by Inda Herwood
Her eyes darken further, mouth set when she says, “Are you serious?”
“What?”
“Are you forgetting what’s hiding under here?” she says, motioning to her shirt.
I smirk, unable to hide it when I say, “No man ever forgets what’s under there.”
“Ugh!” she grumbles, Grim baahhhing in agreement at our feet.
“Okay, just calm down.” I place my hands on her delicate shoulders, forcing her to look at me. “This is not the end of the world. And you shouldn’t give a damn about your scars. What matters is you’re comfortable, nothing else.”
“You gave a damn about them when you saw them the first time,” she argues, not angry, but defensive.
A wave of shame washes over me, and my hands fall from her shoulders. “Yes, I was shocked. But then I saw how beautiful your eyes were, and suddenly I couldn’t see them anymore.”
The admission seems to take us both by surprise, but I smooth my features quickly, trying not to make it seem like a big deal. “What I mean is…in the end, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing. Just lead with a smile and those eyes, and no one will notice the rest. Plus, you’re a ninja, remember? Just roundhouse kick anyone that says something snide.”
She bites her lip, not laughing at the joke like I had hoped. Eyes still washed in surprise, she says, so quietly that it actually hurts my heart, “You don’t know how bad they are.”
I take another step closer to her, much to Grim’s disappointment, while at the same time refusing to look away from her eyes. Instead I swim in them, trying to find every differing shade of gold I can, memorizing it for selfish gain. I associate them with a kind of peace now; a comfortable place to hide when I don’t want to face the world around them.
With slow, deliberate movement, I lift my hand and undo the first button at her collar. She’s wearing a freaking polyester button up in the heat of summer. Her eyes widen at my forwardness, but she doesn’t stop me.
One by one, I open every button until the white camisole she wears underneath is exposed, my hands moving to let the heavy fabric fall from her shoulders, exposing the rest of her neck, chest, and arms. I don’t look at them as I allow my fingers to glide from her shoulder blades down her arms, cascading over raised skin until they meet her hands, weaving them together.
Her expression is as open as I’ve ever seen it.
A sheen washes over precious gold.
“See?” I whisper, lost in the moment, the fact that I shouldn’t be doing this: dangling what I can’t have in front of me. “Invisible.”
Her breath shudders when it slips past her lips, and she shuts her eyes, her hands tightening in mine. With the lost connection, I feel myself reeling with what I almost did – what I wanted to do.
Which is kiss her until she forgot that she was ever touched by anyone else.
With another steadying breath, she nods, eyes still closed. Letting her hands fall from mine, she turns around and goes into her room, shutting the door.
I feel a tiny hoof stomp on my toe.
“Hey,” I growl at Grim, and I swear I see her mouth do the equivalent of a goat smile. “You really are an evil little thing, aren’t you?”
Her returning cry is my confirmation.
A few minutes later, the door Cyvil had disappeared behind opens, and she steps out.
-16-
The Beach
This is crazy, I tell myself as I slip into my favorite indigo sundress that I only wear when I’m by myself, the one that completely exposes my arms and more than half my legs. I haven’t been this free for others to view since I was a little girl, and it feels utterly terrifying.
And I’m doing it all because Jagger Wells said I have beautiful eyes.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
My mother is going to faint when she sees me, openly embarrassing the family in front of all her frenemies.
On second thought, maybe this isn’t such a bad idea.
Shaking out my hands to get rid of the nerves coursing through me, I close my eyes, open the door to my room, and step out, not wanting to see the reaction on his face when he sees the full extent of what only his fingers touched.
Yeah, I can’t even begin to think about that bizarre experience right now.
It’s the first time someone other than a doctor has touched my scars.
When I’m met with silence, and my worst fears start to bubble up in my stomach – still too much of a wuss to open my eyes and see just how horrified his expression is – I’m ready to run back in when I hear the slight hiss of breath. When I realize it’s not coming from me, I crack a single eye to see what it is.
Jagger is standing near the door still, hands in his pockets, like usual. He has on khaki Bermuda shorts, a light blue, cotton button up with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, but like always, his eyes are his crowning feature. They say everything he doesn’t, and unlike the disgusted look I figured he’d wear, I’m met with a small, proud smile, and eyes dripping in cool gray.
When he doesn’t say anything, I slowly move one leg in front of the other, taking me closer to him. Grabbing my purse from the counter, I turn to look at this mystery of a man, only to find him still staring at me. Not the scars.
Without a word, he takes my palm, gives it a warm kiss, and says, “You ready to go?”
A strangled, “Uh…no?” leaves my mouth, and he holds my hand a little tighter.
The trip to the shore takes a while due to traffic, but that’s okay. It leaves more time for me to prepare myself for the reactions I’m about to get. But on second thought, maybe I shouldn’t think too deeply on that subject. Barfing all over Jagger’s nice car would be a travesty.
Turning to watch his profile in the twilight background, I focus on it more intently than I should, looking for any distraction other than the party. I study the curve of his nose, the swell of his lips, the smooth skin of his jaw…and it gets me thinking.
“I bet you were that kid in high school that was the super jock, but also the nicest guy in school.” I mutter more to myself than to him, imaging teenage Jagger.
“What makes you think that?” he asks, hands placed loosely on the wheel, relaxed. It surprises me, mostly because of the past that Lotta had hinted at. But what shocks me more is his racing habit. If he was in fact in a car crash that killed his mother, why would you tempt fate again every weekend by putting yourself in an even more dangerous, and likely, position to get hurt? And how would it not sting to be reminded of your dead mother each time you did it?
Pushing the thought to the side, I answer his question, although distractedly. “Just with how you treat people, your friends. And there’s no way you didn’t play some kind of sport in school.”
This makes him smile. Slightly. He still seems…off, from what happened earlier at the house. Maybe it’s because for a moment, we both had almost thought he was going to –
“You’re not wrong, as much as I hate to admit it. I was really into soccer back then.”
With the sad way he said it, I can’t help but wonder, “And now?”
He shakes his head, finger tapping on the leather of the stick shift as he lets his eyes drift away from mine. “Not so much.”
A silence spreads as we go through the Holland Tunnel, coming out on the other side, night slowly falling around us. My eyes spot a Mercedes speeding by, and I think of another question to ask him. “Was Moon as crazy as a teenager as I imagine him to be?”
Finally, a real smile. “Worse.”
“And Rosy?”
“A big type-A personality, if you can believe it. He was our valedictorian.”
“No way. Really?” I snort a laugh, knowing I never would have put the cool guy with the designer sunglasses and artfully ripped jeans in such a category. “Are there pictures?”
He nods. “Yep. I might even have one from when Moon accidentally dyed his hair green.”
The image takes perfect form in my mind as he says it, and it has us bot
h laughing. “Wait, what about you?”
The laughter slowly dies down. “What about me?”
“Are there any pictures of you as a pimply Freshman? A year when you had to wear glasses? Wait! No, I want to see the ones where you had a bald head. I know Moon wouldn’t have let such an incident go undocumented.”
At the mention of it, he shivers, glaring at me when I break out into another fit of giggles. “I will never, ever, let you see those. Ever.” He vows, the beach slowly coming into view on our left.
“That’s okay,” I say, shrugging it off with a smile. “I’ll just get them from your boys.”
That terrified look enters his eyes again, just as we duck into the front yard of a swanky beach house, three stories tall, the grass filled with BMWs, Ferrari’s, and every other kind of outrageously expensive car you can think of.
As Jagger parks next to a Lamborghini, the Lexus’ engine dying down when he pulls out the key, I think to ask, “Why don’t you drive the Camaro?”
He snorts at that. “Really? I have to explain why I can’t drive that pile of bones around these people?” The both of us step out of the car, his hand coming to rest on my lower back as he meets me on the other side. Without another word, he guides us towards the back of the house where all of the noise is coming from.
Set behind the sand dunes, dozens of young people dance around on the beach with drinks in their hands and music blaring from some source I can’t see. This is the one event a year where the youth of the rich don’t have to be buttoned up and sparkly for their parents. They get to act like the kids they are and throw snobby caution to the wind. I can tell the laid-back aura of everyone here surprises Jagger. I’m sure he was expecting cocktail tables and a swing band playing boring music somewhere.
“Okay, I get that,” I say in regards to his earlier comment. “But how did you come into possession of it in the first place?” I’m asking these insignificant questions because I’m trying to distract myself from what’s to come. I don’t like parties, mingling, talking – particularly with these people. And somehow seeing that in my expression, he answers me when I know he probably wouldn’t have otherwise.
Moving his hand from my back to slip down my forearm, eventually getting caught in my hand, he says, eyes still searching the beach, “It was my mom’s first car. She bought it herself when she was sixteen. It…meant a lot to her.” He swallows hard, his gaze continuing to be evasive, but this time, it doesn’t annoy me. Because I understand.
Holding his hand a little tighter, our steps taking us closer and closer towards doom, I ask, “Does she like parties?” using the present tense on purpose to see if he’ll correct me.
He huffs a strangled laugh. “She hated them.”
Hated. Past tense. Well, at least he admitted a little truth about her, though I still can’t believe this is the first time he’s mentioned her at all.
“I think we’d get along,” I mutter, right before we encounter our first guest.
Jagger
What she said makes me swallow a laugh, because I can totally see my mother loving Cyvil Montae and her sarcastic mouth, and her hatred of the rich lifestyle. My mother never cared for it herself, though having been born into it. She spent most of her life doing charity work as a way to find a good use for her time and inheritance, helping the Red Cross, the homeless, and children’s hospitals. I can never remember her taking a weekend to herself, always trying to save the world with her one woman show.
Thinking of my mom and the things she accomplished – and the hundreds of others she still wanted to do before she passed – leaves a cold feeling in my chest as a girl a little older than Cyvil and a little younger than me walks into our path, her platinum hair lit by the light of the tiki torches set up along the beach.
“Hey, Cyvil,” the girl says with a smile that slowly slips, her eyes momentarily getting stuck on a large scar centered over my fiancée’s left shoulder. Thankfully, it doesn’t drift any farther. “Long time no see.”
“Yeah, it’s been a while,” Cyvil says with a wavering smile, having seen where the girl’s eyes had gone. Taking the chance to introduce me and remove the spotlight from herself, she says, though a little bashfully, “Olivia, this is my…fiancé, Jagger. Jagger, this is Olivia Tisdale. She’s been a victim of the summer party system for even longer than I have.”
“Not by much,” Olivia laughs, and I’m glad that at least I’ll go home tonight knowing one person here was genuinely nice to Cyvil. “And congrats, by the way. My mom told me about your engagement.” Olivia looks at me now, eyes showing their first signs of confusion. “So, how did you two meet?”
Thankfully, Cyvil and I already covered this, knowing eventually someone would ask. “Through my dad, actually,” I say with a forced smile. Cyvil had wanted to keep the story as truthful as possible. And by truthful, that meant leaving out the finer details of that sentence.
“Oh,” she says, looking between the two of us. Her dark eyes are still unsure, but at least she lets it go when someone else comes by and steals her attention, leaving Cyvil and I to take a quick breather before the next one.
Since I’ve never been to one of these things before, I ask Cyvil what the point is, grabbing a beer from the large cooler set in the sand by the boardwalk. When she goes to grab one herself, I tap her hand admonishingly and put it back. “No, you’re not using liquor to get through this.”
“Oh, but you can?” Her eyes narrow at me.
“Yes, because my driver’s license says so. And anyway, you’re going to be our designated driver tonight.” As I go to take a drink, the bottle is suddenly out of my hand and in hers. I didn’t even see her move.
“You’re a terrible fiancé,” she counters, unable to hide the smile peeking out around her lips.
“I think Johnny Law would disagree.”
She huffs, sitting down on a vacated lawn chair set up around one of three large bonfires they have going, this one nearly abandoned with only us and two other kids who don’t seem to want to be here either. With her attention distracted, I take the beer back from Cyvil.
She grumbles, but explains anyway, “It’s stupid, really. Just like all of the other parties. It was originally for the youth of the top one percent to mingle and hopefully form friendships and marriages that will help their parents’ businesses in the future. What the parents don’t know is that they’ve turned it into more of a frat party than a respectable social gathering over the years. Just one sip.” She goes for the bottle again and I take it out of her reach at the last second.
“Do we need to sign you up for AA or something?” I ask, a little concerned now with her attitude towards alcohol. “How did you use to cope with these things as a kid?” I place the unopened beer in the sand as I join her in the adjacent chair, deciding neither of us should have it at this point.
She shakes her head, eyes staring into the fire. “I didn’t. I’d sit in the corner and pretend I was too busy with my phone so no one would approach me. Not like anyone would have, but still…” She pauses, then says, “But this is different. I have to mill with people now, talk, act like you being with me is freaking normal. It’s very stressful. And that’s not including this dress, which I can’t believe I even had the balls to put on. Do you see how a coping mechanism would be a nice thing right about now?” Face lit by the fire, I see the gilded color of her eyes shift over the beach, landing on each face nervously until they find me again. The self-doubt in them is what has me scooting my chair closer to hers, our shoulders touching.
Just as I’m about to say something deep, meaningful, and most definitely something I’ll regret later, a familiar voice pops up behind us, but it isn’t nearly as cheerful as it was last time.
“Cyvil, Jagger,” Mrs. Montae says, now standing in front of us, blocking the fire from view. Her eyes roam disapprovingly around the beach, or more specifically, at the people spread across it. “How are you enjoying your evening so far?” Though her voice is even, her
eyes tell a different story when they notice the uncovered skin of her daughter’s arms and legs.
Cyvil pretends she doesn’t notice, but her hands whiten as they squeeze the arms of the lawn chair. “Fine. And how is the adult’s party up the beach?” she asks in the same tone, eyes flat.
“Splendid. Though it’s growing a bit chilly, don’t you think?” Taking the beige wrap off her shoulders, Mrs. Montae places it around Cyvil’s. But we all know it isn’t the act of a mother’s love. It’s still in the low eighties even with the sun having disappeared and the moon shining. This is because she’s embarrassed of her own daughter. “There, now you’ll be nice and toasty and covered.” Her eyes dare Cyvil to say otherwise.
Those delicate but strong fingers go from strangling the arm rests to curling in on themselves, her mouth about to open in an argument I’d hope would be wonderfully rude and sarcastic to shut her mother up, but instead, another person butts into the conversation.
“Ah, there you are, Mom,” Atillia says, joining us with a tight smile that lets me know she probably heard everything. Her eyes are full of suppressed anger, all aimed at her mother when she puts her hand on her shoulder. “Dad was wondering where you drifted off to. I had guessed the bathroom, but it looks like you found a different dumping ground.” She bends down to give Cyvil a hug and a real smile, all while ignoring the shocked look on Mrs. Montae’s face.
Till says, pulling away to look at her sister, “You look beautiful! I love that color on you. Really brings out the red in your hair.” She lets a piece slip through her fingers, smiling at her proudly.
“Atillia, we should be getting back to the party, don’t you think?” Mrs. Montae says with a hurried air, as though she’s suffered as much embarrassment as she can stand.
“Yeah, I’ll be there in a bit.” Atillia flits her hand at her mother, like shewing away a fly. I chuckle under my breath. As Mrs. Montae begins to walk away, her eyes shooting daggers at anyone who happens to look at her, Atillia says, “Oh, wait. You forgot something.” Taking the wrap from around Cyvil’s shoulders, she flings it at her mother without looking, letting it fall where it may. “Totally messed up the outfit. Warm tones don’t go with cool. Everyone knows that, Mom.”