“Or was pushed.”
That made her pause for a moment. She may have been overheating, but Con had reached new levels of cold. He was approaching sub-zero temperatures.
“You think she was pushed?” Dulcie clarified. He shrugged.
“I don’t really care, either way. She hated her life, she’s probably glad she’s dead. My father hated her, so he’s probably even happier about it.”
“If you don’t care, then why did you come back?” Dulcie was confused.
He smiled, then. She’d forgotten his smile, forgotten the effect it had on her. That slow grin, leisurely traveling the length of his lips. Suddenly, she was starving, too.
“I came back for this,” he said, waving her sketchbook in front of her face.
Then he turned around and walked away, taking her book with him.
*
When Constantine had come home for the funeral, he hadn’t bothered with his old room. He wanted as much distance between him and his father as was possible. He stayed in an apartment over their detached garage.
After he’d left the library, he’d gone back to the apartment and stripped down before getting into bed. There was no air conditioning and the garage was heated. Combined with the warm spell that was gripping the county, it all made the small living quarters sweltering hot.
He laid naked while flipping through Dulcie’s sketchbook. He’d been lying to her – the funeral really was his reason for coming home. Of course he’d thought about her, though. Not a day went by where he didn’t think of Dulcie. But she made him nervous. He couldn’t tell where he was when he was with her. Was he bad for her? Or was she bad for him?
When he was surrounded by plastic shiny people, he had an easier time pretending he was normal, and an easier time pretending his dark thoughts didn’t exist. When he thought of Dulcie, though, all the pretending stopped. He hated that, it was like a bump in the road. It caused him to stumble.
He’d had no intention of seeking her out while he was in town. School was going well for him. He wasn’t going to go into the NFL, like everyone expected and wanted. No, he had other plans. He was going to get his MBA, then move far away, from everything and everyone. Dulcie could ruin his plans, could destroy his carefully built facade.
But as Con examined each page, as his eyes wandered over all the black paint and the dark lines, he knew it wouldn’t be so easy anymore. He got to the picture she’d drawn the year before, in that long ago detention, and he traced his fingers over the shadowy figure.
So much darkness. Falling in love with this chick would be easy, but surviving each other … that’s an entirely different story.
8
“C’mon, it could be a lot of fun!”
“Yeah, Dulcie, c’mon! Have you ever been up there?”
“You could probably get some great pictures, more stuff for your creepy book.”
Dulcie rolled her eyes at the last pitch. Besides, she couldn’t add anything to her “creepy book” – Con still had it. It had been a week. She was beginning to wonder if she’d ever get it back.
Do I really care?
“I don’t know, you guys. I get off work at eleven, will it even be worth it?” she asked, then she bent over and wiped down the table they were all sitting around.
She was at work and the gang had come in to beg her to go to a party that night. Apparently, the football team had decided to throw some huge kegger up in the woods, near an abandoned mine shaft. A hot spot for parties because the cops could rarely be bothered to trek into the woods to shut them down. Dulcie had never been, had no interest in going, but she’d heard some pretty wild stories.
“It’ll just be getting started,” Jared assured her. She grimaced. That wasn’t a selling point, in her mind. That just meant everyone would be wasted by the time she got there.
“Why is this party such a big deal?” she was curious. Jared grabbed her hand.
“Cause it’s in the woods, and all secluded and private. It’ll be fun,” he assured her, then winked.
Her grimace got worse.
Luckily, at that moment a customer called for her. The diner was railcar style, so she moved down the narrow walkway between the counter and the tables. She took an order, cleared another table, then made her way back behind the bar. As she dumped dirty dishes in the sink, she heard the bell above the door go off. A gust of wind rolled through the restaurant, then the door closed.
“Be with you in a minute!” she called out. She dried off her hands, stuck the new ticket on the order wheel, then turned around.
She moved around the counter with her order pad in hand, but when she looked up, she didn’t seen any new patrons at any of the tables. She scanned the small space once, then began looking over the people at the counter, wondering if maybe the new arrival had simply stepped in and then stepped back outside.
No such luck. She spotted him on her second glance around. He’d slid into the booth next to Jared, his arm stretched out along the back of the seat. He looked so at ease, laughing at whatever silly story Anna was telling. So normal, sitting amongst normal people.
There is nothing normal about Constantine.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted out as soon as she walked up to the table. Con turned his smile on her, but she was better prepared for it this time around and it didn’t quite knock the breath out of her.
“Came in for a cup of coffee, saw these guys. I forgot you worked here, Dulcie,” he lied. She could tell. She could just feel the lie, like a cold snake wrapped around his words. He’d known exactly where she’d be, exactly where she worked.
“Well, I do. Did you want something?” she asked. Her voice was loud and flat, and she watched as Jared winced.
“Jeez, babe, what’s got you all riled up?”
Con’s smile got bigger.
“That’s right, I heard you two were going out. How long has it been now?”
Now it was Dulcie’s turn to wince.
“Eh, like two months?” Jared estimated. Dulcie nodded.
“Yeah, almost,” she agreed. The way Con was sitting, Jared couldn’t see his face, but Dulcie was only about a foot away from him. She could see the knowing gleam in his eye. The malice.
Could see he knew Jared was nothing more than a placeholder.
“How cute.”
“So!” Anna’s high voice cut through the growing tension. “We’ve been trying to convince Dulcie to go to the mine party tonight.”
“Yeah, tell her how fun they are,” Bryce added. Con’s eyebrows went up.
“Never been to a party at the mines?” he asked, though she was sure he already knew the answer.
“Never sounded like very much fun,” she replied.
“Remember the one last year, Con? After homecoming? Man, it was epic,” Jared chuckled.
“They are pretty ‘epic’,” Con agreed with a sigh. “Sounds like a good time. Maybe I’ll check it out.”
“See, Dulcie? If Masters is gonna be there, it’s gonna be epic,” Bryce assured her.
If another person says epic, I’m going to scream.
“I don’t know, it’s gonna be so late, and I -” she began to make excuses.
“Of course, if you’re scared, don’t go. It’s dark up there. Dangerous. Wouldn’t want you running off, getting lost.”
He’d said it to ruffle her feathers, and it worked. She stared down the length of her nose at him, like he was a bug she wanted to squash. She wasn’t scared of anything, least of all some stupid party in the woods. And definitely not Con Masters.
No, I’m not scared of him. I’m terrified.
“I’ll go. But it better be pretty fucking epic.”
He smiled again.
“Oh, it will be.”
*
His smile unnerved her more than just about anything. Con had picked up on that a long time ago, and he almost laughed when she turned and hurried away the moment he showed some teeth. She went back behind the counter and prete
nded to be busy with washing cups.
“You really gonna go tonight?”
Con turned back to the table. He’d almost forgotten he and Dulcie weren’t alone. Bryce, a third string player he’d barely spent any time with, was smiling eagerly at him. A blonde thing sat at his side, a girl Con didn’t recognize at all.
It was Jared who’d spoken to him. Jared had played on the team with him, was varsity, but they’d never been close. Hadn’t really been in the same circles. They’d been to a couple parties together, and of course a lot of stays at away games, but that was the extent of their friendship.
“Yeah, why not. For old times’ sake,” Con replied. The couple laughed and turned to chatter excitably about the upcoming night. Jared smiled and clapped him on the back.
“That’s awesome. I gotta ask, though … this isn’t weird, is it?”
“What?” Con was confused.
“This … y’know. Dulcie and me. Dulcie and you. You two had a thing, right?” Jared asked.
Con had to stop himself from replying with “there is no ‘Dulcie and you’, so why would it be weird?”
“No,” he cleared his throat, stopping the other words from coming out. “Not weird. It was just one kiss, one night. Dulcie and I were never ‘a thing’.”
No, we were almost everything.
9
Dulcie felt uneasy from the moment she got out of the car. Not because of the dark, or the woods in front of them, or the thought of being in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of drunk teenagers. No, it was something else.
Something bad was going to happen that night.
“Do we have to do this?” she asked as they trekked up a hillside. Jared laughed and grabbed her hand, linking their fingers together.
“It’ll be fun, I promise,” he said, then leaned down and kissed the side of her head.
She frowned.
It was actually a decent hike, taking them almost twenty minutes. Dulcie wondered how anyone made it back out after they were drunk or high. She was sober and she was pretty sure she couldn’t find her way back to the car if she needed to get to it.
There was a huge bonfire raging in front of the mine shaft, with a couple kegs just inside the entrance. People were scattered about and someone had set up a bunch of wireless speakers. The woods were filled with the sounds of the top hits.
Dulcie wasn’t a big drinker, she’d seen what substance abuse did to the people in her family. She’d never met her real dad, but she’d heard some pretty awful stories about him, and of course her mother and Matt were daily reminders of why she shouldn’t drink. So when Jared got her a beer, she took it and smiled, but she barely sipped at it.
“Could you imagine being here this time last year?” Anna squealed. Dulcie glanced at her.
“No, I honestly can’t,” she agreed. November of last year, she would’ve been sitting at home, pining away for Constantine.
Now she was in the middle of a party, and she was still pining.
“Can I ask you something?” Anna asked in a soft voice the moment the boys wandered off.
“Sure.”
“So that picture …”
Good god, the picture of her and Con kissing was going to haunt Dulcie for the rest of her life.
“What about it?”
“Well, you never told me the story behind it, and now he’s back, and you just seem …” Anna stopped speaking as she searched for the right word. Dulcie felt her pulse quicken.
“I seem like what?” she demanded. She thought she’d been doing a damn fine job of seeming like nothing was different.
“I don’t know, distracted. I haven’t seen you sketching anything, you haven’t taken any pictures. I just thought maybe … maybe there was more than just that kiss. Thought maybe you’d like to talk about it,” Anna offered.
Dulcie knew she took the other girl for granted. Anna had been there before Dulcie’s “stock had risen”, as it were. She deserved a better friend, really, someone who could handle sleepovers and giggle about boys. Someone with some warmth.
“No,” Dulcie said, then she looked around to make sure they were alone before stepping closer to her friend. “We only ever kissed. But it was … intense. Remember how my camera got broken? Cause he bumped into me? When we were in detention, he looked through my sketchbook, and it was like … he just understood, you know? He didn’t think it was weird, he didn’t question anything. He saw everything exactly how I saw it. That’s why I dressed up for the dance, because of a picture I’d drawn of the two of us. He did the same thing. That’s why we wound up under those bleachers.”
“Oh my god,” Anna gasped. It wasn’t the whole story, but it was juicy enough for the other girl. “Oh my god! So like, it was a thing! Oh my god, he got in trouble that night, didn’t he? Oh my god, what if he hadn’t? What if you two had gone out? What if you were like meant to be together and have a hundred babies and that night ruined it? Oh my god does Jared know!?”
“No! No, he does not, and I don’t want him to,” Dulcie replied quickly.
“Do you still like him?” Anna asked. Dulcie glanced around again.
“I’m not sure I ever liked him. We were just … something weird. We barely ever talked, before that and after that, even now. He graduated and left without even saying goodbye,” she explained. Anna winced.
“Harsh.”
“But then two weeks later, he sent me a new camera and told me to make sketches of the pictures I took.”
“Oh my god he’s totally in love with you you should go have all the babies with him.”
When Anna got excited, her speech would approach light speed. Spaces between words and breathing became optional.
“He is not in love with me. I never heard from him again after that, not once, not till he came back to town. Like I said, it was just a weird thing, and it happened a long time ago. It’s done, it’s over with, and now you know, so now we don’t ever have to talk about it again,” Dulcie said, her voice growing hard.
“But what if -”
“I’m serious, Anna.”
Anna tried to glare, but being upset wasn’t in her nature. She pouted her lips and sighed dramatically, then finally laughed.
“Okay, fine. So he doesn’t like you.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t like him.”
“Correct.”
“So you won’t care that he’s hitting on Frannie McKey right now.”
Dulcie froze for a second. Of course when they’d first gotten to the party, she’d scanned the area, looking for him. She hadn’t seen him in the crowd, though she supposed he could’ve been in the mine, or off in the woods. She’d halfway hoped he hadn’t come.
But mostly really hoped he’d be there.
She glanced over her shoulder, trying to be nonchalant. Probably failing. He was standing maybe fifteen feet directly behind her. A girl was next to him, her back against a tree, and he was leaning over her. Smiling his evil little smile, his arm braced against the trunk over her head. Frannie beamed back at him, laughing and flirting. Dulcie remembered they’d dated briefly, when Con had been a junior. There’d been wild stories about the two of them getting caught in some interesting “situations” in the boys’ locker room.
He’s only ever kissed me, and he’s seen what she looks like naked. Why did I come here?
“No. No, I don’t care. I have a boyfriend, remember? Why should I care who or what Constantine Masters is hitting on?” Dulcie responded, but her voice was so quiet she wondered if anyone heard it.
Then she chugged down her entire beer before walking off to grab another.
She was in the middle of guzzling her third straight cup when Jared found her again. He laughed and pulled the red plastic away from her lips, causing foam to dribble down her chin.
“I’ve never seen you drink like this before, someone’s in a crazy mood,” he teased, reaching out to wipe off the foam. She slapped his hand away and took care of it herself.
“So I was thinking,” he started, and she groaned inwardly. “Thanksgiving break is coming up. Wouldn’t it be cool to take off? My parents have a cabin out on the lake. We could head there on Friday, stay till Sunday. Snuggle in front of the fire, take walks around the lake.”
Hmmm, a whole weekend alone in a cabin with him. She tried to picture what it would be like, did her best to conjure images of burning fireplaces and romantic evenings and sexier night times.
But all that came to mind was the unbearable desire to shove him away. To hold him down and scream at him and make him understand that she didn’t want to “snuggle”. She wanted someone to take a bite out of her. She wanted someone to bleed for her. She wanted to make him understand that she would rather stab him in the eye with a hot poker than get naked with him.
Jesus, just break up with his poor kid before he realizes you’re fucking psychotic.
“I don’t know,” she sighed, then stumbled over a root. She wasn’t a complete novice to alcohol, she wasn’t drunk, but her head was spinning a little. He’d led her into the treeline, where it was dark and the bonfire’s light didn’t quite reach all the way. She couldn’t see her feet in the blackness.
“C’mon, babe. We’ve been going out for a while now,” he reminded her as he pushed her up against a tree.
“Two months isn’t so long,” she argued, then hiccuped. He laughed at her.
“You’re cute when your drunk.”
“I am not drunk.”
His tongue was in her mouth and she almost gagged on it. She put her hands against his chest, intending to push him away, but he took it as an invitation and leaned all his weight on her. She could feel his erection against her hip and the urge to vomit intensified.
“God, you have no idea how much I want you,” he groaned, his hands sliding underneath her shirt.
“I have a very good idea of it right now. Get off me,” she instructed, grabbing at his wrists.
“C’mon, Dulcie. No one can see us,” he assured her while trailing sucking kisses down her neck. She shuddered and pulled hard at his arms.
“I don’t care.”
“Please. It’ll be so hot, I promise.”
The Bad Ones Page 5