by R. J. Lewis
“I was nibbling.”
“No nibbling, no licking, no inhaling any foods of any kind in the library.”
“Are we supposed to starve?”
“You’re supposed to keep that smart mouth closed in the library.”
Aston smirked from my peripheral and I glowered at Mrs Thompson as I muttered under my breath, “Fucking lunatic.”
“What was that?”
“I said I’m sorry, alright? I’m sorry, Mrs Thompson, for my abominable transgressions. I’ll put it away.”
“Put it away faster!”
“I will.” Asshole.
When she turned away and shook her head, I rolled my eyes and got out of my chair. Leaning over it, so that Aston’s face was inches from mine, I whispered, “He means nothing to me, by the way.”
He didn’t acknowledge what I said, and I didn’t wait for him to. I turned away and stomped out, passing Mrs Thompson’s stifling glare. Fucking psycho. I could feel Aston’s eyes on me as I went, and I fought with everything not to look over my shoulder and meet them. My wants were obvious right from the get-go, and he continued pretending they didn’t exist.
Still.
I’d catch him staring at me some times. Like the way I knew he was staring at me as I left that library. And every time a boy showed interest, I’d notice his face change, just like it did when I brought up Deck. I saw the dark flash in his eyes, the curl of his fists, the way he shut down for hours afterwards, waiting for me to show interest back. I never did because I didn’t care for other boys. I cared only for Aston, even if it meant the girls had boyfriends when I didn’t. They experienced their first kiss, their first date, their first everything, and I remained untouched over the years, my heart collecting dust, my experience limited to non-existence.
It was hard. At times I wondered about moving on because what was the point? I’d never have a chance with him! You’re crazy, I’d scream at myself internally. You’re so crazy for wanting him! It was just… I couldn’t move on. I felt nothing for any of the boys. They were shallow and immature, while Aston challenged me.
I yearned for his complexities, for his brooding nature, for his green eyes on mine. And, for whatever reason – hopeless as it may have seemed – I waited.
I waited because Aston was worth waiting for.
4
Aston
I spent the first couple years being studied like a mouse in a lab experiment with experts surrounding me. Aptitude test. Analytical test. Problem solving. Brain scan.
Rinse and repeat.
They studied the way I reconstructed every problem they threw at me, every question I posed to myself, every possible route I took to reach my conclusion. They picked apart my brain, wondering where the creativity lurked and why. They collected their piles of data. Data that meant nothing because you couldn’t entirely understand genius. You could only study its characteristics and throw more questions at it.
They couldn’t make sense of me. I beat the odds. I came from nothing. I was abused and isolated; you couldn’t find a child more fucked-up than I had been. They’d questioned my earlier years. They asked me what I used to do when I was alone. I never answered them fully. There was no point telling them I passed my time counting the holes in the window screen, or the blades of grass in the tiny backyard they’d leave me in for hours, or the grains of sand in the run-down park I’d meandered to seven blocks from the house at the age of six.
Numbers distracted me from the screaming, from the images of blood and tears and the monstrous face of my father who had startling green eyes like mine. Numbers left me floating outside my body when my stomach growled from hunger and my foster fuck of a parent decided to snort cocaine than feed me.
I learned to be detached, idly chewing my nails to fill the hole in my belly, as I marked the painted basement walls with one tick after the other. You couldn’t explain that kind of hollow, cruel existence to anybody. They’d just pity you, and I didn’t want pity.
My story ended better than others in my position, anyway. I was saved. Arthur Wright saved me from destruction, from death. He took me to a home that was warm and showered me with food and love. It was like starting all over again. I had to teach myself to feel instead of not feel, to be openly vulnerable when I’d spent my earlier years locked up inside my head, determinedly impenetrable to those that could do me harm.
So when these “experts” spoke in hushed conversations to my adopted mother and father, they said I was wasting my potential. I needed to be higher. I needed to move forward faster. My brain was a gift and I needed to nurture it. Because it was boring sitting in a classroom enduring subjects I’d excelled at week one. I needed more. I needed to advance so they could throw more questions at me and pick apart my brain.
But I didn’t want any of that, and neither did my parents. Mom and Dad wanted me to have a normal life. To experience it than bury myself in academia where I might never come back to earth. They were scared I’d lock myself down again and throw the walls up, afraid of letting people in too close when loneliness reminded me of my past. They were right, but that wasn’t the only reason I didn’t want it too. If I advanced, left high school and started college early, then I’d be away from Elise. And Elise had eyes I got lost staring into. She had a smile that played with my heart, a heart that hadn’t thumped this hard in all the years in foster care combined.
I was bewitched the second I laid eyes on her. She was so beautiful, I almost felt unworthy of her presence. I couldn’t even eat properly, and she sat there, in all her tender gracefulness, watching me tentatively. I’d never felt more like a barn animal, but still, she wanted to know me. She taught me how to swim and knocked on the wall every night just to make sure I was alright. That kind of affection was foreign to me. I didn’t understand emotion until I was forced to feel the emotions she gave me head-on.
I was only a boy, and she did things to me I didn’t understand. I grew up, fascinated by everything – by anything – that was Elise Wright.
Elise and her pink lips. Those lips glossy, juicy, tempting enough to bite.
Elise and her laughter. That laughter, soft and breathless, music to my ears.
Elise.
Elise.
Elise.
I was addicted to Elise enough that I could endure the torturous hours in school if it meant she was there readily for me to see after class. I needed her within arm’s reach. I’d needed her since I’d walked through the door and my eyes drank in that sweet face. I needed her so much, it terrified me. It gave me nightmares. Me, walking through an endless black maze, searching for my Elise, never finding her, never having her, never getting within arm’s reach to catch her.
She was always so close yet so far away.
Every time I awoke from these nightmares, I tethered myself to her. I lingered around her for the sole purpose of breathing the same goddamn air as her. It was an unhealthy, needy obsession. My brain constructed her, pulled her apart, reconstructed her, and pulled her apart again. I spent countless hours studying the shape of her body, studying every inch so I could mentally undress her and see what lurked beneath.
My heart needed her, but my genius needed stimulation. And imagining her – my adopted sister – naked, dressed, and naked again was not the right distraction for the brain that I was gifted with. I felt dirty for not using it. Felt dirty for not feeding my mind numbers. That was another kind of obsession, and I couldn’t find the fucking balance to feed both.
Staying in this town meant going nowhere. The only college here was a college for agriculture, and I’d prefer needles in my fucking eyes. How could I go to a college – a proper real college in a city – and have Elise near me?
I couldn’t.
Ultimately, I was hungry for a girl just as much as I was hungry for learning. The smart decision was to move ahead, even if it meant leaving her behind. I just didn’t know if I could do it.
Reality plagued me every moment I wanted her. Elise was off-li
mits, a temptation that cursed my existence with this visceral hunger to have her, possess her, and taste her like she was made for me. I was tormented and on the brink of falling. If I stepped over that boundary, if I gave into my want, I wasn’t sure I could survive the disappointment of my adopted parents. We would all be affected. Our lives wouldn’t be the way it was. That change was irreversible, and the damage would be permanent. It was a scary thought, destroying a foundation and rebuilding it without knowing what it might end up looking like.
But my want for her…it sat in the core of me, growing and growing. And want is a dangerous fucking thing. It clouds your judgment, it makes you weak, and I knew…I knew without a doubt, it was only a matter of time before I cracked.
Obsession was devotion. Obsession was mania and need. It was a compulsive urge to self-gratify by wanting, and wanting, and wanting ‘til it hurt, ‘til you could feel it there in your bones, gnawing its way deeper within you.
Obsession was my craze for Elise. She was my impulse. My…pulse itself.
It wasn’t healthy. I knew that.
I just didn’t seem to care.
5
Aston
The memory of Elise curled up and crying always haunted me.
She was sixteen, sweet and beautiful. Her body had started to develop rapidly over the course of one year. Her legs were long, her hips wide and soft. Her breasts had come out of nowhere, small but perky. It gave me headaches at the dinner table. She’d wear these tiny little tank tops without a bra on, and that brain of mine hammered away, constructing, deconstructing, reconstructing.
It was misery. I had cold showers every goddamn day.
I felt sick with guilt. Was I so seedy, I couldn’t look at this damn girl unaffected? Did I have to want her every second of every minute of every hour of every fucking day? Was there never a break to this madness?
To make matters more complicated, her blossomed looks attracted the attention of that many dicks. She went from being the pretty girl next door to a girl they all wanted to fuck. It didn’t help she was a police officer’s daughter, and that this temptation was too enticing for the dicks to pass up.
So when I heard her crying that night, I knew something terrible had happened. She wasn’t one to cry. When it happened, it was far and few. Elise always smiled, always made jokes and lit a room up with laughter.
It was two in the morning when I first heard it. She was meant to be at Cindy’s place on a sleepover. I knew it wasn’t going to be as innocent as Dad thought it was. They wouldn’t have a movie marathon and eat pizza like she’d told him they’d be doing.
Elise was innocent, but she wasn’t the kind of girl that passed up fun. And that girl loved to dance. She loved to socialize and laugh. She was the life of a party. I would know, she’d dragged me to that many of them over the years. Maybe if she didn’t think I was so fucking miserable, she’d have invited me to the one she’d been at tonight.
I left my bedroom and quietly opened her door. The lamp on her night table was on, and her bed was untouched. I scanned the room but I couldn’t find her. I moved to the bathroom in the corner of her room and slowly approached. I could hear the shower on, and I stood outside the door, wondering if I should open it or wait.
I heard her muffled cries, and they cut me to the bone. I couldn’t just stand there. I had to know what was wrong. My need for her did not sit dormant; it raged like an inferno, deciding my next actions before my brain could compute.
On a deep breath, I opened the door and stepped in. I immediately found her in the shower stall, sitting under the spray in a white dress with her knees pulled to her chest. Her blonde hair was pressed against the side of her face, and she was shaking.
A bolt of panic shot through me. I grabbed a towel off the hook and quickly opened the stall door. Cold water hit me when I stepped in. It was fucking freezing. I sucked in a breath and quickly turned it off before I knelt down in front of her and wrapped her lithe body with the towel. Her shaking hands gripped it as she sobbed, sucking in breaths every few moments.
What the fuck happened?
I grabbed the corner of the towel and pressed it against her make-up smeared face, drying it as best I could. She wasn’t startled by my touch. Instead, she sank into it and lifted her face to me. When her red eyes caught mine, I felt a chill run through me.
“What happened?” I asked her tightly.
“He…he touched me,” she whimpered out.
I knew damn well what anger was. I’d felt it throughout my life, locked away in a room while every foster parent I’d ever had decided to neglect me or beat me. I’d clawed at my face numerous times in my loneliness, trying to feel pain instead of anger. It was anger over not understanding what I did to deserve the life I had. I’d been surrounded by so much violence before the Wright family took me in; it was inevitable that a part of it had found its way inside of me.
For the first time since being here that was what I felt in that shower stall, looking at a girl I was obsessed with crying. I felt violent. As violent as every monster in my past. I wanted to punch the wall with my fist just to feel my knuckles break. This anger was alive, a separate entity consuming me; it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
I kept my face passive so she wouldn’t see it. I’d scare her otherwise. Fucking hell, I was scaring myself just feeling it.
“Who touched you?” I demanded softly.
She looked away from me. “D…Deck.”
My blood turned to lava. “What did he do?”
More tears streamed down her face. “I don’t know if I deserved it. Maybe I sent him the wrong signals –”
“What did he do?” I repeated, calmly.
“We were dancing, and not in any seductive way or anything, but…it was fun, you know?”
I nodded. “I know.”
“He…he said he wanted to grab another CD from his room because I’d complained about the songs replaying.”
Rage. Rage. “You were at his house?”
“He was throwing a party.”
“What happened next?”
She tightened the towel around her, looking ashamed as she said, “I followed him there because I felt a little responsible for making him change the music. He told me he’d show me a few CDs and I’d get to choose. He took me there and…I feel so fucking stupid, Aston. I’m so stupid.”
“Tell me, El.”
“He handed me a whole bunch of CDs, and as I started going through them, he started to rub my back. I moved away from him, but he kept coming closer. I could smell the alcohol on his breath, he was that close. Just to get rid of him, I picked a random CD and gave it to him. He took it and threw it on the dresser, and then he…he tried to kiss me, but I didn’t want it. He got a little angry and pushy. He…he shoved me on the bed and climbed over me, and then he pinned me under him and tried to kiss me again, promising I’d enjoy it. I stopped fighting so he’d stop being so pushy, and his…hands went everywhere. They went everywhere! Between my legs – everywhere! I felt so sick, like I wanted to throw up, and…I knew I couldn’t just go along with it. So…as he started to kiss my neck, I ran my hand down his head and when I got to his face I clawed at it and kicked him in the balls. He was so shocked. He got off me, screaming about what a tease I was, and everyone heard him, Aston. The guys laughed at me when I ran out of there, and Cindy swore at them, and the girls…the girls were the worst, pointing at me and calling me a tease.”
I didn’t speak for a few moments. My entire fucking body was trembling, though. My vision even spotted at the rage building inside of me.
“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” she asked me, sniffing as she looked at me. “You’re not saying anything because it’s my fault. I was probably asking for it.”
My hands gripped her face, and I leaned closer, until I was inches away. Looking at her in the eyes, I gritted out, “Don’t. Don’t you fucking dare blame yourself. None of this was your fault.”
“But I followed h
im to his room –”
“That doesn’t mean shit, El. You didn’t want it. The second you pushed him away, he should have stopped. He would have done a hell of a lot more to you if you didn’t get him off you.”
She eyed me closely. “Do…Do you hate me?”
I let out a shocked breath. “Hate you? How the fuck could I ever hate you, Elise? I hate myself for not being there.”
“You didn’t know. I…I didn’t want to drag you there –”
“You take me to every party from now on. I want to be there. Do you hear?”
She nodded.
“Did he hurt you?”
She didn’t respond, and that only made the rage inside tick.
“Did he hurt you, Elise?” I demanded a little harsher than I intended.
She reluctantly opened the towel and showed me her wrists. “He gripped my wrists really hard.”
I took them into my hands and studied them. Sure enough, there were red marks along her left wrist, like he’d squeezed it. Again, I fought the anger from showing on my face. I swallowed it all down, but I couldn’t stop the quakes running through my body.
Elise was a temple. Her body was so beautiful, she deserved worship. I felt like someone had come close to ruining that sacredness.
I thirsted for violence. Holy fuck, I wanted Deck’s head rolling off his shoulders, preferably after I’d made him suffer.
I rubbed her wrists softly. “Come on, let’s get you dressed.”
I helped stand her up, and the towel fell from her body. I glimpsed at her small white dress, plastered to her skin and practically see through when wet. It ended at her upper thighs, showing off her legs. There was a lot of cleavage, and had I known she’d dress like this to a party with a bunch of obnoxious teenage fucks, I’d have been there in a heartbeat.
My fingers shot out to the collar of her dress. She froze, staring at me with wide eyes as I ran my finger down the front with a frown. “It’s torn here,” I remarked.
She looked down at the rip from the collar to her breasts. Her pink bra was visible, and she reddened as she hid the tear with her hand.