by Abigail Haas
The bright lights snap me back suddenly as Dekker pulls me outside, launching me into the middle of the scrum. Reporters lunge at me from every direction. I’m in the center of a storm, every thought drowned out by their yells. The crowd has swelled to ten times its usual size—all of them jostling their cameras at me, hurling their questions, their faces crude and gleeful.
“Did you kill her?”
“Where’s the evidence?”
“Are you pressing charges?”
“Why did you do it?”
I trip, nearly falling, and then Ellingham is beside me, hauling me on toward the police van.
“Don’t say a word,” Ellingham orders me. “Don’t tell them anything until I’m there.”
“But what about—”
My reply is drowned out by a fresh roar from the crowd. Tate is being led out of the hotel behind me, handcuffed between two more police officers. His parents and lawyer cluster behind, in a panic.
“Tate!” I call, pulling against my restraints. “Tate, it’ll be okay!”
They propel him away from me, toward a waiting van. But before he’s bundled inside, he looks up, searching for me in the crowd.
“Tate!” I yell again, helpless.
He meets my eyes for a minute, anger burning in his expression.
Then he turns away.
HALLOWEEN
“Enough photos, you guys!” AK raises a bottle of vodka, yelling over the pounding rock music that fills the kitchen. It’s late night on Halloween, and I’m sandwiched between Elise and Tate, posing for the flash of his cell phone camera. AK gestures impatiently, spilling his drink. “Let’s get this show on the road!”
“Who votes that AK doesn’t drive?” Chelsea laughs as she swipes the bottle from him and takes a gulp. Her tanned skin is dusted with glitter in her tiny Leia bikini, her long hair wound up in fat braided whorls.
“What are you talking about?” AK doffs the cap of his revolutionary war costume. “I am as sober as the grave.”
“Bad metaphor, it’s the day of the dead,” Elise points out, still draped around me, holding the kitchen knife we’ve smeared with fake blood. “Graveyards are party central—all the spirits going crazy.”
“C’mon, you don’t believe that stuff.” I turn to her. “Ghosts and spirits and all that bullshit?”
“Oh shit!” Elise giggles. “Okay, if this was a horror movie, you’d have just doomed yourself to some serious undead revenge.”
“Woo!” I cry, waving my arms around. “You hear that, evil spirits? I mock you and your very existence. Just try to come get me.”
“And . . . I vote that Anna doesn’t drive either.” Chelsea watches, laughing.
Lamar looks up from his phone. “I just checked in with my buddies, they say the party’s going hard.”
“Then let’s roll. Max!” Chelsea yells, without pausing for breath. He wanders in, smoking the end of a fat blunt.
“Dude! Not in the house!” Chelsea snatches it away from him. “Do you want our parents to freak again?” She moves to throw it down the garbage disposal, but not before taking a quick toke herself.
“Whatever.” Max grins through the thick zombie scars on his face. He looks down at his football uniform, dirtied and stained. “Hey, can I get some more blood up in here?”
As Elise goes to smear him with more fake-blood makeup, I feel a new pair of arms slip around me; lips kissing, soft against the back of my neck. I shiver, leaning back into Tate’s embrace.
“Did I tell you how sexy you look in that costume?” he whispers in my ear.
I laugh. “Only ten million times.”
“Well, you do.” His lips press against my neck again, but this time he bites down softly, playful. His arms tighten, his breath hot against my skin. “I can’t wait to get you out of it.”
His words send another shiver of excitement through me—this time edged with unfamiliar uncertainty, but before I can reply, he’s pulled me around so I’m facing him, his lips hard and searching on mine. I melt into him, falling back against the kitchen cabinet as we kiss, long and deep. I hear the chatter of the others in the room; music loud; the low, sweet scent of weed, but it all falls away, the way it always does when I’m kissing him.
It still amazes me, how we can create a different place, a whole world, just in the place where our bodies meet. Ours. Even here, in the brightly lit kitchen, it’s the same as when we’re alone, the two of us, in the dark fort of covers in a bedroom at night. All he has to do is touch me and I feel that quicksilver longing, breathless and expectant—
“Okay people, into the van!” Chelsea yells loudly, cutting through the drum of my heartbeat. Tate pulls away from me, we’re both smiling, bashful but conspiratorial. “Andiamo!” she claps, shooing us. “Vamos!”
* * *
We grab our bags and coats and head out to the front of the house, piling into the Newports’ van—crammed together in a tangle of costume hats and fake blood and weaponry. “I told you these costumes would be killer.” Elise beams, crushed up against me. Our tiny cheerleader skirts cut off midthigh, and we’ve streaked blood down our faces, dripping from our fangs.
“You didn’t say you were matching,” Mel complains from her other side.
Elise and I share a look of exasperation. Mel sees it. “What? You didn’t. I would have gotten one too.”
“You look great,” Elise placates her. “You always look cute in that outfit.”
Mel tugs at her catsuit tail, her whiskers quivering. “Still . . .”
Elise turns away from her, back to me. “So”—she drops her voice meaningfully—“you were getting cozy there in the kitchen.”
I shoot a nervous look to the front seat, where Tate is scanning through Max’s iPod, the music already too loud in the packed van.
“Relax,” Elise says, and grins, keeping her voice low. “He can’t hear us. Tonight’s the night?”
I shrug, blushing.
“Aww, my little girl’s going to be a woman,” Elise squeezes me close. I fight half-heartedly.
“Don’t . . .”
“It’s cool,” Elise reassures me. “I’ll cover with your parents if they call.”
“They won’t.”
My quiet reply is drowned by Chelsea. “Elise, what was that song you played for me? The one from that show . . . ”
As the group chatters and bickers, I gaze out the window at the dark freeway, hugging my arms around myself. It’s clichéd, to plan something like this, to be so nervous, but this is my first time. For all of Elise’s and my wild partying, the most I’ve ever done with a guy is almost everything: hot fingers in a dark room, an unfamiliar taste in my mouth. Tate and I have fooled around, sure, but I’ve been holding back, waiting, never quite certain I should take that step over the edge.
It’s not about the physical stuff; I know I want him. I’m consumed with wanting him. That’s the problem. I’ve never felt so reckless in my life before—so out of control. I hide it—from him, Elise, everyone—but sometimes I can’t sleep for the desire racing in my system. I lie awake at night, poring over memories of us together: the look of dark intensity in his eyes, a deliberate grind of his hips against mine, the blurring gasps of surprised pleasure. I lie in the haze of desire, imagining everything that would follow if I would only just say yes: mouths and fingers and that final push of friction my body seems to demand, crying out in a language I don’t even understand.
The truth is, it’s not the act I’m scared of, but giving myself so entirely to someone. As long as there are lines to draw and boundaries to cling to, I can pretend that I’m safe from this wanting that threatens to consume me. I’m separate, still all my own. But after . . .
What then? What comes after, when he has that much of me, to do with as he chooses? When I have him. Will it ever be enough?
* * *
“I don’t want to pressure you,” he told me, his bare chest still rising and falling with quick gasps of air. We were back in his
bed last week, the same place we’d been reaching for weeks now: almost naked, almost there, almost too far to stop.
Almost.
His breathing slowed. “I just don’t understand why you’re not ready.” Tate propped himself up on one elbow, leaning over me, a hand gentle on my cheek. “You know I love you.”
I nodded.
“And you love me.” He grinned, trailing his hand lower, down my throat and across the sensitive skin of my breast. I felt my stomach flip over again—as much from the victory in his expression as the sensation of his fingers, soft against my skin. My love was a prize, a triumph to him.
I nodded again.
“So what are we waiting for?” Tate dipped his head, following the path of his hand with his lips now, kissing a winding trail down my body, while the other hand gently stroked, lower, in a slow rhythm that left me gasping. “I want to know you,” he said, lifting his head from my stomach to meet my eyes. There was nothing but sincerity there, hopeful and reassuring. “Completely.”
* * *
Completely.
The group laughs and chatters as I watch the world blur outside the dark van windows, the word spinning in my head. It’s a temptation and a promise, all bound up in one. For there to be nothing left between us—all of him, everything of me.
I want it, and yet I recoil from the idea, all at the same time. But there’s only person who I’ve ever given myself to like that: Elise. And even though it seems odd, even wrong, I wonder suddenly if the reason I’m holding back from sleeping with Tate is because it would mean he’d possess me in a way she never will.
I feel a buzz against my stomach, my phone vibrating with a text message. Tate.
I love you.
I meet his eyes in the rearview mirror. He smiles, the private grin he only ever shows to me—something quieter, and almost sad.
I smile back, shy.
I love you too.
* * *
The party is at an old firehouse on the outskirts of Providence, an hour out of Boston on the freeway. It’s been transformed into a creepy haunted house: cobwebs draped from every corner; jack-o’-lanterns leering; screams echoing out into the night. The partygoers spill out into the parking lot, a chaotic crowd of zombies, werewolves, superheroes, and the usual slutty story-book-character college girls.
“Disney bingo!” AK whoops, heading toward the firehouse. “I’m going to get me an Ariel!”
We party for hours in the dark firehouse space, the group dispersing and rejoining around me, a steady rhythm like the tide on the shore. I watch as they fall further out of themselves, the way you do when the music is just right and the crowd is dense and forgiving—like an out-of-body experience, nothing but deep bass and movement and hot, sweating skin. But I can’t fall, not tonight, with so much on my mind. So I watch them; lost in the middle of the crowd. I see the night in flashes, glittering and dark: AK clutching at a drunk coed Red Riding Hood; Chelsea blissed out in Lamar’s arms; Melanie’s anxious gaze when she loses sight of us; Tate, oblivious to the stares of admiration from the girls around us; and Elise, Elise with her eyes closed, her head thrown back, her arms drifting high in the air.
She never has a problem letting go, not like me: she’ll slip into the rhythm, or a laugh, or a strange boy’s arms as easily as breathing, not asking for a moment what happens when the moment fades away and there’s nothing left but the pale dawn light and all your old insecurities. I try, but I can’t help my mind skipping over the here-and-now and racing on, to what might come next. Consequence and regret and other might-have-beens: plotting out every angle and scenario, knowing all along that the path I take means missing something else.
Soon—too soon, maybe—it’s past three. The music scratches into nothing and the party shuts down: neon lights breaking through the dim. Suddenly the creepy skeletons and draped entrails are nothing but cheap props, dangling sadly against cinder block walls and a litter of broken bottles, and our costumes are left smeared and disheveled. The others don’t seem to notice the change—they’re still laughing, dizzy and drunk, their faces flushed from dancing and illicit hookups. The crowd spills outside, lingering on the curb out front, bumming cigarettes and flirting, calling out after-party plans.
The night is still just getting started.
Elise links her arm through mine as we pick our way back across the parking lot. “Are you nervous?” she asks. I shrug. “That means yes.” Elise grins. “Don’t worry, it’ll be over real soon. Tate doesn’t strike me as a guy with much self-control.”
“You’d be surprised,” I tell her, and she throws her head back to laugh.
“I guess I keep underestimating him.” She swings our hands back and forth, like kids on the playground, but her next words are sobering. “You don’t have to, you know.”
“I want to. I just . . .” I stop walking, until the group is way ahead and there’s nothing but dark and headlights surrounding us. “How do you do it?” I ask.
“It’s kind of late to be drawing you a diagram,” Elise teases, but I shake my head.
“Not that. I mean . . . You’re always right here, in the present, and I can’t . . . I can’t get out of my own mind like that.”
Elise tilts her head slightly and looks at me again, serious this time. “It’s easy,” she tells me. “The way I see it, the future doesn’t exist. Nothing does—except now.” She looks around, at the party debris and the disintegrating crowd, the couple making out against a car, his pirate hat falling unnoticed to the ground as he gropes higher under her Red Riding Hood skirt. Elise grins affectionately. “You see? It’s all we have. It’s everything. You can’t get tied up in things that might never matter. All that time you waste, you know? You’ve got to be here.” She presses her index finger to my chest, bare through the low dip of the V slashed in my uniform neckline. “Right now.”
“But how?” I shrug helplessly. “It’s not like I can just turn my brain off.”
“Here.” Elise steps in closer to me, and takes something from the pocket of her cheerleader skirt. A tiny plastic sachet; two little white pills. She holds her palm out to me.
I hesitate.
“They’re my mom’s,” she adds. “Prescription, nothing crazy, but they’ll calm you down. Like a few glasses of wine, but . . . smoother.”
“You take them?” I ask, frowning. She’s never told me; I’ve never seen.
Elise shrugs, almost bashful. “Not often. Sometimes. When I don’t want to deal with . . . feeling, like this.”
“Are you okay?” I ask, suddenly shameful. “I know I’ve been wrapped up in Tate, and this whole thing—”
“Hey, this is a big deal for you. I’m fine.” Elise pulls me into a hug. “Promise.”
I stay for a moment in the safety of her arms, catching a breath of her perfume, the light spices of her shampoo. Then she pulls back, pressing the sachet into my hand. “It’ll relax you. Trust me,” she adds with a knowing look, “you’re going to want to be relaxed.”
I pause another moment, feeling painfully self-conscious. My brain has been buzzing all night, caught up in the plan that feels like an inevitability now, whether I could take it back or not. I know what I feel, and what I want—Tate, always Tate—but I’m still frozen on the edge of the drop, waiting. For what, I don’t even know. Something to push me over, someone to tell me this is the right decision. Fall. Be his. Let it consume you.
Maybe this is my push.
I take the packet and slip it into my pocket.
* * *
They drop us off at Tate’s house: the stucco building dark behind the wrought-iron gates. His parents are in DC for some charity fund-raiser, and we have the place to ourselves.
“They texted.” Tate grins, unlocking the front door and quickly tapping in the security code. “They won’t be back until Monday.”
“So no tiptoeing out at four in the morning?” I follow him inside.
He laughs, pulling me in for a quick kiss. “Nope. I can eve
n make you breakfast in bed, if you want.”
“You mean, cold cereal in bed,” I kiss him back, relaxing into his touch like a drug, but he pulls away, already leading me through the foyer and up the wide staircase toward his room. He stops me in the hall.
“One minute,” he says, full of excitement. “Wait here.”
He disappears down the hall into his bedroom, leaving me to loiter nervously on the plush red carpet. My heart is beating like crazy, knowing what’s to come. I almost wish we hadn’t planned it—that I’d just whispered “now” some other night, when I was already caught up in the breathless grasping of hands and lips and hot skin against mine. This is so deliberate, slow, and sobering.
I take the sachet from my skirt pocket, considering it, but before I can open it, Tate calls to me. “Ready.” He beckons me to the bedroom door. I quickly tuck the pills away, take a deep breath, and step inside.
The room has been transformed. Instead of his sports trophies and sailing paraphernalia, the desk and mantle are lit with tiny candles, flickering golden in the dark. He’s playing a mix on low, a song I remember from one of our first dates, and there’s even a rose lying on the pillow of his freshly made bed.
“What do you think?” He takes my hands, looking almost nervous. “Is it okay? I want this to be perfect for you.”
My fear melts away. Not because of the props, the clichéd movie scene he’s made here, but because of the earnest look on his face, hopeful and true. This is just so Tate: to try his hardest to make everything perfect. He always wants to be the good guy, and although I don’t need this—the candles and the music—I love him for wanting to give them to me all the same.