Unchained Melody (8 page)

Always assumed I’d take her virginity?! When was she going to let me in on that little thought?!

‘Huh.’ Ryan said shortly, with no inflection while across from them Reece’s eyebrows drew together. The three boys offered up as choices were the only ones not laughing. Everyone else was falling about themselves, in hysterics at Hunter’s reaction.

‘Cos he’s just so… smooth?’ Marnie giggled.

Hunter thumped on his chest, where a bubble of air was caught. It actually hurt, but he was glad that it was buying him time. He couldn’t look at Callie. He’d honestly not expected that answer and he didn’t know how to take it.

‘No.’ Callie’s voice was still soft. ‘It’s just… convenience really. I mean he’s right next door… I trust him... I figured one day we might get drunk and you know, get it out of the…’ her voice trailed off. ‘I answered the question, okay?’ She sounded defensive.

‘So hold on!’ Reece still sounded irked. ‘You wouldn’t give up your first kiss for a dare but you’d just get your virginity ‘out of the way with?’ What kind of logic is that?’

‘It’s the logic of a daughter of a romance writer.’ Callie grumbled. When Hunter looked up, he saw her vault herself onto the edge of the pool with one hand, keeping her drink upright with the other. She did not look at him. ‘Have you read my mother’s books guys? If I’ve learned anything useless from them, it’s that sex gets better as you go along, that girls waste time obsessing over who to do it with first when all that matters is that eventually, you find the one who… who does it you know, well and when you do it makes the one you stressed over insignificant.’ She chuckled. ‘But the first kiss… that’s special for a girl. She never rushes those, and I like it.’

Hunter was pretty sure he was being insulted. He’d probably be more sure if he’d had fewer drinks. But the only thoughts he could latch onto were: She was going to give me her virginity! She was going to give me her VIRGINITY!

‘I get it.’ Marnie said, nodding. ‘With a kiss, you want to be like, crushing majorly. With a sexual partner, you’d want to trust that they’d be careful, and not run their mouth-’

Callie clicked her fingers. ‘Exactly.’ Then she turned on Marnie and crossed her arms. ‘Right-o, Winters. Revenge time! If you had to choose any guy here to-’

‘Ryan.’ Marnie answered, then looked their way and giggled. ‘But everyone already knew that…’

Hunter glanced up at Ryan and grinned, but to him, Ryan’s face still looked pinched. Was he irked by Callie’s admission, or the elusive chord?

‘Thanks Marnie,’ Ryan answered smoothly. ‘It’s an honor just to be nominated though, really.’

Everyone laughed. Then Ryan turned to Sacha, Sean’s dark-skinned girlfriend who was Meredith’s best friend, and on the Cross-Country team with Marnie and said; ‘Sash? Truth or dare?’

Across the pool, Callie crossed her legs and leaned on her elbows, looking more relaxed now that her skeletons had already been torn from the closet, though she still hadn’t looked Hunter’s way. Hunter took another sip of his beer and glanced at her calves, and then glanced away, breathing in a heavily-chlorinated and tiki-gas breath. He should have invited Meredith. When she found out Callie had named him, he was going to be in for it! And if anyone saw the way he kept scoping Callie out, he was going to be in even worse trouble.

‘.. Course we have.’ Sacha bumped her hips against Sean’s and smiled at him secretively. ‘We’ve been together three years.’

‘Every night baby. She can’t get enough!’ Sean joked, and Sacha splashed him.

‘Oh that’s me humping legs is it?’ She teased. And then, those dark, smiling eyes rolled over Hunter, and one of her dimples deepened. ‘Hunter; Truth Or Dare?’

‘Dare,’ he said quickly, and Sacha’s face fell. No way was he answering a private question to Meredith’s best friend while everyone seemed determined to dig up as much dirt on the triumvirate as they did! Ryan had opened his door and the coolest kids in school were now rifling through their closets gleefully!

A bottle of tequila was thrust in front of Hunter’s nose. ‘I dare you to eat the worm.’

Hunter glared up at Ryan with his foulest look. Ryan looked smug, safe in the knowledge that every time Hunter had ever tried to do that, like a rock star ought to be able to do- he ended up throwing his guts up. He sighed, turned back to Sacha and said: ‘Truth then.’

Sacha grinned, turned in Sean’s arms so her boyfriend’s chin was on her shoulder and shot Callie a sly ‘I’m going to get you beaten up’ look that came from a place of female rivalry rather than outright dislike while the boys made ‘Bok-Bok’ chicken noises at him. Which was dumb because if he was an actual chicken, he’d have eaten the worm as chickens did.

Sacha ran her tongue along the edge of her teeth and grinned as she asked: ‘Hunter why haven’t you ever kissed Callie? I mean, it must have occurred to you because it’s occurred to everyone else that you probably have- so why not?’

Hunter groaned inwardly. God he couldn’t answer that! Not truthfully anyway. If You Could Read My Mind was playing (damn they were cranking the pop tonight! ) And he was very glad Callie couldn’t, and he wanted to keep it that way! He sighed and held out his hand, without looking over at Callie and said: ‘Just give me the bloody worm!’

Everyone burst out laughing. Everyone but Callie. Across the pool she got to her feet and said: ‘I’m going to the bathroom before I end up with one of those slimy things in my hand.’

Barely anyone heard her, but Hunter wasn’t stupid. He saw the way she stooped to pick up her jersey and boots on the way across the terrace and shrink in her shoulders as though trying to make herself invisible- Callie wasn’t just going to the bathroom, she was going.

Hunter looked at the worm, made a face and then swallowed it straight down his throat, not hearing applause as his nerve endings crashed and smashed all over his body from the awful taste.

‘And I’m gonna go throw up!’ He said, vaulting himself dizzily out of the pool, taking off after Callie with a spinning head and hoping that no one noticed.

7.

Once safely inside Ryan’s now-freezing house, Callie hurried into the foyer, trying not to slip on the water spilling from her and puddling on the slick white tiles. At the door, she stopped and hurriedly inched into her sweatshirt, and then yanked her Doc Marten’s out of the bottom of her ballet bag, stuffed her tights and jazz shoes in in their place and stepped into her boots, omitting socks in her haste to get out the door and away from the madness.

Even with the clothes on, Callie shivered. Her back had made her hair damp and now clung to her like a cold shower curtain. And she was cold on the inside too. How many times could she be humiliated in one night? First Ryan’s shut-down after their almost-kiss, and now Hunter would rather choke on a tequila worm then admit to why he’d never made a move? She’d prefer he’d just said: ‘Because we’re not like that’ like he always did. But obviously, trying to be loyal to Meredith in front of their friends, he’d decided to make the entire prospect of kissing Callie look less appetizing than eating a tequila-soaked worm. And after she’d been bluntly honest about the virginity thing too! She was mortified. She didn’t want the guys all over her, like everyone probably thought, but she’d been treated like a pariah and that was harsh.

Screw Hunter! She thought angrily. And Ryan too! ‘That was a mistake Callie…’ I’ll say!

‘I knew you were sneaking out!’

Callie groaned when she heard Hunter call after her. She looked up at him and shook her head. ‘You know me too well bud. But go back outside, okay? As nice as it would be to have three people at rehearsals again, it won’t be on my conscience if you get dumped because Meredith’s mates are out there right now telling one another that you’ve come to collect on my- ’ she formed air quotes around the word: ‘-offer.’

‘I won’t get dumped.’ Hunter said matter-of-factly, resting a hand on one of his narrow hips. He wiped his hair out of one eye with the other hand and made a face, distracted clearly by the worm he was still trying to keep down. Callie hoped it tasted like a septic tank water after it had been used to make moonshine. She wished he didn’t look so good wet, either. ‘Mer’s crazy about me Cal. If she didn’t trust me, she would have followed me here.’

Callie shoved her second foot into her boot and bent to tie the laces, keeping her gaze away from Hunter’s water-speckled and golden six pack. How had he managed to get one of those by the start of Spring anyway? She’d just seen him suck back an entire bag of Doritos! ‘Well then that’s a relief.’

Hunter squatted. ‘Is it?’

Callie looked up at him, surprised by his sobered tone. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Hunter laced his fingers around one bent knee and inclined his head. ‘Callie… in what universe, and at precisely what point in time did you conceive of giving me your virginity?’

Callie was astonished by his candor! ‘Hunter, it was a game.’

‘Then why are you running?’ He squinted into her eyes, though what he could see given how glassy his own brown eyes were was beyond her. ‘And why are you so worked up?’

Callie rolled her eyes, hoping the motion wouldn’t jerk a tear free. ‘I have glassy-eyes from Sean’s joint, which is why I’m leaving,’ she lied. ‘And I already explained my answer; you would have been a safe choice. Besides, you have a girlfriend. If I’d said Reece or Ryan, people would have kept trying to dare me to...’ she made a face and shrugged. ‘Whatever. I’m sorry I said it, okay?’

‘I’m sorry you haven’t said it before now,’ was Hunter’s soft response. He rested her hand on Callie’s knee and a tingle of electricity made her knee cap twitch. ‘When did that occur to you Cal?’

Callie groaned and stood, knocking his hand free. ‘Like, New Year’s okay? It was no big deal. We were wasted from Wolf’s Breath, we walked home, talking about how we’d never kissed anyone on New Year’s and for a second-’ she held up one finger. ‘One second- I thought that maybe we should you know, we were both still…’ she fiddled with the pin on her hat, trying to ignore how Hunter had risen with her and how close he was standing to her. ‘It wasn’t like I was into you Hunter, or trying to score a boyfriend. I just thought it would be a nice little moment, one friend doing the other a favor on a special occasion...’ She began to search through her ballet bag for her Discman. Ryan’s T. V was playing Channel V in the next room and the track was Ginuwine’s Pony and she needed to not hear the erotic words while her knee was still tingling from Hunter’s touch. She turned to leave, telling herself:

It’s the alcohol making us act all stupid. When you sober up you are both going to have a good laugh about this with Ry and never feel this weird around them again! But then Hunter inched closer, blocking her exit by resting one arm beside her shoulder on the low divider wall behind her. ‘It would have been a very nice moment…’ His voice was low and intimate. ‘And if we’re still playing Truth Or Dare…’

That was when Callie caught a whiff of the alcohol on Hunter’s breath, and noted his dilated pupils, leaving only that bright ring of yellow visible of the iris. He was drunk, and she didn’t need to go home and scour a Dolly Magazine to know that this was one of those: ‘Help! I accidentally kissed my best friend and now he won’t talk to me!’ moments just waiting to happen if she didn’t sober up his ego and make him see how foolish he, in fact all of them were being!

Hunter was cute as, and since the first day they’d met, there had been this spark between them, so she sort of wanted to turn her face to his and see what happened; to see if Hunter would do what Ryan had decided against… and what it might be like if the boy she felt the most comfortable with in the world guided their bond up another fret.

But then she glanced into his dilated eyes again and her resolve solidified. She liked the fret they were on, so she needed to snap them both out of it before they dropped the friendship chord completely!

‘I almost kissed Ryan!’ The confession slipped from Callie’s lips effortlessly, for she didn’t know how to be with Hunter or Ryan while keeping a secret. And she knew she shouldn’t anyway. Something had gone wrong in their friendship and distance and dishonesty weren’t going to fix it. Callie needed to be one of the boys again by hiding behind her hat and ignoring that they had grown up to be cute enough to make her want to look at them as often as she listened to them.

The admission startled Hunter back- away from her. ‘What?!’ He looked utterly betrayed.

Callie hugged herself. ‘Ryan almost kissed me, Hunt. This afternoon. It was… it was stupid. We fell asleep and woke up close and the storm came and so it didn’t happen and we’re both glad and neither of us wanted to tell you- but it almost happened.’ Callie tugged her cap back down, so he couldn’t see into her eyes. ‘So I named you in Truth Or Dare, because I didn’t want to encourage Reece, or let Ryan think that I thought it was more than just... a sleepy mistake.’ She smiled tightly. ‘You have a girlfriend. You aren’t attracted to me. You’ve never even come close to kissing me so therefore, you were the safest answer.’ She turned away, reaching for the door knob. ‘And that’s all Hunter. I’m trying to keep things from getting any weirder than they already are so please… don’t get weird. Like the kiss with Ry, my admission was nothing, okay? Nothing.’

There was a knock on the door just then and Callie almost leapt clean out of her unlaced boots. Already knowing who it was, she composed herself and swung the door open, greeting Meredith with a wide, completely fabricated smile. ‘Hey!’ She chirped. ‘Good timing Meredith! Hunter and I were about to trot over to your place so you could look after his drunken ass.’ She opened the door all the way, revealing Hunter half-slumped against the wall, looking dazed. Callie slipped out between Meredith and the door jamb, patting her shoulder. ‘He’s been whining for you for ages and because I was going home anyway, I was going to bring him by.’ Callie was lying of course. She didn’t even know which house was Meredith’s. But the girl, who had at first eyed Callie and Hunter with suspicious blue eyes, swelled with self-importance.

‘Oh baby!’ She shot to Hunter’s side. ‘How much have you had?’

‘Enough to swallow a Tequila worm.’ Callie forced herself to giggle, then winked at Hunter. ‘But he’s starting to come to his senses agin, aint cha Hunter?’

He blinked at her, frowned, and then shook himself off, glancing at his girlfriend while his ears reddened. ‘Yeah… a cold draft will do that.’

‘Good.’ Callie said pointedly. ‘Anyway guys, see yah Monday, okay?’

‘Thanks Callie!’ The blonde said without looking back at her.

Callie closed the door shut behind her and then all but melted to the topmost of the million, perfectly paved steps to Ryan’s door, wondering if she’d come off flippant enough to counteract every horrible claim that was going to be made against her and Hunter’s names, before the night was out.

*

At around one in the morning, Hunter blew Meredith a kiss as Marnie’s car pulled away and jogged back up Ryan’s stairs, his legs burning by the time he reached the top. When he walked inside, the lights had been turned off but the air-conditioning was still on, making him feel like he’d walked inside a refrigerator.

But Hunter’s face was still burning regardless; now that he’d sobered up, he was mortified. He had really made a jackass of himself with Callie, and he hoped Ryan had too- or he was going to throttle him for getting Callie all weirded out in the first place by trying to kiss her!

Hunter swung a left at the end of the foyer, passing the dining room and then began to trot down another flight of steps, trying not to think about Callie’s confession, about what might have gone down between his ‘friends’ that night if the party for two hadn’t been crashed.

Ryan’s bedroom door was open when Hunter descended the basement steps, the reddish glow of lava lamps making the room look like the yawning mouth of hell. The sounds of Freak On A Leash blasting from within didn’t detract from that concept either, and Hunter felt the music stream past his ears and feed his pissed off soul.

Ryan had already pulled out the fold-out couch and tossed some blankets and pillows onto it. Everything in Ryan’s room was black; black wrought iron furniture, black satin bedding, black leather sofa bed- but the exposed Besser Block walls were still their original grey, and so with the light of three red lamps, and clothes, sheet music and empty bottles and cans strewn about, the room looked more like a dungeon than a refuge.

Hunter loved it. This was how musicians were supposed to live! Unfortunately, along with an architect father, Hunter had been saddled with an interior designer for a mother. Because their house doubled as a show piece, Hunter’s bedroom was meticulously presented, and he was expected to keep it that way. Navy blues and whites, natural timber furniture… a clock on the wall made from an actual antique ship steering wheel (his father’s obsession, not his) made his bedroom look like it belonged to someone who was eight in the head and forty at heart.

His own personal touches, like his candles and stash of porn and posters were hidden behind curtains, cupboard doors and in matching wicker storage baskets in his closet. It was embarrassingly gay. Just like his hair. Just like the clothes his mother still bought for him- Hunter was suffering through high school like he was trying to emulate a Brady, not an artist. If he had things his way, he’d make his bedroom look like a diner from the 50’s; chrome furniture and a jukebox, pin-up posters on the walls, one of those cigarette ashtrays that spun and one of those neon signs that blinked...

Ryan had showered while Meredith had been kissing Hunter good night and was now wearing black track pants with white stripes down the sides and no shirt as he stood in the center of the room and sculled a bottle of water until it con-caved with a crack. He threw the empty receptacle carelessly to the floor, looked up at Hunter and said: ‘Hey man. That only took forever. I’ve made your bed up though and there’s a fresh towel in the bathroom when you want it…’ He threw himself down on his own four poster bed and picked up a book: Don Quixote. Hunter knew that because he’d seen it on the table in the music room upstairs earlier. ‘I’m probably just gonna read until I pass out.’

Hunter said nothing in response, watching Ryan settle comfortably into the centre of his bed, his nose already buried in the book. Water was shining like blood on his damp hair in the light, giving him the impression of being someone’s master or vampire lord, not a seventeen year old kid with mummy and daddy issues. Hunter resented him for that- for being so flippant, so fucking cool in the face of everything all the time. For reading a book with a title Hunter wouldn’t attempt to pronounce out loud. No one talked shit about Ryan. Callie was a slut, and Hunter was a wannabe rock-star who should have been a boy scout instead; but Ryan Weaver was Ryan Weaver and had never, a day in his life, tried to be anyone else or had been expected to be.

Hunter leaned against the wall, crossed his arms and stared harder, waiting to see how long it would take for Ryan to feel a burning sensation between his eyes.

It took four seconds.

Ryan glanced at him, then turned back to the book. ‘Geez, how wasted are you? I’m not going to carry you to the shower, man.’ Hunter pressed his lips tightly, his scowl intensifying naturally in the face of that remark. Ryan sighed and put his book down on his chest, ‘Okay what? Did you drop acid or something?’

Hunter stared.

Ryan looked at him then, and after a few beats, a wearied look came over his face. ‘Fuck.’

Hunter raised an eyebrow.