Before The Storm (9 page)
Authors: Kels Barnholdt
Chapter Seven
Up close he looks even better than I remember him. Same dark eyes, same tan complexion, same perfect features, and of course, the same perfect body. I instinctually want to reach out and touch him, but I somehow manage to contain myself. I’ve dreamed about this moment for so many nights. I imagined what I would say in this very moment for days upon days. And the fact that I know it’s not going to go the way I imagined it is eating me up inside.
His eyes are filled with anger. I want so badly to take all that negative emotion away, to tell him it’s not me who he should be angry with, but I know this isn’t fair to him. I know it’s not fair of me to swoop in and mess up the life he’s just somewhat gotten back. I know it’s not fair to risk the consequences of what will happen if I open my mouth. The consequences that not only he will face, but the ones I’ll face too. I never want to go back to the wellness center again. I never even want to think about it again.
“Hi,” I say, somehow finding my voice.
He’s not saying anything, only looking at me like he can’t believe I’m actually here standing in front of him. I think I say the first thing that comes to my mind out of fear that if one of us doesn’t start talking soon I won’t be able to stop myself from reaching out and touching him. This need is so consuming that it hurts. It’s such a want, such a desire, that I don’t know how long I can control myself.
“Hi?” he says, looking at me like I’m totally out of my mind. He then takes a step closer to me. “Hi? That’s all you have to say to me, is hi?”
His face is almost red now, and I’m not sure how to react. I’m not sure what to say since the truth isn’t an option.
I take a step toward him. “Nathan…”
But he steps away from me like I’m fire or something else extremely harmful to him. This really hurts me. The fact that I was once the reason he smiled, and now have become the reason he’s so angry, is so painful that I feel like I might break down again right then and there in the middle of the hallway.
“Have you lost your mind?” His eyes search mine like he’s trying to make sense of me. Like he’s trying to figure out what the hell I could possibly be thinking. “Please tell me you lost your mind Victoria. Tell me that you didn’t just get up and leave in the middle of the night like this is some fucking movie and not my life? Tell me you didn’t run away after you fucking CHASED me around for months. Tell me this is a really long horrible dream and that it hasn’t been three months, but only a few hours, and I’ll wake up and you’ll be next to me in my bed.”
I instantly feel like a piece of shit. I feel like the worst possible version of myself.
The truth is I did lose my mind a little bit, just not in the way he thinks.
“Nathan,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking, “what happened back then, what I was going through, it was…it’s still complicated.”
He laughs sarcastically. “No, it’s not. It’s very uncomplicated. You got freaked out and ran off because you clearly have no experience with guys. You could have just told me, you know. You didn’t have to run off with some aunt I didn’t even know you had and not say a word to me for months. NOT A WORD, Victoria.”
“I wanted to,” I tell him. He has no idea how bad I wanted too.
“No, you didn’t,” he says like he knows this to be true and isn’t just assuming it.
“You didn’t because if you really wanted to, you would have. And now what? You’re back in school? Are you moving back home or…”
I pause. “I’m back in school, but I’m not moving back home just yet.” I say ‘just yet’ like I’m going to someday, but I know I’m not. I doubt my dad will ever let me back inside that house, at least not in the next few years. And by then I’ll be eighteen and able to do whatever the hell I want.
“Well, I hope it’s not for me, because it’s too late. I’ve moved on! There’s nothing here now.” He waves his hands back and forth between the two of us, as if to emphasize his point.
I know it’s not true, at least on my part. The electricity between us is enough to make me want to scream. Most of me knows he’s just angry, but a little part of me is scared that he really means it. Scared that he really feels nothing for me now.
“I don’t expect anything from you.”
He searches my eyes again, trying to figure me out, trying to understand what it is I want.
“Just stay away from me. As far as I’m concerned you’re a coward and a stranger, and all I want is for you to stay away from me.”
His words are delivered with no emotion in his voice, no regret. And just like that he walks away and leaves me standing alone at my locker, feeling like an idiot. I watch his frame disappear down the hall and around the corner before I allow myself to slide down to the floor and start to cry all over again.
* * *
Reasons why my life is falling apart in every respect, a recap.
1) My father and stepmother shipped me off to a boot camp for kids when they caught me having a more than brotherly relationship with my stepbrother.
2) I’m finally back from said boot camp and am living in a hotel with my aunt that she owns. An aunt I didn’t even know existed up until a few days ago.
3) I’m back at my old school where no one talked to me all day and kept looking at me like I was an alien or some creature from another planet.
4) No one knows where I really was the past few months except for Angelina, Missy, my aunt, and my dad. I’m not allowed to tell anyone anything, and if I do I’ll be sent back to the boot camp until I’m the age of eighteen.
5) The stepbrother who I happen to want more than anything else in the world now appears to hate me and wants nothing to do with me. He also happens to have a new girlfriend who is “perfect” for him.
6) My ex-roommate is blackmailing me with one of my journals, and if I don’t find her mother asap she is going to turn it in to my counselors and have me shipped back to the boot camp for still being obsessed with Nathan.
7) Every time I try to call the wellness center to talk to Eric whoever answers says he’s “not available,” which makes no sense since he’s always on those phones.
8) I have to keep the past three months a secret from anyone and everyone, which makes it hard to be myself in any way, shape, or form.
9) I have to go and meet with my new therapist in a few days who I know absolutely nothing about.
10) All this has made me depressed.
11) I’m currently at a party Angelina dragged me to, sitting in the corner thinking about what a disaster my life is.
“Would you come on?” Angelina says, trying to get me to move for about the tenth time since we got here.
“This was a bad idea,” I tell her, looking down at my hands. I’m so not in a party mood. Somehow I let Angelina convince me that this was a good idea. Get back out there she says, put your face back out in the public eye. At first I flat out refused to come, but then she got my aunt on board and they were both talking about how it would be so good for me, blah, blah, blah.
Angelina assures me that Nathan isn’t going to be here. She says it isn’t really his scene. Plus, she knows Dustin is going to be here. She tells me they’re on friendly terms, but it still seems like she wants me here for moral support or something.
“It would turn into a good idea if you would stop acting like a baby hiding in the corner,” Angelina says, grabbing my hand and pulling me up after her toward a group of kids standing in the center of the room. Ugh, I really do not want to talk to anyone. And why is my aunt letting me go to a social gathering on a school night anyway? Doesn’t she know I’m supposed to be under lock and key? Although she does keep texting me. Hmm.
I say hi to a few of the girls I recognize. I have newspaper with one of them and am in a few classes with the other. Then I let Angelina take over the conversation. If any of them think it’s strange that I’ve been missing for a long period of time they don’t say it, just as no one said anything about it all day. I guess I can give thanks for my short-lived popularity to Nathan. And now that he isn’t bothering with me no one else seems to be either, which is just fine by me.
I wait until Angelina is in the middle of telling a story before I slowly slip away from the crowd and make my way into a room in the back of the house. It looks like some type of library. Rows and rows of books line the bookshelves and there are three leather sofas scattered around the room.
I close the door softly behind me and make my way over to one of the shelves. I pull a random title off and bring it over to one of the leather couches where I make myself comfy and open up to the first page.
Writing is the thing I do most when I’m stressed, but since I don’t have a paper and pen on hand this will have to do. Maybe getting caught up in someone else’s story will help me forget what a disaster my own is for a while.
* * *
I’m not sure how long I’m asleep, but when I wake up the room is darker than I remember it being, the book laying on the floor next to me. Shit, what time is it? My eyes adjust to the darkness, and I suddenly jump up from where I’m lying down when I see a shadow sitting across from me.
It takes me a second to realize that it’s Nathan.
At first I think maybe he fell asleep too, because he’s so still. But his eyes are definitely awake. He’s wearing basketball shorts and a Nike T-shirt, like maybe he just came from practice. He has a beer can in one hand while the other lays casually on his lap.
“So much for staying away from me, huh?” he says, shaking his head back and forth like he should have known better than to ask me for such a thing.
“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” I tell him matter of factly. Even in the dark I can see him rolling his eyes. “And besides, you’re the one in a dark room watching me sleep, not the other way around.”
He leans forward. “Really? You’re being snotty to me now? Like you have the nerve to be snotty here?”
I open my mouth to talk, but he just sighs. He then stands up from the couch and takes a step toward the door. As painful as being in the same room with him is, I don’t want him to leave. I just want to be near him.
“I don’t want you to hate me,” I tell him, taking a few steps closer to him.
He stops and turns around to face me. “Maybe you should have thought about that before you just left. Before you left without so much as a word. Just tell me there’s a reason, tell me why.”
And at this point I lose it. All sense of right and wrong goes out the window. All sense of knowing what the right thing to do is just disappears. Seeing him like that, not being able to touch him, is too much for me. I need him. I need to be with him. It’s like every part of my body is in pain and begging me to put it out of its misery.
I can’t take it anymore. In one leap I close the distance between us, and before I know it my mouth is on his, hungry and begging for entry. He grants me my desire and suddenly his tongue is going crazy in my mouth, causing every part of me to want more and more of him. He pushes me down on the couch hard and his hands are all over me, rubbing my legs under my skirt, exploring.
He starts kissing my neck and nudging my breasts with his mouth. I pull my shirt down, granting him access, and his mouth finds its way to my nipples, sucking and licking. I moan loudly and can feel him getting hard under his shorts. I take my hand and rub him, causing him to grind into me even harder. I never wanted anything so badly in my life as I want him in this moment.
“Make love to me,” I moan. The words are out of my mouth without my permission, and it’s too late. Just like that, the spell is broken. He pulls back from me with a confused and hurt expression on his face.
“You almost had me. God, you almost had me.”
He gets off the couch and backs away from me like he’s disgusted with me, and maybe himself.
“I just want you to be happy.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not happy, but I will be one day. And you won’t be here to see it, because you sure as hell don’t deserve it.”
And then he’s gone, and for the second time that day I’m left with nothing but my own tears for company.
* * * Nathan and Victoria’s situation is nowhere near over. There are still many twists and turns to work out. Book Three coming soon!”* * *
