by Einat Segal
One, two, three seconds pass, and my dad doesn't move. We silently reach the basement door and climb downstairs.
"Take off your jacket. You'll get the carpet wet," I whisper.
He eyes me skeptically but does as he's told, taking off his jacket and tossing it over the handrailing by the stairs.
I cross my arms over my stomach and settle on the arm of the loveseat, looking him over.
I try not to see all of Shawn before me. I try to only admire the package.
What am I doing?
I don't know. I've never been the sort of person to question myself, and I'm not going to start now.
"Fee," he says. He hovers in the center of the basement by the bed, not daring to sit down because I didn't invite him to. "Actually, I don't even know what to say except that I’m sorry. I didn't think you'd—"
I’ve heard enough.
I didn't come down here to talk. I push myself off the armrest right into him, grabbing the front of his shirt so that I can reach his mouth.
Maybe I just want to be the one to call the shots. Funny, it is my ego, after all. Oops. I’ve been craving Shawn this whole time.
He kisses me as if we hadn’t stopped back then in his house. He doesn't even need a second to adjust. He knew the moment I told him to come to the door. He knew what I was planning.
But this Shawn is not only starving for me, he's raging. I pushed him too far. I made him feel things he can't handle. The arms that embrace me are not gentle. Oh God. It almost hurts when we come crashing together. Teeth and tongue, nails and passion. Are we kissing or tearing each other apart?
Who cares? Who cares?
Is this happening?
This is happening.
I want this. I want this.
I try to open his jeans with trembling fingers. I need, need, need to touch his skin. I need him naked right now. The stupid button won’t open. My breath catches in desperation, and he rips my hands away and does it himself.
I pull down his boxer briefs and I get down on my knees.
I repeat, I get down on my knees before Shawn Henderson of my own volition.
His musky smell fills my nose making me giddy with desire. His coarse pubes prickle my fingers, and my heart squirms as my mouth wraps around it. Oh God, why is this so weird yet so, so sexy?
He grabs a handful of my hair as he roughly cups the back of my head. I look up, meeting his blue eyes with the usual contempt and euphoric pleasure I always get when he handles my hair.
We don't ruin the moment with something as useless as words. There's a moan that comes out from Shawn, and I remember that he promised to make me scream.
I think he will.
10
I Hate the Honesty Thing
"Wow."
I lie there in the dark, immensely satisfied and at the same time weirded out.
Next to me, naked, is someone I've known fully clothed since I was nine. I know, somehow in the past few months, something was slowly changing between us. There were “events” that led up to this moment. But still, this is strange on so many levels.
Even after he came the first time, the excitement was still brutal. I was almost raving with desire when he kissed me and kissed me as he got rid of the rest of his clothes and ripped off mine.
By the time we actually reached the bed, he was ready again.
I didn't last long, either.
It wasn't graceful. It was fleshy and dirty and spectacular. We were possessed by vicious energy, and nearly broke each other and the bed. It's like how he is with his hands in my hair. How he just knows how to make every nerve ending in my body sing. Except it's not his hands and my hair—it's his whole body and mine.
I only thought about Landon one time, when I marveled about how different this was and yet still so good.
And in some places, somehow better.
"Wow," I say again.
"We should have done it sooner. You should've listened to me."
"And the douchebag resurfaces," I say.
"Nothing I say right now can ruin it."
My toes are still tingling; otherwise, I would have totally gotten up and searched for my clothes to show Shawn the door.
I curl up against him instead. Ah, flesh against flesh. "Oh, Shawn, why are you so Shawn?"
He chuckles. "So you can ask that."
"You should go home."
“Let me stay," he replies.
"What's the point of staying?" I ask.
"I still have plenty of condoms."
Tempting, tempting, but . . . "Listen, Shawn." I rise on my elbow to look into his face. "This is just a sex thing. I'm only using you for your body. If you stay tonight, you may get the wrong idea."
He looks up at me with a sly smile. "This is just a mutually beneficial arrangement. We can stop whenever we want. We can see other people, as long as we're open with each other."
"You're making it sound like we'll do this again," I say, sitting up and scanning the floor for my shirt.
"We will," he says, folding his arms behind his head as he watches me get out of bed to get my clothes.
"Overconfident as always," I say, shrugging into my sweatshirt.
He rolls onto his stomach and looks up at me. "Really? You'd pass up the chance? I promise you, Fee, next time it will be even harder and hotter."
I bend down to fish out my panties from under the bed—what's left of them, at least. "Go home, Shawn," I say drily, looking up to find myself nose to nose with him.
I freeze.
He reaches into my hair as his lips connect with mine. My mouth and my scalp should be numb by now from over-stimulation, but it still works, even this time.
I want it again. I want him again. The gratification. The unrelenting passion that borders on insanity. I want to experience all of it. This must be what doing drugs is like.
Well, Shawn’s right. We can stop whenever we want. I tell myself this as a form of reassurance before I climb into bed.
* * *
"Number twenty, Sophie Green," Shawn reads as his thumbs dance over the screen, typing.
I snort.
"I'm giving you a five, and you get a little star, too," he tells me. "You're the only girl in the world who knows about this list."
"Give me that." I snatch the phone out of his hand.
"It's all backed up in case you're thinking of deleting it."
"What? Venessa Hart got a five too?"
“Well, the list is relative. She was better than the girls who came before her." Shawn says.
"I somehow can't picture her doing anything but missionary."
"It was last year. I don't remember."
I erase the five next to my name and write a ten. Then, after some fumbling, I find the emoji keyboard and add an angry red face.
"Hey, no emoji on my list."
"It's dumb enough, it should have an emoji," I say flatly.
Shawn considers this for a moment. "Well, at least put a smiling one . . ."
"Does this look like a smiling emoji situation to you?"
"I did win, though. Look, I'm smiling." He smiles at me.
"Win?" I hand him back his phone. "I don't think so. You said by Christmas. That doesn't include Christmas."
"It does. It includes Christmas."
I fix him with a ridiculing stare. "If that's what you want to believe."
He gives me a dark look and then tilts the screen of his phone so I can see him replace the angry emoji with a smug-looking pink-cheeked one. It's not even smiling with teeth. It just looks happy with itself, like it ate all the cookies in the cookie jar.
* * *
Shawn doesn't spend the night. We both agree that this time, our parents don't need to know about this. I sneak him out of the house and sneak myself back into my room where I proceed to sleep very deeply until noon. The rest of the holiday and the weeks that follow are spent in a blur of wasting time and orchestrating sexual rendezvous as often as possible with Shawn.
I
t makes me feel both better and worse. Better because when I'm with Shawn, I don't feel as bad about what happened with Landon, and worse because I have a strange sort of dependency toward our encounters.
It's the only thing on my mind, and I feel a little bit sick.
There's a small, insignificant voice inside me telling me that this isn't how I'm supposed to deal with life. But right now, I just don't want to stop. Why should I? Is the alternative of being heartbroken and believing that I’m crazy any better?
And there's something else. I think I may consider Shawn my friend. I can't hardly stand his personality, but I find myself tolerating it, accepting it. He's insufferable, but I don't care.
I’m kind of addicted to him.
If that's not friendship, what is?
So you got what you wanted, Shawn. We're friends with benefits.
* * *
"Oh God, it finally happened," Shawn says with a huge grin as I fix my bra back into place.
We barely even took off our clothes this time. Shawn practically only has to zip up his pants and he's ready to go.
"This has been my fantasy since I was thirteen, Fee."
I look at my watch. "They're going to call us for dinner soon. Better straighten out your shirt."
"Aren't you going to tease me? I've been fantasizing about us doing it here, in the den, while our parents are out there, since I was thirteen."
"Maybe we can sneak in a session after dinner," I say, straightening out my skirt as I try to calculate if we'll have enough time.
"You don't want to banter? Not even a little?"
We likely won't get caught, but I'm at the point of not caring if we do. We've been at it for over three weeks. I don't want to have to deal with Cintia, I muse to myself. It's definitely better that they don't know.
Shawn frowns at me. "Are you okay, Fee?"
His voice is slow, careful. I look up at him quizzically. His gaze softens, and he reaches out and smooths my hair.
"I'm great," I say. "Why?"
"Well, not that I'm complaining or anything, but you're hitting it a little hard . . ."
I try on my sensual smile. "I like it hard."
"You're behaving like an addict."
"That's because I am."
"Well, you . . ." He hesitates and wrinkles his nose, wearing the expression of someone who's about to spill acid on a dead body. "You look unhappy. There. I said it."
Gong rings the bell of my self-awareness.
He said it all right. Way to go, Shawn, putting words on things that shouldn't be talked about. I blink at him, and I’m such a fool. I feel so exposed and vulnerable, I don't even know what to say.
Am I unhappy? I've never been a happy person, but I was never unhappy before, either. Why would I be unhappy now?
Why, indeed?
"Fee, what the hell happened with Landon to make you like this?"
"I can't tell you."
"Why? Do you think I'll tell anyone or call the police? Can't you just trust me?" His voice trembles a little. Why's Shawn so agitated? Why does he care so much?
"You won't believe me if I tell you." These words come bursting out of me. I almost yell them. I can't hold them back.
"Try me."
I shake my head, but nevertheless, my mouth opens, and words come sliding off my tongue. "He's not human," I say.
Shawn's eyebrows shoot up. I'm about to tell him I'm joking—
"You mean, like a vampire? A werewolf?”
"No, he's . . . Why am I even telling you this?"
"Because you have to tell someone."
"Do you even believe me? Do you have any idea how stupid all this sounds?"
He doesn't answer right away.
"Kids," Cintia's voice calls from the dining room. "Dinner's ready!"
I spring up from the couch, rushing to the door of the den. I just want to get as much distance between me and what just happened here. Shawn comes up behind me, grabbing my wrist.
I turn to him, and he looks into my eyes. "I don't know, Fee. I need you to explain. But whatever it is, I think . . ."—he exhales—“I can believe you."
* * *
Shawn’s attempts at believing me are sweet. He’s just going to throw all his common sense out the window so I can have someone to confide in. It’s not going to work. You don’t just believe that there are real monsters in this world just because someone tells you there are.
But he makes it clear he’s going to try his best to believe me. That sort of self-sacrifice is so unlike him that it makes me wonder what he’s really after, or what’s going on with him. He’s obviously going through something lately. He just doesn’t seem like the same person to me anymore.
Or is it me who just feels differently about him?
After dinner, we quickly sneak away, as our parents are deep in another one of their boring conversations about nothing. Shawn sits me down on the couch in the den, stands before me, and crosses his arms.
“Tell me everything,” he says.
I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Fee, you know why I believe you?” He looks at me like he always does. “Because I know you. You’re not scared of anything in this world. I saw you that night, though. You were terrified. You’re a badass girl. I just don’t get what else could scare you to that extent. And. . .” He stops speaking and re-crosses his arms. He looks at the ceiling.
“What?”
“Well, that thing that happened at Ola’s kind of crushed my world, you know?”
“What?”
“Don’t you remember? That night when I showed up at your place covered in blood—”
“No, wait, you’re saying that really happened?”
Shawn’s brow knits. “You didn’t see all the blood?”
I don’t know why I’m so perplexed. I completely established it in my head that everything that happened that night was all part of Shawn’s elaborate plan to have sex with me, and if that failed, to get my parents to think we were dating so he could spend more time with me. “You’re fucking with me, right?”
“Hold it right there. You thought . . . ” His mouth opens and closes. He shakes his head from side to side, blue eyes wide with disbelief. “You thought I made all that up?”
I give him a blank stare.
He releases a quick burst of laughter. “Wow. Fee. Wow! You give me more credit than I deserve. You always talk to me like I’m retarded—”
“Well, you’re just asking for it—”
“But deep inside, you think I’m smart. Unbelievable.” He shakes his head again with a big smile on his face.
“You’re taking this as a compliment,” I observe in a dry voice. “Oh God, Shawn, if your ego gets any bigger, you’re going to crash.”
“I kind of wish I did make that up,” he says with a mock sigh. “But”—his smile vanishes—“it happened, and it was a lot freakier than I told you. I saw the guy come through the solid door like a ghost. I know I’m not crazy, Fee. I thought about it so much after. If I’m crazy, why was that the only thing I ever hallucinated?”
“Maybe the vodka was spiked with, like . . . mushrooms?” I suggest.
Shawn nods. “That crossed my mind,” he says. “But I wasn’t hallucinating when I was in your house, and I didn’t even drink that much to begin with.”
He has a point there. Aside from on the hilltop, I’ve never seen any monsters in my life. I’m pretty sure that if I suddenly became schizophrenic, it wouldn’t just end with one solitary evening. I look away as I struggle to both listen to Shawn and hear my own thoughts zooming in lightning speed through my mind.
“Okay, I’m not saying I’ll believe anything,” he says in a conclusive tone, “but something like that happens, and . . . well, I . . . I—”
“So that guy was a . . . a monster?” I muse.
“I don’t know. I just know what I saw. He was a big black Latino guy, and . . . well, you helped me that night. Maybe you could tell me what happened wit
h Landon?”
Wait, “big black Latino guy” is basically the description of that wyvern dude who attacked me, Shaldorn.
I exhale. I’m nervous. Why am I nervous? Maybe it’s because Shawn is pacing in front of me like a tiger in a cage. “Shawn, sit down. You’re driving me nuts.”
He quickly obeys, sitting on the armrest, angling his whole body to look at me. I tap my palms on my knees. Should I tell him? No. I shouldn’t talk about this. What’s the point?
Well, except, I sort of already told him. I inhale deeply, closing my eyes as I come to a decision. “Okay, Shawn. But don’t blame me if this is crazier than you can handle. I’m not even sure what I saw . . .”
* * *
“Fuck . . . fuck . . .” I don’t think what Shawn’s doing right now can count as pacing. It’s more like he’s jogging the length of the den back and forth.
“For crying out loud, sit down already!” I exclaim. I’m so uncomfortable right now.
“I just can’t get over the fact that Ambrose Sutherland, the Ambrose Sutherland, is a fucking dragon.” He lets out a high-pitched giggle.
I scan him from head to foot. “You’re losing your mind, aren’t you?”
“Definitely.”
“Ugh, I kind of wish you didn’t believe me. I’m spreading the illness.”
Shawn stops walking. “No, just give me a second. I’ll be fine . . .” He concentrates. “Holy shit . . . so when he said he lived more than a hundred lives, does that mean he reincarnates all the time?”
“I don’t know.” I wave my arms up in the air. “Does it matter?”
“Sophie! Shawn! It’s time to go!” cries Cintia’s voice from the foyer. Shawn freezes on the spot. I look at my watch. His face is so pale, his eyes look bright and excited. Shawn, why'd you go digging inside my head, and why the hell are you taking this so badly?
“You have to go,” he says lamely. We didn’t finish talking. I sit there but don’t move.
Yes, I have to go.
I bite my lip.
“Shawn? Sophie?” Cintia cries again. I hear Bob and my dad wondering what we’re doing. Bob jokingly suggests that we may have gotten back together. My dad laughs and says that there’s no knowing with kids these days—he still thinks I’m dating Landon. My mom voices the opinion that we’re probably just listening to loud music.