James Games (16 page)

Except that doesn’t work out so well when my foot misses the third rung on the ladder.

I plummet, too surprised even to yell, Seconds later, I find myself, once again, having knocked James into the grass. Dazed, I sit up. He groans and follows suit.

“Are you okay?” he coughs. I winded him. “You didn’t land on the bad arm?”

“That is a much nicer response than the one you had the first time I fell out of the sky onto you.”

“I should have told you not to make a habit of it.” He winces and gets up, testing his limbs for full functionality.

I hop in place until blood flow returns to my legs. “No, but really, what are you doing out here?”

“You didn’t answer my text,” he admits. “You always answer my texts. You’ve never left one hanging. And I had a bad feeling.”

“Ah.” I laugh nervously. “I guess I must have fallen asleep.”

“You should probably see a doctor about that.”

“Oh! I will. Lots of doctors. Five doctors.”

He tilts his head back. “At least we got to see the stars.”

Even through the San Diego light pollution, it’s still beautiful. I take a moment to appreciate them, and then I take a moment to appreciate him. If possible, he looks even better at night than he does during the day. “Hey. I really am sorry I researched you online. That was super creepy of me.”

“It’s all right,” he says, still looking at the stars. “You were bound to.”

“No, I mean, it was a total invasion of privacy.”

“Privacy?” He gives a short laugh. “Privacy doesn’t exist in my life. It never has.”

I contemplate this for a moment. Then I flop down on my back, grabbing his arm so he’s forced to lie down with me in the grass.

“What are you doing?”

“This,” I say, sweeping my hand up, “this sky, this moment, you and me. This is private. No one will ever know about this.”

He’s quiet. “I suppose that’s true.”

“How did your dad die?” I whisper.

“Cancer. He was an actor too. My mom married him when he was up and coming. Everyone said he’d be famous. But then he got sick, and he was sick for a long time. When he died, my mom picked up his dreams and dropped them on me.”

I consider offering trite words of comfort and decide against it. Instead, I cover his hand with mine. It’s the sincerest gesture I can think of, and he doesn’t pull away.

“So your mom kind of pushed you into the acting thing,” I say.

“Yep. Send out tapes, letters, headshots until someone bit.” He takes another long pause. “It’s strange, being well-known. It’s all in the word. You’re
known.
People think they know you and so they don’t actually take the time to get to know you. It’s a lonely way to live.”

“Is that why you stopped acting?”

“Part of the reason.” His hand twitches under mine. “You said it’s like riding a bike, having friends. I never learned to ride the bike. I spent so many years pretending to be someone else that I forgot how to be someone in my own right. I still haven’t got the knack of it.”

“That’s not true.” I grip his hand tighter. “You’re someone.”

“That’s why I’m drawn to you, Fiona. You’re so unrelentingly you. It’s honest and it comes from your center and there’s no pretense, no lie. It’s unthinkable to me.”

“Just because my personality is more in-your-face doesn’t mean it’s less valuable to be the kind of person that people need to get to know.” I lace my fingers into his. “For instance, I think I know you now.”

“Who am I, then?” He echoes the question I once asked him.

“You’re…” I think hard about it. “You seem cold and standoffish. You keep people at a distance, but only because you’re used to them exploiting you. You’ve never known someone who wanted to get to know you for the sake of getting to know you. And that’s too bad. Because you’re a great person to know. You’re smart and funny, caring and protective. You stand up for people who need it and you hate to see people hurt—”

“No.” His voice is suddenly hard. “Protective is wrong. All that is wrong.”

“You’ve protected me so many times already.”

“You wouldn’t call me those things if you knew what I’ve done in my life.” He pulls his hand away. I’m losing the thread of this.

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. What matters is what you’re doing now, who you are now—”

“It matters.” He stands. He’s frozen over. I don’t know what I did wrong.

“Tell me, then,” I snap. “You need to start letting people in.”

He looks at me, and the ice softens in the moonlight. He touches my face, the barest brush of a fingertip.

“I like the way you see me now,” he says quietly. “I don’t want to ruin it.”

~14~

“RAAAAARGH!”

“AAAAAAAH!”

As the girl I just jumped out as runs away, shrieking her head off, I come to a very important realization.

I was born to scare the ever-loving shit out of people.

Adjusting my troll mask, I slip back inside the hideout—sorry, troll cave—I constructed for myself in this haunted house of painted-black gym mats and crates. A Halloween CD track that’s been on repeat for the past hour jangles—chains rattling and knives being sharpened and women screaming. What’s wrong with a nice manly scream every once and a while? I’ll have to get Iris to write the CD company a strongly-worded letter.

I hear footsteps outside and leap out through the black curtain again. “I WILL IMPREGNATE YOU AND THEN EAT THE BABIES!” I scream.

I’ve learned it doesn’t really matter what you scream at people as long as you do it loudly, but it’s still fun to go the extra horrifying route every so often.

The girl, a junior from my Economics class, shrieks and sprints away. I cackle and settle back into my den. This is like therapy. And after my conversation with James a few days ago, therapy is exactly what I need.

He wouldn’t say any more—just that it was late and I should go to bed. He walked me to my dorm and I had to double back to give the inhaler to Mags, who’d woken up, discovered it was missing, and freaked out.

“I found it in the grass,” I’d lied.

Iris, though, received the truth.

“You have to tell Brooklyn,” she’d demanded. “They’re hazing you.”

“That’s what upperclassmen in sororities do. They haze.”

“This isn’t some no-big-deal teasing. They stole a someone’s inhaler. And made a girl with a sprained wrist climb a tree. You could have gotten seriously hurt.”

“Sigrid’s dad is the dean, remember? If I tell, she’ll just hatch some story to get herself out of it and I’ll end up screwed over. I can handle her myself.”

“If she ever comes back in the middle of the night, you wake me up. Got it?”

I’d promised, but the last thing I want is to involve Iris. After getting my butt saved so many times by James, I need to prove to myself I’m capable of fighting my own battles again.

I hear footsteps outside and throw myself into the hallway again, yelling at a white scared face rising out of the darkness. “YOUR MOM DOESN’T EVEN USE TOENAIL POLISH REMOVER SHE JUST SCRAPES IT OFF WITH HER TEETH!” I howl. The freshman boy jumps out of his skin and pelts off. I chuckle. The next scarer down is Iris, who lunges at people with fake blood dripping down her face. She, too, is in her element.

I retreat back inside my cave. As they have whenever I’ve had two seconds to myself for the past few days, my thoughts turn to James. I’d thought we were getting so close, but I’ve hit a wall. It’s like he’s locked up inside himself and he doesn’t know the way out.

Getting to know James is sort of like exploring this haunted house. It looks scary, and sometimes you turn an unexpected corner and get yelled at by someone in a troll mask…actually, I guess it’s not that similar.

More footsteps outside. I shake my shoulders to psych myself up and then hurtle through the black curtain, shrieking “YOU QUOTE MOVIES YOU’VE ONLY SEEN GIFS OF ON THE INTERNET—oh. Hi, James.”

People usually leap back by this point, so I bump into him a little bit. He takes my shoulders and studies my hideous troll mask. “Is that you, Fiona?” 

“Who else would come up with such creative and intelligent insults to scare people with?” I smile over the sound of a zombie moaning in the distance, but I shuffle my feet. I haven’t talked to James since that night. “I’m surprised you’re here. You didn’t strike me as a haunted house man.”

“I’m not.” He’s so tall that he has to bend his head in the little maze we constructed. “I needed to see you right now, and I knew you’d be here.”

“Me?” Down the hall, there’s nervous conversation. A group of two. They’ll be here any minute.

“Yeah.” He shuts his eyes momentarily. “Fiona, I’m—”

“Hang on.” I glance down the hallway to make sure that Iris doesn’t have her beady eyes on me, and then I hustle James into my troll cave. It’s a tight fit. I’m practically forced to sit between his knees, his scent warm and familiar under the gross chemical smell of fake blood. “Now we can talk.”

He takes a breath. “I wanted to apologize for snapping at you the other night. You didn’t deserve that. You’ve been nothing but a friend to me, and I guess I don’t deserve that.”

A pang slices straight through my heart, like the loud clear note of a bell. Not the kind of pang I’ve ever had about a friend. I press my hand to my chest.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I think so. My heart just did something weird.”      

His brow furrows in the dark. “Maybe you should see a doctor.”

“Maybe…anyway. It’s okay. I understand. I was pushing you. And by the way, you do deserve me. Which is pretty much the highest compliment I’m capable of paying, because not everyone does. One sec.”

I leap outside the curtains to scream “YOUR SHOES ARE LOVELY TODAY,” at the two sophomore girls, who grab each other and flee. It’s important to compliment sometimes, too.

I duck back inside. “Somehow I ended up caring about you, James. And that’s not something you can just get yourself out of. Once I like you, I’m a for-life type of girl. Like hepatitis. And nothing you say is going to change that.”

“Like hepatitis,” he repeats.

“A more appealing comparison is warranted, I grant you.”

“One time I got toothpaste in my carpet and it never really came out?” he offers.

“I’ll accept toothpaste. Minty fresh.”

I hold up a hand and dart out to scream at someone else.

When I go back inside, James is staring at me with an emotion I can’t name. “I was sort of expecting to be told to get lost tonight.”

“This is San Diego.” My legs cramp, and I spread them out so that our thighs are touching. “You can’t get lost here. All the streets are clearly marked.”

“You’re always doing things I don’t expect.” His voice is heavy this time, with more than just emotion. Being crammed together in this small space is getting to me too. I’m sweating. Not because I’m hot, but because he is.

I pull off my troll mask and lean forward so he’s close enough to feel my breath. “Why don’t you make us even by doing something I don’t expect?”

He doesn’t move back. His hand moves to my ankle and slides upward, trailing heat. “What are you expecting right now?”

“I’m definitely not expecting you to kiss me,” I whisper.

Our lips meet, his a surprising mixture of tenderness and hunger. I’m being bad again, but I crave him. I bury my hands in his hair. He wraps his arms around me until we’re kissing as hard as we were at that concert, claiming each other’s breath.

I pull back, gasping, tangled in his body. “This isn’t something that friends do.”

Instead of answering, he kisses me again, dragging me into his lap. I swing my legs over his and lock my knees behind his back, letting my body rub slowly over him. His hands dip down to cup my ass…No, Fiona. This is important. I sever my lips from his again.

“We’ve had this weird dual relationship,” I say, an inch away from his mouth. “This sexual relationship and then our friendship. But they’re very separate. Is that weird?”

He kisses his way down my neck and unbuttons my shirt, finding my breasts and reminding me of how good it feels when someone plays with your nipples with their fingers and tongue. “That would make us friends with benefits.”

“I’ve had friends and I’ve had benefits. Never both. Ah!”

He’s sucked my nipple into his mouth hard and bitten it. “You know what I think?”

“What?” I gasp, still reeling from the unexpected sensation.

“I think you should stop talking.”

I smile into his mouth. “Are you gonna make me?”

They’re the magic words. In a flash, he has me up against the wall—luckily, the real part of the wall and not the flimsy sides. He finds my wrists and pins them above my head, being gentle with the sprained one, even though it’s healed by now. He holds both my wrists with one hand, reaches down, and lifts my hips so that my legs are around him again. There’s no room in here for us not to be pressed into every inch of each other.

Meanwhile, the horror CD blares in the distance and the sound of distant screaming echoes. He grins wickedly down at me. “Any noises we make will just be part of the haunted house.”

“I need a reason to make them first.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re too damn sassy for your own good?” He bites my neck and I gasp, my body writhing instinctively.

“Why don’t you teach me a lesson?”

That does it. He growls and kisses me like our lives depend on it, keeping my wrists held above with one hand and pinning my waist to him with the other. I moan and grind my crotch against him, the sensation flooding me with pleasure.

“Oh, no you don’t.” He reaches down and yanks off my tiny shorts. “That’s my job.”

And then his hand is on me. I shudder, getting wetter by the second as he pumps two fingers in and circles my clit with his thumb. It’s like a stick of incense burning. He lights the tip and the burn moves slow, eating me up at the edge before traveling inward.

He keeps his head to my chest while he does it, sucking and pulling at my nipples in a dance that treads the fine line of pleasure and pain before kissing me again so savagely that my head bumps into the wall. I buck my hips, yearning for something to penetrate deeper, but the moment I do, he takes his fingers away.