Wild Child (34 page)

Or maybe she never really left.

“Businesses have seen a twenty percent increase in revenue,” Brian said. It was Monday morning again, four days until the Okra Festival started on Friday morning, and the town was electric. Walking down the street felt good. Cora’s Café was full of smiling faces and miraculously, for the first time since Jackson had taken over the job as mayor, this budget meeting didn’t suck. “The Peabody is sold out for the next month of weekends and Cora has started taking reservations,” Brian continued.

“The Okra Festival has gotten more attention than it’s ever gotten. Businesses as far as Masonville have reserved booths,” Jackson said, thrilled about that fact, if for no other reason than that it would make good television. “The chili cook-off actually has five entrants. A restaurant from Memphis is coming to challenge Cora.”

Brian laughed. “Well, good luck to them. I’ve had some of Cora’s chili and there’s no way it’s getting beaten.”

“We’ve had to reorganize some of the events,” Jackson said, flipping through the calendar, “for the live taping. The parade and street festival will start Friday morning, eight a.m., instead of Saturday.”

“When does the crew arrive?”

“Thursday night. We’ll have the pageant that night, too. We’ve sent out fliers and the schedule will be in the newspaper on Wednesday.”

“Well, then, let’s keep our fingers crossed that the Okra Festival goes off without a hitch.”

Jackson was past crossing his fingers. He was considering offering Sean as a sacrifice to the gods to ensure the Okra Festival went smoothly.

“You know I doubted the validity of this contest,” Brian said, gathering up his files. “But even if we don’t win the contest, with the increased tourism the town is already winning.”

It felt that way; it really did. The town had new life, but without the new factory it would fade away. Vanish as soon as the parade was over.

When Brian left, Jackson turned back to his computer. Only to stare at the dark screen.

It was happening; all the work was paying off.

Soon there’d be a factory working in this town again. Jobs. A tax-base increase. The schools would be fully funded, and everyone would be okay. He imagined the future and it was bright, brighter than he’d ever dreamed.

He heard the door shut and he was dragged from that fantasy back to his office.

It was Monica standing there, her back to the wall, fire in her eyes, a different kind of fantasy altogether.

“Hey!” He jumped to his feet, happy to see her.

“Hey yourself,” she said, dropping her laptop backpack into the chair Brian had just vacated.

“What’s up? You seem … tense?” She seemed wired to blow, surrounded by thunderclouds and twisters. Dangerous.

“I am.”

“Your mom—”

“I don’t want to talk about Mom.” Monica reached over and locked the door, the click loud in the silence.

“What do you want to do?” The blood getting hot and thick in his veins knew the answer.

“Fuck the mayor.” She pulled off the ancient Duran Duran tank top she wore, revealing a utilitarian white bra. His lingerie-loving lover obviously hadn’t gotten dressed this morning planning to seduce him, which made him wonder, briefly, distantly, what was going on.

Her denim skirt landed in a heap at her feet. She wore black panties, a tiny vee between her legs. “Sit down,” she ordered.

He had no choice; his free will had vanished. He was hers to command. He sat in his chair and wheeled away slightly from the desk, giving her space to slip in. She pushed aside the paperwork and his keyboard and sat down on the blotter, putting one leg up on his chair, her other foot pressed against his crotch.

He wasn’t a foot fetish guy, but still, he saw stars. She tossed a condom at him.

“Like this?” he asked, meaning with the strange current between them, the anger that rolled off her in waves.

“No,” she said and hopped off her perch, turned around, and braced her hands on the desk. She waved her ass at him. “Like this.”

Something was wrong. But he was a man and he was devoutly in love with her ass, so he stood, though in the back of his head he knew better. His pants dropped faster than he thought possible. Through the cotton of her underwear he felt her, already damp, already hot.

“Hurry,” she breathed, pulling down her underwear, kicking it under his desk.

Right. Hurry
. He tore open the condom with his teeth and slipped it on. He touched her hip, then reached around to find the sweet, luscious weight of her breasts, encased in white cotton. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Just … fuck me.”

She pushed back into him, the curve of her ass a terrible
tease, a delicious torment.
Fine. Yes
. A quickie, that’s what this was. Somehow, that made it … okay. He reached down, positioned himself, and thrust deep into her.

Damp she might have been, her words hot, but she wasn’t entirely ready, and he felt her resistance and stopped. “Monica—”

“Don’t. Just let’s go … come on.” Again she pushed back against him, and he felt her loosening. Holding her hips, he thrust into her, slowly, carefully, working to get her caught up.

“No,” she snapped, looking at him over her shoulder.

“Hard.”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her, aware in some part of his brain that that was what she wanted. She wanted pain with her pleasure, and usually he could get into that, but not like this. Not with the scales so weirdly out of balance.

She bent her legs, taking him deep, working herself against him, and he felt the tide coming, the tide he wouldn’t be able to resist. “I need … I need hard, Jackson. Please. Hard and fast.”

He was done. Washed away. Whatever anger had pushed her here to his office for this strange and degrading fuck, it spread to him and he found himself angry with her. With one hand he pushed her head down onto his desk, holding her there, while with his other hand he held her hip in a punishing grip as he thrust high and hard into her.

She was wet now, moaning against his desk. Lifting up on her toes to take as much of him as she could, and it was so exciting and so awful at the same time, he closed his eyes. Not wanting to watch himself have sex with her like this—like they had no kindness between them. He felt her come and then he followed her over the edge.

It was anticlimactic. Over, mostly, before it even started.
If he weren’t such a simple, stupid machine, he probably wouldn’t have been able to muster up the orgasm.

“That what you wanted?” He panted, pulling away, yanking off the condom with no finesse.

“Yes.” Her voice was small as she stood up. She winced, and he wanted to kick his own ass. It didn’t matter that she’d wanted it. He didn’t like his sex mixed up with that much anger.

“Well, happy to serve.”

“It wasn’t …”

“Don’t say it wasn’t like that.” Jackson jerked up his pants, unable to look at her. “It was exactly like that.”

“Okay, fine, so what if it was?” She pulled on her underwear, walked around the desk, and yanked on her clothes.

“I don’t like being used.”

She laughed. “But isn’t that the whole nature of our relationship, Jackson? We are using each other. We’re not dating. We’re not going to last past the next two weeks. We’re fucking each other to pass the time.”

He was trying not to get angry. Not to rise to her bait, because clearly she just wanted to fight. “Look, if you’re mad about your mom—”

“Not everything is about my mom.”

“Well, that certainly wasn’t about us.” He pointed to the desk, where everything had been scattered in their haste.

She yanked on her tank top, pulled her black hair back, and started to tie it up in a ponytail. “It was about sex, Jackson. That’s all.”

“Bullshit.” He wasn’t an idiot and he wasn’t going to be treated like one. “You want to be mad at someone, be mad at your mother. Or better yet, do what you said you were going to do and go talk to her.”

“Oh!” she cried, stepping toward him, and honestly, he had no idea how this had happened. How in less than
twenty minutes he’d gone from being so happy to see her, to bending her over his desk like a whore, to fighting with her. “Really, you’re the expert on talking.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked. He thought they’d been really honest in their relationship. He’d talked to her more than he’d talked to anyone since the shrinks after his mom and dad died.

Monica grabbed her bag and unlocked the door. Jackson could see Ms. Watson in the hallway, trying very hard to appear busy and as though she hadn’t been listening.

“It means talk to your sister.”

The door, that stupid door, slammed shut behind her.

Two hours later Monica sat at her desk, her world in shambles around her, staring at an email.

While the writing is strong, its tone is problematic. I understand if it isn’t possible to create an emotional distance between yourself and the events of that night, or between yourself and your parents, but for the sake of the book, and the success of the venture, you need to try. These three chapters are intriguing, but they sound like they were written by an angry teenager. I want the woman we met at the end of
Wild Child
to write these books. I want the woman I know you are to write these books. Can you try again?

Monica closed her eyes and slouched back in the chair. Uncomfortable fucking desk chair, she couldn’t get a good slouch on. She tipped sideways and crawled up onto her bed.

Worst. Day. Ever.

How did I get here?
she wondered.
How did I get so empty?

The scene with her mother. The scene … oh God, that awful, angry scene with Jackson. She had no idea
how she was going to make that right. How was she going to explain that being unloved by the people she loved made her angry? Made her want to hurt herself.

And that was why she’d gone to Jackson’s like that—to hurt herself. To prove to herself that she didn’t deserve happiness, that it wasn’t for her.

She thought of how angry she’d been today seeing her mother, how it had driven her to act like the child she’d been and not the woman she was. And she was suddenly so angry at herself for always reacting. Always bouncing off and away from people, instead of being a fixed object secure in who she was. Secure in the rightness of her feelings.

Her love for Jackson had been so clean just yesterday—it was the best thing she’d ever had—and then she’d gone and messed it up, dragged it down through the dirt. So that at the inevitable end, when he left her hurt and miserable, she could comfort herself with the idea that it hadn’t been all that special anyway.

But it
was
special.

In the drawer of the bedside table was a note from the only person who ever really knew her, all the
i
’s dotted with circles, and Jenna knew she was special.

She was special.

And she deserved some goddamn happiness.

Enough
.

Right now, right here, she fixed herself to solid ground. She tugged and tore and pushed and pulled the anger away from the love she felt. The person she was.

Spurred to action, she grabbed her laptop and started making some notes.

What happened in his office with Monica haunted Jackson all day. He felt dirty and angry and worried, and
when he went home that night he was ready to pop that bubble between him and his sister forever.

“Gwen!” he shouted as he pushed open the front door. “We need to talk.”

Silence greeted him, but that wasn’t strange. He went upstairs to her room, but it was empty. So were the den, the TV room, and the kitchen. He even checked the never-used sleeping porch. But she wasn’t there.

He grabbed his phone.
Where are you?
He texted.

At pageant practice. Going out with Jay after. Will be very drunk, so be sure to wait up
.

Furious, bent over the sink, he ate pork chops left over from who knows when.

At eight o’clock he texted her again.
No going out with Jay. Come on home
.

He stared at the screen, waiting for her angry answer, but it never came.

Bullshit
, he thought, and he walked around his empty house getting angrier and angrier. At his sister. At Monica. At his parents for dying in a car accident. At the world for not being controllable.

At nine o’clock he found himself outside his sister’s bedroom door.

Knowing he was crossing a line, but somehow unable to stop himself, he opened the door.

What exactly he was looking for he didn’t know. Something. Anything. A small clue into what was going on with Gwen.

Parents do this all the time
, he told himself as he stepped over the threshold.

Her room was a mess. Maybe every teenage girl was this way; he didn’t know. But it bothered him to see it now. She constantly complained about not having clean clothes to wear, but if she never put them down the laundry chute, how were they supposed to get clean? He grabbed the first few things off the floor, a tee shirt and
her cut-offs, and stuffed them in the hamper. But as he did so, something fell out.

It took a second for him to even recognize the silver strip as condoms. Condoms in his sister’s shorts. He picked them up off the floor.

Lubricated, ribbed, magnum, and the dead giveaway … glow-in-the-dark.

It had been a joke a week ago when Monica had pulled out these condoms. Glow-in-the-dark seemed dubious. But they worked, and at the time they found that out, he hadn’t been laughing.

And maybe Gwen just happened to have the same kind. But he didn’t believe it.

Monica was giving his sister condoms.

His sister was having sex.

It was enough to make him light-headed. Light-headed and furious.

Chapter 22

It was close to midnight when Monica knocked on the screen door of her mother’s house. The light clicked on over her head and all the small moths leapt into action.

Turtle Man pushed open the screen door, wearing a robe and a disgruntled expression.

“You know what time it is, don’t you?”