Crushed (8 page)

“Did Alex ask you out?” I ask.

“Yes, and I said ‘no’.” Her warm breath tickles my cheek.

With a shaking hand, I touch her arm. Her skin is soft and smooth and cool, just like I knew it would be. “Why?”

She nuzzles my neck. “It didn’t seem right.”

 I slide my fingers further up her arm, toward the crook of her elbow, expecting her to pull away. 

She doesn’t. 

Instead, she reaches for me. Her fingers graze the side of my face and then hover just above the surface. The tiny gap between her fingertips and my jaw fills with pure electricity. I shudder.

Her lips part slightly and she brings her face down toward mine.

I stretch up, my heart accelerating in anticipation, and I close my eyes, waiting for the soft press of her lips against mine.

But there’s only air.

Calista slides off my lap and backs away from me. Her fingers toy with the neck of her shirt. I say a silent prayer, hoping she takes it off and reveals the lacy bra I know she has on.

But I hesitate, unable to get an accurate read on whether I should close the small distance between us and do what I want so badly to do, or stay put. 

Someone gallops down the hallway, yelling unintelligible words. Calista bites her lip, and the tops of her breasts move up and down in rhythm with each of my deepening breaths. 

“Maybe I should go?”

Before I can beg her to stay, she sprints from the room.

11

 
“Where are you going?” 

“No where.” I rolled over onto my stomach and rubbed the side of my cheek into the pillow. 

Through the window, harsh afternoon light beat down on us. We both smelled like chlorine, and Calista’s dark hair tickled my skin. We lay there in the pool house, listening to music and not talking. We breathed in rhythm, my chest falling when hers rose. My eyes closed, and I started to drift off but fought it. Even though our parents wouldn’t care, I didn’t want to risk them finding us like this.

My eyes flicked open. Calista’s bathing suit lay thrown across the back of a chair. “You should probably put that back on.”

She rested her chin on my shoulder, her face centimeters from mine. “Not yet.”

“Cal, please. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

She gave me a lazy smile and sucked on the tips of my fingers. “I like trouble.”

I closed my eyes again, enjoying the feel of her body against mine. Calista moved her lips lower to my stomach. And even lower.

“I don’t want to go back to school. I want to stay like this forever,” she murmured between kisses. 

I moaned and pulled her up toward me. My fingers traced the outline of her nipple, and I tried touching my lips to hers. 

She laughed.

“I love you,” I said, completely, one-hundred percent convinced. 

She froze and pulled away. “Don’t ever say that again. I’m not your girlfriend, and I don’t want to be.”

***

The knots in my stomach steal the air from my lungs. How could I let it happen again? I slump against my bedroom door, my mind a mess of confusion, blending now with then.

I need to run. That always clears my mind.

My t-shirt and shorts are in the dresser, and I force myself up. I dress quickly and find my running shoes at the back of my closet. I yank on the laces, pulling them tighter than normal. 

Cool, night air washes over me, beckoning me. I don’t care where I go; I just can’t stay here, alone. 

I let my feet guide me. First, over the paved sidewalks leading between the upper campus dorms and then into the towering redwoods which surround Harker. 

I run farther, until I’ve been consumed by the forest and darkness. The trees block the moonlight, and I’m running blind, relying solely on my sense of memory. I focus on the course, my feet striking the dirt path, one foot in front of the other. The steady beat clears my mind. 

Run, Fletch. Don’t think. Don’t think about how you love her. Don’t think about how she messes with your mind. Just run.

The lace of my shoe raps against my shin, but I don’t stop to tie it. I let it lash me, and welcome the sting of hard plastic on my bare skin.

Breathe, Fletch. Breathe. 

But the air is thin, and my lungs can’t hold it. I gasp and double over. 

Why is this so hard? Why do I care so much? 

I’m not supposed to care. Not about Calista. Not about feelings. 

I’m Fletch Colson, star student, man-whore, and occasional pothead.

That’s how my friends see me. 

Senior year is supposed to be fun, the culmination of four years of careful planning and nurturing my reputation. 

Instead, I’m standing alone in a forest, trying to breathe, and my senior year hinges on a bet to be friends with a girl. 

All because I told Cal I loved her, and she wasn’t interested.

She pushed me away and refused to talk to me for days. And when we finally saw each other, the first day of school, she pretended like everything was normal. It wasn’t. 

It isn’t.

The lonely hoot of an owl startles me. I lean against the rough bark of the nearest tree and listen to the forest moan. There are a thousand sounds here, but the loudest — the one I care about most — is the cry echoing around my brain, struggling to break free.

She’s messing with me. Coming to my room, sitting on my lap. Pretending she cares. Well you know what, Calista? There are plenty of girls in the world. Girls who would love to spend a day or two with me. Nice girls. Hot girls. Maybe even Ellie Jacobs.

I can’t do this. Whatever Calista wants, I need to stop it. I’m Fletch Colson. Not some lovesick idiot.

In my mind, Brady’s telling me to take deep, cleansing breaths. Repeating the New Age crap he picked up from his mom’s yogi. 

I listen, breathing in deeply and forcing air in and out of my lungs. Again. And again.

It doesn’t help.

Night presses in on all sides, and now that I’ve stopped running, a chill runs over my skin.

 I don't want to go back to my room, not yet. But I can’t stay here, either. So I jog back up the path to the deserted Beach and down the lower campus stairs. It must be after curfew, but I don’t care if anyone sees me. It’s only a demerit, nothing I can get expelled for, not even with my current detention schedule.

Brady and Reid’s dorm is the only one-story building in this dorm cluster. I run around the outside looking for a clue as to which is theirs. I’ve been over a bunch of times, but always through the hallway. 

Since the windows are identical, I peek in a few, skipping the ones with curtains. On the fifth try, I find it, and as luck would have it, one of them left the window cracked open — probably to sneak someone in. I shove it wider and wiggle through. 

Brady’s stretched diagonally across his twin bed with his leg bent over the side, foot on the floor. Classic pass out pose. Wonder what he was doing tonight. 

Reid’s not here. Must be with Paige.

“Brady.” I kick his leg. “Wake up.”

He startles. “What you doing?”

“I’m bored. Let’s do something.”

“Did you bring the keys to my new car?” 

“No. And you won’t be getting them anytime soon.”

He squints at the clock. “Jesus, Fletch. It’s one in the morning. Go back to bed.”

It’s only ten-thirty, and he’s completely wasted.

Brady’s snore fills the room before his head hits the pillow. When he’s like this, he’ll sleep through anything. Reid once told me how he and Paige screwed while Brady slept. I know, for a fact, Brady didn’t hear them because he would have given me a play-by-play complete with sound effects. 

Bored, I search the room for the bottles of liquor I know he has hidden. 

I find the stashed vodka behind the dresser and liberate it. Since there aren’t any cups, I drink straight from the bottle as I flip through the video games scattered across the floor. I select the most violent one, and sink into Reid’s gaming chair. 

I match every kill with a swig from the bottle.

I kill a lot of stuff.

A swift kick to my ass jars me awake. 

“Whatchya doing here?” Alex stares down at me.

I rub my throbbing backside and realize my head hurts a hell of a lot more. 

“Couldn’t sleep. What are you doing here?” Even in my semi-intoxicated state, I know Alex shouldn’t be here. His room is in another dorm, on upper campus, near mine.

Alex tilts his head as if trying to decide whether or not to tell me. There’s a little bruising around his nose, but nothing else. My fists left little mark on him.

This sucks. Just the two of us, in a room alone…this isn’t good.

“He went out to skate,” Alex mumbles as he rummages through Brady’s closet. “I’m looking for his stash.”

“I think I drank it all.”

Alex eyes the empty bottle next to me and shrugs. “It was crap anyway. I need to get some real Russian vodka for us.”

We stare at each other for a long minute before I stand up. Big mistake. The room spins like an out-of-control merry-go-round. 

“I need some breakfast, or I’m gonna puke.”

“It’s lunch time.” He’s digging through Reid’s drawer now. Probably looking for pot.

I retch, but manage to keep it down. 

“Puking will help, too, you know,” Alex says.

I clench the edge of a desk and contemplate lying down on Brady’s bed. I shuffle in that direction, but every cell in my body aches, and I groan. Suddenly, my stomach doesn’t want to hold its contents anymore. Alex thrusts the garbage can under my face just in time.

I grab onto it and puke. 

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Alex shakes his head. “Yeah, looks that way.” 

I retch again. 

“You done puking?” Alex motions to the garbage can and makes a face. It smells awful.

“Yeah.”

Another long pause. I can tell he wants to say something by the way he lingers and his eyes refuse to land on me.

That makes two of us. I want to tell him he’s a dick and deserved whatever it was I did to him. He probably wants to gloat about his apparent “win.”

Stop it, Fletch. You need to move beyond this.
I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and help myself to Brady’s bottled water. “So, you skating today?”

“Yeah, I’m headed to the parking lot now. I had a busy morning.” 

I don’t want to hear about his morning. In fact, I really don’t want to talk to him.

Alex rocks back and forth on his feet. “I have to ask, even though I don’t want to know — not really anyway — what happened between you and Calista?”

The weight that’s been hanging around my shoulders crushes me just a little bit more. 

“What do you mean?” It’s awesome the way they all think I did something to her. Not one of them thinks, maybe, just maybe, Cal’s the party at fault.

He eyes me suspiciously. “You know what I mean. Why are you guys fighting? Why is she so pissed at you? What did you do?”

The pounding of my pulses rivals only the pounding of my massive headache. I rub my temples and fight back the bile building in my throat. 

Alex is a broad guy, not anywhere near as tall as me, but strong. Still, if I wanted to, I could take him. I did pin him after all.

But I don’t plan on trying. 

I want him to hit me. I need the physical pain because this other thing I’ve felt since coming back to school, is destroying me. 

“Other than the usual summer stuff?” I ask, taunting him a little.

He stiffens, understanding what I imply, but stays across the room facing me. “You shouldn’t fuck with her like that. She doesn’t deserve it.”

I nod and then, for no reason whatsoever, I blurt, “She shot you down. That’s why you’re pissed at me.”

Alex eyes narrow. “She told you?”

The words, having left the prison of my mind, take on a life of their own. “Yeah. She came over last night and told me everything. She sat on my lap and whispered in my ear. Has she ever done that to you, Alex?” 

My stomach flops. Whether it’s a hangover or nerves, is debatable. I glare at Alex, silently begging him to punch me. Scream at me. Something.

Instead, he stares at the ground before lifting his eyes to mine. “As a matter of fact, she has.” His Russian accent comes on thick. All of Brady’s jokes about Alex having Russian Mafia ties, don’t seem like such a reach when he uses this voice. 

He’s lying. I’m fairly sure of it. I would have heard about it. 

Wouldn’t I?

Alex gives a curt jerk of his head toward the door, like he expects me to follow him. A heavy silence hangs over the room as I process what just happened.

I gave him every reason to hit me, and he walked away. 

Anger boils in me. He should have hit me, and the fact that he didn’t, pisses me off. 

“What the fuck?” I yell and throw the water bottle to the ground. “Why aren’t you pissed?”

“You’re too hung over to fight.” He sneers. “Besides, I don’t want to give you the satisfaction.” 

*** 

A strange humidity clings to me as I stumble along the dirt path, through the hazy fog, toward the empty faculty lot. Everything has a weird ghost-like vibe to it.

The sound of wheels on concrete hits my ears before I see the guys on our makeshift ramps. Seeing being relative, since really, I can only see them clearly when they pass within four feet of me.

Despite taking four Advil, there’s a jack hammer wedged in my skull. The heaping plate of greasy fries I had at lunch did little to calm my queasy stomach. Throw in my confrontation with Alex, and yeah, I’m pretty much miserable.

Thank God, it didn’t occur to me I might actually run into Calista at lunch until after I had finished. My stomach couldn’t have handled it. 

 “Hey dumbass, why’d you wake me up last night?” Brady hauls a sheet of plywood past me, to the middle of the lot. After three years, our set-up is sweet. The whole thing consists of four large ramps and yet, somehow, no one has ever stumbled across it lying around in the forest. Probably because no one ever bothers to look. At least not too hard. Plus, skating isn’t prohibited. It’s the stuff that goes along with skating the admin doesn’t like.