Fifteen
Landon
Having grown up in a small, private school, I knew something of small towns. The way nothing ever remains a secret. The way secrets spread like wildfire. The way that fire doesn’t die out until a bigger fire consumes it.
Over spring break, four college girls rented a house on the beach—a Richards property. Clark’s father sent him over to deliver the keys when they arrived. Word was, he stopped by with a couple of his bros from the varsity baseball team, and they hadn’t left for an hour. That might not have been a big deal—but they returned that night with another guy. And nobody left until the next morning.
At least one of those guys couldn’t resist bragging about the alleged orgy trade-off—not that anyone could blame him for talking. Strip poker with Cuervo shots and college girls, two guys and two girls adjourning to each bedroom and multiple partner swaps? Most guys are going to talk. And talk. And talk.
Some aren’t content to stop there. Some want to take pics and video clips as proof and send them to friends, usually when they’re too drunk or high to realize that a buddy with a long-term girlfriend was in one of those videos. The one where a mostly naked girl straddles him in a chair, moving and moaning in such a way that no imagination is required to know what’s going on.
Boyce and I saw the video early the next day.
Melody had seen it by the time Clark went to her house the next night. There was a huge fight, and her mother threatened to call his dad if Clark didn’t calm down and leave. He nearly flipped his Jeep at the end of their drive, peeling a sharp right and leaving a parallel set of rubber stripes.
I wanted to deck him when he showed up at one of the bonfires dotting the long stretches of sand three hours later, acting as if losing Melody was little more than a minor annoyance. Boyce told me Clark had screwed vacationers before—he just hadn’t been caught. “Some guys think it doesn’t count if it’s with some chick who’s short term. It’s a temp fuck.” As if to illustrate Boyce’s statement, Clark paired off with an unfamiliar girl five minutes later. This one looked thirteen and wide-eyed as a baby deer.
“Whoa, dude—look,” Boyce said, gesturing with his cigarette.
Melody slogged through the sand, flanked by Pearl, who was carrying a cardboard box. Marching up to Clark in the flickering firelight, Melody dipped her hands into the box in her friend’s arms and rained ripped-up photos and what looked like pieces of stuffed bear over his head.
“What the fuck, Melody?” Clark said, standing and letting the startled girl in his lap fall onto the sand. She crawled away like a crab.
“You. Cheating. Bastard!” Melody pulled a gold bracelet from the box and hurled it at his feet. It hit him in the ankle and lurched toward the water, rolling.
“Those are diamonds, you psycho bitch!” he yelled, leaping to grab it.
“You can’t buy me!” she returned.
“Who’d want to?” he snarled, and she burst into tears, stumbling away. Pearl threw the empty box at his head—he ducked and it sailed over his shoulder—and followed her friend.
I tugged the cord to the fort’s door, listening hard. I thought I heard a barely audible sniffle, but it could have been a gust of wind. “Melody?” I whispered.
Her face appeared from above, her hair luminous in the moonlight, like a halo around her entire head. She squinted and then said, “Oh—Landon. What are you doing here?” She hiccupped. It had been over two hours since the scene on the beach, but she was still crying.
“Just came to check on you. Can I come up?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
We sat in silence until she scooted closer and leaned her head on my shoulder. “Half my friends are saying I overreacted and half want to help me hide his body. I don’t know what to believe.”
I shook my head. “Overreacted? Because he cheated on you?”
She pulled her knees to her chest, curling into me, and I put my arm around her. “He came over and apologized,” she said. “He said he’d only gone there for his boys—the other guys are all single. He said stuff like that isn’t for girls like me to ever know about. He said he was drunk, and it was a mistake.”
“And you believe him?”
“Obviously not, or I wouldn’t have torn the stuffing out of Beauregard.”
I snorted. “Beauregard?”
She giggled, hiccupping again when we both began laughing. At some point, though, her laughs turned to sobs, and she collapsed into my chest. “Why would he have sex with some skank when he has me? Why?”
I figured she didn’t want me to attempt an answer to that. I also suspected nothing and no one would ever be enough for a guy like Clark Richards. Like his father, he was never going to be content with what he had. He only saw what he didn’t have. And felt entitled to it.
She quietened after a few minutes, inhaling a couple of deep breaths and shuddering. “How’d you know I’d be out here?”
“When I texted and you didn’t answer, I guessed.”
She angled her head back and looked up at me. “You’re a good guy, Landon.”
I’m not, came the automatic thought.
She leaned closer, eyes open, and pressed her lips to mine. Just a brush—tentative and testing. She pulled away only inches, and our breath mingled. I leaned forward, an inch at a time, and she didn’t back away. I kissed her as she’d kissed me, cautiously, slowly, lips only, neither of us closing our eyes.
“Melody?” We jerked apart—her mother’s voice was close, right outside the fort’s walls.
I lay flat on my back while she rose to her knees, her hand pressed to the middle of my chest, the better to feel my heart pounding. “Yeah, Mama?”
Her mother sighed, exasperated. “Come inside, now. You can’t be out here by yourself. It isn’t safe.” Melody glanced down at me as her mother continued, “Also, Clark is now calling the landline, since you aren’t answering your cell.”
Her chin came up. “Did you tell him to eat shit?”
“Melody Ann Do—”
“Do you know what he did, Mama? How humiliated I am?”
Another sigh. “Come inside, Melody.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She turned to back down the ladder, whispering to me, “Wait five minutes before you leave. And thank you.”
• • • • • • • • • •
I was working with Dad the next day—he’d booked a family of four for an all-day excursion of fishing and sightseeing. They were standing at the mouth of the dock when Dad and I pulled up. One girl, about my age, was scowling, arms crossed over her chest. Another one, around Carlie’s age, was bouncing foot to foot, her face flush with excitement.
“Holy shit,” I said under my breath, already feeling grouchy.
“Can it,” Dad said, directing a courteous look toward the four of them. He wasn’t ever outgoing, so it wasn’t like a night-and-day transformation, but his boatside manner was polite and patient, even when explaining and demonstrating the same things a million times.
I hadn’t heard from Melody—but that was no surprise. It had only been eight hours since I jumped down from her fort platform and walked home, so high from her kiss that I could hardly sleep.
But I’d have no cell service until we docked tonight, plus a bitchy teenaged girl and a hyper younger one to deal with. I predicted a long, miserable day.
I was right, but not necessarily for the reasons I’d assumed. The kid actually listened to my instructions and made the biggest catch we’d had all year—though hooking a big one is mostly luck and boat placement, not the skill of the guy with the pole. No one mentioned that shit to her. Dad’s motto: “It’s our job to make sure the client thinks it’s all him.” He helped her reel it in while her parents cheered.
The older girl had straightened off her parents’ car when I got out of the SUV, pulling on her earrings, fiddling with the strings on her cutoff shorts, fidgeting with her hair—putting it up and taking it down. That shit continued all day. She was glued to me, too, asking idiotic questions about my tats—which I’m not in the habit of explaining to anyone, especially not random strangers—and using those inquiries as an excuse to touch them. She wondered what kids who lived here did for fun, eyeballing me like she expected me to invite her along to do whatever that was—and I mean whatever that was. Most awkwardly: she took pics of me with her phone. I suspected she was texting or posting them and felt weirdly violated.
That boat felt more confining than it ever had, and I thought about people in emergency lifeboats, stuck at sea for days. I would jump ship after seriously contemplating shoving her overboard.
As soon as we docked and my feet hit land, I turned on my phone. I had a message from Melody, asking if I was busy today. She’d sent it hours ago.
Bumping knuckles with the kid and cold-shouldering sexual harassment girl, I called, “Great fishing, guys!” to the parents, and then I climbed into the front seat of the SUV.
Me: Hey. Out on the boat all day. Working. No service til now. Just docked.
Melody: I was afraid you were mad because of what I did.
Me: What??
Melody: The kiss.
Me: I’m the opposite of mad, whatever that is. Fort tonight?
Melody: Can’t. Staying over with Pearl. Working tomorrow?
Me: No. Dad will be gone all day. Come over.
Melody: K
As soon as Dad left the next morning, I cleaned the bathroom, straightened the kitchen, and put away piles of clothes that were usually shoved to the side of my bed or haphazardly folded on the shelves. I made my bed.
Melody’s knock was unsure. Quiet. I rubbed nervous palms down my sun-faded board shorts and took a breath before opening the door.
“Hi,” I said, admitting her and closing the door behind her. Locking it.
“Hi,” she said, tucking a long strand of hair behind her ear.
She followed me to the kitchen, where we sipped at sodas and made sandwiches we nibbled but didn’t eat. We barely spoke.
Finally, she cleared her throat. “You said that you’d draw me, once. Want to do that?”
I nodded. “Sure. Yeah.” We stuck the dishes in the sink and I opened the pantry door and clicked on the overhead lamp. “Where do you want—?”
“In there is good,” she said. “If that’s good for you.”
I hope she didn’t expect an answer to that question, because every-fucking-thing about this day was good for me.
She kicked off her flip-flops and we climbed onto the bed. I reached for my pad and pencils and she leaned back on her elbows. “So do you arrange me, or do I strike a pose, like this, or what?”
No way I could touch her and then draw. “Just get comfortable. It’ll take me awhile. You don’t want to try holding an awkward position.” Like the one she was in, her perfect tits straining against her fitted top, creating gaps between the buttons and pulling the hem higher to display the strip of tanned skin above her shorts.
She turned to arrange pillows at the head of the bed while I sat against the wall. She lay on her side, half sitting, half reclining into the mound of pillows, her hair rippling across the surface like a gold waterfall. Pulling one leg into an angle, she straightened the other until our toes touched. I waited for her to still. Her eyes on mine, she unbuttoned the top two buttons of her shirt, showing off the white, lacy bra beneath.
“Is this good?” she asked, her voice quavering and soft.
My hands shook. Fuck. I sucked in a slow breath, and then another, regaining some self-control. “Perfect,” I said, and she smiled.
Neither of us spoke. There were no sounds but an occasional throat clearing and the scratch of my pencil. Her foot swept over the top of mine when she shifted, and I pressed back reflexively. Finally, I stared at the sketch, and then handed it to her.
“Oh, my God.” She looked from the pad to me and back to the pad. “I knew you were good . . . but this . . . is amazing.” She examined herself, stretching out both legs and assessing deficiencies. “I don’t look like this in real life, though. This is gorgeous.”
I took the pad from her hand and placed it on the lowest shelf, just over our heads. “Trust me. You look better.” I moved next to her.
Not meeting my eyes, she reached out to trace my tattoos—her touch nothing like the gratuitous strokes from the girl yesterday, who seemed to think that touching me was part of the package deal her dad paid for.
“Do you want to kiss me again?” Melody asked. Still not looking at me.
I leaned over her, skimming one hand just under her shirt to her bare waist and waiting until she raised her eyes to mine. Repeating the careful, experimental kiss we’d shared two days ago, we kept our eyes open, the touch of our lips seemingly halfhearted. And then her hand twisted in my T-shirt and she pulled me down. My knee slid between her legs and there was no hiding the hard length pressed to her thigh. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, and I didn’t waste time weighing variables because I couldn’t think. Driving my tongue into her mouth, my eyes closed and my hands wandered over everything I could reach.
I loosened the last three buttons of her top and we sat up, attempting to keep our mouths fused while she shrugged out of it. My T-shirt joined her shirt at the foot of the bed. When she reached around to unhook her bra, I watched, eyes consuming her hungrily. I reached to slide the straps down her arms, and she trembled as my thumbs traced her curves. Her dancer’s limbs, lithe and athletic, contrasted with the supple fullness of her tits. Tossing the bra toward the end of the bed, I lay down and pulled her on top of me, high enough to tongue her nipples while cupping her ass to keep her close. Arms straight, she braced herself above me.
When Melody’s whimpers became dazed cries, I sucked a nipple into my mouth, and she screamed and bucked against me. Rolling until my hip hit the wall, I dragged her under me on the narrow mattress, nudged one thigh between her legs and pressed. She clawed my arms and kissed me wildly.
Then her hand slipped into my shorts, and I lifted just enough to give access, lost to the soft, warm grip of her palm and fingers. Going to one elbow, I pulled her with me and thrust my hand down the front of her shorts. “Jesus Christ, Melody,” I gasped, fingers sliding into her so easily. She came seconds later, quaking against me, and I followed.
Drifting back to reality, we slowly pulled our hands from inside each other’s clothing. I grabbed my T-shirt and used it to clean her hand and then mine. I wanted to suck on the fingers I’d thrust inside her, wanted to know how she tasted, but I was oddly shy in that moment. Cocooning us inside my comforter, I drew her close and we lay staring at each other until we fell asleep.
When I woke, she was gone. She’d taken the drawing with her.
LUCAS
I didn’t email Jacqueline until Sunday evening—four short sentences, all instructional, no flirting. She responded in kind, but referred to my weekend. I couldn’t stop myself from telling her that my weekend was good—especially Friday. How was yours? I asked.
Three words stuck out of her short reply—good, lonely, and productive.
We all need our moments of solitude, but this girl should never be lonely.
I pulled out a heavy sheet of paper and my charcoal pencils, chose the fully reclining pose—on her back, arms above her head. As I re-sketched her lean limbs, each stroke across the paper evoked the kisses and caresses that left my body craving more of her. I smudged the shadows under her breasts with my finger, recalling her soft skin and the way she allowed me to touch her. Despite my need to keep a wall between myself and her, it was crumbling faster than I could rebuild it.
In my bedroom, I tacked the drawing to the wall, across from my pillow.
By the end of economics Wednesday, my desire to tell Jacqueline the truth about who I was was warring heavily with my desire to continue the game we’d begun—the one where I was the sexual mercenary who helped her get her groove back. It seemed the ideal scenario—I got to be with the first girl to rivet my attention in years, and she got to spread her wings, forget her self-important ex, and reclaim ownership of her own body.
I silenced the voice in my head telling me that none of this was enough.
Jacqueline appeared to be having second thoughts, too—she didn’t email Landon or text me all week. She didn’t come into Starbucks, and she only looked back at me during class a couple of times. On Friday, her ex approached her at the end of class. He smiled down at her, one hand in his pocket, confident in his charm.
I couldn’t see her face as they spoke, though her posture seemed taut. Wanting to wipe that smug smile right off his face, I left the classroom before I did or said something stupid.
Friday afternoon, I got an email from Ralph Watts, the assistant chief of campus police. Watts was responsible for university-sponsored self-defense lessons the department offered a couple of times every semester. After I’d seen the flyer on our bulletin board last fall and asked him about it, he sent me to a training and certification program. I’d volunteered to assist twice now—donning padding and consenting to be punched and kicked by female students, faculty, and staff who sacrifice three Saturday mornings to learn basic self-protection.
Lucas,
Sgt. Netterson was supposed to assist the next self-defense class, but she snapped her collarbone in some wall-climbing mishap last night. I know it’s short notice, but if you can make it—I need you, starting tomorrow morning. Plus two more sessions after Thanksgiving break, if you can do those. If you can only do tomorrow, that’d still be a huge help. Let me know asap.
Thanks,
R. Watts
For once, I didn’t have a ten-to-three-o’clock Saturday shift scheduled at Starbucks. I wrote Watts back and told him yes, for all three Saturdays.
I also got an email from Jacqueline. Nothing flirtatious—just her research paper for Heller, which I’d promised to go over before she submitted it.
I couldn’t be displeased when I didn’t want her to flirt with Landon . . . Right? I emailed her back, telling her I’d look it over and have it to her by Sunday.
Minutes later, Lucas got a text from her: Did I do something wrong?
I paced the apartment before replying that I’d just been busy and added a casual, What’s up? So indifferent, when I felt anything but indifference where this girl was concerned. Instead of seeming slighted, she replied with curiosity about the charcoals I’d said I was going to do of her sketches. I told her I’d done one and wanted her to see it. She replied that she’d like that.
So I told her I was out and would talk to her later.
“Goddammit,” I muttered, tossing my phone on the counter and pacing to the sofa. I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes, but there was no blotting out the memory of her beautiful surrender in my arms a week ago. She trusts me. There was no triumph in that knowledge because I was giving her the embodiment of mixed signals—not to mention giving them as two different people.
“I am a lying asshole,” I told Francis, who yawned.
• • • • • • • • • •
Standing in a chilly activities building classroom at nine A.M. on a Saturday morning, the last thing I expected to see was Jacqueline Wallace. While Sgt. Don Ellsworth directed our twelve attendees to sign in and Watts handed out packets, I was lacing my low-rise taekwondo shoes and setting up the mats. I slowed when I recognized Jacqueline’s redheaded friend come through the door and went immobile when Jacqueline entered right behind her.
I’d considered suggesting the course to her, but didn’t think she was ready yet—especially if she hadn’t told anyone else what happened that night. If she attended too soon and felt intimidated or overwhelmed, she might not come back.
But she must have told her friend, who didn’t move farther than a foot away from her, stroking a reassuring hand over her shoulder blade or guiding her firmly by the elbow when she looked ready to bolt out the door. Jacqueline was absolutely ready to run when she looked up and saw me flanking Lieutenant Watts. Her eyes tearing from me to the packet she gripped in her white-knuckled hands, she said something to her friend under her breath. One hand on her leg, her friend murmured something back.
Watts began his anxiety-dispelling opening speech, where he introduced himself, and then I bench-press three hundred pounds Ellsworth and me in his usual way: “This feeble-looking guy to my left is Sergeant Don, and the ugly one is Lucas, one of our parking enforcement officers.” As everyone snickered, he praised them for giving up a Saturday morning to attend the session and then gave an outline of the three-week program.
After fundamental principles were discussed, we moved to choreographed demonstrations of attacks and blocks, so the women could get an idea of the moves we would be teaching them. In slow motion, Ellsworth performed the hits and I defended as Watts detailed weak spots of the attacker—some obvious, like the groin, some not, like the middle of the forearm. He stressed the goal of the attacked: escape.
Everyone broke into pairs to practice individual moves, while the three of us circulated to make sure they were executed correctly. Not wanting to stress her out further, I let Ellsworth take Jacqueline’s side of the room, but her navy yoga pants and white T-shirt were continually in my peripheral vision. I watched for signs of distress all too common in survivor attendees. I knew which scenario would trigger memories of her particular assault, and I dreaded its approach.
Thanks to her friend, whose name was Erin, she did well with the hand strikes, yelling, No! with each one, as instructed, and grinning when she nailed the hammer strike block.
We finally came to the last defense move of the day. I couldn’t assess her reaction while we demonstrated it, but once the group broke into pairs again, her stiff posture, wide eyes, and the shallow rise and fall of her chest were clear enough panic indicators. Erin held her hand as they spoke in low tones, heads together. Jacqueline shook her head but didn’t release her death grip on her friend’s hand. More murmuring ensued, and then they moved to the mat.
Erin lay on her stomach, and Jacqueline knelt over her. Her hands shook when performing the attack. Instead of trading places, they kept their positions and did the move twice more. Unable to take my eyes off them, I barely observed the pair I was supposed to be monitoring. When they switched places, I felt her panic from across the room and feared she might hyperventilate and pass out.
C’mon, Jacqueline, my mind urged. You can do this.
A surge of pride flowed through me when she went through the motions, pushing herself to perform them accurately despite her distress. As they rose to their knees afterward, Erin praised and embraced her, and I breathed a sigh of relief, even if Jacqueline didn’t look in my direction in the last minutes of class or when she went out the door.
I didn’t want her fear, or my presence, to keep her from returning. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.
That night, before I could talk myself out of it, I texted her, asking if she still wanted to see the charcoal. She answered yes, so I told her to pull her hair back and wear something warm, and then I hopped on my Harley and went to get her.
Outside her dorm, I leaned on the bike and watched the door. People were coming and going all around me, but I couldn’t pay attention to any of them. When she emerged, I was struck again at our differences. I made enough money now to buy non-thrift-shop threads, but my style hadn’t changed much. This girl was a blend of classic and trendy but expensive clothes—they were a second skin she wore comfortably. She slowed, looking for me while buttoning a little black coat that could have come right out of a definitive 1960s film, the type my mother had loved.
It didn’t take her long to spot me.
Her step faltered and I wondered why. I wanted to sweep her up and kiss her as if there’d been no break since the last time I held her. I wanted to erase her friends’ designation for me—her bad-boy phase—an inconsequential segment of time between two sensible, valid stages: Kennedy Moore and whoever came next.
“I guess this is the reason for the hair guidelines,” she said, inspecting the helmet I handed her as if it was a complex, alien thing. She’d never been on a motorcycle before, a fact that sort of turned me on. Like I needed help with that.
She gazed up at me as I settled the helmet on her head, adjusting and fastening the straps. I lingered over the process, mentally devouring the sweet lips I could still taste when I closed my eyes and gazing into her eyes, deep and blue as the open ocean.
The care I took on the drive over escaped her, I figured, since she buried her face in the middle of my back and held on to me around corners as if she’d be flung to Oklahoma otherwise—not that I’d ever complain.
By the time we arrived, her hands were freezing, so I took one and then the other between mine, gradually rubbing warmth back into them. I wondered how she played an instrument the size of an upright bass with such small hands, but I bit my lip just before voicing this aloud.
She’d only told Landon about the instrument she played.
Prolonging my guilt trip, she asked if my parents lived in the house on the other side of the yard. “No. I rent the apartment,” I told her as we climbed the steps and I unlocked the door.
Francis didn’t appear impressed or concerned that I’d brought someone home with me. He merely stalked from the sofa to the door and out, as if giving me a few moments of privacy. Jacqueline laughed at what I’d named him, musing that he looked more like a Max or a King. I explained that my cat had enough of a superiority complex without me giving him a macho name.
“Names are important,” she said, unbuttoning her coat slowly.
A chill ran down my spine at her words and the possible dual meaning behind them, but it disappeared with the hypnotic draw of her small fingers, slipping buttons through buttonholes at a pace that mercifully drove everything else from my mind and affected my heart rate directly. When she finally released the lowest button, my patience was going up in flames. I slid my thumbs inside and along her shoulders, tugging the jacket gently down her arms.
“Soft,” I whispered.
“It’s cashmere,” she whispered back, as though I’d asked.
I wanted to pull her close, run my hands over that sweater, and kiss her breathless. I wanted to stroke my tongue along the tapered arch of her ear, frame her pretty face with my hands, and taste her plum-ripe mouth. Her eyes dilated slightly in the dimly lit room, and she stared up at me, waiting. Every muscle in my body strained toward her, wanting her. But I had something more important to tell her, and I blurted it out before I lost my nerve and reached for her instead, noble intentions be damned.
“I had an ulterior motive for bringing you here.”