Relativity (21 page)

He kicks out of his pants, wearing nothing but his fitted boxers now. I pull them off, needing to see all of him. His hardness stands at attention and I want him inside me, now.

I pull off my jeans and rub myself against him, nothing but my silk panties separating us.

“I want you so bad, Ripley,” he moans, hooking his thumbs into the sides of my panties and urging them down. He picks me up and carries me over to the bed, gently lowering me down. He climbs over me, his face mad with desire. This is the last time he will ever look at me like this.

I spread my legs for him, watching him grab a condom and roll it over the head of his cock. We don’t need another scare like before. Although, disappearing with a piece of Knox growing inside of me to love and have forever tempts me for a millisecond. But babies don’t fix things, they complicate them, and I can barely take care of myself.

I arch my back and run my hands down my body. He straddles me and reaches down with one hand to guide himself inside me. He slides the tip in and my eyes roll back with pleasure.

“Tell me that we’ll always be together,” he says, startling me.

Surprised, my breath catches. I try to wiggle under him and force him inside me but it doesn’t work.

“Say it,” he demands, holding my pleasure hostage until I lie.

“We’ll always be together,” I lie, clenching my eyes shut. He slides himself inside me and starts to rock back and forth. I never knew I could feel so much pleasure intertwined with pain. I bury my face into his chest so that he doesn’t see me crying.

I grind against him, needing that release even though I wish I could draw it out forever.

“Look at me,” he urges, getting worried. I swipe at my face, trying to hide my tears. I grab his ass burying him farther inside me. My body quivers with the beginnings of an orgasm that makes its way to my center. I come so hard that I nearly scream.

“Come for me, Knox,” I say, still not meeting his eyes. I know he can’t hold back much longer especially with how wet I just got when I came.

“Baby, please. Look at me,” he begs, his strokes becoming urgent.

I miscalculate and think I can hide what I’m feeling so I meet his eyes.

“No,” he yells at the same time that his body convulses with pleasure. “Ripley, no.”

But it’s too late. I’ve already committed to this. I slide out from under him and off the bed. He grabs my arm and pulls me back.

“Why?” he asks, tenderly caressing my face. I force my heart to turn to stone, knowing that he would be so conflicted if he found out the truth about our parents. I’m doing him a favor by not allowing him to fall even more in love with me just to find out the horrible truth. I gather every bit of strength I have to convince him to let me go.

“I didn’t lie when I said I loved you,” I tell him, running my hands through his hair. He swallows in anticipation of my next words. “I’m starting at MU with the summer session instead of fall. I need a fresh start away from this town.”

“But I could come with you. I can get a job down there. I’ll work at McDonald’s for all I care as long as I can be with you,” he pleads.

“I can’t hurt Natalie, Knox. I just can’t.” I sit up on the bed. His hands slowly run down my body in defeat. He knows he can’t say anything to convince me.

“So, that’s it then, you just get to decide the rest of my life for me,” he says, sitting up and rolling the used condom into a tissue. I stare at his incredible body, knowing it’s the last time I’ll ever see him naked. Bile rises in my throat knowing I’m sacrificing the one person who could make me happy forever.

“I’m all screwed up since Mom died,” I say, feeling like a shit for using her as an excuse but considering it’s her fault that I’m in this situation I don’t feel that shitty.

Knox punches his nightstand causing the lamp to wobble back and forth but luckily it remains upright. “I guess I’ll just re-enlist then. There sure isn’t shit to stay here for.”

My stomach clenches at the thought of Knox being sent to some foreign war torn country to fight, his life in jeopardy every hour of every day. I thought he would just stay at the pizza place and maybe I could even sneak in to see him once in a while when I come home for breaks. How incredibly selfish and naïve I was to think that he would just stay in some holding pattern, never changing, just staying the same so that I could peek in on him whenever I felt like it. And if I’m being honest, get a piece whenever I feel like it but still keep everything a huge secret. Boy, I am my mother’s daughter.

“You can’t do that. Your parents need you at Mozzarella,” I say, desperation lacing my voice.

He stomps out of bed and over to his clothes, pulling his underwear on. “You lost the right to tell me what the fuck to do with my life when you fucked me over yet again,” he yells.

I pull the blankets around me, trying to shield myself from his anger. I don’t want to leave things bad. I wish I could just explain everything to him but it would crush everything he knows about his entire life. I love him too much for that. I just wish he could understand that I’m doing this, I’m sacrificing myself, so that he and Natalie can still cherish their parent’s marriage.

“I don’t want this to end badly,” I admit, softly.

“Things never end well or they wouldn’t end. Please just get the hell out of my house,” he says, tossing my clothes in my direction. He turns his back on me as I rush around trying to get dressed as tears are streaming down my face.

I slip into my underwear and am clasping my bra when someone beats on the door. My heart pounds in my chest and I watch Knox advance toward the door, knowing I’m half-naked.

“Knox, stop,” I hiss, grabbing for the blanket off the bed.

“Open the fucking door, you two,” Natalie’s voice screams from behind the door.

Knox turns to me with an almost amused look on his face, shrug his shoulders, then throws open the door.

Natalie rushes in, her face flushed, her brain slowly taking in the scene before her. Rumpled sheets, room smelling of sex, and her best friend half naked in her brother’s bed.

“What. The. Fuck?” she screams, drawing out each word.

Knox shuts the door behind her then blurts out, “I’m in love with Ripley and I have been for about five years.”

“Natalie, listen,” I start but the look on her face tells me that she isn’t quite ready to hear anything from me, yet. She storms into the kitchenette and pulls the vodka bottle from Knox’s tiny freezer. She pours herself half a glass and downs it all in three swallows.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Knox tells her, pulling on a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants.

I pull on my clothes as fast as possible, kicking myself for ever coming here in the first place. I should have just left town without saying good-bye and then Natalie never would have known.

Natalie plops down on the couch, her cheeks rosy from the vodka and says, “So, all this time you’ve been acting like I’m the world’s biggest slut for having an affair with Cale and you’ve been fucking my brother? Well played, Ripley. Well played, indeed.” Her voice is laced with hysteria and I think I actually underestimated how upset she would be which I didn’t think was possible.

“Nobody was trying to one up you, sis. We’re in love. Cale was just using you,” Knox defends us, but I know immediately it is the wrong thing to say.

“Are you in love with my brother, Ripley?” Natalie asks, snark lacing her voice.

My gaze ping pongs back and forth between Knox and Natalie wanting to choose the right answer. She doesn’t want to hear the truth and I would do almost anything I could to soften the blow. For some reason I can tell that hearing me say Knox was just a fuck buddy would somehow make this situation almost forgivable. As tempting as it is to give her what she wants I’m already protecting her enough. I can’t rip Knox’s heart out by allowing him to believe that everything we had was a lie. I won’t emulate my mother in that way.

“Yes, I’m in love with your brother,” I admit. I pull on my clothes as fast as I can.

Knox looks so happy that he could burst. Of course he does because he actually thinks that this is going to change things. He thinks that everything is out in the open now so there is no reason that we can’t be together. Little does he know that the biggest secret will never see the light of day.

“It doesn’t matter though. I’m leaving in a week for Columbia to start college early,” I tell her, slipping into my flip-flops.

“But why? She knows, now we can be together,” Knox pleads, reaching for me. I see Natalie wince at the notion of Knox touching me so I pull away.

“This doesn’t change anything,” I tell him.

“She was using you, just like Cale was using me,” Natalie tells him.

“Shut up, Natalie. It wasn’t like that. You’re so fucked up, you don’t even know what love is,” Knox screams at her.

Natalie gets into his face and is screaming so hard that she’s spitting. “I know that love doesn’t just fucking abandon you. If she loves you so much, why the hell is she pulling a disappearing act?”

“The last thing I ever wanted to do was to come between the two of you,” I say, crying. “I love you both more than you’ll ever know.”

Natalie picks up a magazine off the coffee table and wings it at my head. “I fucking hate you,” she screams. “I don’t ever want to see your face again.”

I rush toward the door, checking my pocket for my keys. The last thing I see before I shut the door to Knox’s loft is him pulling her in for a hug. Neither of them looks in my direction. Strangely, I feel a sort of relief, knowing that they will always have each other to fall back on for the rest of their lives. Someday, I’ll just be a little blip on their radar screen of sibling love.

When I cross the bridge over the lake in the middle of our tiny town I toss the burner phone I’ve kept in the console into the water. Mom’s secret will be safe at the bottom of Lake Jasper for eternity. I’ve never felt lonelier in my entire life.

******

I’m busy packing my suitcase full of summer and fall clothes, knowing I’ll be back for Thanksgiving to get my winter ones, when Dad saunters in.

“Are you sure you really want to skip the graduation?” he asks, his voice cracking. Mom was planning a huge party to celebrate my graduation and I feel a pang of sorrow in my chest. But she isn’t here and I just couldn’t handle walking across that stage and everyone clapping for me out of pity. They can mail me the damn diploma. Besides, I can’t stand the thought of seeing Knox and Natalie. They are both expecting me to be there so it is the perfect time to slip out of town.

I don’t have the heart to tell him that I don’t have any friends left to invite. He knows that something is going on between Nat and I but hasn’t mentioned it.

“It’s okay, Dad,” I say, touching his arm. I know he’s scared for me to leave and I’m going to miss him like crazy, but I’m also trying to protect him. It would crush him to find out that Mom had been having an affair. Besides, he needs to start navigating life without Mom or me.

“But you won’t even let me drive you down,” he whines.

“I just have to do this by myself,” I say, knowing that if he drove me down I might not have the courage to stay.

“When did my little girl get so grown up?” he asks.

I think to myself that it was probably about the time that his wife decided to go secretly meet her lover and managed to get herself killed. If she would have just kept her ass home baking cookies this shit would have gone down a lot different. I guess I’m going through the anger stage of grief at the moment.

“We’ll Skype every week, okay? Do you remember how I showed you to do it?” I ask, ignoring his question.

“You do know that I am in charge of multi-million dollar advertising campaigns for companies like Anheuser-Busch and Purina, right? I think I can figure out how to talk on the computer,” he teases.

I laugh and smile, already knowing I’ll have to talk him through it again the first time we want to Skype. I bury my iPad in the middle of my suitcase so that it is cushioned by my clothes. I’m trying to fit everything I need into one suitcase since I’m taking the train. It is proving to be harder than I thought. Dad throws my beloved teddy bear I’ve had since I was three into the suitcase. I toss it back out on my bed.

“No Theodore Roosevelt Cuddlemuffin?” he shrieks, appalled that I would leave him behind.

“I don’t want my roommate thinking I’m a freak,” I lie. The truth is that Mom bought me that bear when I had to have an operation to put tubes in my ears when I was three. It is one of my prized possessions and I couldn’t bear it if something happened to him. He is much safer staying with Dad. Besides, it will be nice to have a happy face to come home to since my face probably isn’t going to be welcome around Natalie for the rest of my life.

I knew when I said good-bye to Knox that my body, heart, and soul would long for him until the end of my life. But I never anticipated that Natalie would find us out and banish me from her life. It feels like someone else died, my sister. We have been inseparable since we were eleven years old. Not a day went by when I didn’t talk to her. Now she hates me. My best friend hates me.

“I’m proud of you, Ripley. Some kids would have folded under all this pressure, but you kept it together. Mom would be so proud of you,” he boasts.

I wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his chest. He hugs me back and we stand like that forever, neither wanting to let go. I will miss him so much and I already know that I will live in fear nearly every day of something happening to him, but I just can’t stay here in the safety of this house, pretending that my mother didn’t nearly destroy everyone I love. Sometimes, late at night, I wonder what would have happened if they would have gotten caught. If I was just the child of divorced parents instead of a half-orphan. As much as I miss Mom, I can’t wish that pain on Bea, Knox, and Natalie. And I wouldn’t want people thinking she was a home wrecker. Mom always used to say that everything happens for a reason. I guess she was right.

“I’m only three hours away,” I tell Dad, forcing myself not to cry.

“I know, sweetheart. I know,” he says, retreating slowly from my room.