His eyes flicked to mine in the mirror. “Thanks.” He returned to running palmfuls of gel into his hair, turning this way and that. He turned on the sink and washed his hands, his eyes never leaving mine in the mirror. Our bruises were half-way gone, his more so, thanks to the brawl last night. He grabbed the water and chugged it down, setting the glass down and swiping his hand over his mouth.
His eyes took me in as I took him in. Same black shirt and jeans from yesterday. His jeans hadn’t been folded, so they were wrinkled around his ankles. But I kind of liked the wrinkles. He smelled like laundry soap again, and with the tousled gelled hair and wrinkled jeans, he looked the stereotype. Bad boy. Rebel. Enigma.
Only I didn’t think he was any of those things anymore.
His brow quirked, and his eyes found mine. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Turning sexy on its head. Overalls shouldn’t be hot. And seeing the edge of your sports bra shouldn’t be either. And your skinny pale arms shouldn’t make me want to touch them as much as I do. I bet you sunburn like crazy.” He laughed low.
I, on the other hand, glared. “Thank you for your in-depth assessment on my appearance. Once again. Is this going to be an everyday thing?”
He gave me one of those private smiles of his. It made me wonder if he had done it before. The way I’d done it in passing. Checking him out from the corner of my eye in the hall since freshmen year because if I got too close I knew I’d hate myself for liking what I saw and want to smack him. But that didn’t make sense, and I dismissed the idea. Dare and I were strangers/enemies before the day we were assigned our photography project.
“Why would I sunburn?”
He stepped forward and wrapped both his hands around my arms, in the middle of my elbow and shoulder. His large warm grasp wrapped completely around both arms, and he towered over me, the scent of my toothpaste thick on his breath. “You ever hear of Free Fall Lake?”
I frowned, peering up at him. “No.”
“It’s insane, Mel. Huge blue lake, desert mountains, sunshine, unending desert, no rules, no pain.” His voice cracked on the last word and his eyes became intense. “We could go. Just take off.”
He sounded insane. “You’re not serious. What do you mean, just take off?”
“I mean take off.” His tone lowered, like the pain inside of him was driving him on now. “Run away. Just you and me. The lake. The sun. Leave our parents behind like they left us.”
“Is that who’s calling you? Your mom?”
His jaw ticked. “Three days, Mel. She can’t watch her own son for three days before she’s calling me to come take care of him.” His grip tightened around my arms. “I’m not, I can’t go home. And be a father when I’m only seventeen. I can’t do it anymore. And I hate myself for it.” His throat thickened, his words sounding choked, and my eyes burned at the consuming emotions churning in his eyes. “For not wanting to take care of Patrick. He’s better off with me than her, but I can’t take care of a four-year-old, work, go to school, and have to take care of myself. I can’t!” he hissed, his armor shedding itself.
I imagined the crash of metal on the ground as he let it all go. I inched my arms up and then wrapped them around him tightly, burying my face against his chest. His arms came around me, tightening them around me in a stronghold. His heart pounded in his chest, creating a soundtrack to his hurt, his disappointments. He needed this. The way I needed dinner and the chance to free fall. It wasn’t like I had to be in Phoenix. I felt a surge of anxiety at the thought of running away.
But I also felt hope.
“Let’s do it,” I heard myself whisper. Before common sense could slap me back into sense.
“Yeah?” he asked, a spark of excitement in his tone. “You’ll take off with me?”
My head bobbed, anxiety rushing through my blood. This was bad. So bad. But what had being good gotten me? Dust motes didn’t hug. They didn’t nourish. They only mocked. “Yes. I’ll go with you.”
“Let’s pack.” He rushed around me for my room. I followed. “Tell me you have a duffle bag?” he called.
I stood there, numb, and shrugged helplessly.
“Snap out of it, Mel. This is a good thing.”
Was it?
He went into my closet, and a moment later I heard him hiss, “bingo.”
I went in to find him going through my clothes picking outfits I would never pair. “Ugh, no.” I shoved him aside and began putting together outfits to turn sexy on its head. Jeans, loose tees. Sports bras, lace boy shorts. I threw in my phone charger, deodorant, lotion, hairbrush, hair ties, and everything else I thought I’d need. Lastly, I packed my camera and an extra SD card.
I took a few things from my backpack, like my wallet, and then I saw my notebook and my eyes shone with unshed tears. I pulled the notebook free and wrote my parents a letter. I wrote Sean too. I’d slip them in his mailbox and he’d break the news to Genny.
I left the letter on my pillow.
Dear Mom and Dad,
If you even notice I’m gone, I’m fine. If you don’t notice, then you deserve each other.
Dare read it, and then put it back in its place, his eyes unreadable. “Ready?” he asked.
If I spoke, I’d break down. I nodded instead. He took my bag. I grabbed my black hoodie off the back of my bed. He grunted under the weight of my duffle bag.
“Would be so much lighter if you didn’t wear ten-pound jeans.”
I shot him a dirty look. “Seems to me you like my ten-pound jeans.”
His lips rose in the corner.
The sun was blistering when we stepped outside. The heat took my breath away, adding to the confusing fog muddling my brain. What was I doing? He tossed his things into the front seat and then my bag into the back. I ran across the street and slipped the letter in Sean’s mailbox, and then jogged across the heat-soaked asphalt for Dare’s truck.
“We’ll have to wait until Mom takes Patrick to the babysitter before her shift tonight. Want to get a bite to eat until I can get in and pack my own crap?”
I nodded mutely in the front seat.
“Hey,” he said, tone soft and warm. He took my hand and wrapped his around mine. “If you don’t want to do this, I’ll get it. I don’t want to do it without you.”
I didn’t know why that made me cry. I hid my tear-stained face by looking out the window. No one would read that letter on my bed. No one would care that I wasn’t around. But Dare would. “I want to go,” I said, surprised by how steady it was, even as I broke inside.
He held my hand as he drove to a burger spot. He took my hand the moment we went around the front of his truck. I gripped his, too. I needed the contact. The burger place didn’t have indoor seating. You even ordered outside. Dare and I got in line behind some kids I thought went to our school. When I looked around, I realized in dismay that a lot of the people eating burgers and drinking milkshakes went to school with us. They were all looking at us. They’d know when we took off that we did it together. Part of me was glad I wouldn’t have to hear that gossip storm.
“The tomboy and the rebel just blew up Phoenix High,” Dare muttered. “How does that make you feel, Tom?”
“Nauseated.”
He chuckled beside me. “Hot.”
When we got to the counter and ordered, I watched him pull out his debit card. My nails dug into his arm. “Money,” I growled. “What are we going to do about that?”
He shrugged my hold off and rubbed the crescent moons I’d embedded in his skin. “I have money in the bank from working over the summer. Grab the ticket,” he ordered, nodding me along.
I snatched the order ticket from the counter and followed him over to the picnic tables out front, all painted a deep shade of blue. I sank down across from him; the Arizona sun shone down on us.
“I have about twelve-hundred in my bank account, and another five in cash hidden in my room.”
“Wait a minute.” I glared,
crossing my arms over my chest. “Have you been planning this?”
“I was going to take off after the school year ended. I’d planned on adding a few more thousand to the pot working, but the time frame changed. The plan changed.” He joined his hands-on top of the table and held my gaze brazenly. “You changed it.”
I started to feel sick. “Wait, just wait. We need to think about this, Dare. What about graduating? Hmm? We can’t bail on our senior year. What about college?”
“What about college? You think I’m getting in to an ivy league? I can’t even afford textbooks. I can’t get a scholarship. This was my future. Whether it happens now or later.” He looked down, and when he looked back up there was a sheen of heartache dampening his eyes. I thought it was the sun playing tricks on me, or his heart bleeding. “What were your plans after school?”
Truthfully, I hadn’t thought about it. Dealing with Mom and Dad had controlled my focus. “I don’t know,” I admitted bitterly. “I always figured I’d be a photographer, a designer, something that involved hiding behind my lens.”
“You don’t need a high school diploma to be good at something you’re already amazing at, Mel.”
He made that sound like we were a team. But that wasn’t the case. And as much as I knew it would sting, I had to be honest with him. “Dare, we barely know each other. Did you forget that fact? We’re not a married couple with our backs against the wall. We’re two teenagers who want to run.”
“Okay, then that’s what we are. Two teenagers running. Run with me, Mel. Instead of away from me.” He leaned close, his intense eyes on me. “Let’s make a deal?”
“What…?”
“If this doesn’t work out, the running, or even us, then I promise you we’ll come back home. Finish our senior year, or start it over, together. We’ll graduate and go to college. But we have to try and run first or being stuck here is going to ruin us. Sometimes not trying is worse than failing.”
I reached forward to put my hands on his. How could I argue with that? What rebuttal would suffice? He was right. It would ruin us; it was doing a find job of that already. And he’d even created a fallback. A backup plan. Having that in place, I felt a tad bit easier, and ten times more desperate to feel the wind on my face as we both ran.
“On one condition,” I wagered.
“Anything, Tom.”
“I don’t want us to be an experiment. I want us to be the real thing.” I swallowed down the nerves and held his storm cloud eyes as they rained down on me.
“It was never fake to me, Mel.” He curled his lips up in the corner. “I can’t resist your ten-pound pants any more than I can the way your back looks as you run from me knowing I’ll chase you every time.” He rose, bringing his lips close.
Breathless and eager to fly, I met him half-way, pressing my lips to his as the sun shone down on us and we made our first promise. I hoped he didn’t do to me what my parents had. Leave me with a house full of dust motes and an empty fridge. We clasped hands and kissed, his silky warm lips soothing every hurt and worry in my heart.
“Order number twenty-two!” a nasally voice called.
Dare pulled back with a wink and took off to get our food. I felt my cheeks and equated the heat in them to the heat in the air. He returned with two cola’s, cheeseburgers dripping with gooey cheddar, and baskets of crispy golden fries. I groaned, and my stomach followed. We both dove in, stuffing our faces, and holding each other’s gaze the entire time.
Love stories started that way, dripping cheese and escape down our chins.
We parked under the rosewood trees at the park a few streets over and rolled the windows down as we waited. From our position, we could see the entire park. It was empty that time of day, plus it was too hot to risk the metal jungle gym or the basketball court.
“This is crazy.” I wiped sweat from my brow.
“It’s not crazy,” he argued, his feet on his dashboard. “Worst case scenario is we run out of money in a few weeks and come home. In the meantime, we got away. Stop trying to run the logic through your goody-two-shoes brain. Cool doesn’t compute in there.” He reached over and flicked at my temple.
I swatted his hand away. “Oh, and you’re so cool.” I snorted. “You’re barely tolerable, Darren.”
He chuckled. “I can’t wait to run away with you, Tom.”
The way he said it sound so hopeful. Like this impromptu trip was going to solve all of our problems. It was endearing to know that some part of him could dream even after having nightmares. It made my heart squeeze in my chest, and I wanted to lean across the seat and kiss him. Instead, I gave him a dirty look and turned back to the window.
We did that for two more hours, trading blows back and forth, arguing whether it was a good idea and him insisting it was. At six, the sun had dipped, sending streaks of gold and lavender through the blue sky. It was breathtaking.
“Go stand in the field,” I told him, reaching between the seats for my bag and camera. “I’m going to document this trip with pictures.” I loved the idea instantly.
He grinned, showing me he loved the idea too. We both got out and jogged through the field. I coached him where to stand and he did, spreading his arms in the air against the sunset backdrop with a huge, handsome grin on his face. My stupid heart squeezed again as I captured it.
“Do me!” I called out as he jogged for me.
“Jeez, Mel, you don’t have to beg me.” He snatched the camera from me. “I want you to jump. When I say jump, count to three.”
I ran out to where he stood, the grass swishing under my feet. I turned, my smile uncharacteristically wide and excited.
“Jump!” he called.
I counted to three and then did, tucking my legs in the air under me and spreading my arms wide. I ran back to see and gasped at how pretty it was. The sky was gorgeous, and I looked oddly happy.
“Your smile’s pretty damn beautiful, Tom.” His warm breath kissed my temple a moment before he kissed it with his lips. “I want to see it more. This is going to be good for you, I promise. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think it was. And good for me. Trust me,” he begged.
I turned my face and our lips met. He kissed me under the sunset, tangling one of his hands in my overall straps, and I tangled mine in his hair. We ran back to his truck and then drove to his place.
I’d never been and thought the bungalow cottage was adorable. One story, front gravel lawn fenced in with black iron. There was no car in the driveway, but there was a bike against the side of the house the size of a little boy’s bike.
“I’ll be back. Stay put.” He started to get out.
“Can I come in and help?”
“No!” he shouted, tone raising ten octaves. “No,” he repeated, slightly less panic-stricken. “I’ll only be a minute.” He closed his door and jumped over the iron fence with ease, disappearing around the side of the house. I chewed on my thumb nail, wondering why he didn’t want me in. Maybe he had more dust motes than I did.
While he was gone, my phone buzzed in my bag. I pulled it free to find a text from Dad.
Dad: I don’t think I can make visitation this weekend, kiddo. Astrid and I won’t be back in time. But next weekend for sure. We’ll go to the movies and eat sushi. I know how much you love it. Love you, kiddo. Dad.
I glared murderously at the screen, typing in a million different responses before I gave in with: See you later, Dad. When I didn’t come home, he’d know what it meant. The hardest part was that I didn’t even think he’d care. He’d blame Mom for it, and she’d blame him, and they’d have another two-year war that really only maimed me.
When Dare returned, he had a bag packed as full as mine, and he looked as eager as I was to run.
“You ready?” he asked, starting his truck and giving me a penetrating look.
“I’m ready,” I said, tone strong.
He flashed me a grin and then pulled out of the driveway.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I didn’t accept what was happening, until I saw the, Thanks for Coming, sign on the highway, and the map of Phoenix waving me goodbye. We’d been driving for under an hour at that point; the traffic was congested, and the heat from the asphalt rose from the street as the sun set fully behind the rugged mountains. It was as beautiful as it was daunting.
I was running away, and every single ounce of confusion I’d ever felt came slamming into me. Dare didn’t notice. The radio was on loud and he looked ever the rebel. Hair in the wind, breaking humongous rules, as I sat hyperventilating in the front seat.
What the heck was I doing running away with him?
But then my mind went down a different path, and found myself asking, why the heck did I want to go back?
The world made rules and we were supposed to follow them no matter what. Even when the people who instituted them left us alone and broken. Anger burned inside of me so fast I felt whiplash. But not all rules applied to every single person all the time. Darren and I tried. We tried to follow them, but they were hurting us. Stripping our hearts of all that it needed to thrive.
Why couldn’t we create new rules? Better rules? Rules that didn’t hurt?
I let my hair down as we passed that sign and let the wind from the open windows disrupt the thick brown strands. They whipped around my face. I glanced at Dare to find him smiling at the road.
“Only four hours left!” he called over the roar of wind.
The traffic faded that far out, and he picked up speed, cutting across the road with confidence and intent. That was his version of running. Putting Phoenix to his back.
I reached over and turned the radio down. “How’d you find out about this lake?”
He worked his jaw, thinking through the answer. “We drove by it when we were moving from Vegas. We moved to Phoenix when Patrick was an infant, chasing the guy who got her pregnant. Just in time for high school,” he added darkly. “And for him to leave her with a newborn.”
“You remembered driving by a lake?” I rose a brow at him, seriously trying to connect the dots that seemed so apparent in his brain.
The Tomboy & the Rebel Page 11