Handcuffs (12 page)

“You were thinking about me when you were with her.” This is both good and bad. I want him to think about me, but I don’t want him to be with her at all. Still, it’s better than nothing.

“Well, yeah, thinking about how hot it is with you even when we’re just kissing. Thinking how I was a jerk when we had that last fight.”

“She said you were amazing on Marion’s blog.” I just can’t seem to let it go.

“I wasn’t amazing. I drove her home and told her I’d see her later, nothing really happened. Did you see what I wrote about you?”

“Let me think.” Our thighs are pressed tightly together now, the only physical connection between us, but that connection is alive, and it’s present in all my thoughts.

“Did it go something like”—I take a deep breath—“ ‘I would rather abuse myself on a nightly basis thinking about Parker Prescott than have Kandace Freemont spread-eagled on my bed’? ‘Hip-anonymous’?”

“You do know me too well.” He fakes a goofy accent, leans forward, but I don’t move in to kiss him, and by his own promise he can’t press his lips against mine. Our eyes are level, though, and I see that challenge in his again. “It’s true, you know. Do you want to see?”

“What?”

“Are you curious, Parker?” He’s taunting me, and even though I know it, I can’t stop myself from blushing. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t been curious, hadn’t wondered about the darkest, most private things that guys do, but some things are better kept secret. I lunge out of the water to stop him, even though I know he’s just teasing. I put my hands against his shoulders and push him down, and somehow I slip forward. My body rests for a moment on top of him and then we sink down back into the water together.

I am balanced on the end of his knees, I feel him. He has gone stone still. His knuckles are white as he holds the beveled edge of the hot tub. I know that with one movement, I could change everything between us forever, that’s all it would take.

I think about him for a second, not sex, just him, how much I love him and how much it hurts to love him. Then I propel myself back across the hot tub, out of his reach. I don’t feel like I did before, powerful because of his silly promise to me. I feel angry. I want to hurt him. The good feelings have been replaced by frustration. Maybe because I don’t believe his bullshit story about Kandace. Just because it’s what I want to hear doesn’t mean it’s true.

“Parker, I am sorry I pushed you so hard before. I’ll wait as long as you want.” Somehow things have changed in the last ten minutes. He’s looking at me differently, like he can’t keep his eyes off me. Can I believe him? Should I? I want to. I glance at my watch. Good thing it’s waterproof.

“I really need to get home.” I want to curl up under my pink bedspread and stare up at the ceiling for about a week, and try not to think about this or about him.

“There are towels in that bench, the seat folds back.” He jumps out and hands me a towel. It’s a huge fluffy one, though I’m not properly appreciative of the cottony softness since I am now freezing to death. Not exaggerating here, I am facing certain death if I don’t press myself against him and force him to share his towel. Unless we share our body heat and our supersized towels we will surely die.

Wrapped with him in his towel, I use my own to wipe every drop of moisture from my body before I shimmy into my jeans. My panties are dripping and it feels terrible in the cold. My bra is soaked too. Miserable.

“I don’t want you to walk home in the cold,” he says.

“I don’t want to get caught with you. If my parents show up, I can pretend I just went out for a walk to clear my head and ponder the error of my ways.” I’m starting to worry, but somehow I can’t focus on my parents’ beating me home when I’m standing here with him.

“They might wonder why you smell like chlorine and why you’re soaking through your clothes. Let me take you.” He’s right. They probably would wonder about that, especially since they don’t trust me anymore. And because it’s pretty hard to explain why I’m dripping wet and my hair is frazzled from the steam. I should definitely ride with him. He’ll get me home faster.

It’s easy enough to follow him and climb into his shiny black Saab. It’s hard to keep from touching him. He pulls smoothly out of the driveway and turns left. Timid little mouse that I am, I put my hand on his thigh, very lightly. He stops at a light and then turns left again. I jerk my hand back, unsure of my instincts. He gives me a little half smile that I can barely see because he’s looking at the road.

He parallels right in front of my house, pulls me to him, and gives me one of those “I know your parents are watching out the window” kisses. Very showy and dramatic. More head action than tongue action, which isn’t his style at all. A weird show since there isn’t an audience. I know I should stop him, that if anyone is looking I’m in more trouble than ever, but somehow I just can’t.

16

“I’
ll see you at school tomorrow.” I disengage my face, disengage my throbbing lips from his perfect, perfect mouth.

I slam the Saab’s door behind me and run up the steps of our red brick colonial, the steps where I fell chasing Paige and busted my lip when I was four. I keep my head straight so that I don’t have to look directly at the Century 21 sign.

I unlock the door and then relock it behind me, remembering Daddy’s warning, and run upstairs to my bedroom. I need to take a shower before my parents get home. Need to get rid of the evidence.

“Where have you been, young lady?”

It isn’t the words so much as the surprise that halts me in my tracks and makes my heart nearly stop. What is she trying to do to me after Daddy already scared me with his talk of crazy people? Paige is lying on my bed filing her nails. She blows on them and smiles at me.

“Out.” Crap. She knows I’m grounded. She could get me into serious trouble.

“Oh, Parker, I invented the ‘out’ line. Can’t you do better than that?”

“Not really. With a big sister like you it’s hard to really be original.” She smiles like this is the world’s biggest compliment, and I have to admit, she knew how to handle Mom and Dad. She never got grounded indefinitely, and she was a million times worse than me. If her goal was to freak me out, then she succeeded, but that last kiss is still throbbing through me, and I just don’t care about my silly vain sister right now.

“I have to say, those handcuffs were original.” She stops talking but keeps filing. Then, “Your boyfriend thought of that, huh?”

“Yeah. Paige”—I still do not want to discuss this with her—“um, I didn’t see your car.”

“West dropped me off. He’s going to pick me up after the game, that way we can drive home together. He’s watching football with Joe and Tyler.”

“Very romantic.” I roll my eyes and then change the subject. “Hey, when do your college classes start?” College students, I’ve learned, have much longer breaks than us poor overworked high school students. Paige is supposed to be taking classes in communication or public speaking or something. Mom and Dad say she has no idea what she is doing with her life, but they want her to have a college degree anyway. Mom always tells us that at least Paige settled down with a nice boy. She doesn’t seem settled to me, but what do I know?

“A week or two.” She scrunches her forehead up. I don’t think she knows. Paige isn’t much on academics. Mom had to go with her to help her register for classes last summer.

“West was here today borrowing cheese and stealing our ketchup. He says he might trade in your car.” I’m wondering how she will get to school. The campus is all the way across town, and there’s no way she would take a bus or anything like that.

“West wants a nicer car, like a BMW or something.”

I glare at her. I’m the sister who doesn’t even have a car, who would never, never scorn the Volkswagen, if I were lucky enough to have a car like that. “But West is loaded, right? Why can’t he just buy a BMW if he wants one?” And they can just give me the Volkswagen if they don’t love it anymore.

“West’s
family
is loaded, but they have this thing about making your own way in the world. It totally pisses West off that they won’t help us get a house. He doesn’t like living in an apartment.” She shakes her head and I can tell she doesn’t want to think about any of it. She’s always ignored anything stressful or negative. I’m the one who can’t stop worrying; she’s the one who can’t be bothered even with mild concern.

“Hey, is this my comforter, the one from my bedroom?” The room that our parents keep exactly the way she left it?

“Yeah, I’ve been trying to tone down the pink princess theme in here.”

“Good idea. This is such a little-girl room, especially the canopy bed.” She laughs. I don’t much like her making fun of my Disney Princess–style room. Really, it isn’t officially Disney. As in, I don’t have any licensed products. It’s just pink and frilly with a canopy bed. You know, the type of things parents buy for their young daughters.

“Do you remember . . . ?” she begins, and I know where she is going. Disney World, when I was seven. It was one of the big happy family trips we took with the Henessys. Mrs. Henessy arranged for all us girls to have breakfast with the Princesses. Mr. Henessy and Dad had taken Kyle deep-sea fishing or something equally manly, so it was just Paige, Marion, and me. We had these little autograph books that we were supposed to get the characters to sign.

My mom handed me my book and this great big pen with a feather on the end of it. A quill. Paige and Marion got identical pink books, but Mom got me a yellow one that had Cinderella on the cover. I guess she did that so Paige and I could tell them apart, but I wished I had the glossy pink book too.

I remember being superexcited in that giddy way that you get when you’re really little. Then the Princesses came in, and they were all beautiful, and I looked down at my plate and wouldn’t look up. Marion and Paige had a great time getting all the Princesses to sign their autograph books, but the only one I got was the Little Mermaid, and that was because she felt sorry for me and came over and signed even though I wouldn’t look at her.

I hate the word
shy.
I don’t ever use that word. Shy was what I was when I was seven and my one Princess signature got smeared across the pastel yellow page because I dripped tears all over it, because I was afraid and couldn’t lift my head no matter how much I wanted to. That’s how the shyness works. You want to talk, but you can’t. People look at you with scorn. Being an ice princess is infinitely better, even if some people think you’re a total bitch. A snob. Reserved. Those are choices a person makes, to be reserved, to be quiet, or to be a snob. Shy isn’t a choice.

“Remember what?” I know where she’s going but I don’t want to reminisce with her.

“Oh, just Disney and all the fun we had. Do you still have that dumb pink autograph book that you stole from me?”

“Paige, that was like ten years ago.”

“Remember you hid it under your dresser and Mom found it when she was vacuuming? But then you stole it again, didn’t you? It’s probably still in here someplace, and your room looks exactly the same.” She stretches out her fingers and admires her work with the emery board.

“There isn’t much point in changing it, is there? Not when we’re going to be moving soon,” I say. My voice is low and kind of shaky. She knows I hate talking about any of my episodes. That’s why she loves to bring them up. “I have to take a shower.” This conversation is over and I want her to leave.

“Yeah. You have hot tub stink all over you.”

“You would know.” Being a little sister totally impairs my ability to formulate a decent comeback. It’s sad. “Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?”

“That you snuck out and spent your afternoon with sexy-pants in some hot tub? Nah, but I think you’re in way over your head.” I know she’s probably right, but then, most of the time she acts like I’m still twelve years old.

“Probably.” I step into the shower. I hope she will get out of my room while I’m gone, but of course she just lies there getting tiny little nail pieces on my comforter.

I usually hang my bathrobe on the hook on the back of the door before I take a shower, but it isn’t there when I get out. Paige really distracts me sometimes.

I ignore her, still sitting there, as I drip my way to the closet wrapped in a lime green towel. Paige’s clothes were always in a haphazard heap. I keep mine hung neatly in the closet. Of course, her wrinkled clothes still looked completely hot on her. They always do.

“Damn.” I turn toward her, ready to hear some comment about how I fold my underwear and color-coordinate all my socks. “You really are growing up, aren’t you? No wonder sex-on-the-brain is so into you.”

“Whatever.” As usual, I blush, but I love her surprise. And more, I love the reluctant admiration that made her say it aloud.

Finally, I can tell she’s getting tired of tormenting me, and she stands up to leave my room when she hears the front door squeaking open and Preston shouting, “I’m home!” at the top of his lungs.

“You got lucky, you know.” She looks at the clock on my nightstand. “If it were me, they’d have gotten home ten minutes ago.”

Yeah right, I’m so lucky and she’s unlucky. There are a million ways I could refute this, but she won’t listen, so I don’t say anything.