his hand under the blanket and intertwine our fingers.
“Do you think she’s right?” he asks.
“Sometimes,” I say honestly. My voice is different in the quiet night. Truth sounds harsh. “Sometimes it’s hard to love you, but I can never imagine not being close.”
“You know that shit you found on my nightstand?” he replies.
“The cocaine?”
“Yeah. That.”
I nod. I know he shouldn’t be doing it, but I choose my battles with Thomas.
“It scares me.” His voice is so low and so stripped. “When I’m on it, I feel like I can do anything. Like, I’m unbreakable. It was cool at first, but shit’s kind of changed.”
“Okay,” I answer, careful not to speak too loudly or move too suddenly.
“I need to kick back,” he says. Thomas tilts my chin up under his finger, brushing his thumbs from the corner of my mouth to my jaw. “I knew you kissed him as soon as I walked in the house.”
I try to look away, but love keeps me still.
“And when I saw his face, everything blurred. I could have killed him.”
“Thomas …”
“I was so afraid you’d finally had enough of me, and the coke intensified it. It makes you feel everything, or nothing at all.”
A pause and take a breath.
“But I have no choice but to feel with you, Leighlee.” Thomas looks away, staring toward the lighthouse with a dark expression haunting his eyes.
We look again, and I love his blues. They’re high-low, but they’re blue, and that’s all that matters to me.
“I just want shit to be good with us.” He smirks.
“Me too,” I whisper.
“But you won’t be my girlfriend?” Thomas moves some of my hair behind my ear.
“I want to, but—”
“What, Leigh? I’m trying, and I know …”
“You don’t know anything,” I whisper weakly. “You have no idea what it’s like to be me.”
“It’s not because of him?” He scoots up and reaches for his cigarettes in the front seat. Dusty’s shoulders are tense and his tone is sharp.
“It do
esn’t have anything to do with Oliver. I just want shit with us to be good.” I use his same words.
He lights a smoke, and as this boy’s cigarette burns, so does the tension in his shoulders.
“Let’s go in the sand.” I start to climb over him.
Thomas catches my hips, keeping me in the car, straddling his legs. His lays his right palm against my neck and twists his left fingers into my hair at the base of my head.
“You’ll never leave me,” he says with pleading blues. “Promise it.”
“Thomas.” I sigh.
“Just once, promise me this, Bliss.”
I look into his eyes and wrap my hands around the strings of his hoodie, pulling his face closer to mine.
“I could never leave you. It’s a rule.”
Dusty is overdue for a haircut.
Hat-messy and unwashed dark blonde hair slides between my fingers as I run them from his temple to his nape. He doesn’t shift, but I can tell by his breathing he’s not asleep.
I’m on my back, and Thomas is wrapped around me. Next to mine, his hips lie against his bed and his head rests on my chest. His ear is over my heart.
Two a.m. approaches¸ and I’m tired, but this calm is too needed to sleep through.
It’s been weeks since we’ve had time to be still together in love. We sneak glances in the halls, and he leaves me longer notes in my locker than he used to. Our toes find and touch under the dinner table sometimes, but it’s been a while since my boy has sat down and had dinner with his family.
I miss him, and he’s right here.
Closing my eyes, I try to give myself to this presence. Snowy wind howls against Thomas’ window, muffling Happy New Year fireworks and gunshots that are still going off. I can smell vanilla and trees in my secret’s clothes and Veuve Clicquot Champagne clinging to both our breath. His heart thumps steadily against my side, matching the rhythm behind my ribs, and it means so much to me I could cry.
I slide my fingers through soft disorder, just feeling. Just loving.
The school year’s halfway over, passing too quickly and not quickly enough. Summer will be here in no time. I want its heat and the freedom, long days spent in the sun and late nights shared right here, but there’s apprehension in my stomach. I know he hides weekend-bent black eyes behind Ray-Ban lenses. He shows up to school and he plays ball. He’s good, but I know it isn’t without compromise.
Stilting our harmony for a deeper breath that’s warm through my tank top, Dusty shifts his head, but doesn’t move otherwise.
I want to ask him where he was all day. I want to tell him I missed him. I want to know if he’s alright, if everything’s alright, and if he felt the way his heart calmed and mine picked up when we lie like this, so they could beat the same sound together somewhere in between.
I want to tell him I love him.
But where he’s been doesn’t matter, and I know he can feel our hearts. It’s why he has his ear pressed to mine, and I know he knows I love him. How could he not? How could anyone doubt something so strong you both feel it all the way to your marrow when you touch?
Love tangles tightly like roots through both of us and all of this. We were made to love.
It’s the meantime that makes me uneasy.
As he shifts again, Thomas’ too-long hair tickles the top of my bare chest. I can’t help my smile, and he loosens his arms from my middle. Holding my sides, trouble nestles his nose and chin and lips over my skin, tickling me purposefully.
My laughter is hushed, but strong, and I hear this boy shush-laughing, too. My heart hears his, reveling in simple affection, and it’s mostly air—whisper-wrapped and breath-filled—but it’s one of my favorite sounds in the world.
We twist and push and pull, and I giggle so silently-hard that my cheeks hurt, and behind my shut eyes and deep in the bottom of my chest, fluttering and thriving at the top of my stomach, I feel everything that makes me, me, pulling toward Dusty.
Between tangling and turning, pleading and swearing without a single word, he pins me on my side, letting me catch my breath before descending on me once more. Curved fingers tickle under my shirt while Thomas covers my neck with too soft nip-kisses that make my heart crazy.
Pushing the smallest bit free, I look up.
On his knees, sort of behind and kind of all around me, love smirks. He sniffs, and in the fractional leeway he’s granted, I turn to my back and take both his hands in mine, holding us still. His eyelids are tired, but his blues glint, very awake, and their light burns right through me.
Dusty’s smirk grows into a smile, and love is abundant, prodigious with truth in his eyes; it’s staggering, because as good as this feels, love is also toilsome. It’s more than challenging. It’s awe-giving, but love is an uphill battle and a compulsory force, and as Thomas looks down at me with adoring eyes, I know he’s feeling it, too. My person is every bit as strong as our deal, and in this moment, I feel like if he wanted to, he could eat me alive and love would swallow me whole.
He brushes his thumbs where he’s holding my hips, just feeling. Just like I was.
“I love your heart,” he tells me, making it beat. “And your heart loves me.”
“Thomas,” I say softly.
Leaning down so our noses and foreheads touch, the boy whose heart I love kisses me with devotion and regard. We kiss until I’m breathless and blushing, blissed-out like the miracle he makes me feel like I am.
With my hesitation superseded, and overgrown blonde going every which way my fingers have brushed it, we turn onto our sides and Thomas brings me closer. He lays his palm where his ear was before, right over my pulse beat.
“You were made to love me, Leigh,” he says quietly, as if his touch leaves any room inside me for doubt. “It’s why you were born.”
Rebecka is next to me on her parents’ sofa, eating a bowl of Trix and Kix cereal mixed together. Her milk is pink-purple and her hair is still sleep tangled. While she flips channels, I dunk a mini cinnamon roll into milk and watch the television absentmindedly.
Our usual easy Saturday morning is a lazy Saturday afternoon. While she snuck out with Smitty last night, I was on the roof with her brother, sharing shotgun kisses and watching him blow smoke rings at the moon.
He’s been at an away game all day but should be home anytime now.
Becka stops on a commercial for the state of California.
“You think surfing is anything like boarding?” she asks without looking over.
I shrug. “In that I couldn’t hold myself up on either?”
First of May sunlight shines through the living room curtains, and I wish we were outside soaking it up. I brought my bike because I thought Becka would want to board all day, but we’re having trouble leaving the couch. And the longer the afternoon drifts, the more I start to think I might not get to see my boy before tonight.
If he comes home then.
Winter has warmed into spring, and so has Thomas. Missing him is difficult, but my presence in his bed when he comes home a few hours before sunup is the deal we’ve established and a concession I cherish.
I sit down with a refilled mug of milk as my girl settles on a rerun of The O.C.
“We should go on a road trip,” she says nonchalantly.
Before I can ask with what car, the Lincoln rolls up outside. Bass from the stereo drifts in before it’s cut off with the engine, and the sound of doors closing makes my pulse pick up. I hear my secret heart-stimulant laughing with his best boy as he turns his key in the front door, and when it opens, I want to turn and greet love with an open smile, but I follow his sister’s body language: indifference.
Only, not completely.
Without putting her bowl down or turning around, Rebecka lifts her left hand up behind her head. Pete drops her a low five, and follows Thomas toward the kitchen.
Left with the scent of teenage boys: sweat and clay-dirt, cut grass and leafy green, and knowing Thomas is in his uniform—probably sort of sunburned
and more than one kind of dusty—perks up my lazy butterflies.
Curling my toes against couch cushions, I watch adults playing teenagers in fucked-up love on the screen, but listen to what’s going on behind me.
“How’d you guys do?” Tommy asks.
Their conversation is hard to hear, but upbeat. Water bottles are opened and downed in a few drinks before they’re crushed. Petey bites into an apple, and Tommy asks if he wants peanut butter. I can hear trash bag pulled up and twist tied before Thomas carries it outside.
As he comes back in, I catch a glimpse of orange-dirty baseball whites and the corner of his smile. When he returns to the kitchen, what comes out of Tommy’s mouth makes my pulse skip a beat.
“So now neither one of you are going to prom? How is that fair to your mother?” Her tone is teasing and a little playful, but there’s persuasion there, too.
Water turns on as Thomas washes his hands, and I hear the three of them talking, but as Becka tips her bowl up for the last of her milk, she swallows my chances at making out anything that’s said in the next room. Thankfully, she gets up to take her dish in.
When we turn the corner, Tommy looks at us and lifts her hand like we’re an obvious answer.
“Take the girls,” she says, looking from us to the boys.
My eyes open wider as I glance from my best friend to her mother to her son. For a second, I’m distracted by how good he looks with his backwards hat and sun-heated cheeks. I’ve only half-processed what Tommy’s said when Becka speaks up.
“Are you crazy?” she asks, putting her bowl in the sink. “They don’t let juvenile delinquents into prom.”
Tommy swats her daughter’s arm.
“Or tools,” Becka adds with a smirk. “I guess you’re both screwed.”
As she sneers at the boys, she pushes her fingers through blonde sleep knots, composing her bedhead.
Setting my milk on the counter, I lean back and listen while Pete laughs under his breath and Tommy starts talking about dresses, tuxes, and corsages. Thomas remains quiet under faded but still bright blues, and I play my part, but inside my heart’s pulsing hope I’ve never allowed.
“Leigh’s parents probably won’t let her go,” Rebecka continues, and while I am mentally working out how I’m going to ask them, I’m kind of mad she’s using me in her ruse.
Innocents Page 30