Sway (4 page)

Matt fishes them out and sprints away while Scott reaches for the bag and opens it. “Are you sure I should be doing this?” he asks.

I shift my weight, and hers, to my other hip. “It’s either that or we leave her here. Or I guess we could take her to your house…”

Scott rips at the bag like a tiger attacking a steak. Pulling out a rectangle card, he holds it up. “Found her license. It says she lives on third and Hudson. Apartment 213B. Hope that helps.” He looks up at me. “Isn’t that Clearwater apartments?”

It’s Clearwater. And it helps. In the way that a pack of cigarettes helps an ex-smoker.

I sigh. “Yes, it does. Now, I just have to get her home.”

On cue, my car pulls up. Scott opens the passenger door and I slide her inside, then turn to face the guys, my arms screaming in blessed relief. I rub my hands together, hoping to convey an authoritative edge.

“Alright, who’s coming with me?”

Kate

“Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”

—The Smiths

I
’m moving. Swaying back and forth, my head giving an occasional bounce as we hit what feels like a pothole. My mind feels fuzzy, my vision is blurred, but I’m aware enough to know that I’m not in this car alone. But who is with me? I remember my friends, I remember the tattooed guy at the bar, I remember the other guy that bought me a drink and told me I was beautiful, that I was the present he’d been waiting for even though I was the one celebrating the birthday. I remember all of those people.

But I can’t remember who I left with.

I’m stopping. Being lifted and carried and cradled while someone fumbles with a lock. A door opens. It shuts. It’s dark inside the room, and I’m glad. I think even a pinprick of light might make my head explode.

My head.

It’s spinning.

It’s spinning and I’m moving and I’m twirling and I’m stopping. Someone lays me down. Someone tucks a blanket around my shoulders. I’m cold, and then I’m warm.

My eyes crack open for the slightest second, long enough to see muscle and tightness and strength and man. He’s warm, too, so I kiss him and giggle and kiss him again. He doesn’t kiss back. I don’t understand much, but this isn’t how a one-night-stand is supposed to go. But then I wasn’t supposed to have a one-night stand. I was supposed to drive my drunk friends home.

His presence confuses me. His reaction confuses me. My lack of friends confuses me. My head confuses me. The cold confuses me. The wetness around my mouth confuses me.

The odd sensations come all at once, overwhelming me until blood rushes to my head. I sink my head into the pillow, letting my arms and legs go limp on the mattress. This feels good, this feels normal. This is perfect.

Everything goes black.

Caleb

“Diamond Eyes”

—Deftones

A
ccident-prone was the term my mother often used to describe me. My elderly neighbor was less gracious—he often shouted “klutz!” at me across the driveway after another fall from a bike, a trip over skates, a stumble over my own two feet.

While the cranky old man kept going with his taunts, without fail, my mother came rushing. After a wet rag and a well-placed Band-Aid and a smile, she routinely made my pain better with a kiss.

I learned at a young age that a kiss always makes things better.

It wasn’t until I grew older that I quit believing that lie.

Of course I’m alone. Every one of those idiots tucked tail and ran the second I invited them along. Matt claimed a sudden sore throat. Scott blamed his curfew—the guy is freaking twenty-two but still answers to his mother. And Kimball…for all I know he’s passed out cold in a garage somewhere.

My friends. What a bunch of worthless losers.

Guilt chases that thought and I kick the front door closed with the heel of my foot. Once we make it inside the empty apartment, I bump nose-first into a bedroom door, try not to curse, then lay the girl down on the first bed I can find. I reach for a blanket to cover her. Even in the dark, I can see that it’s a bright shade of pink—just like her coat. This is obviously her room, which has me seriously questioning this girl’s sense of taste. Pink is nauseating. Pink is shallow. Pink is sororities and air-kisses and chicks who talk about manicures—everything I despise.

Pink was my mother’s favorite color.

That thought comes from nowhere, and suddenly I’m angry. I don’t even know this girl and she’s making me revisit things I would rather not remember…things I can’t change or undo or wish back. Not that it’s her fault, and not that it matters. I’m out of here in ten seconds. Hopefully less.

I tuck the headache-inducing blanket around her shoulders and stand, intending to walk out. But then she moans, rolls over, and shivers when the blanket falls off. I’ve seen these kinds of drugs at work before, so the coldness doesn’t surprise me. The fact that she isn’t completely out of it does.

Tugging the blanket up across her shoulder again, I push back a long strand of curls that manages to spread across her cheek. Her hair is silk, like lengths of gold chord that slip through my fingers, imprinting their memory long after they fall back onto the pillow. I stare for a moment, a strange longing to feel them again coursing through me. My heart picks up speed, and I know I need to leave.

Before I have a chance to move she rotates onto her back, and two soft hands slide up my arms. Her fingernails are short, blunt from a recent clipping. The edges are sharp as though she didn’t bother with a file. I’m not sure if it’s the absence of pink or the plainness of the cut or the fact that she’s touching me at all, but it surprises me. She doesn’t get manicures? As I’m mulling this thought, she yanks on my shirt and pulls me down, pressing her lips to mine. Shocked doesn’t describe my reaction. I know she’s unaware. I know she’s out of it. But the contact rushes to my head and makes it hard to breathe.

The breaths I manage to grab turn shallow when her arms snake around my neck. Her lips touch mine again as my own hang slack. I’m stunned, but not enough to keep from noticing that her lips are soft, inviting, warm in a way I haven’t felt in forever. They taste like butterscotch, rich and liquid. A longing burns in my gut, fierce in its pull, and I feel myself falling.

Falling.

Pressing into her, I lower my mouth over hers as desire numbs everything but the way this feels…the way she feels…until her teeth nip at my bottom lip and bring me to my senses. With my pulse hammering a painful beat into my neck, I rip myself away and stand, giving her a gentle push onto the mattress. She’s drunk and I’m a jerk. The back of my hand instinctively moves to my mouth to remove her taste, but it doesn’t quite work, and I’m mad all over again. She begins to giggle, and I blink at her change in demeanor, puzzled by her random mood swings. The sound melts away my anger, because it’s musical. Funny, even. I find myself smiling down at her as she curls into the mattress and laughs. It goes on and on until I begin to think she’s losing her mind.

But then she stops. Goes completely still. Turns white. And loses her dinner instead.

Twice.

All over the bed. And of course on my leg.

And now I’m right back where I started. My life could not possibly suck more than it does now. And all I can think is
why the heck didn’t anyone talk me out of going to that stupid bar?

*

I pull her bedroom door closed behind me, leaving it cracked just a little just in case—
in case, what?
—and walk into the living room, bumping my leg on something sharp in the hallway. It turns out to be a table, and I’ve smeared vomit all over it now. Finding it hard to care, I go in search of a towel, locating one lying on the porcelain kitchen sink next to a box of handy wipes and two bottles of Germ-X. I reach for the towel and wet it, and as I swipe it across my jeans, all I can think is that any minute now her roommate might show up and call the police. I could be arrested for breaking and entering, and since I have a prior record the excuse
But I used the key I pilfered from her purse
probably will not get me out of trouble. All the talking in the world would likely wind up with me locked in an eight-by-eight cell.

But I just don’t care. Her friends left her at the bar. Abandoned her drunk and drugged. Entrusted her with a guy she’d never met. A guy who would have taken advantage of her in five more minutes if he’d been given the smallest chance. They left her, and I find myself hoping each one of them will walk in just so I can yell at them in person.

Seriously, why are some girls so stupid?

I pump soap into my hands and scrub them together, then flip the water off and shake them out, trying to decide what to do. Patting them on my backside, I survey the room, looking for an answer. Staying seems to be the worst option, but the girl has already thrown up once. What if she begins again? Or what if the guy at the bar slipped her more drugs than I think, and she…tries to jump out her window? Or hangs herself with an extension cord from her ceiling rafter? I have no idea if date rape drugs make a person delusional, or suicidal, but I sure don’t want to read about her self-inflicted death in tomorrow’s paper. I can’t have that on my conscience, especially when Matt, Jordon, and Scott know I’m here.

And my concern has absolutely nothing to do with those blond ringlets I can still feel gliding through my hand. Or the butterscotch kiss that still lingers on my lips.

This is about her safety.

This is about her—

“What the heck?” My gaze lands on her white wicker bookcase. More specifically, on the rows of thin, worn cardboard lining the bottom three shelves in vertical rows. I don’t need to see the sleek turntable planted above them to know exactly what I’m looking at, and my pulse picks up speed. By the time I kneel down to examine them more closely, my pulse is at a full-out sprint. Her record collection is mind-blowing. I flip through indie bands like Bon Iver, Sleeping with Sirens, The Civil Wars, The Lumineers. Classics like Buddy Holly, Etta James, Elvis, The Beatles. The ridiculous like Wham!, Wang Chung, The Bee Gees, the soundtrack for
The Breakfast Club
. They go on and on. The name Kathryn darts out at me repeatedly, her name written in black Sharpie on the top left corner of each album.

Kathryn. Kathryn’s records.

Kathryn’s LP’s and forty-fives. Dozens of them. Hundreds. All alphabetized and categorized by genre. By size. From left to right in descending order. I can almost see her kneeling on the floor, painstakingly organizing each one until they all flowed together to offer easy access. I glance at the still open bedroom door, my mind drifting to the girl on the bed—Kathryn—currently knocked out and lying in the leftover remains of what looked like tuna on wheat.

But never mind all that. Kathryn what’s-her-name has the coolest record collection I’ve ever seen.

I should know. I have many of these same albums at home. But not all of them. Some are way too expensive for a person living on my salary.

I’d like nothing more than to sit here for a few more hours and stoke my jealousy, but I can’t. I feel like a stalker for being here this long, and this apartment has at least one other inhabitant. I don’t belong here. Probably a good idea to make myself scarce before whoever she lives with decides to show up.

I’m preparing to stand when I spot one more album tucked away behind all the others. My heart, usually so even-keeled and dependable, stops cold. Dead in my chest. A weird, girly squeal comes out of my throat, and I look around, thankful the only other person in the apartment won’t be awake anytime soon. The thought should make me feel guilty, but worries about my manhood usually trump everything else.

Turning back around, I lock eyes on the object as full-on lust slams into me. There, situated inside an oversized glass frame—protected and hidden from curious eyes that might be able to spot it for what it is, eyes like mine—is the only album I haven’t been able to find in all my years of collecting them. Not that I would be able to own it, but I’ve always wanted to see one in person. With shaking hands, I reach for the frame. I have to hold it, if only for a second. My whole body goes numb as I stare at Bob Dylan’s
The Freewheelin’
in my calloused hands, and it’s all I can do not to let out a whoop. Websites tout this album as exclusive. Collectors tout it as impossible to find. EBay touts it as worth forty thousand dollars.

I tout it as un-freaking-believable. Some kids wished for Disney World. I’ve always wished for this.

I flip it over in my hands and try not to feel disappointed when I’m greeted by a sheet of laminated mahogany wood. I want to see the back, but like an idiot I’ve forgotten about the frame. Deciding that it probably isn’t a good idea to pry it open with the pocket knife tucked inside my pocket, I study the front again, still not quite believing what I’m seeing. Why that girl keeps an album like this hidden inside an Oklahoma City apartment building is beyond me. It’s ridiculous. It’s irresponsible. This thing deserves to be locked inside a safe deposit box, secured by keys and bars and bank tellers with stern expressions.