Sheltered (5 page)

But there was a problem, beyond such furtive, delicious and potentially mortifying things. She knew it had happened, and yet for a long moment couldn’t bring herself to face it. No one could have brought themselves to face this.

She’d made a sound, in her sleep. One that had definitely gotten through the press of her fingers, because as she’d woken with that pleasure still surging through her body, she’d heard it.

She could still hear it now—a guttural and not just
potentially
mortifying moan. And as she lay there in the dark of her bedroom, breath held, she felt almost certain she could hear her father getting out of the bed. Were those his footsteps on the hallway carpet, heavy and slow?

For a long, long moment she couldn’t tell. So long that her breath started wanting out and her body began trembling under the pressure. He was going to come in here, and see her like this—awash in desire for a punk—and by God she didn’t even know what he’d do.

There were no rules for masturbation. It was just a given that she would never dare partake in anything like it. The punishment for this had to be somewhere off the page, somewhere past the point of guidelines and don’t-you-dares.

A hole dug in the garden and you in it
, she thought, as the absolute silence of the house sunk over her. No one was coming, but she didn’t let out a breath until she absolutely had to. And though sleep returned, it only did so when those words returned to her, over and over like a prayer.

This girl I knew…

She didn’t want to go out there. No sane person would. She’d had a sex dream about him and touched herself right in the middle of it. If she went out there, he’d read this indisputable fact all over her face and then offer to dig her father’s hole himself.

No one like him would ever be able to tolerate someone like her having sex thoughts about his body. He’d made that playlist for her because he found her fragile and pitiable. He hadn’t done it because he wanted to wander the garden of earthly delights with her.

Lord. Even my dirty thoughts are filled with religious nonsense. He probably thinks I’m a Jesus freak. He probably follows me to Bible college, and then laughs.

It didn’t look as if he was laughing when she caught a glimpse of him through the patio doors, however. He had one arm on the fence, just like before, only this time he wasn’t listening to music—obviously—and he didn’t seem to be looking out for Mickey Ryerson.

He was waiting for her, for definite. Of course he was. She had his gift, clutched sweatily in her right hand. And the gift told her the sorry truth of the matter—she would have to go out there, if only to give it back to him.

She braced herself. Clenched her teeth hard around nothing, tried to make her face as neutral as possible. But even after she’d successfully done all of this, she found she couldn’t reach for the patio door.

Instead she just had to stand there, watching him through glass, as he brought something to his lips. Like a hand he wanted to kiss, only small and smoky and completely and utterly forbidden.

God, she’d been worried about silly little things like sex thoughts and masturbation, and here he was smoking
pot
about three inches away from her house. Because that was almost certainly what he was doing. She knew that cigarettes didn’t look that way. And the way that he was smoking it—it didn’t look like that guy she’d seen at the bus stop, puffing away on his Marlboro Light.

It looked different. He kissed the tip with his perfect mouth and held the smoke in for so long she almost went up on tiptoe, thinking of herself in bed a few nights before, trying to contain all the sounds in her body. And then he just let it out in a little plume, too thick and coarse against the strange, blue-lit almost-darkness.

It made her want to bang on the glass the way her mother did, when the landscaper got too close to her peonies.
Stop that. Stop that, you…you
ruffian
.
You filthy devil, smoking illegal things so close to my flowerbeds!

But then the urge fluttered away, as quickly as it had appeared. That was her mother talking. Not her. If he wanted to…do that, he could. It didn’t hurt you—or so she’d half overheard on some radio program she shouldn’t have been listening to on the bus. And it didn’t make you violent, the way drinking could.

Which was more than a bonus, in her book. Let it make him goofy and hungry for junk food. She had cookies in the cupboard, if he desperately needed to eat them all in a big rush.

Of course, none of these thoughts helped her slide back the patio door. Only Van’s gaze did that, when he seemed suddenly sensible of her presence and turned his head, to stare at her through the glass.

God, why did he have to be so handsome? Because she recognized now that he was—incredibly, impossibly handsome. He hid it well beneath the tattoos and the hair dye and the mildly illegal behavior, but it shone out of him anyway.

Those eyes, that mouth, the way he carried himself. So still and calm, as though nothing in the world could move him to aggression. It made
her
feel still and calm inside. It made her reach for the door handle and slide out into the night.

“Evie,” he said, just like before. Only this time it had a note of regret in it, and as she approached, the hand that held the little smoking stub dropped below the line of the fence.

Like maybe he wanted her to see, but just for a second. Any more, and perhaps she wouldn’t be able to take it.

Only then he said, “You’re early.” Which completely reframed the entire scenario. It made her think of the first and second time they’d encountered each other, and how much of his relaxedness was to do with his personality.

Maybe he needed a little help to be this laid back. The way her mother needed help to not bang on windows and freak out over throw cushions, shortly before passing out on the chaise lounge.

“I didn’t know we had a set time to meet,” she said, then immediately wanted to take it back. It sounded too jagged, too like an accusation—and even worse, it implied something about their relationship.

It implied their actually
was
a relationship. They met-up. They did things together like swap iPods, even though she had no iPod to give. She had nothing to give him, nothing at all.

“I’ll put it out,” he said, and though she tried to tell him that she hadn’t meant it in a nasty sort of way, she could see it was too late. They’d reverted right back to their default state—horrid drug addict and scared virgin.

Lord, how she longed to be something other than a scared virgin.

“Don’t. Don’t. It’s okay. I trust you.” She swallowed. Tried to rephrase the words into something that made sense. “I mean, I trust that you wouldn’t do anything bad.”

Somehow that sounded even worse than her first attempt. And he had one eyebrow raised too, so she knew she’d made a god-awful mess.

“I don’t know how to say what I’m actually trying to say,” she said, and though that seemed like the absolute pinnacle of idiocy, he visibly relaxed on hearing it. His eyebrow went back down again, and when she continued rambling his shoulders dropped. “I just know that the music was really…it was really amazing. It’s probably the coolest thing anyone’s ever done for me, so I’m not going to suspect you of being enthralled to Satan or coked out on goofballs.”

“I don’t think that’s a real thing.”

“No, I don’t either. But I feel phrases like that will give you some measure of what you’re dealing with here. I am a person who knows almost nothing about anything.”

“Don’t you think it’s dangerous?”

“What’s dangerous?”

“To know almost nothing about anything but trust me all the same.”

She studied his great, still face. His steady gaze, the way the corners of his mouth seemed to turn just a touch inward.

“Well, I suppose I could go on like this. Never risk anything. Never put my faith in anyone.”

A line of pain appeared, right down the middle of his face.

“I take it back,” he said, as he glanced away at nothing. “Don’t ever be like that.”

She reached forward for the bolt on the gate. Drew it back, then swung the whole thing open for him.

“You want to come in?”

He looked as though he did, but for a moment he hesitated. The smoking thing was still between his fingers, she could tell, and he seemed caught between putting it out and asking her permission and a million other things she couldn’t name.

She had to say to him, instead, “Just come in. We can sit on the porch.”

But even such a tiny thing proved somehow difficult. The steps were too small for him, for a start. His legs looked like immense triangles, once he’d sat down and folded them almost in two.

And all the while the cigarette burned away between his fingers, smoke curling from it in spirals and wisps. The smell of it trapped somewhere between tea and newly cut grass. Every part of her aware of how easily
she’d
start to smell like that, if neither of them were careful.

But then, Van
was
careful. He held the smoking tip as far away from her as he could physically get it, without dislocating something on his body. And oh it looked so odd, once she’d taken the spot next to him, on the step. Like those “Be Good” videos of boys and girls who’d somehow had to sleep together in the same bed, only the boy kept one leg on the floor the whole time so as to never accidentally put his penis in the girl’s vagina.

Or something like that. She didn’t quite remember and didn’t really want to with Van sitting next to her. Best not to think of anything that contained references to either penises or vaginas.

“Does it make you feel relaxed?” she asked, purely through want of something to say. But once she’d done it, she realized an explanation was in order. “You know, like a Xanax?”

She thought of her mother again, and that time she’d driven her car straight into the Ryersons’ trash cans because she’d “only sort of” fallen asleep at the wheel.

“No. Sometimes it goes in the other direction.”

“It makes you more tense?”

He shrugged, that big shoulder of his drawing her attention in an entirely unwanted sort of way.

“Sort of. If you smoke it too much.”

“You’re not having paranoid hallucinations are you?”

Hey—it was possible. She’d heard it on
How Pot Killed Johnny
in high school.

“Oh my God, how come your head just swelled to twice its normal size?”

She didn’t expect him to actually prove
How Pot Killed Johnny
right, however. Her pulse spiked. Stupid words came out of her before she could properly think them through.

“What? I don’t—”

“Evie—I’m teasing you. I’m just teasing.”

He hadn’t seemed the sort to do things like
tease
. But it looked okay on him—gentle, not cruel. His mouth almost turned up at the corners, which compensated for the embarrassed flush that went through her.

“Oh.”

“It just makes you feel…a little fuzzy around the edges. Pleasantly drunk.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never tasted alcohol either.”

She had no clue why her mouth wanted her to feel even smaller than she already did. But apparently it just had to get out all shameful information at once. She’d never had a drink. Never so much as tasted a sherry at Christmastime.

But he didn’t seem to mind.

“Okay, so it’s sort of like…floating in a tub of warm marshmallows.”

“This is your sales pitch, right? Because that sounds awesome.”

He shook his head. Seemed to move even farther away without actually going anywhere at all.

“This is
so
not my sales pitch. I shouldn’t even be smoking this around you.”

She thought of the song. Thought of the word pitiable again.

“Why? Because I’m so fragile?”

But he answered whip-quick, without a hint of judgment.

“No, because your dad will smell it on you.”

There it was. Evidence. Evidence that he knew exactly what her deal was, and how things went down in the Bennett household. But surprisingly, it didn’t sting half as bad as she had thought it would. And once he’d finished saying the words he just went right on with something else, as though none of it really mattered.

“I’ll put it out.”

He went to do it—licked his fingers in a way that made her stomach bottom out, then came close to pinching the tip—but she had to stop him. Just the smell of it all around them, like burning tea leaves…the look of it, forming a haze around them…it made her limbs feel like liquid. It made her want to do something probably insane.

“Don’t. Wait.”

He turned his head, eyes suddenly sharp and narrow.

“For what?”

Obviously he knew. He knew what she was going to say, before the words came out.

“I want to try,” she said, so faint she suspected she hadn’t actually spoken at all.

But he caught it just the same.

“I don’t think so, Evie.”