by Rose, L. A.
“No.” His voice is suddenly hard. “Protective is wrong. All that is wrong.”
“You’ve protected me so many times already.”
“You wouldn’t call me those things if you knew what I’ve done in my life.” He pulls his hand away. I’m losing the thread of this.
“It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. What matters is what you’re doing now, who you are now—”
“It matters.” He stands. He’s frozen over. I don’t know what I did wrong.
“Tell me, then,” I snap. “You need to start letting people in.”
He looks at me, and the ice softens in the moonlight. He touches my face, the barest brush of a fingertip.
“I like the way you see me now,” he says quietly. “I don’t want to ruin it.”
~14~
“RAAAAARGH!”
“AAAAAAAH!”
As the girl I just jumped out as runs away, shrieking her head off, I come to a very important realization.
I was born to scare the ever-loving shit out of people.
Adjusting my troll mask, I slip back inside the hideout—sorry, troll cave—I constructed for myself in this haunted house of painted-black gym mats and crates. A Halloween CD track that’s been on repeat for the past hour jangles—chains rattling and knives being sharpened and women screaming. What’s wrong with a nice manly scream every once and a while? I’ll have to get Iris to write the CD company a strongly-worded letter.
I hear footsteps outside and leap out through the black curtain again. “I WILL IMPREGNATE YOU AND THEN EAT THE BABIES!” I scream.
I’ve learned it doesn’t really matter what you scream at people as long as you do it loudly, but it’s still fun to go the extra horrifying route every so often.
The girl, a junior from my Economics class, shrieks and sprints away. I cackle and settle back into my den. This is like therapy. And after my conversation with James a few days ago, therapy is exactly what I need.
He wouldn’t say any more—just that it was late and I should go to bed. He walked me to my dorm and I had to double back to give the inhaler to Mags, who’d woken up, discovered it was missing, and freaked out.
“I found it in the grass,” I’d lied.
Iris, though, received the truth.
“You have to tell Brooklyn,” she’d demanded. “They’re hazing you.”
“That’s what upperclassmen in sororities do. They haze.”
“This isn’t some no-big-deal teasing. They stole a someone’s inhaler. And made a girl with a sprained wrist climb a tree. You could have gotten seriously hurt.”
“Sigrid’s dad is the dean, remember? If I tell, she’ll just hatch some story to get herself out of it and I’ll end up screwed over. I can handle her myself.”
“If she ever comes back in the middle of the night, you wake me up. Got it?”
I’d promised, but the last thing I want is to involve Iris. After getting my butt saved so many times by James, I need to prove to myself I’m capable of fighting my own battles again.
I hear footsteps outside and throw myself into the hallway again, yelling at a white scared face rising out of the darkness. “YOUR MOM DOESN’T EVEN USE TOENAIL POLISH REMOVER SHE JUST SCRAPES IT OFF WITH HER TEETH!” I howl. The freshman boy jumps out of his skin and pelts off. I chuckle. The next scarer down is Iris, who lunges at people with fake blood dripping down her face. She, too, is in her element.
I retreat back inside my cave. As they have whenever I’ve had two seconds to myself for the past few days, my thoughts turn to James. I’d thought we were getting so close, but I’ve hit a wall. It’s like he’s locked up inside himself and he doesn’t know the way out.
Getting to know James is sort of like exploring this haunted house. It looks scary, and sometimes you turn an unexpected corner and get yelled at by someone in a troll mask…actually, I guess it’s not that similar.
More footsteps outside. I shake my shoulders to psych myself up and then hurtle through the black curtain, shrieking “YOU QUOTE MOVIES YOU’VE ONLY SEEN GIFS OF ON THE INTERNET—oh. Hi, James.”
People usually leap back by this point, so I bump into him a little bit. He takes my shoulders and studies my hideous troll mask. “Is that you, Fiona?”
“Who else would come up with such creative and intelligent insults to scare people with?” I smile over the sound of a zombie moaning in the distance, but I shuffle my feet. I haven’t talked to James since that night. “I’m surprised you’re here. You didn’t strike me as a haunted house man.”
“I’m not.” He’s so tall that he has to bend his head in the little maze we constructed. “I needed to see you right now, and I knew you’d be here.”
“Me?” Down the hall, there’s nervous conversation. A group of two. They’ll be here any minute.
“Yeah.” He shuts his eyes momentarily. “Fiona, I’m—”
“Hang on.” I glance down the hallway to make sure that Iris doesn’t have her beady eyes on me, and then I hustle James into my troll cave. It’s a tight fit. I’m practically forced to sit between his knees, his scent warm and familiar under the gross chemical smell of fake blood. “Now we can talk.”
He takes a breath. “I wanted to apologize for snapping at you the other night. You didn’t deserve that. You’ve been nothing but a friend to me, and I guess I don’t deserve that.”
A pang slices straight through my heart, like the loud clear note of a bell. Not the kind of pang I’ve ever had about a friend. I press my hand to my chest.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I think so. My heart just did something weird.”
His brow furrows in the dark. “Maybe you should see a doctor.”
“Maybe…anyway. It’s okay. I understand. I was pushing you. And by the way, you do deserve me. Which is pretty much the highest compliment I’m capable of paying, because not everyone does. One sec.”
I leap outside the curtains to scream “YOUR SHOES ARE LOVELY TODAY,” at the two sophomore girls, who grab each other and flee. It’s important to compliment sometimes, too.
I duck back inside. “Somehow I ended up caring about you, James. And that’s not something you can just get yourself out of. Once I like you, I’m a for-life type of girl. Like hepatitis. And nothing you say is going to change that.”
“Like hepatitis,” he repeats.
“A more appealing comparison is warranted, I grant you.”
“One time I got toothpaste in my carpet and it never really came out?” he offers.
“I’ll accept toothpaste. Minty fresh.”
I hold up a hand and dart out to scream at someone else.
When I go back inside, James is staring at me with an emotion I can’t name. “I was sort of expecting to be told to get lost tonight.”
“This is San Diego.” My legs cramp, and I spread them out so that our thighs are touching. “You can’t get lost here. All the streets are clearly marked.”
“You’re always doing things I don’t expect.” His voice is heavy this time, with more than just emotion. Being crammed together in this small space is getting to me too. I’m sweating. Not because I’m hot, but because he is.
I pull off my troll mask and lean forward so he’s close enough to feel my breath. “Why don’t you make us even by doing something I don’t expect?”
He doesn’t move back. His hand moves to my ankle and slides upward, trailing heat. “What are you expecting right now?”
“I’m definitely not expecting you to kiss me,” I whisper.
Our lips meet, his a surprising mixture of tenderness and hunger. I’m being bad again, but I crave him. I bury my hands in his hair. He wraps his arms around me until we’re kissing as hard as we were at that concert, claiming each other’s breath.
I pull back, gasping, tangled in his body. “This isn’t something that friends do.”
Instead of answering, he kisses me again, dragging me into his lap. I swing my legs over his and lock my knees behind his ba
ck, letting my body rub slowly over him. His hands dip down to cup my ass…No, Fiona. This is important. I sever my lips from his again.
“We’ve had this weird dual relationship,” I say, an inch away from his mouth. “This sexual relationship and then our friendship. But they’re very separate. Is that weird?”
He kisses his way down my neck and unbuttons my shirt, finding my breasts and reminding me of how good it feels when someone plays with your nipples with their fingers and tongue. “That would make us friends with benefits.”
“I’ve had friends and I’ve had benefits. Never both. Ah!”
He’s sucked my nipple into his mouth hard and bitten it. “You know what I think?”
“What?” I gasp, still reeling from the unexpected sensation.
“I think you should stop talking.”
I smile into his mouth. “Are you gonna make me?”
They’re the magic words. In a flash, he has me up against the wall—luckily, the real part of the wall and not the flimsy sides. He finds my wrists and pins them above my head, being gentle with the sprained one, even though it’s healed by now. He holds both my wrists with one hand, reaches down, and lifts my hips so that my legs are around him again. There’s no room in here for us not to be pressed into every inch of each other.
Meanwhile, the horror CD blares in the distance and the sound of distant screaming echoes. He grins wickedly down at me. “Any noises we make will just be part of the haunted house.”
“I need a reason to make them first.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re too damn sassy for your own good?” He bites my neck and I gasp, my body writhing instinctively.
“Why don’t you teach me a lesson?”
That does it. He growls and kisses me like our lives depend on it, keeping my wrists held above with one hand and pinning my waist to him with the other. I moan and grind my crotch against him, the sensation flooding me with pleasure.
“Oh, no you don’t.” He reaches down and yanks off my tiny shorts. “That’s my job.”
And then his hand is on me. I shudder, getting wetter by the second as he pumps two fingers in and circles my clit with his thumb. It’s like a stick of incense burning. He lights the tip and the burn moves slow, eating me up at the edge before traveling inward.
He keeps his head to my chest while he does it, sucking and pulling at my nipples in a dance that treads the fine line of pleasure and pain before kissing me again so savagely that my head bumps into the wall. I buck my hips, yearning for something to penetrate deeper, but the moment I do, he takes his fingers away.
“Getting too demanding, are we?” he says into my ear.
“Damn it, James,” I manage. “Fuck you.”
“Language, language. You’ll have to be punished for that.” He bites one of my nipples again and a shriek pops out of me.
“Yeah? You like that?” He bites the other and the sensation shoots all the way to my core.
“James—I’m…”
“You’re what?” He sucks my bottom lip into his mouth.
“I’m not a doll,” I finally get out. “You don’t have to play nice with me.”
He stops. “You think I’m playing nice?”
“I think I might fall asleep here,” I say daringly, knowing the way to get him to play rough is to antagonize him.
He pulls me forward onto my lap, reaches around, and slaps my ass. Not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough to sting. I let out a startled yelp that mingles with the sounds of people yelling in the distance. My skin sings and heat floods my abdomen. I’ve always wanted to try getting spanked, but either the boys I was with before were too shy to try or I was too shy to ask.
It’s thrilling, naughty, and hot as hell.
“I’ve been making people scream all day,” I gasp. “Now I need someone to make me.”
He lays me on my back. To save space—of course, only to save space, it’s very cramped in here—I rest my ankles on his shoulders. He trails two fingers down my inner thigh, leaving sparks, before entering me in one swift push. Every bit of blood in my body rushes to my abdomen.
“James!” I cry.
He holds a finger to my lips. “Not my name.”
And just like that, reality crashes down on me. Not his name because no one can know. Because I’m not supposed to be with him. But I don’t want to be with him, not in the real way. Right?
“I’m thinking too much.” I reach up and kiss him. “Help me out with that.”
He helps me out with that by plowing into me so hard I skid the only two extra inches of floor space we have, floor-burns lacing my back and an explosion starting between my thighs. He leans forward and thrusts again, murmuring “Fiona, Fiona, Fiona,” into my ear, and then I take his face in his hands and look at him, look into his storm eyes, into the flecks of silver metal there.
We come at the same time, our bodies reacting and pulsing together, our eyes locked and breath mingled. When the heat wave subsides, he reaches down and touches my cheek. There’s water there. “Fiona. Are you all right? Why are you crying?”
Because my heart is doing something weird again.
~15~
Mid-terms roll around, and the party scene dies down a little as everyone frantically tries to keep their GPA high enough to avoid getting kicked out of Phi Delta Chi.
Because a Spanish quiz score obviously has so much to do with your ability to down six shots and not throw up all over your friend, who is also downing six shots.
Logic.
I have many talents. Being completely and undeniably gorgeous—it’s a lot of work, it’s not just the easy-breezy life that most people think fabulously attractive people lead. Being lots of fun. Annoying Iris. Going to parties naked. Chewing licorice jellybeans without getting black gunk all over my front teeth. I fully expect to have at least twenty pages of talents the next time I submit a resume.
Math is not one of those talents.
Sign up for a math class, they said. It’ll be better to get your math requirement out of the way as a freshman, they said. Cryptology will be fun and interesting and not involve much actual math, they said.
“Iris? Do you have a penknife?” I ask from beneath my midterms next. And my midterms nest, I mean I’m curled up on sheets I haven’t washed in a month, in clothes I haven’t washed in a week, under blankets covered with a fine layer of Doritos dust and a not-so-fine layer of misery.
“Why? Need to slit your wrists?”
Iris’s study nest is less of a nest and more of a neatly-organized desk with well-used study materials stacked in one corner, because she is a horrible person and most likely an android that Hitler made to win World War II but never got around to using.
“I was thinking actually I’d cut the screen out of our window so I could splatter myself gloriously onto the pavement below, but you’re right, what you’re proposing is much more convenient. Like the Wal-Mart of suicide.”
“I told you not to sign up for that class.” She turns a page in her textbook, remarkably idle for a witness to her roommate’s suicide.
“You did too tell me to sign up for that class! You said everyone took it as an easy way out of the math requirement!”
“Oh, right.” She leans back and chuckles. “Yeah no, that class is hell. Everyone regrets signing up for it. I told you to because I hated you our first week.”
“You are not fucking serious.”
“I am.” She yawns, looking mildly impressed with herself. “That was pretty deliciously evil of me.”
“I hate you,” I wail. “It’s too late to drop out and now I’m gonna get kicked out of Phi Delta Chi because if I don’t ace this exam, I’ll have a D in the class.”
“You’re that bad at math?”
“I’m that bad at math, and also I’ve spent the past eight classes working on a very impressive sketch of Professor Andrich’s head.” I pull it out of my notebook and hand it to her.
Her eyebrows shoot up. “This is
incredible. Damn, Fiona. The shading…”
“So you can’t say I’ve been wasting my time. I’m going to sell it for a million dollars and then I’ll pay a body double to take the exam for me.” I spread out my fingers and inspect my nails. Polish is chipped. I should spend the next two hours giving myself a manicure, definitely. “This is a good plan.”
“You just have to do it, Fiona. That’s all I have to say.”
“If by it, you mean Brad Pitt, then yes.” I hold up several sheets of paper. “Do you know long I’ve been working on this one problem? Three days. Do you know how physically long it is? If I put these all together it’d be like four feet. That is fundamentally wrong.”
“What you need is a tutor, someone who’s really good at math. Why don’t you—”
“Why don’t you tutor me?” I throw my stuffed owl at her. She deserves it. “You’re really good at math.”
“Because I have better things to do. Like study for my own exams. I was going to suggest you call James. He’s supposed to be a math genius.”
Ten seconds later, I am on the phone with James:
“Why didn’t you tell me you’re good at math? Why would you betray me like this? Are you trying to sabotage me? I thought we were buddies here, James. Do you want me to jump out the window—”
“Slow down,” he interrupts. “And you need to stop jumping out windows. Why does it matter that I’m good at math.”
“Because I’m about to fail my math exam and you need to shape-shift into a Fiona duplicate so you can take the exam for me!”
“Okay, okay. Chill,” he says, and his voice is faraway. He’s holding the phone away from his ear. Stupid baby eardrums boy. “The shape-shifting thing is not going to work out, but I’ll come help you study. My place is getting painted today, so we’ll have to do it at yours.”
“Thank you, my lord and savior. I’ll be here waiting!”
“Oh no you won’t,” Iris cuts in. “I have work to do and I won’t be able to get it done without you giggling and flirting and making out on the bed.”