Sweet: (Intermix) (True Believers) (7 page)

“You can’t tag me,” I told him.

“You don’t look that bad.”

“It’s not that. I’m supposed to be in West Virginia, remember?”

He grinned. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Come here, sinner. Wait, give me a matching ’stache first.”

Riley stood stock-still while I artistically swooped the paintbrush over his face. “This is hard, because you have legit stubble.” I was also aware of just how close to me he was standing. How close my mouth was to his.

He looked unaffected though. “Your life is so hard.”

Just for that, I gave him a handlebar mustache, painting curls at the ends with a flourish. “You look amazing.”

“Alright, pose with me. No duck face. I hate duck face. I will pop your lips with a pin if you do duck face.”

“Tell me how you really feel.”

Riley threw his arm around me and held up the phone with the other. I leaned against his shoulder, and gave a serious Hercule Poirot stare, one eyebrow raised, a finger pretending to twirl my paint mustache. Riley snapped and we looked at it. I looked evil. He looked adorably cute, grinning with his dimples flashing, looking every inch of a guy despite the gray paint.

Seeing us together did something weird to me. I sucked in a breath, heart pounding, and I tried to laugh, but it came out sounding louder than I intended.

“I’m Riley Mann, and I approve this message,” he said. He didn’t seem to notice I was acting like a freak.

“That’s because you look good and I look scary,” I told him.

“Yep.”

Of course. I had totally walked in to that one. I shoved him. “Send that to me, jerk.”

“Send you the picture you don’t like?”

“I didn’t say I don’t like it. Just that I resent that you look better than me.”

“Get used to it. Now you’d better wash that off your face before I have to scrub you with turpentine.”

“Sounds hot.” I hadn’t thought about the fact that the paint was drying. Rushing to the bathroom, I took to my face with exfoliant. I ended up beet red with raw skin, but the paint came off.

Riley stood behind me waiting his turn. I was so determined to get the paint off quickly I didn’t even protest that he was just lingering in the doorway watching me. It occurred to me at one point that he seemed to be looking at my butt, but given that his expression never changed, it didn’t seem to have much impact on him.

I turned to him. “The sink is yours.” I looked like I’d been slapped with a wet noodle, my skin stinging, but I was paint-free.

“Can I use that stuff?”

“You want to exfoliate?”

“I want the paint off.” He picked the tube off the counter. “How do I use this?”

“You rub it on,” I said dryly. “Then wash it off.”

“Can you do it for me?” He held the tube out to me.

If it was any other guy, I’d think this was some sort of awkward come-on. But this was Riley. He might as well be asking me to pop his pimple or dig out a splinter for him. There was nothing even remotely sexual in his expression.

Maybe he didn’t like blondes.

Maybe he liked exotic brunettes.

I wondered what I would look like with dark hair.

Then I mentally grimaced. Stupid. That’s what I would look like with dark hair. Like a desperate chick trying too hard. What the hell was wrong with me?

Slapping scrub on his face, I rubbed it vigorously into his skin, trying not to make eye contact or think about the fact that I was thinking about what kind of girl he thought was hot.

“I’m not going to suggest nursing as a career for you,” he commented. “You don’t exactly have a gentle touch.”

Lifting a washcloth—one of mine, I might add—I rubbed off the lotion. Hard. “Do it yourself if you don’t like the way I do it.” Or maybe get a brunette to do it.

Ugh. Why was I being a crazy bitch? I threw down the washcloth and nudged past him. “
Excuse
me.”

“Sure.” He held up his hands. “Wasn’t trying to block you. You going to bed?”

“Yes, if that’s okay with you.” Bitch just kept right on rolling out of my mouth, and I couldn’t seem to stop it.

“I have no opinion on it one way or the other.”

Which was exactly why I was so annoyed. I wanted him to have an opinion about me. About bed. About me in bed.

“Good night.” I paused in the doorway and forced myself to be rational. “Thanks for painting the kitchen.”

“Gee, it was my pleasure,” he said, eyeballing me in the mirror.

Yeah. That was the most obvious sarcasm yet. Because I knew I was being a dick, I just retreated to my temporary room. Where I did something really ridiculous. I opened the picture that Riley had sent me and I stared at the two of us as I lay on the bed, fully dressed, lights off. Over the drone of the air-conditioning I murmured to myself, “Riley Mann,” and then felt like the biggest middle school dork that had ever existed. I didn’t crush on guys. They crushed on me.

So what the hell was wrong with me? I checked my menstruation app on my phone to see if I could blame the sap attack on hormones, but no such luck. It was a whole week until my period.

Rolling on my side, I did something equally as bizarre. I forwarded the picture to Rory with the label “Roomies.”

She texted back a minute later.
LOL. Tyler wants to know what dope you two are smoking. U look like you like each other.

No drugs. Just paint fumes.

Did you paint the kitchen???

Yep.

Wow. Awesome.

Yeah. That was me. Feeling awesomely stupid.

I deleted the text from Riley with the mustache picture in a moment of owning my power.

Which was lame because I knew that it was still there in the text I’d sent Rory.

It wasn’t hot in the room, but my body felt like it was heating from the inside out. There was no way I could get undressed without risk of extreme arousal. I lay there, phone on my chest, legs crossed, reciting Bible passages about death and destruction to myself until I finally fell asleep.

I dreamed that a swarm of locusts had Riley’s face.

Which was perhaps the most deeply disturbing image I’d ever encountered in my life.

Chapter Six

There is an inherent problem with lying about your location. You either have to invite everyone around you into the secret or you look like a psycho. Given that I didn’t want to admit to everyone I knew that I was supposed to be sweating with a nail gun in the backwater, I was just coming off as a raging bitch.

So not only was I not giving of my time freely to help others, I was being nasty to my friends.

Yay, Jessica.

“Don’t check in!” I snapped at Robin as we settled down into our lounge chairs at the water park.

“Why the hell not? Maybe someone can meet us here.”

“I don’t feel like dealing with people today.” I slapped sunscreen on my arms and tried to think of a better reason, but my brain wasn’t firing at full capacity after my stupid, ridiculous night of crap sleep, where Riley buzzed me in an erotic biblically inspired flyby. Effing disturbing. It was like I’d fallen into a B horror movie. I had half expected to wake up and find W
HORE OF
B
ABYLON
scratched into my skin with a needle.

“Are you hungover? Because you’re acting like a whole lot of biotch.”

I sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m exhausted. I think I’m getting a cold.” Lie. Yet another lie on top of the already existing lie. Robin was my friend, and frankly I didn’t have that many tight friends. With Rory and Kylie gone for the summer, I was going to be lonely if I didn’t treat Robin just a little bit better.

As Robin tied up her dark hair into a bun and readjusted her sunglasses, I squirted more sunscreen on my knees. “Okay, the truth is I totally lied to my parents about staying here this summer. They think I’m building houses with a mission group in West Virginia.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you shitting me?”

“No. Unfortunately. I just couldn’t go home, but I didn’t really think about how hard it is to hide your whereabouts with social media. My parents aren’t exactly checking my profile page, but my brother does. I tried blocking him, but he told my mother and she made me re-friend him.”

“You tried to block your brother?” Robin looked amused by the very thought. “I should have thought of that. My brothers like to post pictures of obese hairy men on my page and tell me that’s what I’m going to look like at forty.” She studied her arms ruefully. “It’s the Latin genes. I spend half my life waxing hair off my body.”

Relieved that she didn’t seem horrified by me, I said, “So you won’t tell? And you don’t think I’m an evil human being?”

She shrugged. “No. I mean, who hasn’t wanted to avoid their parents at one point or another? And I was raised in a huge Latino Catholic family, and everyone is always up in your business. It must be nice to turn that off for a few weeks. I’m kinda jealous of you.”

“I guess everyone has their family drama.” I adjusted the yellow bikini top I was wearing, slipping the straps off so I wouldn’t get weird tan lines and tucking them into the cups.

“Yep. My grandmother is furious that I got a D in Spanish. She doesn’t seem to get that listening to her speak it and being able to understand it for the most part is totally different than writing it grammatically correct. I actually feel like I have a disadvantage because I had all this quasi-background info. But to her, it means I’m spitting on my heritage.” She sipped her water bottle. “It gives me a headache.”

“That does suck.” We were at the edge of the wave pool, and a million kids were tearing by, moms hollering at them to slow down. I picked up my fashion magazine and flipped idly through it, trying to find an article that grabbed my attention.

“Hotties, eleven o’clock,” Robin murmured.

I glanced up. I saw a lot of hair gel and mirrored sunglasses. There were three of them and they were checking us out. It was hard to distinguish one from the other with their bulky muscles and giant floral swim trunks. “I’ll let you take this,” I told Robin. “I’m not in the mood.”

“You’re not in the mood to flirt?” She sounded scandalized.

I had to admit, it was a rare occurrence that I didn’t want to meet new people. I liked hanging out, moving through a crowd, demanding that I be entertained. But today I just wanted to hide behind my sunglasses and scowl. “No. I’m not. Hey, when can you get me the typography piece?”

“Tomorrow. It will only take me an hour, then it has to dry for another hour or two.”

“Cool. Thanks.”

“Sure. Oh, here they come.” Robin sat up a little straighter, her red bandeau bikini top standing at attention.

“Hey, wassup?” Douche #1 said.

“Ladies,” Douche #2 said.

“This chair taken?” from Douche #3.

Yeah, so not in the mood. Which is why when Douche #1 said, “Want a beer?” I nodded.

So I was risking getting busted for open container. This was the only way I was going to get through the day without being consumed by thoughts of Riley Mann, the swarming bastard. I had a terrible feeling that for the first time in well, ever, I was suffering from the insanity of an unrequited crush. It sucked. Hard.

Fortunately the Douche Trio was smart enough to have their beer disguised in travel mugs. While Douche #2 assured me they were twenty-one, they didn’t want to get kicked out.

“I’m not even twenty-one,” I told him. “So you’re really flirting with danger here.”

“Is that your name?” he asked with a wink. “Danger?”

Oh, God. “Yes. Jessica Danger.” Hell, it kind of suited me. Much more appropriate than Jessica Sweet. We all knew that was an ironic name for me.

Six hours and I’m not sure how many beers later, I let him give me a groping, wet-tongued kiss in the parking lot and I hated myself for it. But I was tired, drunk, confused by my own feelings toward Riley, and it seemed easier to just allow it than to work up a protest. But I did shove him off when he got too enthusiastic.

I felt nothing. I looked at him and I felt absolutely nothing. No attraction. No memory of what his name was or a single word he had spoken to me throughout the day.

“Can I get your digits?” he asked, holding his phone out for me.

“No,” I said shortly, climbing into Robin’s car and slamming the door shut. I locked it and shut my eyes, hot tears behind my lids. What was I doing? And I didn’t cry. I never cried.

He knocked on the window, looking pissed, but I ignored him and he wandered away, probably calculating how many beers he had wasted on a girl who wasn’t going to blow him. My heart wasn’t exactly bleeding for him. I had given zero encouragement and half-assed conversation all day.

Robin got in a second later and threw her beach bag in the backseat. I was wearing denim shorts over my bikini bottoms, but Robin hadn’t even bothered with that. When she turned the car on and the AC cranked on, she flicked it off with a shiver. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You seem totally upset.”

I sniffled, annoyed. God, crying stung my eyes. How did chicks do this all the time? “I’m hungry,” I told her. “Can we go to the gas station? I want a candy bar.”

“Sure.”

Too much sun. Too much beer. Too much time with douchey guys that I wasn’t interested in while I snuck glances on my phone of the picture of the guy I
was
interested in. Altogether a fail of a day. “I think I owe every girl I’ve ever rolled my eyes at for liking the wrong guy an apology.”

“You didn’t actually like that guy, did you?” Robin asked, startled, pulling out of the water park. “I thought you just drank too much beer.”

“I did. By the way, should you be driving?”

“I only had two beers and the last one was like three hours ago. You dusted me with the drinking.”

“Oh, okay. And no, I did not actually like that guy. I don’t even remember his name. I’m not sure I ever heard him when he told me, that is how little I gave a crap.”

“I think it was Rico.”

I snorted.

“Then who do you like if it isn’t Rico?”

If I hadn’t been buzzed, I never would have admitted it. But I was, so I said glumly, “Riley.”

Robin made a choking sound of horror. “Oh, shit. That’s probably not good.”

“No.” I nodded in agreement as we pulled into the gas station. “It’s idiotic. He treats me like an annoying little sister and I should be glad, really. If I have sex with him, I think my vag would explode.”

Laughing, Robin parked and got out of the car. “I want a drink. And if I were you, I would risk my vagina exploding for one night with that hunk of man meat. Riley is fucking hot. He was tagged in a picture with Rory and Tyler and I felt I needed a bib.”

Tell me about it.

Twenty minutes later Robin dropped me off and I struggled with all the bags. Before we’d hit the water park I had asked her to stop off at a discount home goods store and I had gone accessory shopping for the kitchen, so I had three bags over my right arm, plus a bag full of candy and energy drinks from the gas station and a fast food bag with the remnants of a chicken tender meal from the drive-thru. Having stuffed my face, I was decidedly less drunk, but I wouldn’t have classified myself as sober, which was obvious when I clipped my shin on the coffee table in the dark and ricocheted off the hall wall twice.

“Damn it.” I made it to my room and flicked on the light. I was freezing from still wearing a wet bathing suit so I pulled off my bottoms and slipped into panties and pajama pants. Then yanking my hoodie off the window, I peeled the duct tape off the cuffs and pulled it on over my yellow bikini top, leaving it unzipped. I wanted to snuggle in the warm fabric, to get a hoodie hug. It was old and had been washed a hundred times, a Christmas gift my sophomore year in high school. My mother had threatened to burn it when I had been home on Christmas break, saying it was so faded and threadbare that she wouldn’t even dream of donating it to the homeless shelter. But I loved it and right now, it felt like just what I needed.

Heading back to the kitchen to finish eating, because I didn’t want my room to smell like old fries in the morning, I flicked on the kitchen light and screamed.

“Holy shit!”

Riley was sitting in the kitchen, in what had been the dark until I had turned on the light.

“Oh my God, what are you doing?” I breathed out in relief. “You scared the shit out of me.”

But despite my own alcohol remnants, I could see immediately what he was doing. There was an ashtray on the table with a burning cigarette resting in it, a half-empty glass next to it, and a mostly empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s rounding out the trio. Riley was sitting slack in the chair, his eyes dull, wearing nothing but his black boxer briefs. I wasn’t sure what was more distracting to me—the mostly empty bottle of liquor or the view of his muscular chest and thighs, his metal-studded bracelet and iron cross still on against his bare skin. The table was partially blocking the view of his briefs, and I decided that was a good thing.

I was in way too weird of a place for anything good to come out of me checking out his junk.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Why are you drinking alone in the dark?” I set the bags down on the table and pulled out a sports drink. After taking a sip I held it out to him. “Want some? You look like you need it.”

I thought he would actually reject it, but he did take the bottle and gulped some of the drink before eyeing my other bags. “What’s in there?”

“Chicken nuggets. Fries. Three chocolate bars and a bag of chips.”

“What, do you have PMS or something?” he asked, making a minimal effort to reach out and hook the bag with one finger and dragging it toward him. He dug in for a French fry and ate it half heartedly.

More like all self-control disappeared entirely with a six-pack. “No. Maybe I’m just a pig.”

He finally looked over at me, eyeing my outfit. “Is that your bra?”

If he wasn’t clearly loaded I would have been annoyed. “No. It’s my bikini top. I went to the water park today.”

“Oh.” His eyes narrowed at my chest. “Yellow.”

Thanks, Captain Obvious. I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “So any particular reason you’re having a party for one?”

He lifted his cigarette to his mouth and took a deep drag. As he blew out smoke, he gestured to some papers on the table. “That.”

My heart dropped. “We’re being kicked out by the bank?” As I reached for the papers, I wondered at my use of the word “we.”

“No. That will be a while still. This is about Easton. The social worker is coming next week to do a home inspection.”

Oh, no. He was worried about Easton, which was worse. Way worse. I knew that Riley had filed for custody of Easton when their mom died. Jayden was eighteen and considered an adult, but Easton was only eleven.

Riley picked up the bottle and drank directly from it. “They’re going to take him from me, I know it.” His voice cracked at the end of his sentence, and suddenly there were tears welling in his eyes.

I didn’t know what to say or to do. Seeing him so vulnerable, so clearly in pain, stunned me. I wasn’t the girl you went to for a hug. I wasn’t the friend who knew the right thing to say. I couldn’t soothe and comfort and make it all okay. I was just Jessica, sarcasm my only superpower.

But my heart ached for him, and I felt right then that I would do anything to make it okay for him, that I had to pull my head out of the Bud Light can and be a true, honest-to-God friend to him.

“What makes you think they’ll take him away?” I asked. “You’re his brother, and you have a steady job. He’s lived with you almost his whole life. This is his home. I would think stability counts for something, right? And no one else is contesting custody, are they?”

He shook his head, lifting his cigarette to his mouth again. “No. My aunt Jackie disappeared a month ago, probably shacked up with her drug dealer. Her son is in jail, and they’re my only family, besides good ol’ Dad, who isn’t eligible for parole for another ten years. But look around you, Jess. I mean, you clearly know it—this place is a dump. It reeks in here, and that social worker is going to take one look around and think that my brother belongs in some fucking foster home with people who don’t give a shit about him.”

Without warning, Riley took the whiskey bottle and hurtled it at the back door, where it smashed, amber liquid trailing down the wood.