I sidestepped him and automatically walked to Wes, feeling the guy following me. I touched Wes’s back to get his attention. He turned around in time to hear the guy say, “You shouldn’t dress like you’re giving away free samples if you’re unwilling to pass them out.”
“Uh. No,” Wes said, holding an arm out in front of me, as if warning the guy not to come any closer. “The way she’s dressed is none of your fucking business. It doesn’t give you permission to assume or expect anything from her. I know this girl. She never would have offered herself to you, so back the hell off, and don’t go near her again.”
The guy shook his head. “Whatever man. She probably wouldn’t have been any good anyway.”
I took Wes’s hand after seeing it ball into a fist. I didn’t want him to fight because of me. I forced my fingers between his until the fist had straightened. The guy walked away and Wes’s non-date shifted her weight to one side and put a hand on her hip. “What the hell, Wes?”
“I’m going to drive Sam home. If you’re ready, I can drop you off, too.”
The girl scoffed, gave me the stink eye, and then focused on Wes. “Don’t worry about it. I haven’t had any fun yet, and you’re obviously too preoccupied to accommodate me.”
“I’m sorry she’s leaving. I should have handled the guy myself instead of running to you.” I looked down at my dress. “I shouldn’t have worn this stupid dress or put on this lipstick.” I began wiping it away with my fingers. “I should have stayed invisible.”
Wes took my hand away from my face and held it. “You can always come to me, Sam, about anything.” He gave me a quick smile. “I hate to break it to you, but you were never invisible. You’re going to attract boys, whether you’re dressed up or not, and either way, some of those boys are going to be assholes. Wear makeup if you want to, or don’t. You shouldn’t let how some idiot reacts to you one time make you feel that you shouldn’t do something if you want to do it. And never let a boy make you think you owe him because of what you’re wearing.”
“Thank you,” I breathed, my feelings for him growing deeper in that moment. “Go catch whatever her name is. I can walk home.”
“I’m driving you,” he said firmly, and led me from the house, still holding my hand.
On our way home, the fireworks at the club began. The loud pops and sizzles echoed as the colors burst and spread across the cloudless sky. Wes parked in his driveway and I got out and stared upward.
“We can see them better from the backyard.” He and I went through the gate at the side of his house and pulled two lounge chairs side-by-side, where we lay down and watched the explosions in the sky.
Once the fireworks were over, neither of us moved until his phone rang, and he got up. I stood, too, and while he took the call, I pulled off my dress and got into the pool to cool off.
When Wes got off the phone, he said, “I guess we’re swimming now.”
“I can go home if you need to leave.”
“That was Max on the phone, smartass. He’s the only one who still calls. Everyone else texts.”
“Even the booty call girls?” I asked, an eyebrow arched.
A wide grin overtook Wes’s handsome face. “Even them.” He pulled his flask from his pocket and drank from it.
“Can I have some?”
“You can’t drink, remember?”
“A little won’t hurt me.” I held out my hand.
Wes reluctantly gave me the flask. I took a long drink of the cinnamon whiskey. “It’s cold.” I’d expected it to be warm.
“Insulated flask. Whiskey is better when it’s cold.”
I took another sip.
“Easy,” Wes warned.
I returned the flask to him, feeling a burning sensation in my chest and was suddenly warm all over. “I feel hot.”
“Give it a minute, the burn will go away.”
Wes took off his polo shirt and I watched as he hung it on the back of the lounge chair he’d been laying on. He removed his phone from the pocket and dropped his shorts, kicking them aside before joining me in the pool.
I leaned back until I was floating. I stared up at the stars and smiled. “I feel tingly.”
“You’re buzzing.”
“I like it. I want more.”
“No more.”
I climbed out of the water and sipped from the flask again.
“You’re going to make me come take that thing away from you,” Wes said.
I gave a big smile. “I’d like to see that shit.”
“Get over here.” He laughed and pushed himself onto the tanning ledge, letting his legs hang in the water. I sat beside him and passed the flask. He took the last drink and snapped the lid shut.
I babbled about how pretty the sky was for who knows how long, but stopped when I realized Wes was looking at me. “Why are you staring at me?”
“Not staring. Just watching.” He looked away. “Let’s go inside.”
Wes said I could borrow dry clothes, so I took a pair of pajama shorts and a navy and white polo shirt I’d seen him wear before. I went to the bathroom, slipped out of my wet underthings, and twisted my hair into a bun on top of my head.
In his room, I propped myself up on his bed. “Which side do you sleep on?” I asked.
“The one you’re on.”
I turned my head, pressed my face into his pillow, and inhaled.
“Girls are so weird with that smelling everything shit.”
“I wondered if your pillow smells like you or some girl’s perfume.”
“Which is it?”
“You.”
“What do I smell like?”
“Summer. But you taste like fall.”
Wes grinned. “You’d taste like fall right now, too.”
“Because of the cinnamon in the whiskey. What do I smell like?”
“Something sweet. Like, gardenias.”
“That’d be the fancy shampoo Betty buys for me.”
“It’s nice,” he said softly.
He’d put on a pair of shorts, but no shirt, and it was hard for me to keep my eyes off of him. I suddenly felt bold, thinking of what Austin had said to me. ‘Seize the moment, Sam darling. You may just end up with what you want.’
What I wanted was right in front of me.
I got up and placed my hand on his chest, letting my fingers gently float down his tepid skin. His core recoiled as if I’d burned him. Since he didn’t tell me to stop, I placed both hands on his body and held on. His breath became heavy and I felt as if that was all I could hear. Him breathing. It echoed in the room. In my head. I glanced up to meet his eyes. I saw hesitation in them, but there was something else that encouraged me to keep going. I raised to the tips of my toes, slid my hands to Wes’s neck, placed my partially open mouth on his, and waited for a response. When I didn’t immediately get one, my hands moved to his waist while my tongue slipped out and touched his lips.
“Sam, you should go home.”
He’d said it so quietly that I pretended I hadn’t heard him. I positioned my fingers in his hair and wound them into the damp locks, pulling slightly. He cursed me under his breath, which I oddly liked, and then he opened up and kissed me. I melted as his arms firmly enveloped me and his mouth took the lead. I loved how deliberate he was. How his tongue moved, how gracefully it touched mine. Kissing him this time felt different from the first. This was absolute bliss.
His hands roamed inside of the shirt he’d let me borrow, gently touching my breasts. Having his bare skin on my bare skin was excitingly terrifying. I wanted more of that feeling, and when his hands moved to my hips, I pulled his shirt over my head and pressed nearer to him. Bare chest against bare chest. The heat between us was palpable. My fingers curled against his back. He moaned into my mouth, setting my thighs on fire. His body rested lightly against mine as I pushed the shorts from his hips, and then from mine. We spun around and got onto the bed. His erection brushed my center as he settled himself on top of me. The only bre
athing I heard then was my own. I was dying to know how it would feel to have him inside of me. I was so ready that I could barely stand it. Our mouths joined again and there was desperation on his part. I could feel it. He wanted this too. I opened my legs wider to allow him to fall closer, and then I heard a voice.
“Damn. Sorry, man.” The voice belonged to Max. Wes broke our kiss, snatched a pillow from behind me, and put it over my body, even though the bedroom door had already been closed. He got up and quickly slid back into his shorts. He didn’t look at me as he put a shirt on and took something from his nightstand drawer. He pushed a hand through his hair and left the room without a word.
After a while, I went to find him since he hadn’t come back. He was leaning against the house, staring at nothing, and smoking a cigarette. His angry eyes pierced mine. “Why are you so desperate to have me treat you like every other girl I know?”
“I’m not,” I said, stunned. “Besides, you’ve never treated me like you treat them.”
“I was ten seconds from it, Sam! I’ve been trying my best not to hurt you. I told you to go home. You should have listened.”
“I…” was shocked that he was so angry.
“What if Max had seen you?”
“It wouldn’t have mattered.”
Wes threw his cigarette down and blew smoke over my head. “I guess it wouldn’t occur to you that it could matter to me.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re important to me, Sam!” He was almost yelling. “I care how I treat you—how other people think I’m treating you. I thought we were clear. We’re friends. That’s it.” He shook his head. “You almost ruined us.”
“Me?” I felt my heart break a little. “I wasn’t trying to ruin anything. I thought—”
“You never should have kissed me. Don’t do it again.”
“I’m sorry,” I breathed, tears starting in my eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“Just go home.” Wes pushed himself from the wall and went back inside, leaving me alone, and feeling like absolute shit.
26
I was certain I looked like three kinds of hell. I’d barely slept; feeling confused and awful about what happened with Wes. I had initiated it, but didn’t believe I deserved all of the blame since he’d been a willing participant and as into it as me until Max interrupted us. And then there were the things he’d said to me. I’d overanalyzed the hell out of every word. The part about me being important to him was stuck on repeat in my brain.
I opted to skip breakfast and go downstairs to the closet containing my mother’s things to rummage through the boxes. In the last one I went through, I found roughly forty concert t-shirts. It made me smile imagining the wild times my mother must have had when she’d gotten the shirts, most of which dated back to before I was born. Finding out something new about her that didn’t have to do with her illness made me happy.
I scooped up a few of the shirts and went up to find my dad. He and Betty were in the kitchen having smoothies and sharing a newspaper. I noticed Betty was reading the financial page and wondered if she was scouting for troubled companies to fix. Dad was reading about politics, which kind of nauseated me. I was glad I’d made it home before they had last night. My ass would have been grass if they’d seen me come in wearing Wes’s clothes.
“Were these really Mom’s shirts?” I asked.
Dad looked away from the paper and smiled. “I’d actually forgotten about those.”
I sat down opposite of him thinking that I was going to hear an epic story about Mom traveling to see these bands as a teenager.
“Your mom went through a phase where she collected concert t-shirts.”
My posture wilted. “So, she didn’t see any of the shows?”
“No.”
“Did she think she had?” I grudgingly asked.
“No.” Dad looked down at the table, then back up at me. “A few years before she was diagnosed as schizophrenic, your mom was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. It was mild at first. She counted things, like, the amount of steps it took her to get from Point A to Point B. Later, she became more particular about the order of things, like, the direction the food labels faced, and then she began collecting things.”
“The figurines.” There were always so many of them around. I never thought of it as her collecting them. I’d noticed some of the other stuff, too. I just didn’t recognize it for what it was.
“The doctors and I didn’t know it at the time, because she’d not yet been diagnosed as schizophrenic, but the OCD was a sign of worse things to come. Schizophrenics with OCD have a less positive outcome.”
“I didn’t think there was anything positive about having schizophrenia.”
Dad nodded, acknowledging my comment, but didn’t respond to it. “Your mom loved those shirts. She was especially fond of the Johnny Cash.”
“Why have I never seen them?”
“She never wore them; just collected them. One day she asked me to put them in storage. I did, and she never asked for them again.”
“I’m glad you kept them.”
Dad gave me a sad smile. “Me too.”
Although I’d managed to keep myself busy the rest of the day, so I wouldn’t think of Wes, I felt in my bones that he was at the door when the bell rang. That he’d come to talk. Instead of waiting for Jonathan, I rushed to open the door myself.
“I hope it’s okay that I didn’t call first,” Charlie said. I had to try hard to not look disappointed. “Can you come outside?”
I stepped onto the porch and looked at Charlie, wondering what it was about faint light that made everyone appear so perfect. It highlighted the best parts of a person’s exterior. Charlie’s symmetrical face, bright blue eyes, and blond hair were more potent than before. He hooked his pinky finger onto mine and looked down at me. “I’m off work Sunday night. I know it’s against Dr. Pierce’s rules, but I’d like to take you out.”
A car speeding into the Cohen’s driveway caught my attention. Wes and a straight haired brunette exited the car. She laughed loudly, stumbling into his arms as they walked toward the back of the house.
“Do you need to think about it?” Charlie asked.
I turned to him. “No—I mean yes. I don’t need to think about it. I’ll go.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up around seven.” Charlie let go of my pinky and smiled as he backed himself toward a sporty looking sedan parked in the driveway.
I closed the door, making it halfway upstairs when the doorbell rang again.
“Was that Charlie the sexy waiter I just saw leaving?” Charlotte asked.
She knew it was. “He asked me out.”
She nudged my arm. “That’s great!”
Next door, a high-pitched screech pierced the silence. The sound was followed by a splash and female laughter.
“Ugh. Wes is with some skank. Sounds like I’ll have to drain the pool tomorrow.”
My guts dropped thinking of him planning to do with her what he wouldn’t with me.
Charlotte flashed a devilish smile. “You wanna come over and help me run her off?”
“Not really.”
“Come on, channeling your inner mean girl can be so much fun.” Charlotte’s eyes flashed a hint of evil. “Therapeutic, actually.”
I shook my head no. There was no way in hell that I was going over there. I didn’t want Wes to think I was spying or whatever.
“Look, I wasn’t going to say anything but Max told Austin he walked in on Wes with a girl last night. I know it was you. Those damn security cameras catch everything.”
I nodded, very aware of the cameras. “We didn’t…”
“Good. Better to keep it that way. What he’s doing tonight is what he always does.”
I cut my eyes away from hers, not interested in being lectured again about the dangers of getting involved with Wes.
“I blame myself, because I’m not the warmest sweater in the closet, but the actual thing keeping m
e from staying friends with girls is Wes. I got so sick of my high school friends using me get to him that I stopped inviting girls over, until I met Darcy. She didn’t give a shit about Wes and since she was nowhere near his type, I thought it would be okay, but Wes being Wes, he pursued her. She was completely devastated when she walked in on him banging someone else and realized that he wasn’t serious about her.”
“I would never use you to get to him.”
“I know. I just don’t want the same thing to happen to you.”
“Harlot!” Austin’s voice boomed. “Where are you?”
“It’s great that you’re going out with Charlie. I’ll see you later,” Charlotte said, then ran home to meet Austin.
I trudged upstairs to go to bed and process the new information I’d learned. But being the glutton for punishment that I am, I perched myself at a guest bedroom window overlooking the Cohen’s house. I watched Charlotte and Austin go inside. Wes and the brunette followed them.
I stayed in place and continued to stare out the window, watching the water in the pool glimmer as it circulated from the pump near one of the side lights for so long that I felt hypnotized.
I heard shouting, and then saw the brunette come outside. Carrying her shoes in her arms, she pushed through the gate, still shouting. I smiled, watching her until she was out of sight.
When I looked back, Wes was standing beside the pool, staring up at me. I quickly moved away, embarrassed that he’d caught me watching them.
27
B etty assured me that it was normal to be nervous, but I didn’t like it. “I’ve never been on a date. I don’t know what to do, and I feel stupid in this dress.” It was a one shoulder maxi dress Betty had bought me from the thrift store.
“You look beautiful, and you’re going to have a great time. I’m sure Charlie is nervous, too.”
I didn’t know about that, but I was sure that I didn’t like feeling weird about seeing a boy I’d once thought I hated.
Samantha darling Page 13