Good for You (24 page)

“As always, huh? So it was
me
who attacked
you
in that pink closet?”

He smiles wickedly. “I was just reading your mind that day.”

I stare at him, wanting to be audacious and brash; my shaky whisper is anything but. “Can you read it now?” shaky whisper is anything but. “Can you read it now?” One eyebrow quirks up. “Feeling reckless tonight, are you?” I nod. “Mmm,” he hums. “Let’s see what I can do about that.” His devilish grin appears in the same moment his fingers stroke the skin of my lower back, and then he kisses me, moving from gentle pressure to hot and deep and back to gentle. He pul s away to sit up and it’s al I can do to silence the protest that proves unnecessary when he hauls me up to straddle his hips, facing him.

I lean in to kiss him as his hands wander under my thin, loose sweater, unhooking my bra with a slip of fingertips that graze bare skin and leave a trail of goose bumps in their wake. He’s unbuttoned buttons and loosening clothing for better access, but he’s never removed anything. I don’t have the guts to pul the sweater over my head. Instead, I reach under the sweater and pul the bra straps down my arms, one at a time, pushing each arm back into the sleeves that hang over my hands, before dropping the bra on the ottoman behind me.

He smiles, probably having seen that trick a thousand times. Before I lose my nerve, I scoot forward until I’m pressed to him, wind my fingers into his hair, and kiss him like he kisses me when I haven’t seen him in three or four days—hard and hungry, sweeping my tongue across his lower lip. He grips me tighter and moans into my mouth, spurring me to move my attention to his neck, just behind his ear, one hand moving painstakingly down his chest, lower across his firm stomach, lower stil until he grabs my wrist. This movement feels familiar, though I could swear he’s never held me like this before.

he’s never held me like this before.

“Dori,” his breath is hot in my ear as he holds my wrist securely, and then he rests his forehead against mine, panting. “I… need to take a break.”

“What?” I pul back, confused. This is not a moment in which guys request a break.

“I need a minute or two.” Something in my expression must disclose my worry because his hands come up to surround my face. He closes his eyes and takes a deep, slow breath and then he looks at me more earnestly than he’s even done. “I want you too badly. I need time to cool down, because I want to be
inside
you.” Relief floods through me, fil ing me with the courage I lacked moments ago—short-lived, existing just long enough to force out four smal words, barely audible, that could change everything between us.

“I want you to.”

Chapter 44

REID

“What?” I lean back, cup her chin in my hand. “What did you say?”

She closes her eyes because I won’t let her hang her head, won’t let her turn her face away. “I said I want you to,” she murmurs.

Everything goes silent then. The echo of our breathing, so thunderous just a moment ago, fades. “Dori. I didn’t mean to imply that I can’t control myself. We don’t have to have sex.”

I brush her hair back on one side, checking her mood-displaying ears. Her rosy, tel tale ears. Her voice is just above a whisper, her eyes stil closed. “I’m not—I’m not a virgin, Reid. So… it doesn’t matter.”

Yeaaaah… probably best if I don’t tel her I figured that one out a while back. But—
it doesn’t matter
? What the hel does that mean? “It matters to me.”

Her eyes pop open and her mouth works for a moment, and final y she says, “Oh. I understand.”

I’m trying to read this, attempting to avoid a misstep with her, and for a moment I think she’s shifting—her foot’s gone her, and for a moment I think she’s shifting—her foot’s gone to sleep or her knees are locking. Then I realize she’s pul ing away, and she’s almost ful y standing before I grab her wrists. “You do
not
understand.” Pausing in her effort to escape, she inhales a shaky breath. “I’ve misrepresented what I am to you, to my parents, to everyone.” Her eyes brim with tears. “I’m a total fraud.”

“What, because you’re not a
virgin?
” I sputter. “Dori, I of al people would never hold
that
against you. How hypocritical do you think I am?”

Her brow puckers, a wave of tears cascading down her cheeks, and I don’t want to talk anymore. I want to pul her back down onto my lap and kiss her until she can’t think of anything but me, and us, and what she wants right now.

“But you said it matters—” she sucks in a smal sob.

“Yes, it matters, goddammit.” I stand and take her face in my hands. “It matters that you never throw yourself away on someone you don’t real y want just because of some archaic black and white concept of morality. I don’t care if you’ve slept with one guy, or dozens.” She winces and I hold her steady. “You’re a good person, Dori.” She tries to move her head side to side in my hands and I won’t let her so she closes her eyes. “I’m not.”

“Oh yes, you are.”

She sucks in a shaky breath. “You aren’t…

disappointed?”

I shake my head. “What?
No
. At times like this, I’m confused. And sometimes, when you leave, I’m frustrated as hel . But disappointed? Never.”

“I don’t understand.” She blinks up at me with her big Bambi eyes.

“Like I said.”

Pushing my hands through her hair, I pul her closer, and she leans into me. My thumbs sweep the remaining wetness from her cheeks. “Do you want me, Dori—or do you think having sex with me seems like the only honest decision to be made?” My thumb grazes across her mouth as the tip of her tongue snakes out to wet her lips—running over the sensitive pad of my thumb. It takes every scrap of self-restraint I’ve got not to crush her to me and forget this entire conversation.

She stares at her hands, curled against my chest. “Is it…

horrible… if it’s both?”

I exhale. “Not horrible.”
But not okay, either
. “Come here.” I sit back down, and she sits next to me, turned towards me, knees under her chin, feet hooked under my thigh. My fingers run lazy patterns over her hands, down her shins through her jeans, swirl around her bare ankles. She shivers once and waits, looking at me.

“Look, we don’t have to talk about—”
Other guys? Your
sexual history?
“—the, uh, specifics of anyone who came before. I could tel you that everyone makes mistakes… but I can’t say that guy, or those guys, were mistakes for you.” Brows creased, she doesn’t reply. “Driving drunk and slamming into someone’s house—
that
was a mistake. You were exploring your body. Learning about yourself.”

“It was one guy,” she says, her voice breaking, and I feel like a total shit that this disclosure makes me euphoric.

“And then one day… it was just
over
. And I don’t know why, or wh-what I did wrong. I was s-so
stupid
.” God, guys are dicks. “Dori, you trusted him and he hurt you. He didn’t stick around, he lied, he made you feel used because you cared more than he did… and that misplaced trust felt like one huge mistake. But believe me, it was
his
mistake. Not yours.”

“Reid…” She buries her head beneath my chin, her body folded up like she’s trying to crawl inside of me. “He… he…

I…” Her breathing is quick and shal ow and I’m scared to death of what she’s going to say, because so help me God, if she tel s me that guy forced himself on her, I’l have no choice but to find him and kil him.

My arms surround her and I fight to keep my voice level, unwavering. “Tel me.”

“I
can’t
.”

I stroke her hair. “Yes, you can. Trust me, Dori. You can trust me.”

Her face is pressed to my shirt and she’s shaking. “I got pregnant.” Reverberations hum through my chest, like it’s me who’s crying. “Except for Deb, no one ever knew. Not my parents, not Colin, not my friends. Only Deb.” Oh, hel . “You never told him?”

Words muffled by her knees and my chest, she shakes her head. “He was already… with someone else. He wouldn’t have cared.”

Five-second Epiphany: I did this to Brooke, who
did
come to me, who
did
tel me. Even if she had been with another guy—or guys, the relationship was her and me, as failed as it was. I left her with a wretched choice to make and no way out of making it. I checked out, because I could.

Damn, damn, damn. I shove this realization aside for now, because what I owe Brooke, some guy owes Dori—but I’m the only one here to pay it.

“If no one knew, that means you decided not to...” I stop.

“Not to have it.”

Her sobs are the only answer I get. So this Colin guy dumps her, then she finds out she’s pregnant, and her sister helps her take care of it. She’s probably been raised on abstinence, and pro-life to boot. And to top it off, her sister—the only person in the world who helped shoulder this burden—is now one step up from a coma, with no interaction, no emotional connection to be had.

Christ, no wonder she went off the deep end.

Speaking of which, I am in
way
over my head.

*** *** ***

Dori

I can’t believe I’ve just dumped al of this on him. Minutes ago, we were making out, and he said what he said, and I told him about Colin, and there it was, this secret, beating on the wal s inside where I thought I’d locked it away forever.

Deb and I didn’t discuss it again, after the decision was made and carried out. She tried, once, but I promised her that I was fine and swore I’d rather forget it and get on with that I was fine and swore I’d rather forget it and get on with my life, because that was the reason for the decision in the first place. To get on with my barely fifteen-year-old life.

I faked the flu for a couple of days before going back to school. And then I survived the remaining weeks of my freshman year—seeing Colin in the hal s with his entourage, or his new girl, always smiling, not a care in the world. I learned to cry soundlessly, locked in a bathroom stal , doubled over, the heartache so bad it made me physical y il . I skipped class when I could get away with it, had trouble concentrating when I was there.

Maybe he had no idea what he’d done to me. Maybe he was just a careless boy, with no idea that I would be emotional y crippled by his offhand dismissal. At the time, it felt orchestrated to crush me.

Submerging myself in an endless loop of depressing music and isolation, I was hol ow and faded, a ghost haunting her own life. When summer began, I started spending most of the day in bed with the blinds closed. I contemplated suicide briefly, but couldn’t wrap my head around carrying it out.

Deb had just finished her first year of medical school, and her plans hadn’t included coming home for summer.

Suddenly, though, she was there in her old bedroom across the hal —her tidy shower caddy stored under the sink, her off-key serenade of pop songs in the shower echoing down the hal way every morning. She also resumed volunteering for community service projects—something I’d always been too young to do.

On her third day home, she plopped onto my bed with On her third day home, she plopped onto my bed with her cup of coffee, brushing the hair from my face. “C’mon, lazy butt. Get up. I need your help. These benevolent deeds aren’t gonna do themselves.” I moaned into my pil ow, but didn’t budge. I remember the feel of her fingers pul ing gently through my hair. Maybe not from that morning, exactly, but because I couldn’t remember a time when that wasn’t part of her wake-up-Dori protocol. “Dori, honey.

Listen… maybe you can’t keep this to yourself any longer.

Maybe you need to talk to Mom and Dad.”

I turned over. “You’d be in trouble if they knew.” She shook her head. “I’m a grown woman of twenty-three, and I can take care of myself with our parents. I’m worried about
you
. Staying in bed al day, not seeing your friends, barely eating anything. You sleep nonstop and stil look exhausted.”

Mom and Dad must have cal ed her. I was the reason she’d come home. They knew about the breakup, because there was no hiding the fact that Colin stopped coming to pick me up on the weekends. When asking me what happened only resulted in tears, they stopped asking. They must have gotten worried when the depression got worse instead of tapering off.

“I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to go on with my life like he never happened.”

She bit her lip. “Okay. If you get up. If you keep getting up every day, eat normal meals, sleep normal hours.” She sniffed lightly. “And if you shower daily, because lord knows you smel like a puppy rol ed in poop right now.” I couldn’t help smiling. It had been so long since I’d smiled that the movement felt unnatural. She leaned her forehead to mine, whispering our declaration of devotion, spoken countless times over many years: “I love you, baby sister of mine.”

“How much?” I played along, whispering back as she swam, blurry through my tears.

“As many grains of sand as there are on al the beaches in al the world,” she recited the words like a tender incantation.

“For how long?”

With the edge of her soft pink robe, she wiped away the tear that escaped at the corner of my eye and murmured,

“Forever and forever and forever.”

***

Reid is dressed like a doctor—lab coat and stethoscope—

and he’s talking to God. Or someone wearing a shimmering white robe and looking an awful lot like God.

“Yes, sir, I understand. She wil . Bye.”

At the snap of my cheap flip phone shutting, I open my eyes. I’m lying on the sofa in Reid’s media room.

Everything comes into focus slowly. “Who were you talking to?”

He slips my phone back into my bag. “Your dad.” I frown. “My dad? Why?”

He crouches down next to me so we’re at eye level. “I guess we fel asleep. It’s real y late. I heard your phone ringing, so I answered it—I figured it was best for them to know you’re safe. I told him you’d be home in the morning.”

“What did he say?”

“A lot of dad stuff. Don’t worry about it now. C’mon.” He takes my hand and leads me across the hal and into his room while I’m thinking about everything I told him earlier.

At the edge of the bed he stops and his eyes travel the length of me. “I think you’d be more comfortable in something of mine.” From his dresser, he chooses oxford striped boxers and a blue t-shirt, frayed at the neckline and sleeves, soft and faded from hundreds of washes. Putting the clothes into my hands, he stops me, one hand on my arm. “Dori. Are you al right?”

I nod, certain I’m lying. I am so, so far from al right. I should feel weird that I’m about to sleep in Reid Alexander’s bed. For the second time. But I forget, sometimes, who he is to the rest of the world.

“I’l , um, change in the bathroom.”

When I come back into his room minutes later, the lights are very low—just bright enough to see my way to the bed.

The clock reads 3:11 a.m. I climb in and hesitate before moving into his arms. His hands stroke up and down my back, his lips at my hairline. I feel exactly what I felt earlier—

I need him to hold me so badly that I don’t care what comes with it. Maybe that sounds weak-wil ed, but it isn’t, because I
want
al of it. I just know that at some point, my wanting wil exceed his ability to give, and that wil be that. Until then, I don’t want to think or analyze anymore. I just want to feel. I tip my face up and nuzzle the underside of his jaw, and he shifts slightly and kisses me. So careful, deliberate.

My eyes are adjusting to the dim light when I move to brace above him, my hair streaming down like a screen around my face. His hands are at my waist, on top of my shirt—his shirt—fingers drifting back and forth across the smal of my back, as though they’re stuck in a loop, waiting for me to release them to wander with some magic word.

I don’t know, exactly, what he wants from me. But I know what I want from him, and I lean down to claim it, my mouth slanting over his. Not until my tongue reaches out to lick the soft, ful part of his lower lip—once, twice—does he trace the interior of my mouth, gently, with his own. I run my fingers through his hair, marveling at the baby softness of it at the nape, and he fol ows suit, winding strands of my hair around his fingers, tugging me closer. When my hands slip below his shirt, tracing the planes of his chest with my fingertips, he strokes the curves of my breasts, mimicking every move I make.

“I can’t see your ears clearly enough,” he murmurs, hooking my hair behind my ears. Heavy and uncooperative, it fal s right back into its previous position, bordering my face.

“My ears?”

“Yeah. They’re very perceptive. They blush when the rest of you won’t.”