by CL Walters
I push away from the wall. “Yeah. I made it home.”
“For the record,” Josh says, “she seemed cool.”
I press my teeth together but offer him a nod.
“Still seeing her?”
“What do you think?” I say, and it comes out like bricks to build the wall I want it to.
Josh leans away, and his smile flickers.
I shake my head. “I should go.” I look at Danny. “Congratulations.”
“Come to lunch with us,” he says, his eyes gentle and inviting. I know his invitation is earnest. “Everyone is coming.”
“Yes,” Josh says.
“You should,” Tanner tacks on, and his eyes meet mine. I see there’s an invitation, and I should know that Tanner only says what he means.
The hope in my gut feels dangerous and untrustworthy. I shake my head and take a step away from him, from my friends. “I can’t. I have work.” I hold out my hand to Danny. “Good luck.”
Danny takes it. “Thanks for being here.”
I nod and chance a glance at Josh then Tanner. They are both unreadable, their facial expressions neutral. I turn away before I can see them switch to disappointment and walk away from them, sure that Max’s rules aren’t for rebuilding, only maintenance. If I’ve proven anything in my life, it’s that I can’t do either.
6
I tell Max about seeing Tanner, Josh, and Danny. Her hope—the positivity—feels like oil. I try to grab ahold, but my fingers slip through the viscous feeling. It coats my skin but washes away without her.
I don’t tell her I was a coward; she already knows. I ran away and failed her relationship rules. Too many feelings.
Feelings.
What’s the point?
7
My house is full of people, but the shitty realization is that of the people partying in my house, I only know a handful and none of them are my real friends. Mom is at work. Phoenix is out. Max is at school, though she sent me a Happy Birthday text. We’d Facetimed, and she was at a party where some guy put his arm around her. I ignore feelings about that. Josh and Danny have left town; I got texts from them too. Tanner is MIA (though to be fair I didn’t invite him). No text from him. The rest are people I’ve partied with but don’t know anything about me except the version I’ve offered for consumption. It’s just the shitty version of me on my shitty birthday, surrounded by people but really alone.
I fucking hate my birthday, and it’s always the perfect day to get completely trashed.
Marcus walks in through the front door, sees me sitting on the couch like a king on his throne, and yells, “Happy birthday, Fucker!” He smiles and greets guests as he walks across the room, then slaps my palm with his when he reaches me. He holds out a bottle of Jack. “Have a good time, bro.” He winks like we’re in on a private joke.
The bottle feels heavy in my hands like both a promise and a curse. “Thanks. How’d you get your hands on it?”
“A cousin. You’re nineteen now?”
I nod.
“Two more years and you can buy your own. Fuck yeah.”
I offer Marcus a cool smile, that’s what he expects.
He glances around, looking at the meat market. “Where’s that hot girl you were with at the bonfire?”
Max.
He continues talking, his eyes returning to me. “She was fine. I would have liked to hit that. I hope you did.” He chum-punches my shoulder like we’re brothers in arms.
I feel a little sick and disgusted that he’s relegated Max to nothing more than item and ashamed that I’ve done the same thing to others. He sounds like a tool. “College,” I tell him.
“My loss, I guess,” he says and heads into the kitchen.
Your never, I think.
The front door opens.
Bella walks into the house with her friend, Greta.
I’m surprised. They probably showed up hoping Tanner would be here. Resentment churns in my gut. I twist open Marcus’s gift and take a swig.
Bella’s blue eyes find mine as she meanders through the room. She looks good, like she always does. Her straight blond hair is long and sleek, her body banging in a short skirt and a fitted shirt that shows off her curves as well as slices of tanned skin at her waist. She offers a tentative smile.
I don’t return it, but I watch her walk across the room toward me as I take another gulp of the Jack. I’m tense and raise my shields.
“Happy birthday.” She sits down on the couch next to me, so close she might as well be sitting on my lap.
Greta passes to talk to Marcus who’s at the dining table now.
I look at Bella. Her eyes are rimmed with eye makeup the color of smoke. It makes her blue eyes brighter. “Tanner isn’t here.” I adjust myself so she isn’t a layer I’m wearing and take another drink.
She looks down at her hands in her lap and swipes at the skin of her bare thigh as if there is something there. There isn’t, just smooth, tan skin. “I came for your birthday, Griff.” Her gaze jumps back up to mine, and she smiles again, this time with more convincing brightness.
I hum and take another drink.
“May I?” she asks and holds out a hand.
I give her the bottle.
She tips it up and takes a gulp, her eyes never leaving mine. Then she winces as she hands it back to me. “That burns.”
I smile, and my bitterness smooths out. I take another drink. “An acquired taste.”
Her eyes move across my face, as if she’s taking stock. “Yes. I think it is.” She leans closer, her lips moving against the skin of my ear. “I have a birthday gift for you later.” She leans back slightly and smiles, the promise of what she means clear.
I’m not sure how I feel about that. A few months ago, getting with her was all I wanted, but now her words from the Quarry solidify like knives stabbing me in the gut; choosing him would be like choosing a Nissan over a Tesla. I take another sip, and despite the wound made by her words, my mood is smoother as the alcohol mellows me. I consider her offer, but there’s something else in the shadows, something distant and lonely. My instincts suggest a hasty retreat, but I decide that can’t be right. Here’s a beautiful girl offering up… something. Bro Code. Guys don’t feel that way, not when a hot girl expresses her interest, right? I recall telling Max my rules, though I don’t want to think about Max, and decide that if Bella checks all the boxes, I should be into it. Right?
I take another drink, stretch my arm over the back of the couch, and hand her the bottle again.
She takes another sip.
We don’t really talk, just exist in one another’s spheres while the party happens around us. I drink. She drinks. The alcohol doing what it’s supposed to, lower the inhibitions, free up the constraints of whatever ills walk alongside me, until all the emotion is numb, but the physical sensation is wide awake. Her constant touch, skin slipping against mine, kindles physical sensation, but something in the recesses of my emotional ghost town echoes that physical and emotional aren’t the same thing. I dismiss it.
Phoenix walks into the house at some point during the night. I’ve lost track of time. He stalls at the door, taking in the scene. Sounds of the party coil around us, tightening the walls of the room. I’m still on the couch with Bella rubbing against me. Her hands haven’t stopped touching me. One of her hands is in my hair at my nape. Her boob is pressed against my arm. Both of us are drunk and dumb on that bottle of whiskey we’ve been sharing.
Phoenix’s eyes meet mine, but he doesn’t smile like I expect. Hot-girls-hot-cars poster expectations. Instead, he hesitates at the door, then picks his way around the revelers. He’s carrying a pink box. When he reaches me, he sets it on the coffee table littered with cups, bottles, and cans.
“I got this for you,” he says over the music.
I lean forward. It’s a cake with Happy Birthday written across the top. “Thanks, bro.” I give him a loose smile. “Come have a drink with your baby brother.” I hold out the part
ially empty bottle to him.
He glances at it and takes a step back. His eyes dance around the room and then rest on Bella, who’s snuggled up against me. “I didn’t know you were having a party.” He has to repeat himself, leaning closer, and I lean forward to hear him.
I lean back after I do. “It’s my birthday, and it sucks. Might as well party.” He knows why I hate my birthday. He was there. Cops. Shouting. Tears. Father led out in handcuffs. A birthday to remember.
He shakes his head. “I can’t stay.”
“What?” I try to stand but flop back onto the couch, drunker than I thought. That and Bella holds onto my arm, making it impossible to move anyway.
Phoenix holds up his hands. “Don’t. I just–” he stops. “Never mind. Happy birthday, Griffin.” He offers me a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes and disappears somewhere.
I don’t think too much about it, just sit in my kingdom, feeling not much of anything at all.
The party waxes and wanes until there’s only a handful of us left. Greta disappears out the front door holding Marcus’s hand, and Bella’s still next to me. She’s drunk. I’m drunk. She leans over and trails kisses on my neck.
I stand, barely, and hold out my hand.
She takes it.
I lead her to my room using the wall for support, and then draw her into the dark when we get there. “You into this?” I ask. I’m asking her, but the question smacks me. Am I? I wrap my arms around her and kiss her jaw because I’m supposed to be into it. A little voice that sounds like Max says, “What about your rules?” I shake my head to dislodge the thought.
“Yes.” She turns her face, so her lips connect with mine.
“You sure? I’m not Tanner,” I say against her mouth.
She pulls away. I can’t see her face clearly in the dark, but the moonlight outside my window makes her eyes shiny orbs. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Sorry you said it, or sorry I heard it?”
“Both.” She draws me toward the bed, sits down, leans back, then pulls me onto her. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since. And you were with that other girl.”
I have the faint thought that this is happening because of Max. She’s a giant missing piece of a puzzle I can’t finish. I shake my head again. I can’t think about Max right now.
My mind teeters and slips toward focusing on my body, which doesn’t really care about Bella’s admission, more interested in the sensation of her hands on the skin of my back under my t-shirt. Her mouth, her lips against mine wakes the necessary parts of me up as I settle in between her thighs (which is a relief that everything is in working order considering I’m drunk AF). She tilts her hips to invite me to settle deeper. The physical effects of lust run through my blood like lightning. I’m hungry. She must be too, tugging at my shirt until it’s off and hers follows so we’re skin to skin.
The last time I was with anyone, it had been her, and that was months ago, just after graduation. The physical connection is easy between us. The physical function of my body as it prepares to connect with hers isn’t a thinking endeavor. I’m wound up, tense, and decide release is what will help me get back on track. I kiss her with all the pent-up energy inside of me.
I don’t sleep with girls I care about.
I falter as the words I shared with Max slash and burn my physical response.
My mouth drifts away from Bella’s, and I use my arms to push away from her. “I don’t think I can do this,” I say.
But Bella’s response to my drifting is to turn up the physical. “I want you,” she pants, pulling me back to her. She kisses me deeper, reaches into my pants and touches me. “Please.”
Her skin against mine physically feels good.
She wants me.
The voices in my head reminding me about the rules recede. I grasp onto being wanted and to the physical pleasure associated with that want.
The response of her mouth is as hungry as mine, filled with heavy sighs and warm moans, sounds that add fuel to the fire. She offers reciprocal pleasure with her tongue and her touch. I give both back because the voices fade, the emotions numb in comparison to what I’m feeling in my body, which is nice and loud. My brain feels far, far away. The sensations override everything else.
“Griff?” Her voice draws me back from the alcohol pleasure numb, and she moves her hips against me. “Do you have a condom?”
“Yes.” I reach into the cabinet drawer next to my bed, and she unbuttons her skirt shimmying out of it. I can’t find the box and look for it. It’s gone. “Fucking Phoenix,” I swear and bow my head.
Bella’s mouth moves on my shoulder, her hands are all over me. “What is it?” She pushes at the waistband of my jeans. “I need this. What’s taking so long” Her voice is threaded with a high note of need.
I look at her. “I’m out. Unless you have a condom.”
“I’m on the pill,” she says while touching me, offering, needing, drawing me back to her, and pushing me onto my back.
If I were thinking, I might take stock that the missing condoms are a sign, but I’m not. I don’t believe in signs. My brain is connected to my animal needs. She doesn’t seem to be thinking either because she draws my mouth back to hers. She tugs on my jeans, releasing me from the confines of the denim and my boxers and pushes everything over my hips.
She returns, straddling me. “It’s okay. Please.” Her mouth works magic against my skin, and she leans forward, her breasts in my face, her body rocking against mine.
I descend further into the basic need of release.
“Griff. Please.”
It’s against the rules, a quiet voice reminds me.
What’s the point? What have any rules ever gotten me? Instead, I grasp her hips because I’m not thinking past the moment. I hear her wants, her words, Please, Griff. I hold myself and guide her, until all I feel is wrapped up in the sensation of her body snug around mine. I draw in a breath, and I forget where I am. I forget what I was looking for. I forget to think at all, and I just exist in the sensations. The skin of her hips against my palms. The sound of her moans. The movement and friction of our bodies working in concert and climbing toward the crescendo. Then I reach it and fall over the edge, letting go. My mind goes refreshingly blank, and I drift into the darkness of release, then sleep, not feeling so alone, not really feeling anything at all.
The thud of a door somewhere in the house wakes me up. My mom is leaving for work, I decide. The room sort of spins in the twilight of predawn, and I remember the party, the drinking, and Bella. I try to shift onto my back, but warm skin presses against my own, and I realize she’s still in my bed with me.
I lift my head and see her arm draped over me.
Shit.
What have I done?
Shit.
With a sinking feeling in my gut, I know I’ve gotten drunk and slept with Bella, even after what happened at the Quarry.
I’ve fucking lost my mind.
With two fingers, I move her arm as gently as I can. Then, mustering as much finesse as I’m able, despite what I’m realizing is a massive hangover thrumming through my head and gut, I extract myself from my own bed. She rolls over, and I freeze. Then, I slink across the room to my dresser and find the first clothes available. Slipping into the black sweats and a random t-shirt, I glance at the girl in my bed.
She’s as nude as I was, the blue comforter draped across her hips. She’s on her side, back to me, her hands tucked under her. Her blond hair spread out around her. I have the strange awareness that seeing her this way at one time might have awakened the sexual attraction I’ve always felt for her, but for some reason it’s regret swirling through me instead. What I thought I wanted incongruent with the road I’ve taken to get to this moment. I’ve broken so many of my rules.
I’d gotten too drunk.
I’d slept with her without a condom, even if she is on the pill.
I’d used her.
I feel used.
&
nbsp; My stomach tightens with unease.
I sneak from my own room and use the bathroom, brush my teeth, check for life inside my house. I’m expecting to find a party mess because I didn’t clean up, but there isn’t one. Everything party related is gone. No cups, bottles, cans. No trash or food. No empty wrappers, or stray dishes. The couch looks perfect, the carpet vacuumed. Everything in its place.
I make coffee because I need to think, but the impending headache is making it difficult.
A noise draws my attention to the hallway.
Bella—dressed in her clothes from the night before, her hair a haphazard mess—has her shoes between the fingers of one of her hands, her phone, and keys in the other. “Shit,” she mutters. It appears she’s trying to sneak out.
“Coffee?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I should get home. My mom–” she waves her phone– “needs the car. I didn’t want to bother you.”
I turn away and stare at the coffee pot, wishing it would brew faster so I could do something else instead of talking to her. My face and ears flood with embarrassment, and I think she’s feeling it too, trying to sneak away. I don’t want to be a coward though, so I turn to face her. “About last night–”
She stops her creep across the floor toward the living room and sighs. “Can we not?” She lifts her head, and I notice the dark rings around her eyes, the make-up and shadows of my own regret reflected at me. “I look like shit. I feel like shit. And I don’t know if I have it in me right now to figure out what just happened between us.”
“Is there an us?” I ask and realize it sounds abrupt and rude. “Did you want me to call you?” I regret the second question the moment it’s drifting between us. I don’t want to call her, and that makes me feel worse because if I did, it would just feel like going through weird and unnecessary motions to a predictable end. Have I ever wanted anything with her beyond sex? No.