The minutes.
Until there are more miles between you and me.
Until the hours are long, and the heart strings weak.
Too far away for you to tug them.
“I’m done. Finished. Throw me to the curb or hang me out to dry. Steve asked me to be exclusive!” Sasha threw herself onto my bed dramatically, hands covering her face.
“And... you’re surprised?” I quirked an eyebrow, pushing her over to make room for me to crisscross applesauce beside her. “You’ve been hot and heavy since before homecoming.”
“There’s one semester left in our high school careers. One. It’s the absolute wrong time to be getting emotionally entrenched with a meat sack.” Revealing her face, pale cheeks tinged red and short dark hair spiked out funky against the comforter, Sasha frowned. “Why do I really like this stupid idiot?”
“Sasha, he’s not the worst,” I reasoned, lifting up my fingers to tick off pros to being in a relationship with Steve. “A, he’s absolute adorable in a goofy secret nerd way, now that he doesn’t act like a sex-crazed macho pig all the time. B, you yourself have sung the praises of his...”
“Absolutely gigantic dick?” She breathed out, interrupting me and sighing. Sasha was that way—sexually liberated and not ashamed. Surprisingly, she owed her sense of freedom and freedom of identity to the teachings of her, less than typical, grandmother. “Yes, that is part of his charm.”
“Also, I’ve seen you around him, babe. You glow. So, he can’t be a complete idiot. Especially given that he really seems to like you. Plus,” I waggled all of my fingers, “You both got early decision to Haverford. I think that, honestly, the biggest problem Steve used to have is that he did whatever necessary to fit in with his friends.”
“Friends like Drake Castleton?” Sasha sat up quickly, eyeing me closely. She’d been trying to get me to open up about Drake ever since the pictures had circulated like wildfire through the student body.
“I told you—I'm not talking about it.” I shook my head, irritation heating my cheeks. “You and my mom should get together and create new police interrogation tactics. Just ask over, and over, and over again until the suspect breaks from sheer annoyance.”
“Well, you need to talk about it. That was a shitty thing he did.” She pulled several pillows to her and tugged them against her stomach as she leaned forward. “Like, on the bad boy behavior meter, Drake slammed right past awful and despicable into unbelievably moronic. He’d just gotten you. I mean, sort of. He had, hadn’t he?”
I nodded, but barely. A quick jerk of my head up and down. “We never said we were official though. We never said we were exclusive.”
“Bull shit,” she breathed out, gaze going wide. “Two seconds with you would tell a boy that you’re not the open relationship type. Drake’s a lot of things, but he’s not stupid.”
“You just said that he was unbelievably moronic.” I countered.
“His behavior was, but Drake Castleton is far from an idiot about girls. Just like he knew Tabitha was a manipulative, obsessed bitch and him using her for sex couldn’t have a happy ending, he knew that you, Tarryn Monroe, were a good girl. Not like, ‘tell the teachers that student A and student B were cheating on a test, but a good girl in the sense that you don’t just kiss anyone. You don’t just make out with anyone. When you do, it means something. He knew that. So, when he slept with—”
“He did it to keep her from sending those photos.”
“And look how that turned out,” she rolled her eyes, falling back against the bed again.
“Anyways,” I stood up, stretched, and tried to change the subject. “How did we start talking about Drake? You’re here because of Big Dick Steve.”
“I don’t want to talk about Steve anymore,” she huffed, tossing her arm over her eyes and blocking out the world. Or, as well as she could with bright sunlight streaming into the world and her arm too narrow to battle against it.
“And I don’t want to talk about Drake.”
My phone buzzed, as if on cue.
Sasha lunged for it, but I beat her to it, snagging up the cell quickly and stuffing it into my pocket.
“Aren’t you going to look at the text?”
“Not right now.”
“It’s from Drake, isn’t it?”
“I’ve no idea.” But that was a lie. All of my text messages were from Drake lately.
I’m sorry.
Forgive me.
I was only trying to protect you.
I’m sorry.
Tarryn, please talk to me. I never wanted this to happen.
This newest message would likely be more of the same. If I wrote back, if I extended that olive branch, I knew that I’d push everything behind me just so I could see him. Just so I could kiss him again. Touch him.
The real thing was better than the boy in my dreams, even if the imaginary one was the one that hadn’t hurt me, whilst the real thing had betrayed my trust at the first turn.
“I’ve one more final. I need to study.”
“Two more for me,” Sasha groaned, and I was glad to note that the subject of tests finally seemed to properly divert her attention away from boys. “I guess I should get home too. I only told Mom I’d pop over for a little bit to re-confirm travel plans with your parents. She’s expecting straight As. And Dad’s promised a new car before college if I can get in the top 5 of our class. I love my car, but it would be super nice to get something a little newer than 30 years old with a janky engine that overheats. ‘The problem with kids these days is they don’t know how to work for what they want. It’s all handed to them’.” Sasha affected a male voice, waggling a finger. I’d met her parents for the first time last week, when they’d come over to meet my own parents and make sure everyone was comfortable with the winter break plans, and her impression of him was spot on.
Also, Sasha hadn’t been kidding around when she’d said her dad was a giant. The man was easily six foot four and that sort of... fat that’s not fat, but a layer of softness over a bunch of really, really thick muscle.
“Stop it,” I laughed out, pushing her shoulder so she fell back against the bed once more. “Your dad seems really sweet.”
“Well, he’d had some bacon that morning. So... any day that’s a bacon day in our household leaves him in a good mood. Just thank your lucky stars that you’ve not been around him on a Sunday when Mom forces us to fast and cleanse our spirits to be better vehicles for God’s love. You know what he’s started doing? Squirreling snacks and candy bars around the house. And he’s got a tiny mini fridge under his desk hooked into one of the floor outlets full of soda. He’s saved me from starving more than once, and he can’t call me out on stealing from his supply or else he’d have to admit to Mom what he’s doing.”
“I know what I’m getting your dad for Christmas.” I smiled, watching her stand and straighten out her black romper, before slipping into her sandals and quirking an eyebrow at me curiously. “Bacon jerky!”
She laughed, nodding. “You’ll be his favorite person in the world.”
“Oh, God.” I glanced over at my calendar, a thought bouncing around my brain. “Is your mom going to make us fast on vacation? Like, should I stuff granola bars and apple sauce into my suitcase?”
“Granola bars... and apple sauce? That’s your idea of snacks to keep you from starvation?” Sasha shook her head, sighing. “You really are odd, Tarryn. Not chocolate or chips. But healthy shit. And you want to keep saying that Drake didn’t know you’d expect to be exclusive? You’re straight and narrow. Healthy. Reliable. Obviously, you’d want to date the guy you got hot and heavy with in the middle of a lake.”
“I will see you after exams.” I gripped her shoulders and started moving her towards my bedroom door. “And then we will head off to the snowy mountains and cuddle by fires and talk boys. I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that. Especially since you’re apparently going out with Aiden Wednesday night.”
&n
bsp; “How... how did you know that?” I sputtered, halting as she escaped my grip and turned around to face me, a mischievous grin plastered across her face.
“It was literally the first thing your mom said when she let me in the house.”
I groaned. “I swear... no privacy!” I stomped out of my room, stopped, and then pointed down the stairs. “Out with you. You can be friends with my mom instead of me.”
Sasha bounced past me, smile not faded one bit from her face. “You'd be lost without me, and you know it! Besides, even if your mom hadn’t spilled the beans, somehow Steve already knew too.”
I groaned. “I hate small towns.”
“You love them, and you love me.” Sasha countered, sticking out her tongue.
“I can love you, and still be infuriated by you,” I growled playfully, continuing to point down the stairs.
She obliged, taking them two at a time as she descended. But her voice rang out and upwards as she dropped down from the last riser onto the foyer floor. “Can’t wait to have that uninterrupted boy talk in the middle of the mountains with nowhere for you to escape to as a means to avoid the subject!”
Sasha wasn’t going to let me get away with keeping quiet. Not for much longer.
“Way to peer pressure, Sash!” I shouted back, huffing back into my room and picking up my textbook from the desk so I could sprawl out on the bed and pretend like I was concentrating on the words inside.
“Friends don’t make friends wait for juicy details of their love life!” She called back, sounding not the least bit chastised.
The phone in my pocket buzzed again. I hadn’t checked the message from before, so I rolled onto my side and dug out my cell.
Drake: Heard you’re going away for break. Can I see you before you leave?
Drake: Come on, Tarryn. Please. Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking.
I chewed on my lower lip, heart and brain fighting furiously.
I’m sorry. No.
I wanted to spill out words. Tell him why I couldn’t see him. Tell him all the emotions inside of me were a perfect storm of wanting him and hating him.
But if I opened that gate, and everything began to flood out of me, I didn’t think I could dam it up again.
It was better to stay in control. To keep telling him no. To cut off my addiction cold turkey and get him out of my system.
I thought about Tabitha. How easily could a person fall into that sort of all-consuming obsession? How easy would it be for me, level-headed and future-focused that I was, to destroy all my hard work simply because I wanted a boy.
A slippery slope.
Named Drake Castleton
3.
D R A K E
The day the photos went public...
“We had an understanding, did we not, Drake?” Grandmother’s voice quavered a little as she held an embroidered napkin to her face and concealed her mouth as she took a bite of tea sandwich. She was, as she always was in the face of crisis, playing the almighty matriarch of the Castleton Family. Though the quake in her voice gave me pause.
She wasn’t getting any younger, but she rarely let anyone see her vulnerabilities.
“We did have an understanding, Grandmother.” I shrugged, body slumped against the wingback chair, posture deliberately disrespectful. If she knew what Tarryn meant to me, how badly her pain hurt me, then I wasn’t sure how my grandmother would respond. Castletons had a unique response to actual love or sincere caring for another human being, even within the confines of blood relations.
To put it bluntly, Castletons refused love, and refused to give love, in nearly equal measure. And anything that looked like love was more than likely a ruse to gain some sort of advantage or another.
Marriages were arranged.
Affairs, when they happened, should be done so with an end goal in mind. A goal that benefited the family.
Maybe that’s why my father had pissed her off so much, to the point of offering me the keys to the kingdom. He’d sought comfort in the arms of a woman who could do nothing for him. She didn’t have the ear of a politician. She didn’t have secret connections in non-extradition countries (yes, a similar thing had come into play and been necessary years and years ago when a distant cousin was involved in a DUI hit-and-run accident).
But my father’s secretary, though beautiful and intelligent, was a hollow dalliance with zero treasure at the end of the orgasm. If one wanted to cheat, there had to be more than the desires of the dick at play.
God, no wonder I’d grown into such a fucked-up guy when it came to sex and relationships.
“So, what happened then, Drake? You have a future ahead of you, for all intents and purposes a thriving industry to take over as soon as you’re ready. I am debating pushing my own son, your father, aside in favor of you. Yet, you continue to prove that perhaps you are no better than the tree which grew you. That the branch and the apple are one in the same.”
“Hey,” I sat up, knowing that sulking would only get me so far. She’d want to see that I had a backbone as well. That I didn’t go down without defending myself. But it had to be about me, only. Not Tarryn, who had also fallen victim to Tabitha’s gross betrayal of privacy. “As far as I knew, Randall had taken care of the problem. And then I have this girl, obsessed with me, come up and threaten to expose the very evidence that Randall, your man, supposedly destroyed.”
“We did not know about any photos, Drake. You told me about a video, and that is all. As far as Randall knew, he had taken care of the problem.” She spoke slowly, making sure I knew that blaming Randall would get me nowhere. For her part, she’d likely already raked poor Cummings over the coals, but that was her job and not mine.
“I didn’t know about them either, not until she made her threats and extorted...” Fucking awkward to talk about sex while sitting near my grandmother.
“Extorted sexual relations from you?” She questioned, though it wasn’t a question at all.
“Yes,” I growled, standing up. “Do you think I want to jeopardize everything you’re offering me by screwing up again? My dad sure as hell doesn’t deserve the empire you and Grandfather created,” I said what she wanted to hear, though I didn’t even know what I wanted anymore. The twisted, oppressive family legacy, or something else. “I want to be what you expect. I want to be the heir to what you’ve built.”
Freedom.
To follow my own goddamn dreams.
Whatever those were.
“But I’m not a saint,” I pushed when grandmother didn’t respond. She wasn’t sold on my words, a doubting Thomas living behind her gaze. “I’ve made a fuck ton of mistakes.”
“Language, Drake. You’ve used more than enough foul language in my presence for today.”
“Sorry,” I ran a hand through my hair, thinking over my next words carefully. They needed to ring truth. Grandmother Birdie needed to believe every syllable, beyond a shadow. “I don’t want to hurt people anymore. I don’t want to hurt myself. I’ve been on this destructive path for as long as I can remember. The girl who got hurt in this, the girl in the photos, she didn’t deserve this shit.” I waved a hand, realizing I’d cursed again. “Sorry. She didn’t deserve to be exposed like that.”
“It’s a product of her own bad judgement, Drake.” Grandmother took a sip of tea and stared up at me.
“It’s a product of my bad judgement,” I corrected her. “I’m a Castleton. I take responsibility for my own actions. And from now on, I’m not dragging people into my issues.”
She looked at me thoughtfully and then reached to the glass topped table beside her where she picked up a matte black business card with an embossed phone number and a logo. She rested it against her lap, loosely held between two long, arthritic fingers.
“Doctor Allporth is a friend. He treated your father, years ago. Though it did little good.” She paused, lifting the card towards me. I didn’t take it from her. “If you are serious about moving forward with your life, then you must leave
your addictions behind.”
“I don’t do drugs. I barely drink.” The first was a white lie. I didn’t do drugs regularly, but I’d experimented once or twice. As for drinking... it was a little more than ‘barely’.
“You are addicted to sex, Drake. You grew up in a household that put little emphasis on real intimacy. I too, am at fault. I should have seen the flaws in your mother and father and intervened years ago. Perhaps if I had, then there would have been no relationship with that teacher, or string of girls afterwards. The situation you currently find yourself in could have been avoided all together.”
I took the card from her, incredulousness written across my face.
“It is true,” Grandmother spoke again, obviously reading my expression, “I am not a warm person, Drake. I was hard on your father too, because I thought his own father was too soft. He was spoiled and today turned into the man he is. You were... neglected and yet are so much like him. But your father has never wanted to change. He has never been committed to stepping out from under the shadow of his own flaws to become a better man.”
“I want to change,” I repeated the words, and they were true. She could see through me. I’d never realized how easily she read me, not until now.
“I know you do. And it is for that reason, and that reason alone, that I have hope you will become the heir worthy of the Castleton Empire.” She stood up, using the arms of her chair for support. “Call Doctor Allporth, Drake. I will not invade your privacy and ask him to share the contents of your sessions with me, though he would if I pressed him. He owes me... quite a lot. But this journey is yours, and yours alone. And you must do me proud, Drake. It is quite impossible for me to live forever as head of the business. I would like to die knowing my husband’s hard work is safe.”
She walked towards me, and next I knew my grandmother had raised both of her hands to rest against my shoulders. She was so small, not the giant of a woman who once scared me as a child with her stern words and hand slaps warning me off of the candy bowl before dinner.
Balls: A Bully Romance (The King of Castleton High Book 4) Page 3