Jaycee let the tears fall like she didn’t even notice them. “Zach wants you back.”
“I want him back too. He’s my drug. That’s what’s so hard.” Natalie took her glasses off and cleaned the lenses on the edge of her shirt. Be brave. Do it. “Jaycee, can I tell you something?” She struggled for the words. “Bishop thought I was trying to find out what happened with Tyler so that I could tell Zach, but I…I was going to let Bishop tell Zach.”
“Okay.” Jaycee got out, and Natalie had to yell out the window to get her attention.
“Okay? That’s not okay. That’s sick. I’m turning into a monster. I mean, am I any better than Tyler? I sabotaged my relationship with Zach, and I don’t even have the guts to admit it.”
“You just admitted it to me. That’s something.” Jaycee stood by the driver’s door and shoved her hands in her pockets. “Maybe you should stop overthinking everything, Nat. If you were truly a monster, you wouldn’t care about Zach. Or me. Or yourself. But you do.”
Natalie wanted to scream. Here she’d wanted to open up to Jaycee, and Jaycee was being so casual. “You’re all so unpredictable. You scare the crap out of me!”
Jaycee smirked. “Now that? That’s a good confession.”
“What if something happened to one of you?” Like Jake. “I’d never forgive myself.”
“What if nothing happened to us? Isn’t that worse?” Jaycee asked. “I don’t know about you, but I’d take something over nothing any day.”
Chapter 40
Jaycee
Trying to get by my dad and out of the house was proving impossible.
“You come home at dawn, and now you say you’re going to Cleveland for two days, and I’m not supposed to be curious?” He eyed my backpack.
“You wanted me to make plans. So I’m going on a trip with my friends.” Strange words from me, and my dad’s disbelieving expression proved it. I glanced over his shoulder, through the front door’s rectangular, prismatic window to where Mik’s car had just pulled up. I had about thirty seconds before Mik would come knocking and fan my dad’s little hope flame. I didn’t want that to happen until I knew what was going on. I tried to sidestep him again.
“Not so fast.” He narrowed his eyes, no doubt wanting to tell me to have fun while also restraining me in a death grip.
The doorbell rang. Great. I reached around him and swung open the front door. Mik was standing there looking awfully shy. I changed tactics, grabbing his sleeve and pulling him next to me. “This trip is sort of an extended date, Dad. Surprise.”
Again, my dad looked like he was either going to call bullshit or start tap dancing. “Nice to see you, Ryan,” he said. “I take it you’re the sober driver?”
Mik nodded. His eyes skimmed my face, my neck. I had a flash of the previous night. Of how close I’d let him get. Of how close I’d let him stay.
My dad looked out the door. “And who is in the car?”
I glanced out. “Eric Bishop.”
“OU president Terrance Bishop’s son?”
“Yep,” I said, thankful that Bishop’s family came with a certain level of respectability. “Natalie’s coming too, so you know we’ll be more responsible than we’d all prefer to be.”
My dad looked over Mik and me like we were one person. “I’m going to allow this on one condition. Text every few hours. Don’t leave me hanging here.”
I hugged my dad around the waist. “We’ll be fine. We’ll be back on Sunday.”
“Okay. Get going,” he said when I didn’t let go.
“I love you,” I told his T-shirt, giving in to those words and their pesky sense of mortality.
“Yep,” he said. I squeezed him until he added. “Love you too.” His face blotched, and I left sniffing, suddenly grateful that Mik didn’t say things just to fill the silence.
We drove to Zach’s house and parked on the street, only to find Natalie and Zach standing in front the Bonemobile, their bags at their feet and their arms around one another.
“Nooo,” Bishop said, getting out of Mik’s car. “I thought we were beyond this.”
“Don’t judge the love,” Zach said, kissing Natalie’s wrist.
Mik and I got out as well. We threw our bags in the open trunk, and when I passed Natalie, I whispered, “Off the wagon already?”
She shrugged. “Look how happy he is.”
“I’m looking at you,” I whispered back.
Natalie turned away and tossed the keys to Mik. “Mik drives because he knows the area. He goes to school up there.” Her eyes darted to mine like she was trying to shove me with her words. “He goes to Kent State.”
Bishop had been opening the passenger door, but he pointed at me. “You take shotgun.”
“I can sit in the back,” I said.
“No way. Favored girl always gets the front.”
“Man Commandment Number Eight,” Zach added. I glanced at Mik, and his eyebrow jutted high as if to say, It’s true.
Zach crawled in the back. Natalie took the middle with Bishop on the other side. I knew Natalie was right about me trying to talk to Mik, but it still felt weird. Two hours passed, almost two-thirds of the drive, before I found the courage. The back trio was sound asleep.
“So you go to school up here?” I asked, immediately wondering if that was too much pressure. The dark path of I-77 flicked a strobe light of streetlamps on his profile. What would Natalie say? She’d talk about herself. “I’m not going to college. Maybe you don’t know that.” I picked at the hem of my shirt. “I’m planning a trip across the country,” I added, wondering why I was admitting that aloud. “I mean, I might do it, but probably not. My parents would croak.”
My backtrack statement made Mik glance at me, and I was unnerved by how much concern lined his face. Things were different after last night—after I’d drunkenly criticized him for not talking to me and then puked into a wastebasket while he held me upright. Then I’d woken to him lying beside me. His hand in mine. And I’d been happy.
That was the craziest part. How did a hangover and massive embarrassment and waking up on Zach’s ridiculous sheets leave any room for happy?
“Thanks for last night,” I said quietly.
“No problem,” he said.
I tried not to jerk my head at the sound of his voice, but I failed. And I liked his voice. Not too deep, but still flecked with attitude. What would it be like to fight with him? Scream at him? Shut him up with a kiss? I went full-body hot. Too many movies. People don’t really kiss in the middle of a fight…do they?
We were silent until we reached the hotel, a Holiday Inn Express. Assigned to room 317, Natalie and Zach took over one full-sized bed, tangle-cuddling like puppies.
Bishop claimed the other one. “I slept on the couch last night,” he added. “It’s my turn for the bed. I don’t care who sleeps next to me.”
“Someone can sleep in the tub,” Zach said unhelpfully.
“No, it’s cool,” I said, pretty certain that I wasn’t going to fall asleep. I grabbed a pillow and tossed it on the floor. “One time, Mik, Jake, Natalie, and I camped out in the backyard and we only used one pillow. Remember, Nat? We fanned around it like a pinwheel?”
“I remember that.” Natalie rubbed her eyes. “Ugh, that was the night with the firefly butts.” She fell back on the bed, and Zach pounced. I dragged one of the comforters to the floor so that I didn’t have to watch them get all handsy.
“What about lightning bug butts?” Bishop asked through a yawn.
“If you pinch off a firefly’s back end while it’s glowing, it’ll keep glowing and you can write with it on anything. On Natalie’s forehead, for example.” I risked a smirk at Mik. He smirked back. He remembered. “Although it’s sad, because it kills the firefly.”
“It’s gross,” Natalie added. “And it’s sociopath behavior.�
�
“Thank you, Dr. Cheng.”
Mik was leaning against the wall, standing over the bed I’d made on the floor like he was assessing the whole situation—like he was trying to figure out where he fit in, which was a really good question. On one hand, we’d kind of slept together last night, no big deal. On the other? I had been out of my mind drunk, and right at that moment, I’d never felt more sober.
I lay down on one side of the pillow. “You can sleep on that side. Like when we were kids,” I added awkwardly.
Mik pried off his boots and trench coat and joined me on the floor, except not really because his body was facing the other direction. His head, however, was next to mine, and I could smell his shampoo and see all the winding curves in his ear.
Natalie turned the lights off, and the darkness slapped. “We’re getting up at four a.m., so”—she yawned—“don’t fool around.”
“That goes double for you two,” Bishop said. “If I hear the slightest groaning, Zach…”
Zach pretended to snore, and Mik chuckled from mere inches away in the dark.
My eyes began to adjust, filling in the gray. I turned my head, and Mik turned his, and we were two inches apart and looking at each other upside down. People look demented upside down. I turned back to the ceiling and traced the concrete slabs that hung over us. Don’t suppose I’ll be able to sleep, I thought in the moments before my heart went slow, my body curling up into a ball of post-hangover exhaustion.
I woke up when I got stepped on. Bishop mumbled an apology and kicked a path toward the bathroom. Desperate to get out of the way and keep sleeping, I crawled to the other side of the pillow and collapsed…until I felt the warm stillness of Mik’s body beside mine.
And suddenly I wasn’t sleepy.
Zach and Natalie were both breathing hard enough to prove that they were out. And a bathroom fan-turned-asthma-monster sounded on the other side of the cardboard walls, followed by the shower. I cracked an eye open. Mik’s breath was even, his chest rising and sinking. His mouth was open a little, and I couldn’t help wondering what he did with those lips. Did Natalie make up that ex-girlfriend? Were there many girls? Who did he hang out with at school? Did he talk to them? Probably.
I hated those people all of a sudden. And I hated that he was sleeping, and I wanted him to stare me down with his well-deep eyes. When he did that, I could tell that he was looking at me. Not my Jake obsession or tomboy clothes or my status as a “beautiful disaster,” as Zach so callously put it. Just me. Whatever Mik saw, he liked, and I wanted to ask him what he was seeing exactly.
I made my move fast and without too much thought. I tossed onto my side and felt my pulse bang as I dared to let my arm “accidentally” flop across Mik’s stomach. He didn’t react, and my heart got way too excited to feel the edge of his black T-shirt—and his skin beneath it. I touched him for a solid minute, feeling downright crazy. When I was about to flip onto my back and give this up as pure dark o’clock madness, Mik’s hand moved to my waist.
Guess who was no longer asleep.
What my fingers had done to his stomach, he did to mine. Light touches. Curiosity with moments of heat in his palm. When his hand went still, I realized he’d matched my move. Would he do it again? I reached under his shirt, tracing the edge of his rib cage down to the lip of his pants and back again. Then I waited. And almost gasped when his hand slid under my shirt to the top limit of my stomach, to the spot where my ribs rose sharply to catch my breath. His hand swept down to my waist, and in a move that was both gentle and sure of itself, he turned onto his side and pulled me closer. Nearly touching.
I kept my eyes tightly shut because I knew that if I looked at him, I’d stop. And I didn’t want to stop. This was quite possibly the best series of dares I’d ever engaged in, and it was my turn again.
I reached even higher and felt his chest. His heart. It slammed against my fingers, and my mind hummed with, This is Mik. This is Mik. Holy shit, this is Mik. But through the head rush, there was more.
This is me.
My hand slid over one side of his chest, which didn’t feel scarred or hairy—thanks, Natalie—and back down to the edge of his pants where I found a belt loop and claimed it as a lifeline.
Mik’s breath was sharper, and I still couldn’t open my eyes. His hand slid up the center of my chest and rested on the spot where my heart was going insane. It stayed there a hell of a lot longer than mine did on his, and I wondered if he was backing down.
I was breathing so hard that I was scared. No one had ever touched my breast before—no one had ever done anything to me before—and as his hand slid over my bra, I couldn’t stop a sigh that somehow felt insanely embarrassing and awesome.
Mik’s arm pulled tight around my lower back, bringing us together. Matched. Hips to hips. Chest to chest. With his height, my face was pressed into his neck, my lips on his throat.
My pulse hammered like I’d just dashed over a finish line, which made me think of track, of all things. Junior year, my dad won an epic battle to get me on a sports team. My long legs found hurdles, and at my first meet, a blue-haired eccentric-looking boy from the other school asked me if I liked to trip. Thinking he meant acid, I nearly spit on him, but then he pointed to my untied laces. It actually made me laugh. After I’d run my event, I found him waiting for me along the fence, only to overhear two boys from my school hassling him.
“Don’t bother,” the first one had said. “She’s as deranged as she is hot.”
“Possibly a lesbian,” the second one chipped in.
I snagged the lead ball from the shot put gear and nailed the second boy in the stomach. That was my last day on track, although the coach did bemoan the fact that she hadn’t sensed my natural gift for shot put before she had to kick me off the team.
Why was this memory coming now while I was in Mik’s arms with my legs somehow wound up with his legs? Was it to prove that I wasn’t a lesbian? Because I definitely wasn’t. I was as attracted to Mik as he, um, definitely was to me. It was more than that. My impulse to touch him had tangled with my doubts too fast. Was I still Jake’s little sister to him? Did I even want to be? Crazy thoughts. Of course I wanted to be Jake’s little sister. But now… things were so different. And I’d worried so much about what Mik wanted from me that I hadn’t figured out what I wanted from him. A kiss? A first kiss? More than that?
What kind of more?
“Mik?” My lips brushed his neck.
“Jaycee, I—”
An alarm went off, and Natalie jumped up and flicked on the light like she’d been foghorned awake. I tried to slide away from Mik, but our bodies were tangled, and it was so obvious that Natalie watched with her arms crossed, her eyebrows sky high.
“Morning,” she said with ten kinds of emphasis. Zach sat up, following her cocked-head stare to where Mik and I were sitting, looking so damn guilty.
“No way. Were they hooking up?” Zach squinted tiredly.
“Better than that,” Natalie said. “I think they were cuddling.”
Chapter 41
Mikivikious
Chapter 42
Zach
Vampire-cave blackness. Plus this place reeked of mold and damp.
Bishop stumbled forward and into a row of seats. “Christ,” he said. “This is hands down the creepiest place yet.”
“My spine is tingling,” Zach said. He bumped into Mik, who lit his Zippo, throwing a dull glow over the old rows of stadium seating. Silver faces looked back at them.
Zach screamed. A falling-to-his-death stormtrooper kind of scream.
“They’re mannequins,” Jaycee said. “Someone staged mannequins all over this place!”
Zach held Natalie’s shoulder in a death grip while his girlfriend swung the beam of her headlamp left and right. Jaycee had already climbed up the seats and was sitting next to one of the blank silver
faces. “How cool is this?”
“Magic Johnson Theatres,” Zach read off the wall.
“The basketball player?” Bishop asked. “He had movie theatres named after him?”
“They used his name as a way to develop first-rate multiplexes in urban areas. The first one was in Harlem,” Natalie said. When Bishop hooked an eyebrow at her, she added, “I googled it. You guys should try that sometime. I don’t have to be the only one who knows what’s going on.”
“My girl researches everything.” Zach slipped an arm around her. “Which was a real neat-o surprise when we started doing it.”
“Zach,” Natalie warned, but she was almost laughing.
“What? I’m proud of my girl. Can’t I brag?”
“No,” Jaycee, Bishop, and Natalie said at the same time.
Zach looked at Mik. “At least you’re on my side, man.”
Mik patted Zach’s shoulder and shook his head. He moved up the aisle, his Zippo lighting the way. Jaycee scurried to follow him, and Zach thought he saw them link hands. There was a different energy between those two since The Ridges. Natalie said that they had been cuddling this morning, but Zach wondered if it was more than that—like they now knew the high of getting too close. Once you’ve had that, you want it all the time. For Zach, that moment had been the first time Natalie sat on his lap and put her arms around his neck. It had felt so good that he’d never wanted her to move, even when his leg fell asleep.
They should call it cuddling crack. Or maybe hugging heroin.
Zach kept his hand on Natalie’s shoulder as they walked up the aisle. At one point, he heard Bishop swear, staring at the screen behind them. Zach turned around. The white, plastic wall had been slashed apart as though by some wild animal or blade-wielding ninja.
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