Something True

by Jessica Roe

  “I know,” she assures me quickly before I can start rambling like. . .well, her. “I saw your face when they appeared at the door. Seriously, you were like what da fuh? It would have been funny if it wasn't, you know, horrifying.”

  “Do you. . .do you wanna talk about it or somethin'?” I hesitate, because as much as I love the girl, I don't know if I can sit here and listen to her pour her heart out about my brother. There's only so much a guy can take.

  She shakes her head, lifting the cloth to inspect my wound before pressing it back down again. “I'm good.”

  “But are you okay? You're handling this amazingly well.”

  “It's fine. Stop looking at me like I'm about to fall apart on you.” She rolls those bright blue eyes. “It's not like I was in love with the guy – we hardly knew each other. We had a fun few weeks, and I'm a little hurt, sure. I wish he'd have just called me to let me know that he and his fiancee were trying again.” She doesn't know that he was talking to Fauna the entire time. I don't think she needs to know, it would just hurt her more. “My pride has definitely taken a few knocks. Mostly I just feel like a dumbo. But I'll get over it. I'll hang out with my girlfriends, drink things through, then I'll move on.”

  “You mean think things through?”

  Her laughter is infectious. “No, I most definitely mean drink. I'll tell you something, though – I coulda done without that super awkward family dinner tonight. I had to fight the urge to empty that pot pie right over his head.”

  “My grandparents love you.” I like this. Just being with her, talking to her. No cuts, no digs, no fighting. This is all I want. If I can't have everything with her, then this is all I want.

  “They're sweet.” She sighs. “And so is Fauna. Aleix has to be honest with her. She didn't deserve to have it blurted out in front of everyone, but she should know the truth.”

  I nod. “I know. I'll talk to him.”

  “Good.”

  “So, you sure you're gonna be okay?”

  “Yeah. Give me a few days and it'll be like it never even happened. I mean, we didn't even sleep together, so. . .”

  My head whips up so fast the cloth slips from her grasp and lands on my knee. I thought for sure they had. . . “You didn't?”

  She tuts, picking the cloth back up. “I don't just go around sleeping with everyone. I'm not a total ho bag. I have a month waiting rule.”

  I roll my eyes. “I never said you were a ho bag.”

  “You sure?” Her eyes sparkle as her lips curl up teasingly. “I'm pretty sure you might've called me that once or twice.”

  “Definitely not.” I try to hide my smirk. “A million other things, sure. But definitely not that.”

  Her smile makes me feel like I'm on top of the world. She leans closer to inspect my wound, so close that her sweet smell engulfs me – coconut and lavender and something indescribably Ibbie – and I can see the flecks of gold in her bright blue eyes. I didn't even know eyes could come in a shade that blue. She mesmerizes me. “The bleeding has already stopped. Though I hope you scar, you ass jacket.”

  I want to kiss her more than I've ever wanted anything in my whole life. “Now that's not nice.”

  She takes a step back and folds her arms across her chest. I almost reach out to pull her back to me, but stop at the accusing look on her face. “You guys didn't really slip, did you? You and Aleix were fighting. I'm not stupid, you know, even though most people think I am just 'cause I'm blonde and happy and I talk a lot. You started a fight with him, I know it.”

  “Yeah, I'm really sorry for giving that fucker exactly what he deserved.”

  “Well that was more of a punchpology if you ask me.”

  I shrug, because I could deny it, but I don't want to. Aleix really did get what he deserved. “You know what? I did. And I don't fucking regret it. He hurt you, Ibbie,” I say earnestly. Her expression softens then, and it proves to be my undoing. My hands reach out and slip around her waist, tugging her back between my legs. She looks down at my hands, then back at my face, her mouth parting in surprise. “So I hurt him. And I'd do it again.”

  “Walt-”

  I don't want to hear her telling me I shouldn't have fought with my brother, or questioning why I did it when I'm supposed to hate her. I don't want to hear her arguing with me or scolding me or demanding I make amends. So I do the only thing that makes sense to me, the only thing that will ever make sense to me. Before she can say another word, I lift my hand up to cup the back of her neck and I crush my lips to hers.

  She gasps into my mouth, freezing. I wait for her to pull away, to slap me, to call me crazy. But tentative hands come up to frame my face, and then they're grasping my cheeks tighter, pulling my lips more firmly to hers. She's kissing me back.

  She's kissing me back!

  I lose my head, because it's everything I dreamed of yet so much more. Her mouth yields against mine, soft, pliant, hot. So fucking hot. I tilt my head, kissing her deeper as my hand slides around her back, my fingers splaying over the material of her dress. One of her arms wrap around my neck and I pull her tighter against me, melding out bodies together until she's on my lap, he knees on either side of my thighs.

  Her tongue caresses mine, our backs arching into each other.

  When she pulls back, there's so much confusion in her eyes that I don't know how to handle it. “Walt,” she whispers hesitantly, but she doesn't pull away.

  I don't want her to think about anything right now, because if she thinks about this then she'll stop. And God, I don't want her to stop.

  Threading my fingers through her hair, I bring her mouth back to mine.

  Chapter 7

  Ibbie

  THE SECOND WALT'S lips touched mine, I forgot my own name. I forgot that we'd spent the last year hating on each other, that I'd dated his jerk hole of a brother, that his grandparents were just downstairs and this was super inappropriate. Because Walt, he knows how to kiss. He kisses like he knows every one of my secret desires and fantasies and is using them against me, to own me. And I. . .I want to be owned by him.

  With a pleasured little grunt, he spins us around smoothly and presses me into the plush bed. His body leans over mine as he kisses me with more heat and power than I've ever been kissed in my whole life. I've kissed plenty of guys before, because hey, I love to kiss, but never has there been this passion with any of them.

  One of my hands strokes the soft skin at the back of his neck, and the other clutches the material of his shirt, desperately holding him against me. His hands are everywhere; cupping my face, lacing through my hair, stroking my thigh, brushing the sides of my stomach. It's like he wants to touch every inch of me and he can't get enough.

  I feel like I've lost all control of myself, of my lips, my body, my soul. This is the guy I've hated for an entire year. This is the guy who's hated me. The guy who's tortured me, who I've gone out of my way to screw with. And yet the moment his lips touched mine it was like none of that mattered anymore, like in a way, it had all been leading up to this. This right here, in this bed, in this room. I don't know if it's just the kiss though, because tonight I saw a completely different side to Walt, a side I've never seen before. I saw a guy who was sweet to his grandma, who had so much respect for his grandpops, who cared about his brother's fiancee and was more protective of me than anyone has ever been in my entire life. I like this Walt. I never thought I'd use the words like and Walt in the same sentence, but I do. I like him.

  Walt's lips leave mine and I immediately crave the contact, but he kisses down my neck, pushing aside the sleeve of my dress so he can press his hot lips into my shoulder. I come undone, lifting my chin in the air and squeezing his waist between my thighs. How is it that he can make me feel this way when before today I've felt nothing but disdain for him?

  “Ibbie,” he utters fiercely before he covers my mouth with his once more. He kisses me like. . .like I'm the air he needs to breathe, like I'm the light he needs to see, like I'm the heat of su
nlight touching his skin for the very first time. He doesn't just kiss me, he worships me.

  I open my mouth and welcome his tongue, brushing it with my own. I want this. I want him. So badly. A part of me wishes that I could rationalize this away as a hate kiss, but there's nothing hateful in this. Not from either of us. This feels like he needs me, and in this moment I feel like I need him too.

  My hands move to his broad shoulders, clinging on, desperate to hold him against me – though I don't think he's in a rush to go anywhere. His body is heated over mine; heated and hard in places I'm soft.

  I don't know how much time passes, minutes or hours or days, but eventually our kisses slow. Walt leans his forehead against my cheek for a moment, then pulls back to look down at me. His eyes give nothing away.

  That was. . .

  That was unexpected.

  “What the hell just happened?” I ask when I can breathe again, my voice barely above a whisper. Now that his lips aren't fused onto mine and robbing me of all reasonable thought, bewilderment is firmly taking a hold of me. I'm not sure I even know which way is up right now.

  Walt shakes his head silently, unable to speak. His eyes, those dark depths I'd always thought were so cold, are filled with so many emotions I can't even begin to sort through them. But they're not cold, not at all. How could I have ever thought they were? Obviously I wasn't looking hard enough.

  “Ibbie,” he breathes finally when I cup his cheek with my hand. His expression is dazed. “I-”

  “Walt, Ibbie!” his grandma calls from the bottom of the stairs. “Dessert is ready! Get down here before your ice-cream melts!”

  Walt closes his eyes in defeat. “Be right down, Grandma!”

  “I'm so confused right now,” I admit to him quietly when her footsteps move away.

  “I know.” He nods as if he has so much more to say, but he doesn't offer up any kind of explanation as to why that kiss just happened. Instead, he rolls off of me and stands, holding out a hand to help me up.

  “Oh my God,” I mutter when I catch a look at myself in the small mirror on the dresser. Nope. Just so much nope. My lipgloss has been thoroughly kissed away, my neatly styled hair is now wild around my shoulders and my chin is red from stubble rash. I look one hundred percent kissed. No, I look one hundred percent ravished. Doing my best to make myself presentable, I pat down my hair and reapply my gloss, but his family are going to know what we were doing up here for sure. Oh God, the shame. His grandma is going to think I'm such a hussy. And Aleix. . .he's going to know that I went from making out with one brother to the next and. . . Oh wait, I don't give a hairy monkey's bare butt about what Aleix thinks, the lying jerk. But still, they'll know what we were doing and that's just totally cringe.

  I, on the other hand, have no frigging idea. What were we doing up here? Because we sure as heck weren't acting like the regular Walt and Ibbie. That's one thing I do know.

  When I turn back to Walt, needing answers, the expression I catch on his face steals my breath away and stops me in my tracks. There's so much longing in his eyes as he looks at me, though he quickly hides it away, shoving it back behind a blank mask. But I saw it there. He was. . .he was longing for me. For me. The guy who hates me was longing for me.

  Oh boy, the confusion. It's eating me up.

  He moves forward to stand in front of me, putting his forehead on my shoulder. “We should. . .uh, we should get downstairs,” he says quietly. “Don't want the ice-cream to melt.”

  All I can do is nod in reply.

  +++

  AFTER DESSERT, WALT'S grandma hugs me for the longest time and tells me to come back whenever I want. Even without Walt. She's so nice.

  Walt and I are silent when we climb into his car. I almost feel like throwing a barb at him just for old time's sake.

  “Where are we going?” I ask a minute later when he doesn't take the road that leads back to the city. Instead, he circles back around behind his grandparents' house and turns off on an old dirt road.

  “Just wait,” he replies softly. “We're almost there.”

  He's not lying. Only a minute later he takes another turn into a field that no one seems to have claimed for years. The grass is overgrown and ahead of us, on the opposite end of the field, an old, wooden windmill stands. “Are you going to murder me?” I question doubtfully. Damn it, I should have slipped a weapon in my purse when I knew I'd be going on a car journey with Walt.

  “Yes, Ibbie. I brought you here to kill you and dump your body,” he replies dryly.

  I fold my arms, sincerely unamused.

  He stops the car just inside the field, leaving the headlights on. The sun has long since set and the cold winter weather has stirred up a spooky mist in the air around us. The fog swirls and dances in the glare of the headlights. With the silhouette of the windmill before us, the effect is beautiful in a creepy, eerie way.

  Walt sighs, looking straight ahead and not at me when he talks. “This is where I used to come when I was a kid – the windmill has been abandoned for years and no one bothers to come out here anymore. Aleix and I would camp out in this field during the summer, then we'd hide out and make forts inside the windmill when the winter came and the weather got colder. I still come here sometimes when I need to get away and think.”

  I swallow, turning my head to study his profile. Though it's dark inside the car, the headlights cast a faint glow and I can just make out his shadowy face. He looks startlingly handsome like this. His hair and eyes, already as dark as night, are nothing more than shadows. I trace the sharp angles of his jaw with my eyes, the curve of his cheekbones, the soft lines of his lips. I realize that he's choosing to share something with me here, something that's special to him. This Walt, the one I've spent all this time with tonight, is so different to the Walt I've known for the past year. Yet I think it's this one that might be the real him. I. . .I hope it is. I like this Walt so much.

  “What do you think about?”

  One of his shoulders lifts. “Stuff,” he answers mysteriously.

  It doesn't escape my attention that we still have yet to talk about that kiss.

  “Come on,” he says suddenly, unbuckling and climbing out of the car.

  “What are you. . . Walt! What are we doing?” There's nothing else to do but follow him out. I rub my arms when the icy November air hits my skin. “It's cold!”

  Grinning at my pitifulness, he grabs his jacket from the trunk and puts it around my shoulders. His fingers brush the sensitive skin just below my neck for a little longer than necessary as he straightens the jacket out; it sends bolts of warmth sizzling through my veins. I look up into his eyes. He's not overly tall, maybe five nine or ten, and with my heels on I'm almost the same height as he is.

  I squeak in surprise when he grips my waist and lifts me up to sit on the hood of the car. The metal is cold on my butt, even through the material of my dress. “So there's that,” I grumble, and he laughs as he hops up next to me.

  We lay down next to each other, our heads touching as we look up at the dark night sky. His black hair is such a contrast to my own blonde locks. Though it's cloudy out, I can still see a few stars here and there.

  “Blair knows all the constellations,” I say conversationally.

  He nods. “Yeah, and the stories behind them too. Except I like her versions better than the real ones. She's pretty cool.”

  “Well duh.”

  Waiting a moment, he says, “I spoke to Aleix before we left.”

  “Whappened?” I ask too quickly, fumbling my words. “I mean, what happened?”

  “He's gonna talk to Fauna tonight, come clean about everything. He knows he acted like a shit to both of you.”

  “Think she'll forgive him?”

  “Not that he deserves it, but probably. She loves him a lot, and I guess they weren't technically together when he was seeing you.”

  “And we never slept together.”

  “Yeah, and there's that. That helps.” That's an odd
choice of words, but I choose to say nothing.

  “I feel so frigging bad.”

  He turns his head to look at me, his eyes sharp. “Don't you fucking dare try to blame yourself for his screw up. It's not your fault.”

  “I know.”

  Chapter 8

  Ibbie

  WE FALL INTO a comfortable silence as we both turn back to the clouds and the stars, the only noise coming from the rustling of the grass as it moves in the soft breeze. Our breaths mist out in front of us. I tuck my cold fingers into the sleeves on Walt's jacket, wondering how he isn't freezing his frigging nips off right now in that shirt.

  I want so badly to ask him about the kiss, to demand where it came from and what it means. Because I don't have any answers, and even though he was the one who instigated, I most definitely didn't push him away. But for the first time in my life I find that words aren't coming easily, like I've spoken so many in my lifetime already that I've simply ran out. Now that would be a tragedy.

  “Was your boss pissed about you missing the show tonight?” Walt questions eventually, folding his hands across his stomach comfortably.

  “He was pretty cool about it actually. As long as I only make it a one time thing. Not that I'd be wanting to skip again. I'm lucky enough that I actually love what I do.”

  “I think it's great,” he confides. “You know, how you're following your dreams. That you've always just known what you wanted to be doing with your life so you worked hard at it, made it happen. Most people don't have your determination to follow their dreams like that.”

  “Thank you.” He just keeps on surprising me. I get curious then, so I ask, “What are your dreams?”

  His silence stretches on for a full minute before he turns to look at me again. “My dreams?”

  “Sure.”

  “How do you know being a tattoo artist isn't my dream?”