True Love Way

by Mary Elizabeth

  I’ve asked for this over and over, but his answer is always a never-changing no. He doesn’t have to say so. I know he won’t touch me because of my forever state of sadness. But I want it, and I know it’ll make me better, just like his handholding and kisses do.

  The thought of Dillon touching me where it tingles is nearly enough to make me scream. To have his bare skin pressed against mine will do more than any pill Mom passes my way behind Dad’s back.

  I know he thinks about it.

  It’s when he blinks a little slower and kisses me a little harder. It’s when he has to step away and adjust his pants like I don’t know what he’s doing. When Dillon stops breathing and lets me kiss from below his ear across his throat, I know he wants it, too.

  I place his hand on my chest, and his eyes snap open—wide open.

  He doesn’t remove his palm. “Pen.”

  “Are you scared? Because I’m not,” I say.

  Dillon shakes his head, slowly blinking.

  Letting go of his wrist, I toss my sunglasses to the other side of the bedroom and lift my shirt over my head, showing Dillon Decker my bra for the very first time.

  I unhook the pink cotton and let it fall down my arms.

  Neither one of us takes a breath.

  Slowly and with a shaky hand, Dillon touches me on his own.

  “The greatest,” he whispers.

  Carefully lowering me onto my back, Dillon lies at my side. We kiss, but I want him to really touch me. Turning myself into his side, I hitch my leg over his and move my hips up so he knows it’s okay to get closer.

  He won’t.

  “Why are you afraid of me?” I ask as his kiss brushes down my neck to my collarbone. “We love-love, Dillon. It’s enough.”

  His eyes look up at me while his lips move further down my chest. I watch as they skim over my shoulder and lower down the right side of my right breast.

  Slowly, slowly, slowly his mouth gets closer to my nipple until he’s finally there. Warmth surrounds—wet and tongue and licking. Fire shoots between my legs, and I have to use my own hands to cover my mouth.

  Dillon’s gentle at first, but then his hand squeezes harder, and he sucks deeper. I can feel his tongue circling and kissing. He switches sides, and the abandoned nipple shines in the low light. Fire shoots again. This time I moan, and Dillon smiles against my breast.

  Hot—everything is hot as a fever. I can taste what having sex with him will be like. He’s strong. His movements are tough. He would handle me, love me … take me.

  I can’t wait another day.

  I circle my hips against his leg and whisper, “Dillon.”

  “Now?” he asks, lifting his head.

  He’s pouty lips and wanting this, too.

  Until the slamming door of a silver Chrysler echoes from the driveway up to my room.

  Dillon jumps up and throws my bra at my face. We’re all over the place, limbs and shirts and legs. He pulls my shirt over my head while I try to snap my C-cup back in place.

  When our backs hit the bed, my bedroom door opens, and a very suspecting football coach gives us both the “boy” look.

  “Nothing!” Dillon yells, despite never being asked a thing.

  The pillow over his lap is a dead giveaway.

  Penelope and I turn sixteen on a rainy morning in September. Deep gray clouds rumble and boom, mimicking the noise in my head.

  “Don’t make me spend my birthday here,” she says through the phone. “Take me somewhere safe.”

  “Okay,” I say and end the call.

  My eyelids are heavy, and lack-of-sleep aches deep within my bones and muscles. I know skipping out on another birthday will break my mother’s heart. The horrified look on her face as she clutched the cordless phone in her hand last year when my girl and I emerged from the woods is something I’ll never forget.

  “How could you, Dillon?” she later screamed at me. “Do you know how terrified I was?”

  I kick my comforter off and sit up, stretching my sore arms above my head before I get out of bed and grab clothes from my dresser drawers. Once I’m dressed, I spill whatever’s in my backpack onto the floor and pack a flashlight and a couple of extra hoodies for Pen.

  She’ll forget to bring her own.

  Before I walk out the front door, I pack a few bottles of water and some food from the refrigerator so we have something to eat during the day and snag the red throw blanket from the couch.

  Hopelessness waits on the sidewalk in front of my house in yellow rain boots holding an oversized black umbrella above her head, wearing pink sunglasses.

  She passes me the umbrella, and we walk side-by-side with no destination in sight. We end up at the beach just as the sky opens up and soaks the world. The ocean fights back, slamming angry whitecaps against Castle Rock hard enough to crumble the cathedral.

  The birthday girl runs ahead of me, kicking up wet sand behind her. Pen spins with her arms extended at her sides and her face meeting the rain.

  “Happy sixteenth fucking birthday!” she shouts to the sky. “This year will be better, right? This is when it all gets figured out.”

  I run after her, dropping the umbrella for slowing me down.

  “Then why do I feel like I’m dying?” She falls to her knees and drops her face into her hands.

  I wrap the damp blanket around her body and raise my girl to her feet. With rain falling into my eyes and sobs breaking from between Pen’s lips, I lift her into my arms and carry sadness as fast as I can to the cliff at the end of the seashore. A small, cave-like opening at the base of the bluff is just enough to protect us from the storm and the ocean.

  “I know it’s your birthday and you can supposedly cry if you have to, but don’t,” I say, lifting Pen’s drenched sweater over her head along with her thin T-shirt and bra.

  She shivers, half-naked in dim light from outside, and continues to cry because she’s right. Sixteen won’t change anything. Whatever she has is getting worse with age, and if that means this year will be worse than last year, I’m afraid.

  “I can cry if I want to,” she says with chattering teeth just before I pull my dry hoodie from the backpack over her tiny frame.

  “That’s true, but I think our time in this cave will be better spent if you’re not making things wetter with your tears.”

  She smiles. “You had the lyrics wrong.”

  I tilt her chin up and rub the back of my thumb across the corner of her curved lips. “That’s better.”

  After I change my hoodie, I make Penelope eat a granola bar and a cup of applesauce. A slow stream of tears continues to fall from her eyes, but it’s nothing new. All she does is cry lately.

  “Are you tired?” I ask, moving strands of wet hair away from her face.

  My own exhaustion has taken a backseat to the concern and heartbreak I experience whenever I look at this girl. How helpless I am around her has made a home deep inside my gut, and I can’t shake how guilty it makes me feel.

  She trusts me enough to let me have her love. Penelope comes to me when she needs help.

  But I can’t save her.

  I can’t make the tears stop.

  Nothing I do anymore works.

  I lean back against the rock wall, and Pen lies beside me on the sandy ground, resting her head on my lap. Rain continues to hammer down from the sky, and the ocean crashes to the shore. An hour passes before Pen’s breathing evens and she falls heavy at my side. It’s not until then that I close my eyes and finally sleep for the first time in over twenty-four hours.

  We don’t wake up until the next morning.

  This time my mom does call the cops.

  “What’s Pen’s deal with the rez kid? I thought you told her not to talk to him,” Hebert says between bites of pizza.

  I look up from my lunch toward my friend across the table. Mathilda Tipp’s beside him, checking her makeup in a small mirror; her blue eyes look over the top toward me.

  “Why?” I say, knowing this
has something to do with the reason my girl’s not in the seat next to me and nowhere to be found.

  “I saw her walking with him earlier and was going to kick his ass, but redhead over here wouldn’t let me.”

  Mathilda snaps her mirror shut and drops it into her bag. “You guys do realize Penelope’s a real person, right? She can have friends.”

  “Word is Josh Dark is a dealer,” Kyle says, digging a white plastic spork into a questionable looking school-issued fruit cup.

  Herb, Red, and I wait for him to explain, but he continues to eat odd colored peaches and pears.

  “What kind of dealer? Does he deal cards at poker games?” Mathilda asks.

  “Or deal fine arts?” Herb adds.

  Kyle pushes his tray away and sits back in his chair. He shifts his eyes back and forth between the other two occupying our table and me.

  “Umm, no,” he says in tone that suggests we’re idiots. “He deals drugs.”

  While Mathilda questions Kyle about the information he just dropped on us, everything around me literally stops. With the sound of my own heartbeat echoing in my ears, I rub my hands over my face and close my eyes until the surge of rage washing over my head crashes and I can take a decent breath again.

  “There she is, D. Don’t tell her I told you. I don’t want her mad at me.” Herb chews on his pizza, and Mathilda pretends to look through a magazine she quickly pulls from her bag. Kyle crosses his arms and waits for the show.

  Pen and I have never had a fight, but I feel like fighting now.

  My girl hides her face from me behind a curtain of her hair and green-framed glasses, but she smiles softly to everyone else. Before she has a chance to pull the chair away from the table, I kick it out. She sits, not bothering to say hello.

  “Why were you talking to Josh again?” I ask irately and lowly, so that only she can hear.

  Herbert coughs.

  “He’s my friend,” she says defensively, scowling.

  And just like that, Pen breaks my heart.

  She doesn’t call many people friends. It’s hard for her to admit that Herb, Mathilda, and Kyle are her friends, but she so easily admits Joshua Dark is?

  As I scoot my chair back, it screeches against the tile floor. I get up and walk away from the girl I love because I can’t stand to look at her.

  I need space.

  Just for a moment, I need some air.

  Heading toward the back of the school where I know I can be alone for a while, I’m relieved when I look over my shoulder and Penelope hasn’t followed me. The lunch bell rings, and since I was dropped from honors history after the first semester for too many late assignments, I have the basic American history class with my girl right now.

  I don’t go.

  “Hey, you,” Pepper Hill says, showing up out of nowhere. “Fancy seeing you here. I thought this was my secret spot.”

  She digs inside her purse for a pack of cigarettes and pops the orange end of one between her red lips. With the paper box still in her grip, Pepper cups her hand over the end of the smoke and lights it with a pink lighter.

  “Wanna try?” she offers, blowing an acidic gray, offensive smelling fog-like smoke into the air.

  My dad gave me the lecture about tobacco, so I know about all the dangers of smoking. But I’m angry, so I do it anyway and fall hard for the instant calming effect and head change it gives me.

  I take a deeper hit, filling my mouth and lungs with the disgusting taste of tar and acetone.

  “Slow down before you get sick.” Pepper laughs.

  She takes the half-smoked cigarette from me, and with her standing so close, I can see why Pen’s jealous of her. Pepper’s stunning in a blinding type of way. Her hair’s a different color blonde than it was when we were younger; I can see the natural color growing out closer to her scalp. Unlike my girl, this one wears a lot of makeup, and she smells like a gross love spell.

  “We can meet here every day, if you want,” she says, shaking her pack of cigarettes.

  I know it’s wrong, but if Pen can do it, so can I.

  “Okay.”

  “Not today, Dillon.”

  “Can I go up and see her?”

  Sonya sighs. “Dillon, not today.”

  Penelope hasn’t been to school in almost two weeks, and I haven’t been allowed to see her. Coach Finnel was over to speak to my dad last night. They talked quietly about doctors visits, episodes of unstoppable crying, and the pros and cons of medication she’s supposed to be taking.

  “Will you tell her I love her and ask her to call me as soon as she’s feeling better?”

  With tired eyes, more so than my own, Mrs. Finnel smiles. “You know I will, honey.”

  Not bothering with my bike, I leave it in the middle of the driveway with my heart and start the lonely walk to school. I didn’t sleep at all last night, like the night before, afraid to leave the window in case she showed up.

  Sleeplessness wraps itself around my body, squeezing the life right out of me. Like looking through a fishbowl, my depth perception is off, and my reaction time is slow. I trip off a curb onto the street in front of a car, jumping out the way before it hits me. The driver honks her horn before speeding away.

  By the time I make it to school, I fall into my seat and can’t keep my eyes open. I fold my arms over my desk and drop my head, dead to the world. An hour later, the sound of the bell is in my dreams, and someone shakes my shoulder.

  “You can’t keep this up, Mr. Decker. One more time and I’m calling your parents. Get out of my class.”

  I lift my head, and my psychology teacher, Mr. Moore, is walking away from me. Collecting my things—including the assignments I didn’t do while I slept—I stumble out to the next class. I should wake up after lunch.

  When I get home from school, she’s waiting for me, bright-eyed and barefoot at my doorstep. Penelope runs as soon as I’m within sight and slams into my body, pressing kisses all over my face. It feels good to touch her, and I’m happy to see her. I’m glad that she’s feeling more like herself, only too tired to show it.

  “What’s the matter? Are you okay? Dillon, talk to me.” Looking at me through green circular sunglasses, she places her palms on the side of my face and forces me to look at her.

  “I’m just tired,” I say, taking one of her hands and leading her into the house, up to my room.

  Falling face down onto my bed, my eyes automatically close.

  “It’s a job to be my boyfriend, isn’t it? I’m a hassle.” Her weight presses down on the mattress beside me.

  If I could make the words leave my mouth, I’d tell her that I get it, and that I love her regardless. I understand she’s sick, and I’m here and never going anywhere. Exhaustion keeps me from explaining she can count on me.

  Penelope takes off my shoes and pulls a blanket over my body. She lies beside me, but not as close as before, and I hate the distance. A single word about how much I missed her today or that I like her glasses refuses to pass my lips. When she starts to cry, I want to wipe her tears away but can’t.

  Before I fall asleep, the one who keeps me up at night whispers that she loves me.

  “I’m sorry I do this to you. I’ll try harder to be better,” she says softly.

  When I wake up, I’ll tell her I love her, too, unconditionally. My love for her is absolute. I’ll explain I stay awake with her every night because I want to, because I care, because she’s my girl.

  No matter what.

  Tonight, I’ll be by the window, and everything will be like normal. Tomorrow, we’ll walk to school together, and everything will be okay. If she’ll just stay here with me, when I wake up, she’ll know.

  “You smell like cigarette smoke,” Penelope whispers.

  I press my lips to the top of her shoulder, slowly lowering her bra strap.

  “No, I don’t,” I say against her soft skin.

  She lifts her arms so I can pull the black lace down her arms. “Yeah, you really do.”
<
br />   I meet Pepper Hill behind school every day after lunch to smoke, giving my girl a different excuse each time.

  “I left my backpack in the cafeteria,” I’ll lie. “There’s something I need to get from … wherever.”

  There’s more to it now than getting back at my girlfriend after our first fight. Pen’s been doing well for the last few weeks, but I still worry, and smoking helps me deal. I don’t like lying to her, but it’s better than admitting there’s something I share with her worst enemy.

  “Maybe it’s from the party,” I say, removing my shirt.

  Today is my parents’ nineteenth wedding anniversary, and they’re hosting a party. Everyone’s drunk, and after sneaking away with Pen, Risa promised to be our lookout.

  This could be the night.

  Pushing her legs apart, I lower myself between her thighs so that Penelope can feel exactly what she does to me. Her head falls back, and her pink lips part as I press my bare chest against hers, lighting the room on fire.

  Pressing myself against her warmest spot, with only our jeans between us, I feel her nipples harden against my skin and a shallow breath is pushed from my lungs.

  “Take them off,” I say, panting.

  Penelope reaches between us and unbuttons her jeans.

  “Not your jeans. Your glasses.” I pull them from her face and throw them off the side of the bed, hoping they break so she can’t put them back on for the rest of the night.

  Unhidden and exposed, Pen turns her head to the side, as if she’s suddenly embarrassed for me to see her. She closes her eyes and grips onto my sides, nearly breaking skin with her nails.

  I kiss where her heart beats beneath.

  Then lower.

  And lower.

  Unzipping her jeans, I lower them down to her hips before Pen lifts so I can pull them all the way off, leaving her in nothing put a blue pair of underwear with a small white bow on the top elastic.

  She hides her face behind her hands and sucks in a sharp breath when I kiss the inside of her knee.

  “Is this okay?” I ask before I go any further, afraid of pushing this fragile girl too far.

  With her eyes still closed and my sheets gathered in her grip, the girl I have grown up loving nods her head and bites her bottom lip.