Song of the Fireflies (13 page)

I caught a tiny smile hidden in her eyes.

I let go of her hands and stood up from the sand.

“Out in the open. Everything. Right now. No more secrets or lies between us.”

I began to pace, but then stopped and looked down at her and said, “When I was fifteen, and we crashed at Lissa’s house that night of her birthday party, I touched your boob when you were sleeping.”

Her mouth fell open with a spat of air. I was smiling from ear to ear.

“Pervert!”

I nodded. “Yeah, I was. A total fucking pervert. Hell, I
still
am. I always
will
be. But yeah, I touched your boob without your permission or you knowing about it. And I don’t regret it.”

She just shook her head, smiling the more I spoke.

I rested my chin in my hand for a moment, pondering. Then my index finger shot up. “OK, you want another one?” I slapped my hands together. “Senior year. You were supposed to go to the prom with that jack-off—what was his name?—anyway, he called you and cancelled because
I
threatened him.”

“What?”

I nodded again. “I did. I knew he was a fucking douchebag. The thought of him trying to get in your pants made me fucking mental. I tried to talk you out of going with him, but you were hell-bent. So Mitchell watched the restroom door while I cornered him inside right after he had taken a piss. I told him that if he didn’t back off, I’d fucking kill him.”

“I can’t believe you did that,” she said and she wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Well I did, and I’d do it again. Are you going to leave me now? Have I run you off?” I knew I hadn’t. I was trying to prove a point.

She shook her head.

“You want something worse about me?” I asked and at this point, even I was a little afraid to go on. But this was our moment of truth. If I was going to make her understand anything, I had to show her a side of me that I knew she wouldn’t like.

I reached out and took her hands, pulling her to her feet.

“I did coke for a year after you left,” I said. “And twice, when I couldn’t find any—because I was becoming addicted fast—I actually smoked crack. Right off a soda can. That’s about as fucked up as it gets.”

She looked like I had just slapped her across the face.

I put my thumb and index finger a centimeter apart in front of us and said with a squinted eye, “I was this close to becoming a full-blown addict. This close to being strung out twenty-four-seven, sleeping in fucking Dumpsters, giving blowjobs for blow. It was why I think I was so hell-bent on helping Mitchell get off that meth. I saw what it was doing to him. The same thing my shit almost did to me.”

Bray let out a long, concentrated breath and dug both of her bare feet deeper into the sand.

Then she looked back up into my eyes. “Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Ever do any of those things?”

I shook my head. “No. In fact, what sobered me up quicker than anything was when I went to a drug house with this guy—I didn’t even know his name—and I was offered a line of coke. Primo shit. The other guy there, the one selling the stuff, was going to blow
me
. He would’ve given me a line and all I had to do was let him suck my dick. I almost did. I thought, hey, at least it’s not the other way around. But then the guy who I went there with, he stepped up before I could answer and said he would let the guy do it if I wouldn’t. And then two minutes later, there I was, watching this drug dealer suck this guy off who I rode there with. I thought, that could be me, getting violated for drugs. Willingly.” I took a breath, softened my face and said, “And then I thought of you.”

Bray took my hands into hers, consolation and understanding and even a little bit of horror lay resting in her face.

“I thought of you and of when we were kids swimming in that pond. Just seeing your face looking back at me in my head made me want to stop that shit. It didn’t matter to me that I thought you were engaged—” I pointed at her. “I was pissed about that, just so you know. I thought that should’ve been
me
. Anyway, it didn’t matter to me that you were in love and that I thought I’d lost you forever, I wanted to be a better person for myself and because I knew you would hate to see me like that. I never touched coke or crack again and I never will. None of that life-killing shit. No fucking way. And smoking weed became a rare recreational thing for me.”

Without giving her a chance to respond, I added quickly, “Would you have left me if I said yes? If I admitted I took part in something like that?”

This time, even though my heart told me that no, she wouldn’t have left me, another part of me felt ashamed enough about everything I had told her that I thought maybe she might. It was when I truly understood what
she
went through with me all those years. I didn’t agree with how she handled things, but I understood it at least.

“No,” she said softly. “There’s nothing you could do or say to make me leave you.” And even though we had both said this very same thing to each other a few times in the past two weeks, it felt new and more real every time it was said.

She leaned in and kissed my lips. “Now it’s my turn,” she said.

I honestly didn’t expect it. I knew I had told her that I wanted us to get everything out in the open. Right there. Right then. But I think a part of me assumed she had no other secrets. Hell, the ones she had been keeping were pretty bad in and of themselves. What else could she have possibly been hiding from me?

My hands fell away from his and rested at my sides. I took a step back, swallowed, and announced, “I like sex. A lot.”

He raised a brow. “And that’s a problem why, exactly?”

I wanted to laugh at that, because it was funny to me admitting to a guy that his girlfriend loved sex and he was supposed to frown upon it. But I couldn’t laugh because it was the next part I was the most afraid to admit.

“Well,” I said, “it’s a problem because I… I’ve been with quite a few guys.”

He’s going to be so disgusted with me and just walk away, I know it…

“The same can be said about me with girls,” he responded casually. “Did you use protection with them?”

I was dumbfounded by his response. Not his admittance, but his lackluster reaction to mine.

“Yeah,” I said. “I-I mean, once or twice it didn’t go down that way. Heat of the moment, I guess. Stupid as hell, I know, but I always did after that second time. And I’m clean. They tested me for everything when I was in the hospital.”

He looked up in thought for a moment and then nodded. “Well, so am I,” he said casually.

It didn’t matter that he seemed OK with the truth. I was still worried and felt the need to explain further. Just in case.

“It started out I was only trying to fill a void,” I said. “I think I was just looking for affection. But then it turned into something else.” I ran my hands over my face and then the top of my head and sighed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I swallowed and looked at him nervously. “I had a threesome with this guy and his girlfriend. And I liked it.” I couldn’t look at him anymore. I felt so ashamed. I felt like the biggest slut on the planet. I didn’t deserve him. “I think that’s what changed me. I’m sorry, Elias. I really am.”

“Why?” Just like before, there wasn’t a trace of disappointment or disgust in his voice. “Bray,” he said, and I looked up, “I had a threesome with Mitchell and Jana. And it wasn’t my first.”

“I know,” I said. “Jana told me that night on the ridge.” I thought about Jana for a moment. I saw her dead eyes looking up at the night sky. The blood on the rock underneath her body.

I forced it away.

“So then what’s the problem?”

“Doesn’t it bother you that your girlfriend has been with so many guys, or that I’ve done really kinky stuff?”

He shook his head and looked at me as if I were being ridiculous. “So it’s OK that I do it and not you?” he asked. And before I could say anything, he added, “Baby, this isn’t 1950. You have as much right to as much sex as you want, however you want, as I do. You didn’t cheat on anyone or screw someone’s husband.” He narrowed his gaze and said, “Did you?”

“No.”

“Then you have nothing to be ashamed of. Definitely not with me. As long as your love for sex doesn’t land you in some other guy’s bed now that we’re together, we’re good. I’m not an asshole. I’m not going to throw your past up in your face.”

I should’ve known all along that Elias, of all people, would not judge me. Not on my sexual history. Not on anything. The only thing I regretted was the seventeen years I wasted not realizing it sooner.

Elias took a hold of my hands again and wedged his thumbs underneath my bracelets to find my scars. “I love you, Bray,” he said, and the moment changed in an instant. “But you’re gonna have to promise me something. You have to promise that you’ll never do anything like this again. It scares the hell out of me to even
think
”—he put pressure on my wrists with the emphasis of that word—“of you killing yourself. You can’t leave me in this world without you. Do you understand? Look in my eyes and tell me that you’ll never try anything like that again.”

“I won’t,” I said. “Like I told you, I only did it once because of the side effects of that medication.”

“But you did it once,” he pointed out. “You had it in you all along. You even admitted to having suicidal thoughts before that, Bray. That means you had it in you. And that is terrifying to me. Just knowing that it’s there.”

“I won’t,” I said again, hardening my gaze. “I’m past that now. I’m stronger than that.”

He thought about it for a long moment. I hoped he believed me.

Then he leaned in and kissed me long and soft. The feel of his lips against mine and the emotion in that kiss melted me. I felt weak in the knees, and I draped my hands around his neck, interlocking my fingers. He lifted me up around his waist and held my butt in his hands.

“Elias,” I said softly onto his lips when the kiss broke.

“Yeah?”

“You said that it should’ve been you.”

He drew his head back slightly to better see my whole face. “Huh?”

I kissed the tip of his nose.

“Earlier,” I went on, “when you said that about my ex. You said you were pissed when you thought I was engaged, that it should’ve been you.”

His eyes smiled and shortly after, his lips followed. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

“So then why don’t we?” I blushed. “You know… get engaged.”

His smile turned into a grin. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

My whole face flushed as hot as a Georgia summer. I wiggled my way out of his arms and stood upright in front of him again, shuffling my toes in the sand. “I-I don’t know… I guess so,” I said meekly.

“Might as well,” he said. “I think it’s safe to say after seventeen years we’re pretty much stuck with each other. So sure, why not? We’ve been doing all kinds of crazy shit as of late. Might as well add it to the list.”

I just stood there, blinking rapidly, with my lips parted. Then I pursed them, crossed my arms, and popped my hip to one side.

“That was the most romantic fucking proposal I’ve ever heard in my life,” I said with heavy sarcasm.

Elias smiled hugely, baring his prefect set of white teeth. “Wasn’t it, though?” he joked.

My arms unfolded and I slammed the palms of my hands into his chest, knocking him on his ass on the sand. He just looked up at me and laughed.

I started to walk off, fuming pissed, but I loved it just as much, and he knew it.

“Baby, where the hell are you going?!” He couldn’t stop laughing.

I raised my middle finger in the air high above me and just kept walking. I could hear his laughter carrying on behind me over the growing music as I approached the beach house.

“I’m going to get drunk and stand in the center of the room and tell everyone that your cock is two inches long! And then afterwards, I’m going to—”

He grabbed me from behind and pulled me down on the grass and sand.

“My cock is
not
two inches long,” he laughed, sitting on top of me.

No, it definitely wasn’t, that was for sure…

I smirked up at him.

He grabbed my hands with both of his and pinned them above my head. The prickly sensation of grass tickled the backs of my arms. Then he leaned in and kissed me. When he pulled away his eyes searched my face. “Will you marry me and my two-inch cock?”

I smiled. It wasn’t exactly romantic, but for some reason it felt right. “Sure, why not?” I replied.

He took me in for another kiss and we stayed like that, him sitting on top of me on the sand until Grace interrupted us—which was probably a good thing, because we were heading right in the sex-in-public direction.

“Ho-ly shit! You’ve got to see this!” she said waving her hands out in front of her frantically, a crazed smile lighting up her face.

We followed Grace back inside the beach house. A crowd had gathered in a circle inside the large living room. Elias tugged on my fingers; I followed in close behind him, and we pushed our way to the front of the crowd to see Tate and Caleb exchanging blows.

I heard a crunch as Tate’s fist made contact with Caleb’s face. Caleb stumbled backward into a guy on the other side of the circle, but he bounced back just as quickly and returned the blow. Tate dodged it and came around behind Caleb, grabbing him around the waist with his thick muscled arms, and he squeezed Caleb so hard I thought he was going to bust a vein in Caleb’s head.

Caleb managed to raise his arms above him and grapple Tate’s head. Tate lost his grip, and Caleb whirled around and grabbed the back of Tate’s neck, forcing his body over forward. Caleb’s knee came up, and I heard another stomach-twisting crunch. I yelped. The music and the sound of bystanders chanting was loud, but apparently not loud enough that it covered the sound of Tate’s face being pummeled into Caleb’s knee.

Elias pulled me back when Tate and Caleb started getting closer to us. They were moving around in a circle, both of them bent forward in battle-ready stances with their clenched fists out at their sides, each waiting for an opportunity.

I didn’t notice until I managed to tear my eyes away from the fight for a split second, but Tate’s girlfriend, Jen, was standing at my right side. I looked over at her questioningly.

“They do this all the time!” she shouted over the noise, then turned back to the fight. “Come on, baby! You got this!”

I was so confused. But I think Elias was enjoying it. Any moment now I half-expected him to whip out some cash and pass it to the nearest sideline bookie.

Tate buried one hard right jab into Caleb’s ribs, then a left, then one dead center in Caleb’s gut. Caleb doubled over, and a second later Tate hooked him underneath the jaw with an uppercut.

Caleb fell backward on his ass and tried to shake off the blow, but it was clear he had lost.

Tate raised both arms in the air as if he were in a boxing ring, and the room erupted in cheers. Jen stepped out and kissed him. Molested him. With those two, there never seemed to be boundaries.

Then Tate reached down and gave Caleb his hand, helping him to his feet. They hugged and joked around, and then it was all over. Everyone went back to partying. Caleb moved past us without even looking at us and looped his arms through Grace’s and Johanna’s. They disappeared into the kitchen. Tate, with Jen at his side, walked toward us.

I looked at Tate like he was crazy.

“Hey, it was Caleb’s idea,” he said.

“Is he
drunk
?” I asked.

Tate laughed. “Probably. But he’d challenge me sober.”

He patted Elias on the back while Jen handed Tate the extra beer bottle she had been holding.

“We’re heading to a secret spot on the beach next,” he said, looking at us. He took a swig before he finished and made a subtle face, as if it tasted sour. “Headin’ out in the morning. We’ll probably stay there for a few days. Are you two still good to go with us?”

Elias and I exchanged a glance.

“Yeah, we are,” I said.

“I’m game,” Elias added.

Tate grinned and pointed at us both, the beer bottle hanging from the same hand. “You two are gonna have to tell me what’s up with you sometime.” His grin got bigger.

I glanced at Jen, and she smiled at me. Did she know something I didn’t? Instant paranoia. But I was relieved when she said, “Yeah, seriously. Tate and Caleb have a bet going on. A few more days and they’ll both be trying to pry it out of you just to see who won.” She pushed up on her toes and kissed Tate on the side of the mouth.

“A bet?” I asked.

Tate laughed. But it was Jen who elaborated. She pointed at Tate and said, “Yeah,
he
thinks you two robbed a bank or something. Caleb thinks you killed someone.”

I felt myself gasp sharply, but I don’t think anyone heard. Elias’s hand slid down and linked with mine. He tried to play it off, or was trying to divert their attention away from me with my deer-in-the-headlights face. He laughed out loud and shook his head in disbelief just to distract them.

Tate laughed along with Elias and patted him on the back one more time. Then he and Jen left us and went to mingle.

Before we crashed, with Jen’s go-ahead, Elias and I made use of an upstairs bathroom, where we soaked for a long time in a hot bath. The music had died down an hour ago and everybody had either found a place to sleep or left. The low humming of the central air-conditioning unit could be faintly heard from the bottom floor as we sat together in the tub next to the window overlooking the beach. I lay with my back and head lying against his naked chest. One of his arms rested along the side of the cast-iron claw-foot tub. Elias had dimmed the lights in the bathroom earlier, which left the room in a low copper-colored glow that spilled onto the white marble floor near the elongated sink. The moonlight cast a grayish-blue hue on the tub through the window.

Elias continued to massage my scalp with his fingertips long after he had rinsed the shampoo from my hair. I nearly fell asleep against his chest, lulled by his touch, but when I shut my eyes, I saw Jana’s face staring back at me.

“Elias,” I said in a low, distant voice as I stared toward the window. “Even if nothing ever happens to me, even if I get off with a slap on the wrist, I don’t think I can ever forgive myself for what happened to her.”

Water trickled from Elias’s arm into the tub as he reached underneath the water for my arm and pulled it against my breasts. He laid his head against the side of mine and I could feel the warmth of his breath from his nose as he exhaled softly against my cheek.

“I know, baby,” he said quietly. “I can’t tell you not to let it get to you and I can’t say that you shouldn’t feel guilty because it was an accident, even though that’s what I feel, but I’ll be here for you. Always.”

“I know you will…”

He traced the bone along my forearm with the tip of his finger, up to my shoulder and then along my collarbone. I closed my eyes and let the shiver running along my spine subside.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You know you can,” he said softly with his cheek pressed against my wet hair.

I reached up and touched his face, trailing my fingers along the well-defined curvature of his jawline, the tiny stubbles of his unshaven face gently prickling my sensitive skin. I continued to look out at the ocean, lost in the memory of Jana on the ridge with me that night, before she died.

“If she had been pregnant with your baby,” I began, “what would you have done?”

I felt his chest rise and fall heavily against my back.