by Jade West
“This needs to stop,” he says and my heart pains. When he’s serious he means it. He always means it. I both hate and love how he always means what he says.
I play ignorant. “What needs to stop?”
He brushes my hair away from my forehead and smiles one of those sad smiles. It’s not you, it’s me. Such a fucking cliché.
I hope he doesn’t insult me by fucking saying it.
“I care about you,” he says. “I care about what happens to you. Fuck, Carrie, I was worried sick about you. But I can’t let this turn into anything it shouldn’t be.”
“Anything it shouldn’t be?” My tone comes our sharper than I mean it. “Who’s to say how this should and shouldn’t be?! Who makes up the rules?!” My eyes burn into his. “Did you make them up? What about what I think should and shouldn’t be?”
I stare right at him, all thoughts of scrubbing muddy boot prints drifting into nothing.
“I want you,” I tell him. “I want to be with you. When I’m with you, I feel like we fit. I feel like you could get me, even when I don’t get myself.” I pause. “And I feel like I could get you too.”
“We do fit,” he says. “And that’s a good thing. We can be friends, Carrie. I’d like to be your friend.”
I’d laugh if I wasn’t so fucking mortified.
Fucking friend-zoned by the hot older guy I’ve been getting myself off over for months.
It stings bad.
“Friends?! You want to be my fucking friend?!”
“Yes,” he says, and he’s got that serious edge to him again. “I’d very much like to be your friend, Carrie.”
“And that’s all, just friends? No matter what?” My eyes search his for a chink in his armour, but he looks so sure.
“Just friends,” he says. “And I’ll be your friend no matter what. I’m on your side, Carrie, always. You can count on me.”
I hear Jack’s footsteps in the hallway, and I’m too fucking proud for either of them to see me upset like a silly little cow, so I grit my teeth, shrug my shoulders and act like I don’t give a shit about Michael Warren anyway.
“Fine,” I tell him. “Just fucking friends it is then.”
I turn my back on him and scrub that carpet until I get blisters.
They don’t hurt nearly as much as my heart does.
Jack
I try to work out if they’ve fucked or not. Michael’s got stronger control over his fucking dick than I have if he hasn’t fucked the girl already.
Whatever heated exchange they’re having on my living room carpet dries up as I return. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife as Carrie scrubs the carpet like a lunatic.
Oh how quickly things change.
This morning I boarded a plane with the sole intention of putting an end to Michael’s Carrie Wells insanity for good. This evening I’ve invited the crazy girl to stay in my home, not for Michael’s sake, but for hers.
Hers and maybe mine.
I’m rarely excited by anything, but I’m excited by her.
When I was a kid, I loved going to watch daredevil stunts with my dad. I loved the guys on bikes doing flips in the air and the people getting shot out of cannons. I loved magic shows where the pretty assistant always got sawn in half in a box.
It always felt so exhilarating – the inevitable buzz of adrenalin that zipped up my spine at the thought that something could really go wrong. As though I was dancing with danger just by looking on from the sidelines.
That’s how Carrie Wells makes me feel – only I’m not on the sidelines with Carrie Wells, I’m right in the fucking arena.
Being around her feels like dancing with danger. It’s all in her eyes. In her wildness. In the way she gives no fucks for social norms and conventions.
It’s in the way I know she won’t be tamed, but I want to try anyway.
I don’t fucking know why, but I do.
I’m watching the clock until sensible Michael heads home for a sensible sleep before work tomorrow. I’m wondering how much work of my own I’ll get done knowing this exotic sprite of destruction is loose in my house tomorrow.
Michael hovers a long while before he leaves. He declines a beer as we finish up the cleaning. He declines a coffee too, stating – as predicted – that he needs a decent night’s sleep in order to give his meetings the best of himself tomorrow.
He’s always trying to give the best of himself.
If he hasn’t fucked Carrie Wells yet, that’ll be the reason why. His own inflated sense of decency.
I tell him I’ll see him soon when he finally heads off for the night. Carrie nods her head but says very little, even though he prompts her for a goodnight.
I can’t keep up with their exchanges. One minute they’re falling over themselves to take the blame for each other, the next they won’t even look each other in the eye.
She looks shocked as I hand her a cold beer from the fridge.
“I think you’ve earned it,” I tell her and clink my bottle against hers.
“Just cleaning up my mess,” she says but swigs it back with a smile.
I pull out a stool from the kitchen island and take a seat. She follows suit, propping her grubby elbows on the freshly wiped marble like we haven’t just spent an age making this house presentable.
I’m not like Michael with his super reasonable approach to life. I like to hammer down the ground rules and make sure everyone knows where I stand on things.
I’m direct and I give no fucks for anything less.
“Let’s get a few things straight,” I say and she cocks her head at me. “I may be letting you stay, but I’m not a total fucking moron. If you want to stay under my roof, you’ll be treating the place with respect.”
“I’ve got more respect than you have for the place,” she tells me. “When was the last time you checked on your land?”
I shoot a look at the window, staring at the blackness beyond. “You mean my fields?” I shrug. “Fields pretty much take care of themselves last time I checked, with a little helping hand from the sheep in them.”
“That’s your problem,” she says. “You don’t know your own land. You have no respect for it. You like the house but not what comes along with it. Maybe you should be a city boy instead.”
Her assumptions rile me and my tone lets her know it. “You think you’re from the land? From a tribe of nature in harmony with the soul of these parts? Is that what you think?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Something like that actually, yeah.”
I take another swig of beer. “Listen, sweetheart, if you cut my family tree it would bleed the sap of this fucking county and all the years we worked the land here. I’ll show you, if you like? Agriculture runs all the way back through my bloodline on the very same soil my house rests on now. I belong in a city no more than you do, I’m just better at blending in.”
“So why are you so fucking useless with the gifts you have, then?” she asks, and it takes me aback.
“Why didn’t I fix a fucking fence, you mean? I have hundreds of fences. Miles of hedgerows and brooks and ditches. You think I’m going to keep an eye on every part of it all the time?”
“You should,” she snaps, and I laugh.
“If you’re so bothered about my fences, why don’t you head out there and fix them up for me?”
I’m surprised when her confidence shrivels. She spins her bottle in her fingers and looks at the table, not at me.
I feel a tiny shiver of enlightenment, as though I’ve lifted up a pebble in a rock pool and found a desperate little crab underneath.
“Well?” I prompt. “You could head out there and fix them up for me. I’d say that was a fair exchange for a roof over your head, no?”
Her eyes meet mine but they’re guarded. “You mean like a job? An actual job?”
“I mean like contributing to your keep. Doing what you can to keep the place together. If you’re staying here too, you should be invested in keeping the place looked a
fter, don’t you think?”
“But I’m only here for a few days…” she says. “I’ll hardly have time…”
I’m surprised to find I’m not even trying to fool myself into thinking she’ll be gone in a few days.
“Then you’d better work quickly, hadn’t you?”
She nods. “I can fix a fence, you’ll see. I’ll make it good as fucking new. Better than fucking new.”
“I hope so,” I say. “Carrie, I’m a fair guy. I like things to run smoothly. I believe in order and taking control of life and making your own luck. I’m happy to give you a shot here, but there will have to be ground rules. I’m not talking Michael-type ground rules, either – I’m no fucking social worker out to fix the world and everyone in it.”
“Ground rules like what?”
“Ground rules like don’t fucking take the piss out of me, treat the place with respect, and do what’s expected of you.”
“And what’ll be expected of me?”
I smile and finish up my drink.
“I’ll let you know when I’ve worked that out,” I tell her. “Goodnight, Carrie, I have work in the morning.”
I’ve reached the stairs before I hear her call goodnight after me.
My hand is down my pants before I’ve even reached the top stair, because I’ve no delusions of fucking morality when it comes to women I want to fuck.
Unlike poor fucking Michael.
I fire a text message off to him before I take a shower, man to man.
And then I shoot my load over my bathroom tiles while thinking about Carrie’s pretty little blue knickers.
Michael
I should be long asleep when the text message sounds.
It’s Jack, of course, not Carrie.
My heart thumps at the possibility that she’s already decimated his patience. Maybe she’s already descended into hissing monster Carrie and he’s thought better of his offer. Maybe it wouldn’t entirely be such a bad thing, having to bring her back here.
Maybe I could hide her from Pam long enough to figure something out. Maybe having her around could work, even if I won’t allow myself to cross the line with her. Maybe I’d even be able to help her through her shit without having to check all the right boxes at work.
I open the message, expecting the worst – but it’s nothing like that.
Man to fucking man, Michael, are you gonna fuck the girl or what?
My reply is instant, even though my gut aches with it.
Of course I’m fucking not.
It takes a while for him to reply. I’m just about drifting off to sleep when the phone bleeps at me.
But you want her? I’m talking for real here.
I don’t let myself go there because I daren’t. I daren’t allow myself to admit how I really feel about Carrie Wells, because once I do that there’ll be no going back. I can’t allow myself to contemplate the serious potential of crossing the line with a girl less than half my age, a girl who depends on me to help her through this shitty time in her life. A girl who’s had nobody constant who’ll stand strong in the face of all her whims and tricks and silly games.
A girl who needs to know she can rely on me to be her friend above all other things, even if I’m in love with her.
I’m in love with her.
Fucking in love with her.
I’ve never felt so alive as I feel when I’m around her, and if I let myself entertain the possibility that this could be, even for a second, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to live my normal life again.
So I don’t.
I say the right thing.
The sensible thing.
No, I don’t want her and you shouldn’t either. She’s barely even eighteen, Jack. She’s a girl who needs care, not fucking cock.
I don’t get a response to that one.
And I don’t get any fucking sleep either.
Chapter Twelve
Jack
Carrie Wells is a one-girl whirlwind of backchat in my once peaceful home. She’s noisy and obnoxious, messy and disorganised with no respect whatsoever for timekeeping.
Every evening I head home from work nervous of what the fuck I’ll find there, and yet I’m still excited when I turn the key in my front door.
Michael’s right, of course. There’s no way he should contemplate fucking Carrie Wells, and neither should I.
But I am contemplating it. I’m contemplating it every fucking minute.
Still, I do try to talk myself down from pursuing that tight little pussy of hers, simply because I have no idea where that kind of crap would lead any of us. The girl is a loose cannon, and I’ve never been one for commitment. I’m rarely still interested in a woman after she’s spent the night in my bed, and where would that leave our living arrangement if it comes to a thanks, but no thanks next morning?
You know what they say: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned – and Carrie Wells is both crazy and furious enough to make Hell’s own demons shit a ton of bricks. I really don’t need that kind of insanity on my plate, not while she’s holed up in my house.
But that’s really not what concerns me at the heart of it, not if I’m being totally honest with myself.
What concerns me most of all, is that this excitement I feel around Carrie Wells would survive a night in my bed, and escalate all the more because of it.
There’s no doubt she’s craving some kind of stability, and as grotesquely adult and responsible as it is, I feel a strange compulsion to help the girl find her own straight and narrow and keep her on it.
I know that helping Carrie has been Michael’s job for the past five months, and I know he’s been giving it his all, but whereas Michael usually has the experience to excel in this kind of one-on-one coaching, I can’t help but feel he’s slightly off the mark with this one.
Scrap that, I think he’s well off the mark with this one.
Call me arrogant for forming an opinion after just a few days in her company, but I really think I’m onto something.
Where Michael is trying the calm, stable and supportive routine, I think he should be giving her an earful of shit. Where Michael seems like he wants to wrap her broken bits in cotton wool, I think he should be putting a heavy foot down on her bad behaviour,
In short, I think Carrie Wells needs discipline as well as support. Probably even more so.
I think she needs a heavy hand to keep her in line, and I think she’d flourish for it.
I think she’d even like it.
I know Michael’s hands were mostly tied at work. He had boxes to tick and guidelines to adhere to. He had allocated time slots to make a difference and the clock was always ticking.
But not anymore. Not here.
Not for any of us.
I strongly doubt Carrie’s ever been given boundaries by someone who isn’t intimidated by her craziness. I doubt she’s ever been made to understand the concept of tough love.
Maybe not even any love.
I see it in her eyes when they meet mine over our late night beer. I hear it in her voice when she tells me she doesn’t need anyone and doesn’t give a fuck what I think of her approach to loading up the dishwasher so insanely high it’s almost impossible to close.
She’s a bag of backchat and bluster, pushing and poking me for a reaction whenever I’m in her company, but I see enough to get a sense of the troublesome girl with the raven hair.
It’s not that Michael isn’t around enough to draw his own conclusions about what Carrie needs. He heads over every evening when his workday is done to check in on her. He makes calls to various associations about her living arrangements and talks her through the paperwork, even though she’s thoroughly disinterested in everything he’s doing for her.
Carrie gives him nothing because she’s a snotty bitch who’s punishing him for sticking to his morals. I see it even if he can’t.
That’s why I decide to broach it with her after the first swig of beer goes down a treat this evening.
“Straight up answer,” I begin. “Why are you being such a fucking bitch to him?”
She raises her eyebrows like she doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but I laugh in her face.
“Cut the crap, Carrie, we both know you’re freezing him out. You want to humiliate him for giving a shit about you. Why?”
“You’re fucking mad.” She taps the side of her head. “You’re seeing shit that isn’t there.”
“You’re fucking mad if you think I can’t see right through you,” I tell her. “I just want to know why.”
She shrugs. “Because he’s a fucking dick.”
I shake my head. “Nice try, sugarplum. We both know the guy’s not a fucking dick. Just a couple of days ago you were desperate to confess your undying devotion to him in my living room. Now you act like he’s the biggest loser piece of shit you’ve ever met.”
“He treated me like the biggest loser piece of shit he’s ever met.”
I take another swig of beer. “What do you mean?”
She folds her arms.
“Carrie, what do you mean?”
She groans. “Why can’t you mind your own fucking business?”
I’m not going to let this go. No fucking way.
“It’s hard to mind my own fucking business in my own fucking house, Carrie.”
“Yeah, well, it’s hard to be nice to a guy who says he doesn’t want you.”
I raise an eyebrow. “He said that?”
She nods. “Friends, that’s what he said we can be. Such fucking bullshit.”
“Friends isn’t the same thing as saying he doesn’t want you.”
She kicks my stool with her boot. “’Tis as far as I’m concerned. He can go fuck himself.” She tips back her drink. “I don’t want him anymore anyway. I don’t give a fuck that he blew me out.”
I know she must be lying, but my hands feel clammy all the same.
“You don’t want him anymore?”
Her eyes aren’t just piercing tonight, they’re dangerous. Her guarded stare gives me the fucking shivers.
“So, what do you want?” I prompt.