Delinquents (Dusty #2)

by Mary Elizabeth Sarah Elizabeth

Thomas slides his fingers down my arm and takes my hand.

  IT'S ONLY been twenty minutes, but you'd think we've been sitting in these cheap chairs for hours.

  The secretary just called number twenty-two, and crooked love is ready to walk. His knee bounces while his heel taps the linoleum. Shifty in his seat, he traces my knuckles, my cuticles, and the lengths of each of my fingers like maps, but his touch is absentminded. Blacked-out-blues dart and wander, and his breathing is anything but a pattern.

  But we're so close.

  “Hey,” I whisper, covering his skin-and-bone-blueprint-tracing fingers with my own.

  Dusty tilts his head toward me but keeps his face forward. His eyes don't focus and his knee doesn't stop. I trace his knuckles like he's been doing to mine, and he rearranges our fingers, interlacing them together: him over me, over him. Leaning in so I can whisper softer, I get close enough that my nose and lips brush his shirt.

  Love smells like Tide and vanilla and warm summertime.

  “Do you remember when I didn't know you were in the bathroom and I opened the door?” I ask quietly.

  His fingers trace and his heel taps, but he turns his head. He gives me his ear, but I need him to really hear me. I need to keep him here.

  “You pulled me in with you, remember?”

  The corner of his smile twitches, and I know he's remembering setting me on the counter and touching my knees, stepping between them and tugging at my dress, feeling his way up my legs and warning me to stay away from the most harmless kid ever.

  “I knew then,” I tell my love quietly. “I didn't understand, but I loved how it felt to be with you. I wanted that.”

  His heel keeps tapping, but he leans back a little in his chair.

  “I didn't know what to do with my hands,” I whisper, touching his. “But I wanted you.”

  Sitting up, Thomas pushes my right leg off my left, uncrossing them. I keep cool, but he squeezes my knee, and I know I'm playing with fire.

  “Twenty-three,” the secretary calls, prompting a mother and daughter to stand and shuffle.

  Black eyes close and my boy's heel has stopped tapping, but under his hand, my own knee picks up where his bouncing left off.

  SEVEN MINUTES later, we're called back to fill out paperwork, and then sent down the hall to a computer lab. We sit down together, but all Thomas cares about is my hair and my arms and my legs. I'm trying to enroll him into the next year of his life and all he's doing is pulling at me.

  “Look,” I say insistently, moving the mouse across different entry-level classes.

  Leaned forward but toward me instead of the screen, he doesn't take his eyes from where his fingers curl around my summer-blond ends.

  “This is important, Dusty,” I tell him, pointing to the screen. “What do you want to do?”

  Half-sly and half-completely careless, he smiles. He looks up, but not at the computer. Black eyes are all mine.

  “Be with you,” he says, dropping his touch from my hair to my back. He slips the tips of his fingers under my top and my heart flips. My focus wavers and the precious place between my legs feels no pain.

  I pull away from his hand.

  “English?” I ask, looking back at the screen and ignoring my pulse.

  “Sure,” he whispers, bringing my chair closer. Moving my hair, he kisses my neck and his warmth surrounds me. His lips are soft and his breath is softer, and he knows it.

  “Be serious,” I say, selecting some class and scrolling down the page for another.

  Thomas kisses under my ear, and I feel him smile. His hand wraps around mine in my lap, and I hear him breathe in before he says it.

  “Marry me.”

  My heart swells in my chest and I forget how to breathe.

  Love turns my chair completely toward him against everything experience has taught me, wishful hope blooms. He's about to say something else, but he sniffs before he speaks, and I remember exactly how to breathe.

  “Algebra?” I point out. “You'll need that if you want to transfer—”

  “Sure,” he interrupts, slouching back and looking down. “Whatever you want, Bliss.”

  I HAVE no idea how we make it through the rest of enrollment, but Dusty's had his fix.

  I need mine.

  Between merciless sunlight and soul-baring black, I spread like an open flame in the back of the Lincoln. Needful and greedy and eager, I lift and grip as this boy makes me give him the sound he covets most. I cry out, and crude possession takes over. Yearning consumes. Compulsiveness demands, and totally hopeless brings both of my legs over his shoulders.

  It hurts.

  It's everything.

  It's too hard, too fast, and not enough.

  Stripped and sharp and struggling, the sound that comes out of Thomas as I dig my nails into his skin and pull his hips into me cuts through to my heart, but that's where I need him. I want him all the way deep, all over every beat.

  Even through my cries, I feel his moans from inside.

  We fuck until I'm burning up and begging to fall, until I'm screaming for it and his hand is over my mouth, and someone has to have heard us, but I can't care. All of me curls and burns around all of him. Flickers tingle through my veins and tighten in my chest. Everything glimmers and throbs with my pulse, and I want it back—

  That feeling he gave me in the enrollment room before She snatched it away.

  The way I felt the other night in my bed when he told me he was getting help.

  That wishful little thrill love is so good at giving me lately—

  Hope.

  “Ask me again,” I manage between breaths this rush leaves no room for.

  Half-undressed and buried from beginning to end squeezes his eyes tightly closed. His rhythm falters but he's lost, unheeding and blissfully subjugated in feeling. He keeps moving.

  Cutting my nails into his sides, I slack my hips. Dusty mourns the loss of contact with a pained sound and presses harder, chasing me back down. I lift my voice and whole body up, helpless for more that's still not enough. He fucks with all his weight, and breaking skin, I bask in my heart's abandon and soul's struggle.

  “Ask me, Thomas,” I tell him with my teeth under his ear.

  Love drags the force of himself through me, and I lie back, higher than the sun shining light all across us. The muscles in his neck and shoulders strain and frustration digs between his eyebrows every bit as strong as he digs for home inside me.

  “Give me your hand,” he says, his voice just as devoured as the rest of him.

  Lit, I bring my fingers from his sides to his face. I hold his cheeks and touch his hair, and he's perfect like this, but he shakes his head.

  “Your life, Leigh.”

  Gravity drops out and significance rushes through me. Dusty presses his right hand over my chest. The muscle under his touch rises and reels, and it's too much.

  “I want this,” he says. “Give me this.”

  My heart pounds, and I want to scream but there's no air.

  “Marry me,” love finally whispers, deep inside, all over my pulse and moving hard.

  It's all I hear before I cry and he starts to shake.

  Tommy handles her son's choice to go to Linn-Benton instead of rehab with more wine and new prescriptions. Lucas deals by spending more time at the office, but their daughter, as usual, does not accept, nor does she pretend for anyone that she does.

  “Cocaine,” she says, declaratively disgusted and loud enough that I know her brother down the hall hears her.

  “Seriously?” she asks louder, her volume increasing with caustic sarcasm.

  It's the first of August and a few minutes after noon. The air conditioning is set to freezing, but we're in swimsuits under shorts and long sleeves. Sitting on her unmade bed, I'm consciously aware of keeping my summer cardigan buttoned over my marked-up chest while Becka sifts through mail at her desk. Tossing issues of Spin and AP to the floor, she drops everything except for a large, white envelope.
r />   “Seriously?” It chimes this time, every bit as loud, but excitement filled now.

  The envelope she tears open is stamped with UCLA's emblem, but it's not thick enough to be an acceptance packet. Jumping up from her chair as she reads with wide blue eyes, my girl beams.

  “Oh my fucking … Fuck … Yes!” She sits back down to read it again, but her knees bounce. She radiates pride and excitement, and she should.

  Rebecka slaughtered her way through AP and IB classes. This isn't the first scholarship of its kind, and it won't be the last. For all of her decadent wildness, baby-pink is brilliant.

  “It's not nearly enough,” she says, smiling wide. “But it's a major fucking start.”

  I'm genuinely happy for her, but I know what comes next.

  “Have you filled out your application yet?” she asks, turning to her laptop, click, click, searching and clicking some more. “Actually, if you apply to all of them, we can just choose one together.”

  I pick up a Rolling Stone off her floor.

  “Not yet,” I say, lying back on her bed, opening the magazine above me.

  “Baby,” she admonishes.

  “I will. I promise.”

  Not a lie.

  I will.

  I'll fill out applications to huge West Coast universities for her, but I'll do so knowing I won't get in, and knowing further that even if I do, I'll never be able to afford it—and even if I could, I wouldn't be allowed.

  My mind wanders to the boy down the hall, and I cross my legs to feel the sting.

  Love is finding comfort in love-made soreness. Love is assurance in a familiar ache.

  Love is still feeling loved, days later.

  “Okay, but like, soon,” Becka says, looking at me. Seriousness sharpens her voice. “Like, the sooner the better,” she continues. “As in, let's do it right now.”

  Rolling my eyes, I laugh.

  “I thought we were going to the beach,” I remind her as I sit up. Tossing the magazine aside, I press my fingers to little cardigan buttons to be sure they're still together.

  “The beach isn't going anywhere, princess kid. This is our future.”

  No, this is your future.

  “Are you …” She starts to ask something, then stops mid-question and gets up from her chair.

  “What?” I ask, confused and more than slightly anxious as she walks toward me.

  Reaching, she tugs at my buttons and pushes my swim tank down, and panic replaces all of my blood.

  “Becka, stop!”

  Pushing her and pulling at my clothes, I flip out, wincing through every sting that struggling with my best friend brings. I end up on my back with every defense I have up, fighting frantically to cover the marks over my heart, but I can't, and she laughs.

  Jaw-dropped and fierce, she pulls her hand from mine.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” She jabs her pointer finger so spitefully hard into the bruise in my chest that I scream.

  “Rebecka!”

  Kicking, I push her forcefully away and sit up. I pull both sides of my stretched-out sweater together and wish I could wrap it around my whole self.

  “You lying little freak,” says the kettle. She laughs and it's real, but there's bitterness underneath it, and distrust burns through her blues as she tugs at the edge of my cardigan like she's looking for more.

  I pull away. Dusty's mark throbs and burns. I feel violated.

  “Are there more?” she asks. Her blues widen, incredulous. “Are you fucking Oliver?”

  Swinging my legs over the side of her bed, focusing on that hurt, I scoff. “No.”

  “It's okay,” she says back, her tone softer, a little apologetic. “You can tell me. I won't be mad.”

  She's so much like trouble.

  “I'm not.” I should be thankful we're not talking about the future anymore, but now I just want to go home.

  “You really can tell me, Bliss,” Becka insists, smiling. “The truth shall set you free, you know.”

  I don't hold my breath waiting for her to tell me she's been blowing Petey for who knows how long.

  “Truth,” I say flatly. “I'm not fucking Oliver.”

  “SO, DO you have some ideas?”

  Miles from fucking, Oliver and I sit at my mom's kitchen table with our laptops side by side.

  Between spending my days with Becka in the sun and my nights underneath hard-spun love, I've managed to splinter off a few minutes for just myself over the last couple of weeks, and I do have some ideas.

  “I found some I think I like,” I tell him, opening my notebook. There's a list on the first page and only three schools are on it, but it's not nothing.

  Subtly stylish and ever good looking smiles. Summer as a lifeguard's been good to him. Tan and fit, he smells like the beach and makes me want to lean.

  “What about majors?” he asks.

  I shrug. I have no idea, but unlike with my parents or Becka or Dusty, I'm not scared to admit that here.

  “That's okay,” Oliver says, extending his hand for my list. “You don't have to know yet. It's okay not to know.”

  I focus on the ocean-blue and grass-green paint streaks on his black cutoffs as he types the first school on my list into his laptop.

  “You can go in undecided. Just start with whatever interests you in any way and go from there.”

  His tone is as patient and kind as usual, but I like it better with music in the background. Opening a playlist on my screen, I scoot my chair closer to his and we take virtual tours together. Linfield and Willamette are pretty, and I like that they're smaller, but they're not as far from my parents as I'd prefer. Mayhurst is farther, and gorgeous, but crazy expensive, and that's when Oliver suggests the Art Institute in Portland.

  “They have a ton of scholarships,” he says. “And their programs are amazing.”

  I don't doubt these things, but it's only two hours from here—which is close enough that Thomas could come visit whenever, but so could my parents.

  “Are you going there?”

  Quietly cool smiles with kind of, sort of shy pride.

  “No.” He shakes his head. “I got into Pratt.”

  “Wait.” I narrow my focus. “What? Oliver, in New York? Pratt Institute, Pratt?”

  He laughs a little and says, “Yeah,” but that's it.

  “Do you want to stay in Oregon?” he asks.

  I shrug again, and when he brings up The University of Puget Sound on his screen, I'm awed not only by how pretty it is, but by possibilities.

  “Tacoma isn't too far from home,” he says. “But enough to get a little free.”

  I only half hear him as I reach over and start clicking.

  MOM WAS excited when I brought up Puget Sound.

  “It's private, right? Small? Isn't it affiliated with a church?”

  When she said she wanted to make plans to visit, I wasn't lying when I said I'd like that.

  I haven't decided, but I think I like it, and I have yet to tell Rebecka any of this. I will when the time is right, and today is not that day.

  It's her father's birthday,and her mother is going all-out as usual. She's throwing a huge party and my Mom's letting me go on the condition that be I home for breakfast Sunday morning.

  Whatever.

  Ben's leaving for school next week. Pete spends all his days at Easy's garage. My boy drives to and from Linn-Benton week-daily, and I start my senior year the day after tomorrow. It's been weird not seeing them all the time, and it's only going to be stranger when school starts and they're nowhere to be found in the halls.

  Standing in front of my closet, half-dressed with curlers in my hair, it's hard to shake apprehension away.

  Pushing dresses around, I wish I was getting ready with Becka. We've spent so much time together lately. It's different, but it's hard not to miss. She hasn't brought my marks back up, but she's more possessive of me and our time so I'm surprised she still hasn't replied to my text from this morning.

 
; Jealousy and resentment burn through me, but I swallow hard. So what if she's with Petey? Maybe she's good for him. His eyes are clearer than Dusty's lately.

  Stepping away from my closet, I grab my phone.

  Tell me something good, I text love.

  I sit down at my vanity and reach for bronzer. Not a full minute passes before he replies.

  Come over.

  THE CATERING van is parked across the street from the Castor house. Lucas and Tommy's cars are in the garage, but Becka's Jeep is nowhere to be seen.

  I pull in next to the Lincoln.

  Smoothing down my sundress as I get out, I push my curls over my shoulders with one hand and carry Luke's card in my other. It's a little after four and still hours before the party starts. End of August heat sticks to me, but the sky's cloudy and the breeze blows through soft peach-pink cotton as my Candie's sandals click across the driveway.

  I let myself in when I get to the front door, and inside, the house smells like warm bread and fresh flowers.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” Tommy greets. Carrying two gift boxes, she smiles a smile that could melt ice caps. “Rebecka isn't home yet, but Thomas is around here somewhere.”

  Nodding, I look around on my way to the stairs. No dirty dishes or paperwork clutter the counters. Nothing's piled up or unclean. It's all spotless-perfect, just like it used to be.

  With the exception of gourmet delicacies in the kitchen.

  Love can wait for chocolate.

  Stopping before I head upstairs, I pop open a little box to find tiny nonpareils, and I feel him.

  I've always known when Dusty's close, but it's stronger than it's ever been. It's more than just my heart now. From my fingertips to my toes, my entire body senses his presence, and I smile to myself as I take a piece of chocolate and let him come to me. I listen closely and get a little rush on the simple sound of his approach.

  Enclosing trouble doesn't lift his heels as he walks. He takes his time across the tiles. His steps sound like an at-ease siege, and each one fills my veins with anticipation. When I turn to face him, lawlessness on long legs looks far too good in a plain white tee and dark slim denim. His eyes are lightless, but they're zeroed in. I'm all he can see and his focus grips me like I know his pocketed hands want to. His regard covers me and his look is just like his kiss.