Breakable (18 page)

Sliding my hand round to the base of her spine and pulling her closer, I teased my fingers into the back of her jeans while I returned my mouth to hers, kissing her slow and gentle to slow and deep, slow and deep to fast and tender, fast and tender to hard and deep – reeling her in, bit by bit.

Her hand massaged and pressed. My skin burned and my muscles leaped under her palm as if prepared to do her bidding, whatever it was. I was only in charge because she allowed me to be. My command was illusory. If she said stop, I would stop. If she leaned to my ear and said
Take me, now
, I would, knowing it was too soon and would be a mistake. I would do whatever she asked, however she asked it. I would be her bad boy, if that’s what she wanted. If that’s what she needed.

I wanted to make it good for her.
So good
. But not this time. Not yet. Stretched out on her narrow mattress, without removing a single item of her clothing, I’d driven us both to the brink of crazy. One tap and we’d go over the edge. Her languid posture and heavily lidded eyes told me she was kiss-drunk and pliant. She would follow my lead.

‘I should go,’ I whispered.

Her forehead creased. ‘You want to go?’

No, beautiful girl. I want to pin you to this mattress and please you in every goddamned way possible for the rest of the night
.

‘I said I
should
go.’ I pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth. Her lips were swollen and wet, and if I didn’t stop looking at them I wasn’t going to make it out of here.
Moving to nuzzle her ear, I said, ‘
Should
is different than
want
.’

She sighed in response. ‘Can I see the sketches, then?’

‘Mmm, sure.’ My body protested the separation as I lifted from her to sit up, taking her hand and pulling her up as well. If she’d remained lying there, her hair all round her face, her clothes askew, my shredded self-control would be thrown out the window. Forcefully.

I grabbed the sketchpad and sat next to her on the edge of the bed.

I showed her the two sketches – each undeveloped, in need of fine-tuning. Despite that, she seemed impressed. I told her I would probably redo them in charcoal and tack them to my bedroom wall. Her response was comical astonishment, especially when I added, ‘Who wouldn’t want to wake up to this?’ I bit the inside of my cheek to maintain my blank expression.

Too late, I realized I’d not washed my hands after sketching her, before touching her. If I removed that sweater, she’d undoubtedly be covered with swipes of grey, as if I’d marked her as mine. My body tightened in response to that thought. I leaned against her door and pulled her up and against me as I kissed her one last time. When she came on to her toes and pushed into me, I knew she was five seconds from being flat on her back in the middle of that bed.

‘I have to go now, or I’m not going.’ I groaned.

She said nothing – no
yes, go
, but also no objection to my leaving. I dismissed what I saw in her eyes – a moment
of hesitation that said I could be more than the rebound her friends meant me to be. Imagined, no doubt. I kissed her forehead and the tip of her nose, but not her tempting, luscious mouth, murmured, ‘Later,’ and left her room, my thoughts disordered and my body on the verge of rioting.

Having grown up in a small, private school, I knew something of small towns. The way nothing ever remains a secret. The way secrets spread like wildfire. The way that fire doesn’t die out until a bigger fire consumes it.

Over spring break, four college girls rented a house on the beach – a Richards property. Clark’s father sent him over to deliver the keys when they arrived. Word was, he stopped by with a couple of his bros from the varsity baseball team, and they hadn’t left for an hour. That might not have been a big deal – but they returned that night with another guy. And nobody left until the next morning.

At least one of those guys couldn’t resist bragging about the alleged orgy trade-off – not that anyone could blame him for talking. Strip poker with Cuervo shots and college girls, two guys and two girls adjourning to each bedroom and multiple partner swaps? Most guys are going to talk. And talk. And talk.

Some aren’t content to stop there. Some want to take
pics and video clips as proof and send them to friends, usually when they’re too drunk or high to realize that a buddy with a long-term girlfriend was in one of those videos. The one where a mostly naked girl straddles him in a chair, moving and moaning in such a way that no imagination is required to know what’s going on.

Boyce and I saw the video early the next day.

Melody had seen it by the time Clark went to her house the next night. There was a huge fight, and her mother threatened to call his dad if Clark didn’t calm down and leave. He nearly flipped his Jeep at the end of their drive, peeling a sharp right and leaving a parallel set of rubber stripes.

I wanted to deck him when he showed up at one of the bonfires dotting the long stretches of sand three hours later, acting as if losing Melody was little more than a minor annoyance. Boyce told me Clark had screwed vacationers before – he just hadn’t been caught. ‘Some guys think it doesn’t count if it’s with some chick who’s short term. It’s a temp fuck.’ As if to illustrate Boyce’s statement, Clark paired off with an unfamiliar girl five minutes later. This one looked thirteen and wide-eyed as a baby deer.

‘Whoa, dude – look,’ Boyce said, gesturing with his cigarette.

Melody slogged through the sand, flanked by Pearl, who was carrying a cardboard box. Marching up to Clark in the flickering firelight, Melody dipped her hands into the box in her friend’s arms and rained ripped up photos and what looked like pieces of stuffed bear over his head.

‘What the fuck, Melody?’ Clark said, standing and
letting the startled girl in his lap fall on to the sand. She crawled away like a crab.

‘You. Cheating.
Bastard!
’ Melody pulled a gold bracelet from the box and hurled it at his feet. It hit him in the ankle and lurched towards the water, rolling.

‘Those are
diamonds
, you psycho bitch!’ he yelled, leaping to grab it.

‘You can’t buy me!’ she returned.

‘Who’d want to?’ he snarled, and she burst into tears, stumbling away. Pearl threw the empty box at his head – he ducked and it sailed over his shoulder – and followed her friend.

I tugged the cord to the fort’s door, listening hard. I thought I heard a barely audible sniffle, but it could have been a gust of wind. ‘Melody?’ I whispered.

Her face appeared from above, her hair luminous in the moonlight, like a halo round her entire head. She squinted and then said, ‘Oh – Landon. What are you doing here?’ She hiccupped. It had been over two hours since the scene on the beach, but she was still crying.

‘Just came to check on you. Can I come up?’

She nodded. ‘Sure.’

We sat in silence until she scooted closer and leaned her head on my shoulder. ‘Half my friends are saying I overreacted and half want to help me hide his body. I don’t know what to believe.’

I shook my head. ‘Overreacted? Because he cheated on you?’

She pulled her knees to her chest, curling into me, and I put my arm round her. ‘He came over and apologized,’ she said. ‘He said he’d only gone there for his boys – the other guys are all single. He said stuff like that isn’t for girls like me to ever know about. He said he was drunk, and it was a mistake.’

‘And you believe him?’

‘Obviously not, or I wouldn’t have torn the stuffing out of Beauregard.’

I snorted. ‘
Beauregard?
’

She giggled, hiccupping again when we both began laughing. At some point, though, her laughs turned to sobs, and she collapsed into my chest. ‘Why would he have sex with some skank when he has me? Why?’

I figured she didn’t want me to attempt an answer to that. I also suspected nothing and no one would ever be enough for a guy like Clark Richards. Like his father, he was never going to be content with what he had. He only saw what he didn’t have. And felt entitled to it.

She quietened after a few minutes, inhaling a couple of deep breaths and shuddering. ‘How’d you know I’d be out here?’

‘When I texted and you didn’t answer, I guessed.’

She angled her head back and looked up at me. ‘You’re a good guy, Landon.’

I’m not
, came the automatic thought.

She leaned closer, eyes open, and pressed her lips to mine. Just a brush – tentative and testing. She pulled away only inches, and our breath mingled. I leaned forward, an inch at a time, and she didn’t back away. I kissed her as
she’d kissed me, cautiously, slowly, lips only, neither of us closing our eyes.

‘Melody?’ We jerked apart – her mother’s voice was close, right outside the fort’s walls.

I lay flat on my back while she rose to her knees, her hand pressed to the middle of my chest, the better to feel my heart pounding. ‘Yeah, Mama?’

Her mother sighed, exasperated. ‘Come inside, now. You can’t be out here by yourself. It isn’t safe.’ Melody glanced down at me as her mother continued, ‘Also, Clark is now calling the landline, since you aren’t answering your cell.’

Her chin came up. ‘Did you tell him to
eat shit
?’

‘Melody Ann Do–’

‘Do you
know
what he
did
, Mama? How humiliated I am?’

Another sigh. ‘Come inside, Melody.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ She turned to back down the ladder, whispering to me, ‘Wait five minutes before you leave. And thank you.’

I was working with Dad the next day – he’d booked a family of four for an all-day excursion of fishing and sightseeing. They were standing at the mouth of the dock when Dad and I pulled up. One girl, about my age, was scowling, arms crossed over her chest. Another one, around Carlie’s age, was bouncing foot to foot, her face flush with excitement.

‘Holy shit,’ I said under my breath, already feeling grouchy.

‘Can it,’ Dad said, directing a courteous look towards the four of them. He wasn’t ever outgoing, so it wasn’t like a night-and-day transformation, but his boatside manner was polite and patient, even when explaining and demonstrating the same things a million times.

I hadn’t heard from Melody – but that was no surprise. It had only been eight hours since I jumped down from her fort platform and walked home, so high from her kiss that I could hardly sleep.

But I’d have no cell service until we docked tonight, plus a bitchy teenaged girl and a hyper younger one to deal with. I predicted a long, miserable day.

I was right, but not necessarily for the reasons I’d assumed. The kid actually listened to my instructions and made the biggest catch we’d had all year – though hooking a big one is mostly luck and boat placement, not the skill of the guy with the pole. No one mentioned that shit to her. Dad’s motto: ‘It’s our job to make sure the client thinks it’s all him.’ He helped her reel it in while her parents cheered.

The older girl had straightened up off her parents’ car when I got out of the SUV, pulling on her earrings, fiddling with the strings on her cut-off shorts, fidgeting with her hair – putting it up and taking it down. That shit continued
all day
. She was glued to me, too, asking idiotic questions about my tats – which I’m not in the habit of explaining to anyone, especially not random strangers – and using those enquiries as an excuse to touch them. She wondered what kids who lived here did for fun, eyeballing me like she
expected me to invite her along to do whatever that was – and I mean
whatever
that was. Most awkwardly: she took pics of me with her phone. I suspected she was texting or posting them and felt weirdly violated.

That boat felt more confining than it ever had, and I thought about people in emergency lifeboats, stuck at sea for days. I would jump ship after seriously contemplating shoving her overboard.

As soon as we docked and my feet hit land, I turned on my phone. I had a message from Melody, asking if I was busy today. She’d sent it hours ago.

Bumping knuckles with the kid and cold-shouldering sexual-harassment girl, I called, ‘Great fishing, guys!’ to the parents, and then I climbed into the front seat of the SUV.

Me:
Hey. Out on the boat all day. Working. No service till now. Just docked.

Melody:
I was afraid you were mad because of what I did.

Me:
What??

Melody:
The kiss.

Me:
I’m the opposite of mad, whatever that is. Fort tonight?

Melody:
Can’t. Staying over with Pearl. Working tomorrow?

Me:
No. Dad will be gone all day. Come over.

Melody:
K

As soon as Dad left the next morning, I cleaned the bathroom, straightened the kitchen and put away piles of clothes that were usually shoved to the side of my bed or haphazardly folded on the shelves. I made my bed.

Melody’s knock was unsure. Quiet. I rubbed nervous palms down my sun-faded board shorts and took a breath before opening the door.

‘Hi,’ I said, admitting her and closing the door behind her. Locking it.

‘Hi,’ she said, tucking a long strand of hair behind her ear.

She followed me to the kitchen, where we sipped at sodas and made sandwiches we nibbled but didn’t eat. We barely spoke.

Finally, she cleared her throat. ‘You said that you’d draw me, once. Want to do that?’

I nodded. ‘Sure. Yeah.’ We stuck the dishes in the sink and I opened the pantry door and clicked on the overhead lamp. ‘Where do you want –?’

‘In there is good,’ she said. ‘If that’s good for you.’

I hope she didn’t expect an answer to that question, because every-fucking-thing about this day was good for me.

She kicked off her flip-flops and we climbed on to the bed. I reached for my pad and pencils and she leaned back on her elbows. ‘So do you arrange me, or do I strike a pose, like this, or what?’

No way I could touch her and then draw. ‘Just get comfortable. It’ll take me awhile. You don’t want to try
holding an awkward position.’ Like the one she was in, her perfect tits straining against her fitted top, creating gaps between the buttons and pulling the hem higher to display the strip of tanned skin above her shorts.

She turned to arrange pillows at the head of the bed while I sat against the wall. She lay on her side, half sitting, half reclining into the mound of pillows, her hair rippling across the surface like a gold waterfall. Pulling one leg into an angle, she straightened the other until our toes touched. I waited for her to still. Her eyes on mine, she unbuttoned the top two buttons of her shirt, showing off the white, lacy bra beneath.

‘Is this good?’ she asked, her voice quavering and soft.

My hands shook.
Fuck
. I sucked in a slow breath, and then another, regaining some self-control. ‘Perfect,’ I said, and she smiled.

Neither of us spoke. There were no sounds but an occasional throat clearing and the scratch of my pencil. Her foot swept over the top of mine when she shifted, and I pressed back reflexively. Finally, I stared at the sketch, and then handed it to her.

‘Oh, my God.’ She looked from the pad to me and back to the pad. ‘I knew you were good … but this … is amazing.’ She examined herself, stretching out both legs and assessing deficiencies. ‘I don’t look like this in real life, though. This is gorgeous.’

I took the pad from her hand and placed it on the lowest shelf, just over our heads. ‘Trust me. You look better.’ I moved next to her.

Not meeting my eyes, she reached out to trace my tattoos – her touch nothing like the gratuitous strokes from the girl yesterday, who seemed to think that touching me was part of the package deal her dad paid for.

‘Do you want to kiss me again?’ Melody asked. Still not looking at me.

I leaned over her, skimming one hand just under her shirt to her bare waist and waiting until she raised her eyes to mine. Repeating the careful, experimental kiss we’d shared two days ago, we kept our eyes open, the touch of our lips seemingly halfhearted. And then her hand twisted in my T-shirt and she pulled me down. My knee slid between her legs and there was no hiding the hard length pressed to her thigh. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, and I didn’t waste time weighing variables because I couldn’t think. Driving my tongue into her mouth, my eyes closed and my hands wandered over everything I could reach.

I loosened the last three buttons of her top and we sat up, attempting to keep our mouths fused while she shrugged out of it. My T-shirt joined her shirt at the foot of the bed. When she reached round to unhook her bra, I watched, eyes consuming her hungrily. I reached to slide the straps down her arms, and she trembled as my thumbs traced her curves. Her dancer’s limbs, lithe and athletic, contrasted with the supple fullness of her tits. Tossing the bra towards the end of the bed, I lay down and pulled her on top of me, high enough to tongue her nipples while cupping her ass to keep her close. Arms straight, she braced herself above me.

When Melody’s whimpers became dazed cries, I sucked a nipple into my mouth, and she screamed and bucked against me. Rolling until my hip hit the wall, I dragged her under me on the narrow mattress, nudged one thigh between her legs and pressed. She clawed my arms and kissed me wildly.