by Ginger Scott
“Right, so I just shove all the clothes in this one and then pour in…what? Like, two cups of this stuff?” I’m not even close. Even I know this much. But I thought it would be better to play full dumbass rather than have her see me flounder and look foolish for real.
“Uh, yeah, if you want to repeat that episode of the Brady Bunch where Bobby floods the laundry room with bubbles,” she says, giggling and taking the full cup of soap from my hand, pouring almost half of it back in the bottle.
“That’s a classic,” I say, making my move, pushing back and waiting for her to take over.
“Oh, I don’t think so. Get over here. You are going to learn by doing, not by watching,” she says, reaching her hand to mine. I come willingly, hungry to touch her, but my fire is put out quickly when she pushes the detergent back into my hand.
“What, no hands-on instruction?” I tease. She smirks, but she also rolls her eyes, so I give up on the overt flirting—for now. “Okay, okay, fine. I put in this much, but where?”
Cass points at a small drawer on the side of the machine, and I pull it open and pour in the soap. “Now what?” I ask, honestly clueless. She’s laughing at me genuinely now.
“WOW,” she mouths, big and slowly.
“Hey, don’t make fun of me for not knowing how to do domestic shit. That’s not nice. I’d like to see you swap out an air filter and put in a quart of synthetic,” I say, practically growling when I’m done with my testosterone-filled comeback.
Cass is staring at me with her hand on her hip. “That make you feel better?” she asks, her mouth pursed, and her eyes doing that slow blinking thing that my mom’s do when she’s about to tell me to knock it off.
“Yes,” I actually growl and beat my chest once for added effect. “Yes, it did.”
Without pause, Cass proceeds to talk me through every single step involved in swapping out a goddamned air filter and putting in a quart of oil on a sixty-seven Dodge Charger. A sixty-seven Dodge Charger that “yes, you can switch to synthetic from ten W forty…if you know what you’re doing!” And somewhere in the middle of it all, I admit to myself that there’s a really good chance that I’m falling for her. It was at about the point that her lips slowed down to delicately toss out the words valve covers and oil filter cap.
Scales. Are. Tipping.
“Right, so, I sort the whites from the darks then, and put them in here,” I say, swallowing my pride—with an actual swallow—and replaying the hottest damned dressing-down I’ve ever had.
“You’re getting it,” she says, pulling herself up to sit on the counter, her legs swaying back and forth like wind chimes while she watches me do my first solo load of laundry in my entire life. I’m actually kind of proud.
I look at her over my shoulder, and her bottom lip is caught between her teeth while she tries to hide her smile. I like the way she’s looking at me.
Time to test the scales.
I press the start button and the machine begins to whirl and buzz quietly. It also says forty minutes. “Forty minutes?” I protest, but Cass just laughs, and then pats the counter next to her. I see her eyes flash when she realizes what she’s done, but I won’t let her feel bad.
“I’m good down here,” I say, making a joke out of it and positioning myself right in front of her, moving my hands to grab the meaty calves of her legs. “Damn. Those feel like weapons.”
I let my grip loosen, but I don’t move my hands away, and she doesn’t ask me to.
Cass
He’s touching me. And it’s not like the way he touched me in the gym, when he pressed my muscles to make them work harder. That touch was purposeful. This is a thoughtful touch, a strategic touch—an opening that he is taking.
“So, how do you know how to change the oil on a sixty-seven Charger?” he asks.
“I drive one. Back home. That’s my car,” I say, and his top lip curls just enough to make his left cheek dimple.
“That’s hot,” he says, and I laugh at his bluntness. It’s probably my favorite quality about him, the way he just says things—whatever he’s thinking. There’s no filter, no wall. That’s how I operate, or at least how I try to.
“I know,” I say back, matching him. I match him. We. Are. A. Perfect. Match. These thoughts have flooded me ever since I told him I had MS, and he acted as if I said I liked pepperoni on my pizza.
His gaze lingers, and his smile grows a little bigger. I can see him chewing on the sides of his tongue, small twitches working in his jaw as if he’s deciding whether or not to say something. He looks at me like this for a while, and his hands stay locked to the underside of the bottom of my legs. Eventually, he starts to tap at them teasingly with his fingertips, causing them to sway toward him as if he were toying with a balloon.
“How are the weapons feeling this morning?” he asks, giving each leg one more rub and squeeze before letting his hands fall back into his lap. My skin grows cold and tingles, wondering where he went.
“Good. I was tired yesterday though. But I think I can go again today.” I’m exhausted, but my stomach is doing that urgent fluttering thing that is making me say irrational things and convince myself that I’m fully recovered from our first killer workout—all because I simply want to spend more time with him.
“Liar,” he smirks. He knows I’m bullshitting, and I feel the burn of embarrassment starting to move up my neck. “I won’t judge you, just so you know. Humans, we get…tired.”
I twist my mouth and squint at him, not sure what he means.
“You’re tired, because I probably worked you harder than you’ve ever been worked. And it’s okay. You’re allowed to be. I won’t think it’s because of the MS, which I know is what you’re afraid of,” he says, his brow lowered and his eyes zeroed in on mine. “I won’t think you’re weak. Ever.”
My head nods in agreement and my lips form a relieved smile. I don’t tell him that he’s off-base, because as much as my real reason for pretending I’m not fatigued is to be near him, I do also worry that he’ll think I’m weak. I worry because everyone else in my life thinks I now have limits. Ty is the first person who, so far, doesn’t set them for me.
Ty catches a glimpse of my opened notepad and anthropology book next to me on the table. I had planned on getting a little of my homework done from the first day of classes, but that was when I thought I’d be in here alone for the next hour. My plans changed the second he said “Hello.”
Before I can reach for the book, Ty takes it in his hand, and begins flipping through a few pages.
“Ah, undergrad classes,” he says, sighing dramatically. I know he didn’t mean anything by his statement, but suddenly I feel embarrassed, and maybe a little inferior, by the fact that I’m not yet nineteen and he’s twenty-two, by the fact that I’m taking one-hundred-level courses and he’s getting an MBA.
“I was just getting ahead, but…I can put it away,” I say, taking the book from him quickly, and zipping it up in my backpack along with my notes and pen. I like the heaviness of the pack in my lap, like a shield—so I leave it there, hugging it to my body while my legs dangle.
I wonder if I look as uncomfortable as I suddenly feel. He’s smiling at me, sort of. He looks uncomfortable too, and now I’m beginning to wonder if he’s starting to calculate all of the negatives that come along with our age gap. He keeps looking at his watch, nervously twisting it around his wrist, like he wants to leave.
He wants to leave.
“I could just come and get you. You know…when your laundry’s done?” I practically blurt out my question. He’s blinking at me, like he’s trying to decipher whatever language just spilled out of my lips. I’m pretty sure the dialect is young, naïve, and stupid.
“Are you…getting rid of me?” he asks, his head cocked slightly to one side as his eyes shift between my backpack and me, growing wider with each pass. Suddenly, he smirks as if he’s discovered something. “Wait a second…were you looking at a porno mag? Is that why you put your book
away?” He grabs my backpack from my lap so fast that my reflexes fail their mission to grip it back.
“No, I swear. I was just studying,” I say through nervous laughter, sliding from my perch on the counter in an effort to get it back. I know Ty is just teasing, and at first we’re in a cute game of tug-of-war. But when he unzips the side and reaches inside—his fingers threatening to pull out the pamphlets and self-help books I just picked up from the library—my fight to regain possession grows more manic. Ty, however, still thinks we’re playing; his hands grip one end of the bag and mine the other. He yanks hard, his strong muscles really only knowing how to do one thing, and it forces the zipper open completely.
I thought I felt foolish about being younger. But that was before I made a floor display of every cliché low-self-esteem brochure printed in the state of Oklahoma. Naturally, the most embarrassing one is in Ty’s hands right now.
“How to Love Yourself So Others Will Too,” Ty reads, flipping the book in his hands and skimming his eyes over the description on the back. I take this opportunity to scoop everything else up in my arms and sit on the floor with my legs crossed, quickly stuffing things back in my bag. “Oh, this is good. Wait, listen to this one…”
He starts to quote a few of the passages, mocking the stereotypical affirmations and examples in the book. I know they’re stupid—and hearing them now, I’m not sure why I picked the book up. But reading it made me feel good an hour or two ago. “Wow, what class is making you read this shit?” he asks, finally putting the book down. His laughter cuts short when he sees me, my eyes buried in my lap.
“It’s not for a class,” I say, looking up long enough to get the book from him. “My stuff’s in the dryer. Just…just knock on my door when it buzzes done.” I leave quickly, clutching my things close to my chest and feeling ridiculous.
I don’t bother to zip my bag up again, instead carrying it all into my room and letting everything spill out into a pile on my bed. I don’t know what made me check all of these things out. It all started with the book Ty was reading, actually. My hands gravitated to it while I was looking through some of the health and wellness books. At first, my attraction was the same as Ty’s—I found the book amusing. But some of those cheesy sayings actually rang true, especially the ones about feeling inferior to siblings and how we use self-deprecating humor as a crutch. Next thing I knew…I had two books, four magazines, and a dozen brochures.
Ty’s knock on my door is soft. I hadn’t shut it all the way when I walked in, so he takes advantage and comes all the way into my room with little warning.
“Dry already?” I ask, doing my best to pretend none of that happened. I pick the pillow up from my lap, laying it over the embarrassing evidence.
“No,” Ty responds, moving closer until he’s at the foot of my bed. Without pause, he slides from his chair to the bed until he’s sitting next to me. He picks up the pillow, and my stomach sinks. His smile is soft as he scoops everything into my bag, and slides it all to the floor, closing the distance between us even more until his hand is suddenly cradling my cheek.
“Just so we’re clear here, I mean this,” he says, pressing his lips softly against mine as his other hand moves to my chin, tilting my mouth toward him. I’ve been kissed by some pretty convincing boys in my life, each one wanting to make me believe something by the way their mouth worked against mine, the way their tongues coaxed their way inside. This one kiss from Ty was like removing a blindfold.
No kiss has ever felt like this. His thumbs are soft against my cheek, and his fingertips are gentle in my hair. His lips pause over mine, stroking softly before crashing into me with more force. I’m used to guys using this move to disarm me, to get me on my back so they can see how far I’ll let them go. But Ty is only pulling me closer to him, his hands sliding from my face to my shoulders and arms until I feel his strength lift me completely so I’m on his lap.
When his hands find my face again, he stops long enough to breathe, our foreheads pressed together and the tips of our noses touching. Even this simple touch is perfection. My heart is beating wildly, and I can feel my body trembling as Ty slides his hands deeper into my hair, bringing my lips to his again, this time sucking on my top lip until I give in and open up for him completely as he tastes me with his tongue.
The longer the kiss lasts, the stronger his grip on my body is, and when he finally pulls away from my mouth, he continues to hold me close, cradling my entire body to his. I feel every heavy breath escape his chest, and I start to wonder who is feeling this more—me or him? My knuckles are white from the tense grip I have on the back of his shirt, and when I finally let go, I notice how sweaty my palms feel. I don’t know what Ty has done to me, but I know I will never be the same.
Not after that kiss.
Chapter 7
Ty
The first time I kissed Cass was just my damn impulse. But this last one, yesterday…that was…
The moment she looked up at me from the floor, I was done weighing my options. Watching her hands quickly trying to cover up the brochures and pamphlets with promises to make you feel happy, pretty, popular and whole—whatever bullshit promises brochures like that make—that was enough.
I have a box full of those brochures and books, buried under an equally old tub of trophies and CDs tucked somewhere in the depths of my closet at my parents’ house. I’d get a new brochure with every new group I went to—or with every therapist I spoke to. I got them from the school, and from my mom’s whacko circle of friends who believe in holistic powers and positive thinking. And every time I got one, I’d thank the person, bring it home, and throw it in the collection.
When her backpack opened, I saw all of her insecurities spill right onto the floor, and I just knew. This one. This girl—she’s that other half my mom always talks about. I didn’t kiss her because I felt bad for her. I kissed her because I felt her. Cass is me—in every possible way. We’re both broken and pissed, fragile yet strong, careful with our hearts, but free with our words. And seeing the look on her face when I caught her in a moment of feeling less, in a moment that she felt unworthy…
“You are so much more than your sister,” I whisper to myself, amused that somehow she thinks she has something to prove. Fuck that. I have something to earn.
“Mail call!” Nate yells, tossing a hefty envelope at me as he busts through our door. It lands on my chest, so I sit up in my bed and look it over. It’s from Baker, Louisiana. Kelly lives in Baker. I toss it to the side and give Nate my full attention.
“Not gonna open it?” he asks, one eyebrow raised, tempting me.
“Nope,” I say, moving to my chair and pushing to the desk. I flip open my laptop to check my training schedule for the rest of the week.
“Wow,” Nate says. I can feel him staring at me, and I know there’s a grin on his face. “You’re smitten.”
“Shut up,” I say, following it up by tossing a pen at him from my desk. I’m more than smitten, but I’m also the one that does the dishing of crap around here. The crap doesn’t flow both ways. “You ask Rowe about the game and dinner with the parents yet?” I know he hasn’t, but this should get the focus off me and…feelings.
“Yeah…no…” he says, falling flat on his back and pulling his pillow over his eyes. “I don’t know what it is, dude, but this girl—she intimidates me.”
“Are you still tiptoeing around the boyfriend thing?” My brother saw Rowe hanging up a picture of her with another guy, and he’s too pussy to come right out and ask her about it—so instead, he’s taken to permanently moping. It’s annoying.
“I brought it up. She doesn’t want to talk about it. That’s about as far as it goes.” He blows out a heavy sigh.
“Well, if you don’t ask her, Cass won’t go. And if Cass doesn’t go, I’m going to kick your ass. So quit being a douchebag,” I say, grabbing his shoe and throwing it out in the hall like I always do when he irritates me. I’ve been doing this to him since he was a kid and u
sed to want to hang out in my bedroom while I was talking on the phone to a girl.
“Fucker. I hate it when you do that,” he says, standing with a heavy slouch as he drags his feet toward his sneaker. He keeps walking down the hall when he picks it up, though, so I know he’s just as smitten as I am.
I push the door closed and turn to look at the simple brown package lying on my bed. It’s one of those over-sized envelopes, and it’s super puffy. It looks like a shirt. I bet it’s a shirt. That was Kelly’s thing—she loved those shirts with really silly sayings, and I thought they were a tremendous waste of resources, human labor, and money. She would buy me one for every birthday, holiday, anniversary, or whim just to tick me off. I loved it. I loved her for doing it.
Suddenly, I’m back on my bed, holding the package in my hand. For some reason, I smell it, wanting to know if it carried any sign of her along with it during its postal route. It just smells like cardboard and ink.
When I tear the corner open, I see the white fabric and confirm my suspicion immediately. I can’t help that it still makes me smile, and I rip the rest of the envelope away to hold the shirt up and reveal the punch line. It’s a stick man, humping the word it. Fuck it. Ha! Okay, that’s funny.
I toss the envelope in the trash and fold the shirt up and slide it in my top drawer. There really might be a time and place to wear that one—it’s a keeper. She finally found the one joke shirt I think is worth the twenty bucks she probably spent on it.
There’s a Facebook message waiting for me when I open my laptop, and I see Kelly’s picture looking back at me.
Well?
She must have followed the tracking code to see if I got it yet.