How We Fall (11 page)

He didn’t want me to, but I couldn’t help it. I kissed him back.

69

Saturday morning I usually slept in, and this Saturday I wasn’t getting out of bed if I didn’t have to. The parents always left at four am to take produce to the Saint Joseph farmers’ market, Chris had to do the produce stand today, and the other chores could wait, so there was no real reason to get up. I’d barely slept last night, just stared at my ceiling for hours, thinking about what had happened on that blanket.

Marcus wanted me. It made it so much harder to fight myself.I rolled over onto a cool spot on the sheets and tried to go back to sleep, but the temperature change woke me the rest of the way up. I squinted at the alarm. Eight thirty.

Sighing, I slid out of bed. Sounds drifted back from the kitchen.

Marcus stood in the living room with his cell phone, wearing a tight black t-shirt and the baggy track pants he wore as pajamas. I had pants like that somewhere, leftovers from my one year of volleyball.

I paused with the fridge door open. Volleyball. Ellie. Playing without her wasn’t the same, so I’d quit. I pulled out the juice and closed the door. No more news since the backpack. The field hadn’t turned up any other evidence, but the backpack felt like only the first thing.

“Why are you up?” I asked. The drive home yesterday had been quiet, and he’d said he was sorry, and I’d told him not to be sorry. I still didn’t know what else to say.

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Kate Brauning

“I helped the parents load the truck. Sylvia texted me, but I get crappy reception in my room.”

I poured myself orange juice. “Want some?”

He looked so worn out. I sometimes forgot he got up early on Saturdays to help load the produce. I’d be no help that early in the morning, and my parents knew it.

“Um—hot chocolate?” He set his phone on the window sill and walked to the kitchen.

I turned on the teapot. “Is mix okay?” It wouldn’t be.

“The other way is better.” He put a saucepan on the burner, poured in milk, then spooned in cocoa powder. Hershey’s special dark.

I turned off the teapot. “But it’s slow.” We could do this. We could be normal around each other.

“But it’s better.” He added a third of the sugar I would have and whisked it.

“Is anyone else out of bed?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Don’t think so. Hey.” He paused. He wasn’t looking at me, which meant something was up. “I didn’t mean to be weird yesterday. Or make things harder.”

I frowned at the bottom of my orange juice glass. I looked up to see him staring at me, a worried look in his eyes. I hadn’t noticed before, but they were bloodshot. “It’s fine,” I said. “You didn’t.”

Except he had. He’d made it so, so much harder. He liked me. He wanted to be with me. And I so badly wanted to be a girl in high school with a huge crush on a guy who would kiss me slowly like that.

“You kept telling me we had to keep things low-key, and I didn’t listen, and I’ve gone and made it worse.” He gripped the whisk, his frown deepening.

“Shh!” I hissed. Chris could be up already. This conversation would undo a year’s worth of secrets.

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How we Fall

He sounded scared. “I can do it, okay? I can keep things low-key. We’ll be more careful. We know we can’t go that far, so we’ll back off a bit. I won’t push you. I swear.”

Being more careful might help. Give us the chance to calm down and not give everything up right away. “It’s fine,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry. Let’s try to take a step back and see how it goes.”

He balled the dishtowel up in his hand. “It’s not incest, you know,” he whispered. “We can’t—first cousins can’t get married in Missouri, but it’s not illegal for us—them—to be together.”

Have sex. That’s what he meant. It wasn’t incest, but the fact that he’d had to check, had to see if us being together was illegal—that scared me. Maybe it wasn’t wrong in a legal sense, but real couples, normal couples, never would have had to do that.“I know,” I whispered. I’d researched it, too. Once again, we fell quiet.

He sighed and hung up the dishtowel. “So, are we okay?”

“Yeah.” We were not okay, but we were still here, still friends, still us. That mattered more than any limits we had to put on ourselves.

His face relaxed, but his eyes stayed serious. He shifted his weight to the other hip as he leaned on the stove. His fingers gripped the edge of the counter. “It’s just, I’ve been thinking—”

I waited for him to finish, but he set his jaw and shook his head. He cleared this throat. “Never mind. Want to watch a movie?”

I blinked. “I was going to turn on
Casablanca
. But you can come if you want.”

“Oh. Let’s watch
Jurassic Park
instead
.
” He turned around and poured the cooling hot chocolate into a mug. He rinsed the pan, wiped a drip off the counter, and rearranged the flour, sugar, and cocoa canisters so they descended in height.

“Sorry, but no way.” I went back to my room and put in the 72

Kate Brauning

DVD, Marcus tagging along. This felt normal. This was cousin stuff, friend stuff. I climbed back into bed and on top of the blanket. Limits. On top of the blanket, not under.

He closed the door then climbed in beside me and slouched against the headboard. The Warner Brothers logo appeared on the screen as I curled my arms around a pillow. Marcus drank his hot chocolate as the narrator marked a path on the map from Paris to Marseille; Marseille to Oran; Oran to Casablanca.

I exhaled and pulled the pillow closer. No one else here besides Marcus could stop moving long enough to enjoy a Saturday morning properly. Sometimes I felt like everyone else in this family was whirling in opposite directions and Marcus was the only one standing still, the only one looking right at me.

The magic about
Casablanca
was that it was just one story in all of World War II. It wasn’t about a concentration camp or the Battle of Britain or D-Day or any landmark event. Ilsa and Rick’s story was just one of love in the middle of war. About heroism in small things, and how much of a difference those small things made. Wars weren’t made up of countries and allies and enemies. Wars were made up of people who loved and died and betrayed and left their loves behind. Ilsa and Rick’s problems, in spite of what Rick said, did amount to more than a hill of beans.

When the Germans started rounding up the usual suspects, Marcus set his mug down and bumped my foot with his. I didn’t move. I knew he was wondering how much was okay; if it would be weird to stay a foot away from me or weirder to be close.

He moved down a little and slid his arm around me. I hid my smile in the pillow and tried to focus on the movie. I could get over my crush on him or whatever this was. But for right now, this was good, and we could stick with our limits.

During the scene where Rick is drunk and Ilsa comes in to 73

How we Fall

the bar, Marcus started playing with my hair. He twisted my hair around his finger, then straightened it out against the pillow. He looked serious, for the second time that morning.

Mom had taken a photo of us last year. We were sledding down the hill on the same sled, Chris behind us on his. My hair had been so red and his so dark against all the white of the snow. Marcus had put it in a flimsy, plain metal frame, and I liked that he’d kept it. “Your hair gets darker every year,” I said. When we’d moved here, his hair had been light brown.

Now it was the darkest of anyone in the family. This year, he’d even passed his dad’s height by a good two inches. Realizing we weren’t kids anymore was strange, and maybe that was part of the stress. Everything was more serious now.

But we’d handle it. We always did.

He sighed, the serious look turning dramatic. “It’s all the hot chocolate.”

“You dyed your hair by drinking hot chocolate?”

“It’s my secret. Women can’t resist it.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Clearly.”

He propped himself up on his elbow. “I’ll prove it. Look at me.”

I did. His face was perfectly serious and very close to mine.

Kissing was okay, when it was like this. Not smiling at his dead-pan expression took all my concentration. But trying to keep a straight face made it even harder and I couldn’t stop myself from grinning at him.

We were okay. We hadn’t ruined anything. He slid an arm underneath me to pull me closer, but then instead of kissing me, dropped himself onto me and dug his fingers into my ribs.

I shrieked and then kicked him, and he started laughing. I was trying so hard not to laugh and wake everyone up, so it kept coming out in squeals and gasps and I kept kicking. His fingers snuck around to my stomach. I grabbed his hair and yanked, and he finally lifted himself up off me, one hand braced on 74

Kate Brauning

either side of my face and a knee between my legs.

“You fight dirty,” he said.

“Look in the mirror,” I panted.

He watched me breathing for a moment, looking pleased with himself. “Sounds like I took your breath away.”

The door opened and something clattered to the floor.

“What the hell is—Jackie!”

Marcus scrambled out of bed. Claire stood in the doorway, her suitcase on the floor and a bag of dirty laundry over her shoulder.

I sat up slowly. “Don’t you knock?” I looked at her calmly, but my hands trembled so I pushed them into the blankets.

What was she even doing here? She hadn’t said she was coming. Marcus glanced at me, his eyes wide.

“I figured you’d still be asleep.” She glared at both of us.

“What’s going on here? What the hell were you doing?”

She’d tell the parents. Aunt Shelly would literally go crazy.

Mom and Dad would be so upset, they’d make us move out, move away. I wouldn’t be here to see the twins grow up, to help Candace stand up to Angie, to help Marcus handle everything.

“Don’t freak out. It’s not a big deal.” Marcus crossed his arms.

She turned on him. “What is wrong with you? If I find out you were—hurting her or something, I swear on all that’s holy I’m going to—”

Fear stung me. “Claire, no, it wasn’t him. Seriously. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

It had never occurred to me someone might think Marcus was forcing me.

He stared at her in shock. “Holy shit, Claire. I’d never—”

“Yeah, whatever. Take five, would you? I’d really love to talk to Jackie about this.” She dropped her laundry on the floor and moved out of the doorway.

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How we Fall

Marcus glanced at me before leaving. His shoulders were slumped, his hands shoved in his pockets. He didn’t want to leave me here with her, but it was probably best.

Claire shut the door behind him. “Did I really just see that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know exactly what you saw. Why are you even here?”

She put her hands on her hips and gave me a look. “I decided to come home. Now out with it. What’s going on?” She sat down next to me, her eyes scanning my face. “You can tell me.

I don’t think Marcus would, but I want to make sure while he’s not here—Jacks, he wasn’t forcing you?”

I put my face in my hands because the idea was so awful.

“Claire, no. It’s both of us. I swear.”

“Are you high? Drunk? Seriously ill? What kind of hicks-in-the-sticks business is going on here?” She looked a lot like Mom with her layered blond hair, but her expression was all lawyer Dad.

I glared at her. “None of the above.” This was classic Claire, barging in where she didn’t belong and demanding to know why she hadn’t been involved earlier.

I pulled the pillow onto my lap and leaned against the headboard. Claire and I weren’t much alike, but we’d always gotten along. Right now wasn’t the moment to make her my enemy, so I had to figure out some way to explain this. “Nothing’s going on.”Just in case my irritation wasn’t clear enough, I refused to make eye contact and yanked on the pillow tag.

“Give me something, Jackie.” She sank onto the bed.

“Fine. We have a thing. It’s not a big deal.”

“But
why
? He’s. Our. Cousin.”

“I know.” It wasn’t like I could have forgotten.

“How long has this been going on?” She had that concerned-big-sister tone in her voice.

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Kate Brauning

“A year. You can’t tell anyone. Ever. No one knows.”

I knew she was going to flop back on the bed and say “Jackie!” before she did it. “Please tell me you’re using some kind of birth control. Your kids would have six eyes.”

“That’s actually not true. The genetic issues are barely different than they would be if we weren’t related.” Research over popular myth was important there. I fiddled with the edge of the blanket. “And besides. We’ve never really . . . had sex.” No way was I telling her about yesterday.

Claire sat up and crossed her legs. “You’ve had this friends-with-benefits thing going on for a year but never had sex?”

“Right.”

“I can’t wrap my head around this. I need a minute.” She stood up. “Actually, let’s go to town.”

“Now?”

“We can talk in the car. Someone is going to overhear us here.” She picked up her purse and dug out her keys.

I let go of the pillow. That might mean she didn’t plan on telling. I slid out of bed. “Let me put on jeans.”

Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later.

I’d almost expected it, and now that it was here, my hands were clammy and I couldn’t quite get my fingers to work correctly.

I’d gone on dates a few times before Marcus and I started this thing, and I didn’t like them. Too much pressure. Too much talking with people I didn’t know very well. Like the one time with Jared Sharp, and I didn’t know what else to say so I talked the whole time about
Citizen Kane
even though it was a boring movie. Jared, it turned out, enjoyed hearing about it even less. Or my ill-fated date with Michael Findley, on which he got handsy before we even got our food, and I smacked him, and then he refused to pay. There had been a few more normal dates, but I was always thinking about what the guy was thinking, and worried I’d done something stupid, and everything was 77