Put Me Back Together

by Lola Rooney

  Grabbing my keys out of the door, Lucas dangled them from his finger. “Race you to the top!” he said then ran for the stairs.

  I swallowed once before following him, his words echoing painfully in my mind.

  “Race you to the tracks, Katie!”

  “You heard him, Katie Kat. You’d better hurry now. If I get there first, who knows what might happen.”

  “You call that racing?” Lucas called down to me in a whisper, and I looked up at him. The memory dissolved when I saw his face and that dimpled grin waiting for me.

  “I’m coming,” I called, the same words I’d spoken years before, but I put it out of my mind, because looking back was doing me no good. I wanted to look forward. So I cleared a path through the memories and ran after Lucas, hoping maybe, just maybe, we could look forward together.

  This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened on my couch.

  The moment we walked in the door of my apartment Lucas pulled me down onto it, seating me on his lap. I only had a second to think about the fact that I was literally sitting on top of him, every cake and ice cream-loving pound of me, when his mouth found mine. His hand ran up my thigh as though he wanted to start exactly where we’d left off in the car, and all thinking went right out the window.

  “Finally alone,” Lucas said, the hand he’d placed on my thigh making a soft circular motion on my skin, making me feel very much as though I were a wind-up toy. With each turn of the circle, he was turning me on. “It was very forward thinking of you not to have any roommates,” he went on as he kissed across my jaw and over my chin, then downward, toward the low V-neck of my dress. “Thank you for orchestrating this moment.”

  “Well, I aim to please,” I breathed as his mouth found the base of my cleavage, that place where my breasts intersected, and I felt his warm tongue lick me in that perfect spot, his hands griping my hips. The heat that had been rising between us sparked into a fire and I parted my lips and began to pant, afraid that if I didn’t I might burn right up.

  This time he’d taken off his suit jacket along with his coat, and as my hands pressed into his shirt I could feel the muscles of his chest pressing back. What did a chest that felt like that look like, I wondered dizzily, and before I could stop myself I’d reached forward and unbuttoned the two top buttons of his shirt. My hands stilled and so did Lucas’s as we both realized what I’d just done.

  “Are you undressing me, Miss Archer?” Lucas said, and though he was trying to tease his voice had suddenly gone hoarse.

  “No,” I said quickly and perhaps not too convincingly, since I couldn’t pry my eyes away from the expanse of smooth, muscled chest I’d revealed. In a sudden fit of daring I leaned forward and placed a kiss in the exact spot he’d just kissed me, eliciting a tortured noise from deep in Lucas’s throat that I dearly wanted to hear again. And again. And again.

  Leaning forward, I let my lips slide against Lucas’s cheek until I reached his ear. “When you make that noise, it makes me lose my mind,” I said. Then I leaned back again, letting my eyes meet his only to find they weren’t gold at all anymore. They were so dilated they were black as night.

  Placing his hands under my arms, I felt Lucas lifting me slightly off of his lap and then back down again, this time with one leg on either side of his so I was straddling him. My breath caught in my throat at this sudden, more intimate position and I gripped his biceps hard as he slipped his hands up both my thighs this time, not stopping where he had before, but reaching farther, until his hands were cupping my ass under my dress.

  It was at this moment that it occurred to me that maybe I should tell Lucas I was a virgin.

  It wasn’t like I’d been keeping it from him. I just hadn’t thought the night would go like this. All our wrestling on the bed the night before had seemed like a distant dream after a night of no sleep, and by the time morning came I’d chalked it up to male hormones. My own hormones were a whole other matter. But never in a million years had I imaged that tonight I’d be straddling him on my couch, telling him he was making me lose my mind. Things like this just didn’t happen in my life. For good reason.

  As his lips made their journey down my cleavage again, his mouth so incredibly close to my breasts that I thought I might go mad if he didn’t kiss them, my nervousness made me pant even harder.

  Where did Lucas think this was going? I was pretty sure I knew where he wanted it to go, if the way his hands were gripping my ass was any indication. But every make-out session didn’t have to end in sex, did it? Or did it? What did I know? All I had to go on were Emily’s stories, and I could hear her voice in my head right now telling me this was Lucas Matthews. If Lucas knew one thing, it was how to screw, and girls all over campus wiggled right out of their panties at his very first kiss. Well, I hadn’t taken my panties off—although I realized I had mentioned that he might get to see them earlier—but I had started undressing him.

  Oh God, I thought, is that some kind of a signal?

  Was I leading him on? Was I a tease?

  Did I want to have sex with Lucas tonight? Was I going to have sex with Lucas tonight?

  I heard him sigh and bring his face up to meet mine, kissing me lightly on the mouth. “I’m getting the feeling I don’t have your full attention,” he said, pushing a lock of my hair behind my ear before returning his hand to my butt. He really seemed to like it down there.

  “No, you do,” I lied. I wondered what I should do to make him stop looking at me with that questioning expression. Maybe kiss his chest again?

  “Katie,” Lucas said softly. “I don’t know if you realize this, but your body is very responsive.”

  I don’t think I’d ever turned beet red before. With my skin colour I didn’t even think it was possible. After that moment I didn’t have to wonder anymore. It was possible. My cheeks had never burned so hot in my life. I had to cover my face with my hands to block out my mortification. “Oh my God, shut up!” I cried.

  “I’m not saying it to embarrass you,” Lucas said, pulling at my hands, though I kept them clamped over my eyes. “All I’m saying is considering what I was just doing to you, it was easy to tell your mind was elsewhere. You were barely paying attention. What’s going on in that head of yours?”

  I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, louder than any drum. I gazed into his kind eyes, afraid to speak. Would it matter to him? Would it turn him off? Would it make him walk away?

  And if he did, could I stand it?

  “Are you—” Lucas began until I interrupted him, graceless to the last.

  “I’m a virgin,” I blurted.

  Lucas clamped his mouth shut but didn’t break our gaze. I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but I did feel him take his hands off my ass and smooth my dress down over it.

  “I’m sorry, that was stupid,” I said, frowning.

  “What’s stupid? Being a virgin is stupid, or telling me about it?” Lucas said, rubbing my arms lightly. “You don’t have to be embarrassed.”

  Peering at his face, it began to dawn on me that he didn’t seem particularly perturbed. In fact, he didn’t even seem all that surprised.

  “You already knew, didn’t you?” I said, and the fact that he didn’t deny it right away gave me my answer. “Oh, just kill me now,” I moaned, pressing my forehead into his shoulder. I tried to scramble off his lap, but he held me in place by my legs.

  “Katie,” he murmured into my ear. “Don’t hide from me.”

  “This is mortifying!” I said still refusing to raise my head. “Here I thought I was being all hot and seductive, and all this time you knew I had no idea what I was doing!”

  “Who really knows what they’re doing, anyway?” Lucas said flippantly. “And for the record, I think you were doing a pretty good job at seducing me. For your first try, I’d say that was an expert-level performance. Two thumbs up.”

  I punched him on the arm. “Stop trying to make me laugh, I’m too embarrassed.”

>   “What’s so embarrassing about being inexperienced?” he said, running his fingers up and down my spine, sending fluttering waves through my body.

  This time I did look up at him. “Think about how old you were when you first had sex.” I could see his mind going back to that day. “Right, now subtract that number by how old I am right now, and maybe you’ll get why this is so embarrassing. I bet you were having sex when you were fourteen.”

  Lucas pursed his lips and looked up at the ceiling.

  “Oh my God!” I cried. “You really were fourteen! You must think I’m a freak.”

  His hand reached up and covered my mouth. “Don’t say things like that about yourself,” he said, which quieted me. Nobody had ever interrupted the hateful dialogue in my head before, probably because I never said it out loud in front of anyone. I didn’t quite know how to react. “You know what I thought when I figured it out? I thought, how could this stunning girl have possibly managed to escape the notice of every guy she’s ever met in her nineteen years on Earth? Because if I’d been there…well, let’s just say your high school memories would be a little more X-rated.”

  This made me feel a little better, though not completely. “How’d you figure it out, anyway? Am I that bad of a kisser?”

  “I don’t know, let’s check,” Lucas said, leaning in and placing his lips on mine, teasing my mouth open with his. He smiled against my lips. “Seems pretty great to me.”

  “How, then?”

  “Remember the day when we went to the basketball game, when I leaned you up against the car?” he said.

  Did I remember? It was pretty much seared in my brain—the first time I’d really realized how much I wanted him.

  “I was just playing with you, trying to make you admit you liked it, even though you kept insisting you wanted to be ‘just friends.’ But then I saw your lips trembling and I could tell I was moving a little too fast. I put two and two together and I just knew.”

  “And it doesn’t make you want me less?” I asked him, wishing my voice didn’t sound so weak and small.

  “I really don’t think it’s a question of how much I want you,” Lucas said. Placing his hands on the small of my back, he very gently pressed me forward until I was right up against him, my panties pressing right against his crotch, and I could feel how hard he was right through his jeans. The slight pressure in that oh-so-sensitive place made my body flush all over again.

  “Even now, while we’re talking? We aren’t even kissing,” I said, my voice very low. It seemed wrong to be talking about this in anything other than a whisper.

  He wrapped his arms around me, somehow pulling me even closer, and the whole room seemed to shake as we rubbed together, the sensations that had been coursing through my body all redirecting their energy to that one little place. “Whenever you’re around me,” he said, his lips against my cheek. “In the car, at dinner, even in class.” He moved his hips and I let out a gasp. “This is what you do to me.”

  Throwing my arms around his neck, I pushed my mouth against his, my every reservation disintegrating as my whole body throbbed.

  “Take me to the bedroom,” I breathed into his ear, and I heard him take just one ragged breath in response before he stood up, my legs still wrapped around him, and carried me down the hall.

  I had the sudden urge to scream out “Yippee!” but thankfully I was able to hold it in.

  He paused as he reached the closed door, pressing me back against it. His lips met mine, but his kisses weren’t quite as frenzied as they’d been earlier.

  “Katie, I’m going to take you into this room,” he said seriously. “And I’m going to do things to you that will make you scream.”

  I giggled. Oh boy, I was really going crazy with desire if I was giggling.

  “But,” Lucas went on, “I don’t think we should have sex tonight.”

  “What do you mean?” I whined. All the right parts were still pressed together in this position. I could barely see straight, let alone control myself, or my mouth.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I want to,” he said. “I think that’s pretty obvious. But I don’t want your first time to be on our first date, do you? Your first time should be wonderful. I want to make it wonderful for you. And I want to be sure that you’re ready.”

  “Oh, I’m ready,” I said. The searing heat between my legs told me so.

  “Just trust me on this one, okay?” Lucas said, and his expression was so pleading that I couldn’t help but agree.

  “I’m still going to scream, though, right?” I said playfully as he leaned down to open my bedroom door, which, come to think of it, I didn’t remember closing that morning. My own words echoed in my ears as the door swung open and Lucas tensed, tightening his grip on me and trying to back out of the room again, but I was too fast. I slithered out of his grasp, taking in the confusion and panic in his eyes before I swung around.

  I’m still going to scream, though, right?

  But I didn’t scream right away. I didn’t scream as I took in my paintings, the ones I’d taken off the wall to hide from Lucas, strewn across my bed, torn to pieces. I didn’t scream when I saw the paper with its two haunting words, the paper I hadn’t noticed was missing from my coffee table, sitting now on my pillow, stabbed through with a knife. And I didn’t scream when I saw the four-letter word written across the wall above my bed in a red substance that might have been blood.

  LIAR

  Lucas put a hand on my arm and said, “Katie, what—”

  That was when I started screaming.

  “Get out!” I cried, shoving him backwards as hard as I could, ignoring the look of utter shock on his face. “Get out of here!”

  I’d caught him off guard and he stumbled backwards, though he had thirty pounds on me at least. But he didn’t have the weight of my horror bearing down on him. He didn’t have the strength of my barreling dread, or the fear I’d been holding inside of me for what seemed like forever. Fear of this moment. Fear of what was happening right now.

  “Katie, let me help,” he said. He’d regained his balance and turned back to the door, but I was too quick for him. “No, stay out!” I shouted, terrified more than anything that he might come back in and see it all again.

  I slammed the door in his face and swiftly turned the lock as he called my name and shook the door handle.

  That was when the tears came, blurring my vision and pouring down my cheeks. I slid down the door, which vibrated against my skin as he pounded on it. I slid all the way to the floor, and wept.

  16

  I slept right there on the floor, my cheek pressed into the hardwood, shivering long into the night in my flimsy dress. I didn’t even consider moving to the bed, and not only because it was a god-awful mess and my pillow—which I would be throwing out later—had a knife cut right through it. Not only because I didn’t want to lie down under those four letters, dripping with malice. The real reason I didn’t at least pull a blanket off the mattress to cover myself was that I didn’t think I deserved it.

  My past had finally, completely caught up with me. My shame had nowhere to hide.

  The sun woke me up the next morning, an errant ray of light falling through the window I’d failed to cover the night before to pierce my eyelids. I dragged myself off the floor and Turner did the same, uncurling himself from his position beside me on the floor. It was the first time he’d ever slept beside me.

  Great. I’m so pathetic even my cat feels sorry for me.

  Grabbing my glasses from my dresser, I stood in the middle of my room facing my reflection in the mirror. My face was a disaster, my eyes raw and red, my skin a wan yellow, my cheek inflamed from spending the night shoved into the uneven wooden floor. I’d forgotten to take out my contacts the night before, but it didn’t matter; I’d cried them out. My bedraggled hair fell over my shoulders in knots I knew it would take me hours to brush out. Anita’s dress, now so wrinkled I doubted it would ever be the same, hung on me weirdly, maki
ng me look about fifty years old. I realized it was because I was stooping, as though fifty years of sorrow were piled on my back. Overall, I looked like a homeless widow, or a mad feral girl. What was most frightening was that I recognized myself in these figures.

  That’s me, I thought. That horror is me.

  I didn’t know where Lucas had gotten to. For a long time, far longer than I would have expected, he’d stayed by the door, pleading with me to let him in. After a while I could tell he’d sat down with his back against it, because his voice had seemed to be calling right into my ear. As I sat there, still crying, I could almost feel the heat of him through the door, just a thin plank of wood separating his back from mine. Eventually I cried myself to sleep.

  Peeling off the dress, I yanked on a pair of yoga pants and a Queen’s sweatshirt and pulled my nightmare hair into a ponytail, all the while peering at the crack at the bottom of the door to try to discern a shadow. But there wasn’t one. I assumed he’d gone home. Maybe he’d left a note.

  My glance moved to the bed.

  Or maybe not.

  I didn’t touch the bed. I didn’t go anywhere near the bed. I stepped close enough to see that the red letters were not painted in blood, but in red paint, the paintbrush and tube pilfered from my supplies on the floor by my desk. Having seen this, I turned and left the room.

  When I walked into the living room I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye and started, ready to scream, but it was only Lucas getting up from the couch. We stared at each other for a moment. His hair was sort of sticking up and his clothes were rumpled, but he was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Even if his expression was unreadable. The emotions that bubbled up in me at the sight of him were so strong they were almost frightening, mainly because I didn’t feel as though I had the right to them anymore. I’d never really felt like I had a right to be with Lucas. It figured that I was about to lose him.

  “I didn’t think you’d stay,” I said. It was the only thought in my head.

  Lucas practically gaped at me. “You thought I would leave you here alone after seeing that?” He gestured in the direction of my bedroom. “Katie, what the hell is going on?”