Drowning in You (18 page)

“
In that
case…” I clamp my other hand around her side, trapping her in my
arms. Her eyebrows perk and the rest of her features freeze before
she slides down me. My head finally screwed on again, I’m quick
enough to grab a fistful of her flimsy top and bring her back up to
my height, although she’s still a head shorter than me. I love
this—the top of her head fitting under my chin like she’s the other
puzzle piece.

I see her
gulp. “What makes you think I wanted
this
?”

Is this a test? I was so sure
before. I stick with my instinct, and say, “Because.”

I trace a path with my lips
around her mouth, over her cheek, and the shell of her ear, not
actually touching her, but so close I can feel the whisper of her
skin. A quiver has her threatening to collapse from my touch, my
breath, and I’m fighting to stay silently cool and collected, but
inside am shaking just like she is, and feeling so turned on.
“Because otherwise you wouldn’t have quivered like I’d just
discovered every one of your secret places.”

That turns her face bright red,
which sends my cock up in salute.

With a fistful of her top in my
grip and the other now bent behind her back, we seem much more
naked and raw than we were in the pool. I decide the time is
right.

I let out a growl. “Argh, this
is all so messed up. Sometimes my dad will act like he’s after your
dad’s money and sometimes he seems truly affected by the ski
accident. Despite being cleared, the public still has it in for me.
But through all of it you still stand by me.”

“
So
is
your dad is trying to
harm my dad and steal his money?”

I step back, pocketing my
hands. “You trust me?”

“
Let’s just
say I think you know how to get me to face an issue.”

The trapping-her-to-me part.
Looks like I’m not a bastard after all.

“
And you
believe me?”

“
I’ve believed
that you weren’t capable of doing such horrific things to all those
people for a while. But I’ve
understood
just recently.”

“
You were in
on the investigation?”

She shakes her head and rises
on tiptoes so she’s just below my eye level. “Nope. But on some
level we understand each other,” she says, waggling a finger
between our faces, “and since the accident no one has forced me to
do anything. You force me to do all the right things, somehow, in a
very, very good way. So it’s sort of hard staying away from you
now.”

She trembles a little, so I
take her weight and she slumps, her toes no longer holding her up.
Her body is a puppet in my hands. It’s such an alien feeling. I’ve
never touched girls in the way Charz lets me touch her. A girl’s
never trusted me like she trusts me. It’s nice knowing she sees not
only through the media storm, but also me for who I really am.

“
I’m the worst
kind of bad for you, Charz,” I surprise myself by saying. I don’t
know why I’m doing it. Maybe it’s testing her back, as she did to
me just before. She hasn’t made me feel guilty once, and
truthfully, with her I forget the things I’ve done.

“
Maybe
I
like
bad,
Dex.”

“
People think
I murdered your mom and almost killed your dad.”

“
Then people
don’t know.”

She links her fingers in mine,
bringing us closer. I guess I’m not trying to keep her away very
hard.

“
I don’t want
to be in on this because I prefer not to know, but I’ll help you
because I can see you need to figure this out. I just want my dad
better before I focus on anything else.”

I can’t stop the tiny, goofy
grin. I take a small step away and say, “Then let’s not have you
focus on me, okay?”

“
It’s not a
choice I have. To ‘focus on you’? It’s something that we are. It’s
not something I need to work at.”

You know, despite how confusing
all girls are, she’s pretty much summed us up. Charz isn’t a
relationship to work on, though God knows I’ve tried so hard to
prevent it. Charz and I just are, and hard as I try, I’m fucking
scared we’re too intertwined to begin to separate us.

Charz holds my hand and leads
me to the front door. I fudge the truth when I say my ride is
around the corner, because it is, but I might have to wait for it
to pick me up in twenty minutes where it’ll take me and forty or so
other passengers to our destinations.

The dirt bike
did
not
want to
start today.

At the door, Charz rests her
nose against mine, caressing me with her angel-soft skin. This
action feels uniquely ours already, but I have to remind myself
that there isn’t an “ours”. Only couples have intimate “things”
like this.

She slips three fingers from my
hand, so we’re just hanging on by two fingers. “I’m in. Whatever
you need to do—I’m in.”

I have to kiss her. I’ve had
nightmares and dreams about her lips on mine. I’m huffing by the
time I lean in. I’ve gone crazy imagining that first moment our
lips meet and despite my no-I-wont, yes-I-will attitude towards us,
I need to take a selfish moment to make her mouth mine.

Charz’s scent is chlorine-y at
the moment. I’m entranced—want to learn every one of her scents.
She traps me in a state where I’m incapable of stepping away. I
inhale and groan from the erotic pressure it builds in me.

And, I think I almost do kiss
her. But a chill sweeps over our bodies and reminds us that the
world still exists outside of this moment, so I slip my two fingers
from hers and tell her I’ll call. She tries to hide her smile, and
I suppress the biggest, stupidest grin ever.

Oh, and in case you’re curious,
love is nose to nose, cheek to cheek, two fingers to two
fingers.

And love is now the one thing I
can’t step away from.

16. Mourning Mom

Charlee

“Well, Darce, because I’m not
up to it today.”

He stares at the side of my
face, and I know he’s doing it because I can almost feel it. I
recite the license plate of the SUV in front of my car, then peek
around the corner to recite ones farther in front. I like
remembering license plate numbers.

“
I’m not going
to look at you just because you’re staring at me.”

Darcy shoves his arms across
each other against his chest and looks ahead too.

I’m just not
ready to see Mom, ok
a
y?
I think. But I actually say, “We
have plenty of time.”

“
You didn’t
see her last week when we visited. Don’t you miss her?”

I try to swallow over a lump
that’s lodged in my throat that wasn’t there before. My glands are
on fire, constricting my throat, which makes breathing difficult,
the way it feels when Darcy body slams me to the floor.

“
Sure,” I
snap. “I don’t miss Mom and it must be the best feeling in the
world for her that her only daughter refuses to see her. Oh, wait!”
I smack my forehead quick and fast. “She doesn’t have feelings
anymore.”

I must have
terrified Darcy because for the rest of the fifteen minutes to the
cemetery he doesn’t utter a word, much less move an inch from his
position in the passenger seat. I’m always the one to cave in but
I’m never this mean to him, or anyone. In fact, I don’t
snap
at anyone. I don’t
swear or talk behind people’s backs.

I don’t even leap onto a
dripping wet guy who has an eyebrow ring and tattoos that stretch
over his shoulder and run my hands over his bulging biceps and
forearm. And I certainly don’t unashamedly flirt with this guy
after he’s basically broken into my house and leapt into my
pool.

I have to force my shoulders
and neck into motion when my car stops. The tension has me
frozen.

Darcy and I are suddenly in a
parking bay at the cemetery. I’m usually attentive, flashing my
blinker the full three seconds before changing lanes, but I
couldn’t tell you if I stopped at the red lights—or if there even
were any red lights on the drive. Darcy and I turn to each other at
the same moment.

I try to say yes, but I’m a
horrible liar without the practice. So I begin nodding but then
finish with an exaggerated shake of my head. Darcy’s head hangs
down, his neck having lost the power to hold him up.

“
I’m…” what do
I say? What can I
really
say? I can’t—not that I don’t want to—visit our
mother. She never denied me a Dr. Seuss story, not even after I
asked for the same one for a whole month straight. And look at me.
“I’m…”

That’s how I say it. Darcy
accepts this is all he’ll get and trudges out of the car with his
bunch of flowers and silent tears streaking his dirty face.

When Darcy stops at the grave,
five rows up in the grassy section labeled ‘D’, and fourteen aisles
down from the edge, I rummage through my bag and yank out my
cell.

I’m
horrible!
I message Rosa.

I hold my cell in a death grip,
my hands still poised at steering-wheel height, watching Darcy
stand at the side of the grave, hugging the flowers. He drops his
chin and sniffs the bouquet. His knees buckle and he falls to the
ground, hand outstretched to touch our mother’s grave plaque.

The new notification sound
shocks me from my reverie and I drop the phone, scrambling to
recover it from the floor of the car.

No, I am! I am
awake at 9-freaking-
AM
because my group was too tired to go clubbing again,
Rosa replies.
Ok, sorry,
stop beating yourself up. Talk and I shall promise not to fall
asleep.

Please sleep. I don’t know why
I messaged you.

You miss my
face,
she replies, sending three smiley
faces
.

Like a rash.

I look up to check on Darcy and
he’s on his knees, plucking leaves from the bottom of the stems
with perfection, inspecting each one and then individually placing
them in the vase near the plaque. I need to think about something
else. Anything.

Tell me about what you’ve been
doing.

You ready for this? Four nights
ago got a tramp stamp coz I lost a bet I couldn’t drink three shots
in ten seconds. Three nights ago scored two kisses at Cubanita
Havana with one hot Latin dancer and some random. Two nights ago I
scored—wait for it—four kisses at another club in Athens. Squeeee!
And today my tattoo is finally less itchy.

Rosaaaa
, I type furiously.

How could she? We both swore
off tattoos, and drinking bets were only when we were both together
and could look out for each other. She’s with a Contiki group she
met weeks ago! And a tramp stamp tattoo for a lost bet? People
actually do that outside of the movies?

What were you thinking?

I wasn’t! LOL. Best week of my
life.

Darcy places the last of the
stems in the vase, wipes his hands on his pants and then
stands.

Realizing
what she’s sent, Rosa adds,
Besides parties
with you.

Not that I can blame her. I
should feel hurt but I don’t, not really. I don’t do crazy things
like drinking three days in a row or branding my skin or kissing
guys whose names I don’t know.

What kind of
tattoo?
I ask.

It says: Life, do your worst.
In Greek.

But you don’t know Greek! How
do you know what it says?

There’s someone moving in the
distance in my peripheral. Looking up, Darcy steps away from the
grave. He’s coming back? Already?

Because… Gotta
go. Tell you later,
she says.

Because…someone translated for
her? How could she trust a stranger to tell her the truth? She
could have ‘slut’ inked above her butt.

Before I know it I’m dashing
from the car, forgetting to shut the door and…

…
and I trip.
It’s a colossal fall, my hands shooting in front of me. They don’t
stop my tumble. I roll sideways, learning firsthand how even though
the rain stopped a few hours ago, the grass has yet to soak it
up.

If I’m sore, I don’t notice it.
Darcy breaks into a run, asking if I’m okay and what happened.

Waving at him to turn around, I
say, “Go back.” I stand up and brush the blades of grass from my
leggings. “Go back. I’m coming.”

Darcy’s stiff face breaks,
starting from his mouth. It’s this little grin in the corner, which
spreads across his entire face. His cheeks pinch when his
expression melts. While I try not to limp through the rows of green
grass and graves in an attempt to conceal my shame, Darcy waits,
hands on his hips, trying not to collapse into a ball of
giggles.

“
Yeah, yeah.
You’ve never seen someone fall? Come on.” I take his shoulder and
lead him back to Mom’s grave.

We stare at her for ever and
ever. It’s funny how selective memory works. I forgot that the
space between the graves is wide enough to lie between. I forgot
how beautiful these people’s resting places are with their flowers
and pictures. I forgot how our nana chose silver leaf instead of
gold leaf text because our mom never grew out of her
silver-obsessed teenage years.

The one thing I never forgot is
the words on the plaque, because I said them and Nana heard and
noted them down. They’re now engraved there for eternity.

“
It wasn’t
time; it never will be. So let’s not count the days and you won’t
be in our past.”