“You don’t follow rules, so why should I?”
He takes my chin in his hand like he did last time and gently turns my head toward him. He leans forward and presses his lips to my forehead, and that warm, tingly, vibratey, floaty, sinky feeling overtakes me again.
He leans back and laughs, “You’re gunna be the end of me, you know that?”
I slide back and hop out of the truck, slamming the door and stepping up on the runner to lean through the window.
“No, Ben. I’m gunna be the beginning of you.” I grab my bag and jump down to the driveway. He’s watching me, his jaw slack and mouth hanging open. I don’t know why I said it, or even what it means, but I was motivated by that strange new thing that happens when he’s around. What I do know is, I like when his face shows things that are happening inside him, especially when I feel like he’s not used to it. I like the idea that it could just be me who can bring it out.
***
It feels so good to be let off farm duty. I feel rested, stretched out, but still completely sun-baked. Flipping closed the magazine I’m reading, I roll over on my towel in front of Lacy’s pool and lay the mag over my face.
“What do you want to do tonight?” Lacy asks from somewhere beyond the sticky pages covering my eyes.
I shrug.
“Whatever. Don’t matter to me.”
“I think Kels and them are heading out to the Dustbowl later. We could go there. They’ll be drinking, though. They’re always drinking.”
I shrug again.
“Let’s do it.” Pushing the magazine to the side, I sit up and let my eyes adjust to the scorching sun. “But I have to eat something before I pass out. This heat is stupid.”
“The driest summer in twenty some years, I hear,” Lacy says, brushing little bits of towel fuzz off her legs. I burst out laughing, and she throws her hands out and glares.
“You spend way to much time with my family, Bear,” I say.
“No, I just happen to enjoy my life. I embrace where I’m from. I love my history.”
I hate when she gets preachy.
“Yeah, because you’re banging my brother,” I say as nonchalantly as I can and watch her whole face turn the most vibrant red.
“I AM NOT!” She screeches, and I pull her into a big hug.
“Jesus, don’t explode. I was just kidding. If you are, I don’t ever want to know about it. Ever. Seriously.”
She pulls from my hug and shakes her head, “You are just a bitch. A total bitch.”
“But you love me. See we’re like sisters already.”
Lacy just walks away, and I laugh.
“Lac-y!” I call after her. I can hear her laughing.
“I hate you,” she mumbles loud enough for me to hear.
“See. Sisters.”
I scoop up the towels and run to catch up to her just as she steps through the huge glass sliding doors. Her house is a lot more modern than mine, but it also wasn’t built at the turn of the twentieth century. My toes squish the plush grey carpet of the hall as I run past her mom.
“Hi, Judy. Love what you’ve done with the place. Bye, Judy.”
Lacy’s mom breathes in to say something, but I take the stairs two at a time past her and still manage to straighten a photograph on the wall as I’m running. Judy is what most people call clean until they know her. Then they call her obsessive. She cleans multiple times a day, and I swear every three months she’s redecorating something.
I squeeze into Lacy’s bedroom just as she’s shutting the door and toss the towels on the bed. A pain shoots through my arm as Lacy punches me, and I face her open-mouthed.
“That’s for being a jerk about Asher. And yes, I guess I do hang out with your family too much.”
“Okay, fine. I deserve that.” I start rifling through her closet. Jeans, jeans, jeans, and a thousand hoodies.
“Can I borrow this?” I pull out a light yellow zip up, and she nods. She’s shorter than me, and tiny, but she likes her clothes a little baggy, which is perfect for me. I would not ever be able to fit into her pants, though. She looks now like Asher did when he was ten. Like a bean, the super skinny flat ones. I pull my shorts on over my bikini bottoms and zip up Lacy’s hoodie over my top as Lacy throws on loose board shorts and a white tank that shows her flower bikini underneath. I can’t help but think she’d probably fit in L.A. Not with Ben’s crowd but the beach crowd. Definitely with her wavy blonde hair, surfer-style, and love of water.
“What are you staring at?” Lacy looks behind her then back at me.
I throw my arm around her shoulders as we walk out of her room and down the stairs.
“I totally get it,” I say, and she looks confused.
“Get what?”
“Why he likes you so much. I don’t like it, but I get it.” I let my arm slide off her shoulders at the bottom of the stairs. She doesn’t have time to answer because Judy’s watching us like a crazy person as we make our way to the box of pizza on the counter. She’ll be on us the second we’re done to wipe the black granite counters because it ‘shows the grease.’
Lacy is so much more like her dad. Laidback and quiet.
“Gracie?” A tiny voice sounds behind me, and I turn and squat down on my heels to look Mason in the eye.
“What up Mas-son?” I say in a terrible gangster voice holding up my hand for a high five, and he giggles, slapping my hand. It makes me smile every time.
“Can I sit wis you?” His words whistle through the hole where his missing tooth should be.
“Totally, little man. Get your butt up here.” I lift him onto the chair and then lean against the back of it, resting my chin on his tiny shoulder. We eat in silence, and Mason draws pictures on the counter in grease. Lacy points to his tomato-covered fingers and nods toward her mom.
I try to hold in a laugh at the thought of Judy with the bleach bottle after we leave. I snort out a laugh, and Lacy follows suit. We make eye contact, and I spit out a chunk of pizza, trying not to laugh. Mason sits up straighter, and a huge smile spreads across his five-year-old adorable face. He doesn’t know why we’re laughing, but he doesn’t need to. He giggles, which makes me laugh harder, which makes Lacy almost choke on her pizza, which makes Mason squeal with pleasure. I wrap my arms around him and nuzzle my face in his neck and laugh a fake wild laugh as he shrieks and tries to get away.
“Girls, no horseplay at the table, or I guess counter.” Lacy’s dad, John, enters the kitchen and leans on the island across from me. “What’s so funny anyway? I like laughing.”
He picks up a slice and smiles the same smile Lacy has.
“How mom is going to freak when she sees this.” Lacy points to the greasy counter.
“Aw, don’t pick on your poor mother. She has a serious case of… um—”
“Of crazy?” Lacy laughs again, and Judy clears her throat.
“I heard that! What am I going to freak about?” She leans against her husband and then grabs his arm, her eyes going wide like there was a rattler or something sitting on the counter.
“Our cue to split,” Lacy says and backs out of the room. I follow. The Pearsons are weird, but they’re pretty much my family. Judy and Mom were close before she ditched us, and Judy spent a lot of time at our place helping my dad figure out how to care for four toddlers and run the farm after Mom just disappeared like dust on the horizon.
“Where are you girls off to tonight?” John asks as Judy frantically scrubs the grease from Mason and the counter.
Lacy shrugs, “Just going to meet up with Mel and Kels at the Dustbowl.”
“Don’t be late, Bear. Stay out of trouble. I know what we used to do down there at your age.” He winks, and Lacy rolls her eyes.
***
As we walk down the cracked and deserted sidewalk, the orange of the setting sun makes everything around us either flare to life in golden fire or recede into the darkness of shadow. I momentarily breathe it in with awe. Echo Hill is beautiful because it’s been l
ived in. The houses are unique, some nice and some run down, and each family has a history that shows in themselves and their surroundings. I can name every home as we make our way to the school. I can recite who they are, how long they’ve lived here, and who owned their house before them. The Hill is beautiful, yes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to get the hell out of here as soon as I can. Lacy and I walk in silence, and I listen as the breeze whistles through trees, pushing us toward the only place other than the diner we ever hang out. The Dustbowl.
The Dustbowl’s a massive ditch behind the football field at our school. It’s strange to see them side by side, the greenest, most cared for, piece of land in our town next to what looks like a nuclear test site.
The middle of the Dustbowl is all sand and zero vegetation. The rumors in town are that a meteorite hit us forever ago and turned just this patch of land to desert. Whatever the truth is, and I don’t much care, it’s aptly named. We take a shortcut around the back of Mr. Duncan’s dilapidated colonial three-story and come out behind the school.
I can see specks sitting around a tiny fire, their voices carrying across the field but not their words. I jump up onto the lowest bleacher bench lining the field and walk along it until the end zone. Jumping off, I catch up with Lacy to cut across the field. We follow the chain link fence until the final panel where the fence isn’t attached to the post and duck through.
There are mostly seniors here, Brandon and Dermott being two of them. Kels waves with a plastic bottle that she’s holding in her hand. They’re drinking. They’re always drinking. But what else is there to do around here?
Dermott moves as if he’s going to stand, and Brandon grabs his shirt and pulls him down. I reach up and unzip the hoodie I’m wearing so that it’s obvious I’m wearing a bikini underneath. I’m tired of being brushed aside by Ben, and I know D will notice. He always notices me. Dermott looks at me the way I want Ben to. Like if I snapped my fingers he’d drop to his knees just because. His eyes unzip me, unravel me, devour me, but I feel nothing behind it. It used to make my stomach jump, make me smile and stand real close to him just to feel the warmth of his body. D’s hot, but not Bentley hot. D is everyday hot. Brown hair, brown eyes, defined features, thick lips that taste good.
But his smile is just a smile, not like Ben’s. His eyes, while hungry, aren’t all consuming. His touch is rushed and clumsy, not slow and tentative.
Looking at Dermott, I feel nothing anymore. That tingly, sinky, floaty, vibratey feeling Ben gives me has destroyed it. This makes my stomach drop so fast I have to brace myself. The feeling is just Ben. The Ben Feeling.
Lacy makes her way to Mel, and they immediately start talking about my brother, as Mel is one of Asher’s closest friends. Lacy steals glances at me and I try to smile encouragingly, but I have my own problems right now. Like the one where I think I have feelings for Ben. Like, actual real feelings.
This is not good.
I sit hard beside Dermott, and he leans back so I can scoot in closer, which is a motion that is natural for us. We’ve been like this since I danced with him on my 12th birthday and had my first real kiss. It’s no secret D wants to date me, but I don’t date, and his best friend Brandon hates me for it. His eyes are hotter than the fire as he looks past D to glare at me.
Unfortunately, when you live in a tiny town you’re either friends with who you’re given or you’re a total loner and loser like Hunter was. My heart clenches at the thought of my brother. The sight of him as he drove away from me last weekend…again. I have too many guys in my life with too much power over me.
“Hey D,” I mutter and lean on his shoulder.
“What’s up, Gracie?” he asks and hands me a bottle with a clear liquid. Vodka. I hate the stuff, but I need to kill all these feelings. I grab the bottle, watching Lacy narrow her eyes at me from across the fire, but I take a swallow anyway, wiping it off the corners of my mouth. It scalds my insides as it slides down my throat and settles its burn in my stomach.
“Easy, Killer,” D says and takes the bottle. “Something wrong?”
“Everything.”
D touches my lower back and slips his hand under the hoodie so he’s running his fingers along my bare spine, a motion that would have led to make-out-session-necessity a couple weeks ago. But this time? Nothing. Absolutely nada. The only thing I feel is my stomach lining being eaten by alcohol.
He leans into me and presses his mouth to my ear. “You wanna talk about it?”
That’s guy code for hookup.
I nod against his face, and he bites my earlobe playfully before taking my hand and pulling me up. I must have taken a much bigger haul on that bottle than I thought because I wobble slightly when I stand. The buzz of rarely ever drinking takes its hold on me, and the feelings start to fade just a little. I lace my fingers with Dermott’s and don’t look back because I know between Lacy and Brandon I’ll be charred to ash by their glares.
We leave the way we came in and make our way to the bleachers, totally cliché but so totally private. Halfway across the field, D wraps his arms around my waist and kisses my neck with that hunger. There’s nothing slow about him. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it’s not like Ben.
I shouldn’t be thinking about Ben right now. I pull the vodka from D’s hand and take another burning gulp.
Now that D’s hands are both free, he reaches up and unzips my hoodie all the way.
“Dermott!” I hiss. “You can at least wait until we get there.”
He bites down on my shoulder. “No, babe. Actually, I can’t.”
I giggle from the alcohol and spin around in his arms, wrapping my own arms around his neck. He walks me backwards to our destination, and at the exact second we disappear behind the metal and wooden stands, D grabs me by my butt and hoists me up so my legs wrap around him. He presses me against the metal bars, and his mouth crushes mine. D’s a great kisser, his hands, his mouth, his tongue all work together to accomplish exactly what they need to, but as he kisses me and I rake my hands through his hair like I have so many times before, I still feel nothing. All the hot aching need I used to feel when we’d ‘talk about stuff’ is gone. I press harder into him, deepening the kiss. The movement becomes wild. The kiss is desperate. I clutch his shirt in one hand, a fist full of hair in the other. The harder I kiss him, the more urgently he returns the gesture.
But there’s nothing.
I mean, it feels good. He feels good. But I wish he was someone else. All I see is Ben.
My eyes snap open, and I place my hands on Dermott’s shoulders and push. He leans back, really breathy and grinning.
“You stoppin’ me already, babe? Usually we get a little further than this before you decide to put on your purity ring.”
He laughs, and I glare. I hate the purity joke. Like being a virgin means you’re automatically pure, that the other stuff we do is separate and apart from my virginity. Lacy is a thousand times more pure than I am, and she’s not a virgin.
“Seriously?” I ask and lower my legs to the ground. He steps back. His angles, his build, those lips. I should feel it, but I don’t. Like a leaking tap, cold drops run down my spine as the realization washes over me, and Ben’s image floods me again.
He’s not Ben. I step out from behind the bleachers, and D grips my hand, pulling me back to him.
“Gracie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a prick about it.” His eyes plead with me, and I’m stabbed with guilt. D’s a nice guy. This vodka is not doing a good job of stopping the feelings. I lean down to pick up the bottle from where I dropped it. I squeeze his hand and take a swig.
“I can’t, D. We can’t do this anymore.”
I turn and leave. When I’m a few steps onto the field, I hear a loud curse and a bang that reverberates through the sky from whatever Dermott kicked or punched. The noise makes me spin and plop down on the grass right where I’m standing. I take another drink. Things are beginning to slow down, to numb out.
After a
few minutes, Dermott comes out from behind the bleachers and storms across the field. I hold the bottle out to him, but he won’t look at me.
“Keep it. You obviously need it for whatever shit you’ve got going on in your head,” he mutters and keeps moving.
My vision starts to blur, and I fall back into the lush grass. I just wish the world would stop spinning for two seconds so I could think.
CHAPTER 16
Bentley
Carter hands me a beer, and I look at him warily.
“Oh, come on, Ben. One beer ain’t gunna kill ya. It’s been a hard week with our little spitfire off the roster.”
He slaps my back. We’re sitting around the table after a game of cards. Carter’s three beers in but Asher, Archer, and I are only allowed one. I look at the grins on the twins’ faces, and I just can’t stop myself from asking.
“Yeah, about Gracie. What’s her deal anyway?” I ask, and three sets of Holloway eyes narrow in on me.
“What do you mean what’s her deal?” Archer crosses his arms across his chest. My heart stutters, but I let a slow smile splay across my face.
“Well, she’s very…” I stop to choose my word carefully. “She’s very particular.”
The room is eerily quiet for a moment before Carter smiles wide and the twins both laugh.
“That’s nicer than we’da put it,” Asher says.
“I like to say she’s a pain in the ass,” Archer adds, and Carter just shakes his head, the smile never leaving his face.
“Gracie has a hard time forgiving people, Ben. She’s not one to let stupidity slip by her, and I don’t really think she trusts anyone, even us. She is very controlling of her surroundings, as you’ve probably noticed.” Her father says.
“But she’s not really controlling, though, Dad. She’s a collector.” Asher takes a sip of his beer and leans forward on the table. He scoops up the deck of cards we had used for a game of gin after supper and begins shuffling them.
“What do you mean a collector?” That sounds weird and a little creepy.
“Gracie compartmentalizes her life to feel like she has control of it,” Asher says as he flips a card over and places it face up. He flips another. He continues to flip as he speaks, laying each card next to the other.
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