Junk Miles (15 page)

He jumped off the desk again and came over to me, his figure lean and powerful in the dimness. I felt my blood thrum in my veins. He sat on the bed next to me, his skin smelling like soap and smoke and Saxon.

“
I’m fucked up,” he admitted. “But I could be better than I am. With you, I know I could be. Give me half a chance,” he pleaded.

“
I don’t know if you really want this.” My hands itched for his skin, but I was already scared. “Once it’s real, it’s not going to be exciting. It’s going to be so boring, I don’t think you’ll be happy with it.”

“
You never bore me.” He took my face in his hands and kissed me, then leaned me back on the bed and kissed me more. And just when I thought I should stop things before they went too far, he pulled me into his arms and just held me. I was nervous that he’d fallen asleep when I heard his voice, low and quiet in the dark. “There are things I want, too. Things I want to change. I’m tired of only being there for a good time, Brenna. I’m tired of being a corrupter of the people I love. No one wants to be the perpetual fuck up.”

I relaxed against him, against the warm body of someone who screwed up a lot. I liked holding our mistakes up against each other, for comparison’s sake, even if it was completely awful of me. It made me come out looking better than I was. It made my own failures feel like they could be overcome. “I know how you feel. I get overwhelmed by it all too.”

He snorted. “Overwhelmed,” he mocked. “That’s one way to look at it.”

I sat up from him. “You don’t think I have similar experiences to you?”

“
I think you think you do,” he said carefully. “I like you because we’re the same, Blix. But I want you because we’re different.”

“
What does that even mean?” My gut already hated whatever it was he was about to say.

“
It’s the virgin/whore thing.” He shrugged. “Don’t get all offended when I explain what I’m talking about,” he warned.

“
You don’t need to explain anything to me.” Of course I was offended. I couldn’t fathom any other way to feel considering the crap that just oozed out of his mouth. “Do you really think I don’t know about the whole virgin/whore idea? And how exactly I am supposed to keep from being offended by it?”

“
You represent the best possible kind of girl.” Saxon ran a hand down my arm, and I batted it away. “C’mon, Bren, don’t be a prude about this.”

I stood up, hating that I was wearing his clothes. “I’m not being a prude. Maybe it’s just a little freaky that this isn’t really about me at all. It’s about what I
represent
.”

“
It’s about what you think versus how you are.” He turned me by the shoulder, but I shook his hand off again. “You have the ability to see it all, to think it all, but you haven’t done it all. That’s what I like. You and I
think
alike, but you haven’t
done
the things I have.”

My face burned hot. It made no sense to be ashamed that I had less experience whoring and drugging, but I felt like Saxon held it over my head that I wasn’t as knowledgeable as he was, or something like that.

I scooted back on the bed, out of his immediate reach, and leaned my head back on the wall. “So you like me because I can think like a rebel, but I act like a good girl?”

“
Pretty much,” he agreed. “Of course, when you say it that way, it makes me sound like a dick.”

“
Maybe you sound like a dick because you’re a dick,” I suggested.

“
Don’t get all high and mighty with me.” He moved off the bed, went to his window, and lit another cigarette. “It’s the same reason you get all hot for Jake, just in reverse.”

“
That’s
not
why I like Jake,” I insisted fiercely.

“
Yes it is.” Saxon pointed his cigarette at me. “And it’s because you feel bad about it that you’re here, in my room right now.”

“
What do you mean?” My words were cold, but I was curious. Like it or not, Saxon said what other people didn’t. That didn’t mean he was right or true. Just worth listening to.

“
Jake did all the bad, and in his head, he’s good. Kind of worked the devil out physically, so he can be an angel in his head.” He laughed and took a drag. “That’s why you two never made sense. He did all the bad you’ve only imagined, and you know he thinks he can protect you from doing any bad yourself.”

“
But you think bad and do bad.” The crazy logic of it all made my head spin. “If I do what Jake is warning me against, I’ll be just like you. Based on your stupid theory.”

“
Yep.” He took another long drag.

“
Then your fascination with me will probably go away.” As much as I felt a twinge of regret at that thought, I felt relief too, and that made me feel a little more sane.

“
I doubt it.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Then I’ll just feel less guilty being with you. I won’t be the dirty older pervert who ruined you.” He blew a long stream of smoke out. “We’ll be partners in crime.”

I shook my head, which had just started to pound. “Yeah, we’ll be just like Bonnie and Clyde,” I said sarcastically. “It won’t work, anyway. In order to do the bad things, I’d have to do them with you, so you’d be like my rebel mentor. And since you’d have the upper hand, we couldn’t be partners.”

“
That’s where you’re thinking too much like Jake’s girlfriend.” Saxon gave a careless, one-shouldered shrug. “I’m willing to keep our relationship open.”

“
What does that mean?” I didn’t bother to point out that we weren’t in a relationship, because Saxon would just laugh at that. I was deep enough in this to know that he wasn’t going to get tripped up with technicalities.

“
It means if you need to do some experimenting without me, I’m not going to preach you a sermon about it.” There was no light except for the moon coming through the window. It highlighted the planes of his face and glinted off of his eyes, making him look like a ghost. “I’m not saying I won’t beat the crap out of a few guys to work out my jealousy. I’m just saying that I’m not going to expect you to be on some leash.”

“
Like a pet,” I snapped.

He didn’t seem upset at all. He seemed amused, and that only made me more upset. “No, not like a pet. A pet is something you keep on a leash, Bren. Or in a cage. Or right by your side. You would be free. With me. No checking in, no rules.”

“
You can’t have this both ways, Saxon.” The feeling that went through me was mostly sadness. “You can’t have us united and let me do what I want while you do what you want.”

“
Why not?” he demanded. Now he seemed a little irritated.

“
Because you have to give things up to be in a relationship.” I spoke with all the wisdom of someone who had dated one guy for four months. It wasn’t much, but it was more experience than Saxon had. I finally had the ability to trump him in something!

“
I disagree.” He got up and put his hands on my waist. “I think you can be yourself completely and let the person you’‘re with do the same thing,” he said lowly, his voice falling as he bent his head. “And I think you can enjoy each other without all of the complications of being monogamous.” He put his lips on mine, and there was the burn I had felt before, the excitement, but it was dampened.

This wasn’t what I’d wanted. Even given my low expectations as far as a relationship with him went, this was not at all what I had expected.

I pulled my lips from his. “You want me all to yourself sometimes, but sometimes you’re happy to think about me with other guys? It makes no sense. You make no sense.”

“
No one makes any sense. That’s my point.” He kissed my neck slowly, flicking his tongue on my skin. “I’m just honest. Sometimes I want you alone, sometimes I’m willing to acknowledge I can’t do it all for you. Not that I’m happy about that one, by the way.” His kissed all along the underside of my jaw, and it felt so incredibly good I could almost forget the idiot things he was blabbering about. “I just feel like we would both like being flexible together.” He laughed at his own dirty pun.

I pulled away. “I’m going to bed.” My neck was painted with the cooling moisture of his tongue, my mouth still puffy from our hard kissing.

“
Coward,” he said affectionately.

“
Take a look at yourself,” I said, so bone tired, I could only think about my bed.

I made my way down the hall, still in Saxon’s clothes, the acrid smell of smoke so overwhelming I considered a shower, but decided I was too exhausted. I stopped outside of Mom’s door. Part of me wanted to crawl into bed with her, not to tell her any of this crap I had managed to wade deep into, but just to be near her. But I knew she’d be preoccupied with the smell of smoke on me. Mom worried a lot about that kind of thing. Good thing she didn’t know the other less than desirable activities I’d been participating in lately. Things that would make a few cigarettes look like nothing.

Chapter Eight

Once I got to my room, I expected to pass out from weariness, but even though my body was heavy and beaten, my mind raced a hundred miles an hour. I tossed and turned, something that was completely out of my norm, then pulled out my laptop and logged on to Facebook.

Jake was still my friend. My heart leapt a little when I saw that the picture of the two of us was still the one he had up.

I wondered why this had happened in the first place. Now, groggy, miserable, and disillusioned by Saxon’s cowardly hard-ass approach to dating, I wondered why I hadn’t grabbed on to Jake and never let go. I wondered why I had ever let my mind wander to anyone else or to anything else.

I clicked his picture section. The album had been renamed. Now it just said “Gone.” I opened it, though I knew that wasn’t the best idea considering how much I already had crammed and crashing in my head. There were four new pictures.

The first one was actually two pictures next to one another. One side was a color picture of me, smiling in the diner, a forkful of waffle held out to the camera. The other side was a black and white close up of a waffle, cut up with two butter knives stuck in it and a cigarette smashed in the center. My breath caught in my throat. It was such a weirdly ugly, jarring image. And very similar to the one of the apple with the knife through it that I had taken earlier.

Each picture after was done in the same format. On the left side was a color picture of me, on the right a black and white of whatever had been in the picture with me, but undone. There was a picture of me in front of the school, then a close-up of the school mascot, toilet papered and graffitied. There was the picture of the overlook where we had skipped school, me smiling brightly, then a black and white of the same backdrop, deserted, a dusky light making it look ominous. And the last was me sitting on Jake’s bed, grinning like an idiot. The black and white on the other side showed his blankets rumpled and thrown, and a wrapper on the sheets.

A condom wrapper?

I felt my throat tighten. I wasn’t sure. I’d never had a reason to use a condom, but Jake had some. I had found them deep in his closet when I was spying. He told me he had bought them while he was still living crazily.

I swallowed hard. Was I being melodramatic? But Jake was a precise artist. He was methodical. If there was a wrapper in the middle of that picture, it was there to send me a message. He knew I’d check it. He knew it would make me crazy.

I realized then how dangerous it was to get so close to someone. Only Jake could know exactly how to punish me so perfectly.

I simultaneously realized that I deserved every second of agony. I thought about him smiling his slow, slightly crooked smile at someone else. I imagined him laying her down and taking his time, being gentle. Or had he gone back to the way he was before? Drunk and uncaring?

How had it happened so fast? It was winter break. All of the lowlifes in the Sussex County area would be throwing parties, getting plastered and humping each other with jolly abandon. If Jake wanted, he could pick up a different girl, or even two, every night of the week, and it could happen in no time at all. In just one day, with just a few stupid decisions, he and I had probably smashed everything good and real we spent the last few months building together. And I started the whole ball rolling.

I wished I had never opened my laptop, but I also embraced the awful feelings that made me want to sob. I deserved to be hurt. I had hurt him so badly. I deserved to feel awful.

I laid on my bed and every crazy, terrible, wonderful thing that had happened in the last week swirled though my head, dizzying, and, finally, sleep inducing.

I slept a sleep so miserable, it felt like a complete waste of my time and woke up feeling drained and weary. I knew what I needed. It was still so early, nearly dawn, but I forced myself out of bed and took a hot, weak-watered shower, scrubbing off the caked-on makeup from the night before and the clinging smell of Saxon. I hurried to my room and tore through my suitcase, taking out my one crazy, luxury item.

I had learned to pack sensibly from my mother, and I knew every inch counted. But something pressed me to add my running shoes, a gift from Thorsten. They were fancy, made to cushion and support, and just be generally great. And they were super cute. I put on a pair of sweats and a hoodie and tied my shoes tight, just the way I liked them. I left a note for Mom taped to her door, and left the dorms.