Bone Deep (9 page)

Cam hasn’t moved.

Jess used to do this. Use the words “I don’t know” to get attention. She liked others fussing about her, trying to figure out what was wrong. I’d get so pissed off, feeling required to care about whatever inconsequential thing she was “upset” about, that I’d end up ignoring her instead.

With Cam
it doesn’t feel like a game. Slowly, I take her chin in my hand and turn her to face me. “That’s a pass. And there are no passes allowed in this game.” I say it casually, even though my insides are burning to know
if
and
who
and
how many
.

She si
ghs. “Maybe once. And not that it’s any of your business, but he didn’t…you know, do what you did.”

“Because he was more of a gentleman than me?”

Strands of hair fall across her forehead with a shake of her head. “Because I didn’t want him to.” Her eyes meet mine again, round and searching and a tad more determined. “There I answered it. My turn. Truth.” She leans back. “How’d you know where my family lived?”

I can’t tell her. I can’t. Not yet
—or, shit, more like never. “Dare—”

“Wait!” She pokes my stomach with her finger. “You have to answer mine first!”

Kill me now. I swallow, finding somewhat truthful words. “I didn’t actually know it was your house. I was…um, looking for someone. I guess it was just luck that I found you instead.” Her face twists with the ridiculous probability of this
actually
happening. Hell, next she’ll ask who I was looking for. I need to change the direction of this conversation. “I dare you,” I say quickly, my brain racing to find the rest of the sentence. My gaze floats to her mouth where her lower lip is caught between her teeth. I smile and finish, “To put your lips as close to mine without touching them.”

“
I thought you said you were wearing your stranger-kissing repellant.”

“
Pssht.” My brow lifts. “Who said anything about kissing?”

She hesitates.

“If you don’t do it,” I say teasingly, “the penalty is a dare much worse. It might involve streaking.”

An eternity-like second passes, and then with a sigh she carefully scoots closer, turning so her body’s facing mine. “I’m starting to understand your version of this game a little better.” Pink deepens to red across her cheeks the closer and closer she moves. Her hand steadies against the seatback. “Fair warning…” Brown eyes burn into mine. “Your next dare is going to be really,
really
uncomfortable.”

Her knee bumps my thigh and a wave of something sweet crashes into me. She smells lik
e a flower bouquet. The train lurches, and my hand instinctively shoots up to stop our foreheads from colliding, landing on her collarbone. Her eyes widen. This may have been a bad idea—I don’t want to make her do anything she doesn’t want to. I start to reconsider, but then I feel it under my palm. Small swells in her chest.

“Your breaths…”

Her lips inch closer. “Yeah.”

“They’re shallow.”

“I know,” she says lowly. Wisps of brown hair flutter with her words, tickling the side of my face. I’m going to regret this later. But with her face this close to mine, nose bumping my cheek, and a very vivid memory of her tongue in my mouth, I don’t care about later.

So I say in a whisper even lower than her
s, “Dare me to take them away.”

Five full seconds pass before her breath warms my skin. “
Krister…” A slow blink. A lick of her lips. A small, crooked smile. Minutely, she tilts her chin and says with dramatic fashion, “I dare you to take my breath away.”

And then we’re kissing.

I lean in this time and she doesn’t back away. The air’s stuffy, and our heads are kinked, legs crammed together between the leather seats. I can’t get closer to her even though I want to because her knee is jammed against my nuts. But Jesus, when her lips drift apart and her candy-sweet breath enters my mouth, everything gets warmer and stuffier, and I probably taste like sour coffee but I don’t care. She kisses like a bashful puppy, all cute and soft, which has me desperate for more. I hold her face in my hands because I don’t know where to touch; I want all of her. I want to slide my fingers through her hair, wrap my hands around her tiny waist, trace my finger up her bare thigh, but we’re in the back of a train, and technically this is only our third kiss, and I can’t do things the same as with Jess.

She pulls away first, but just enough to say, “Your version of th
is game is by far my favorite.”

And the warmth of her hands on my neck is
by far
making it impossible to break the contact I know I should. I tilt my head, press my lips to hers again. “For the record,” I say in between kisses, “I would’ve asked you out if you hadn’t—”

The rest of my sentence is cut off by the sound of the t
rain’s bell to signal the next stop, the fact that I can’t be any more than a distraction to her right now. “Let’s get out of here,” I say instead and pull her to the yawning doors. Warm air sweeps over us as we step out onto the platform.

“Do you even know where we are?”

This station is much grander than the others. A building made of tinted glass, Concord reflecting back, looking more like a quiet, faded photo found in some old chest than the vibrant, bustling city that greets us as we turn. Palm trees shoot up in the distance, rustling with the warm breeze. Concord always smells funny to me. Like an old-lady Bunco group in a movie theater. We shimmy through the crowd, and I hold tight to Cam’s hand to keep her from being swallowed up into the smiling, camera-toting horde. This is where all the tourists come, to inundate their brains with images of prehistoric creatures and fancy paintings and whatever else they can find at the overabundance of museums around the district.

This is also the station where Dad used to start and end his shifts; where trains switched out drivers. I wish I would’ve remembered this before
pulling Cam from the train—we could’ve gone one more stop to Parlough. My body starts to clench, muscles protesting to set foot in the very building
he
did. We approach the glass doors to the station, and I fight to push it away, this feeling, think of something—
any
thing—to repel the hatred pulsing through me.

I lift her hand to my mouth and kiss her knuckles, and there it is: the flush in her cheeks, the timid smile,
the look that makes me want to stab my leg with Ditty’s keys because those eyes are driving me fucking crazy.

Glass doors swi
sh closed behind us. It’s a straight shot through the station, under a handful of grand archways and twenty-foot-tall, copper-laid ceilings. Cam starts to glance around like she’s looking for somebody. Or…more like she’s worried someone will recognize her. Her eyes dart from bench to bench. Door to door.

“Have you ever been here?” I ask, and she shakes her head. I don’t know what’d make her nervous—it’s just a bunch of old people with heads buried in newspapers or fingers lazily tapping keys of laptops. A scrawny security guard stands over in the corner near the restrooms, pulling at the collar of his too-loose shirt. He loo
ks about twelve, and harmless.

“You’ve lived in
Chanton since you were eight and you’ve never been to Concord before?”

Her eyes follow the gold crisscrossing design on the floor, coated with so much lacquer it looks slippery and wet, and the words
murderous filigree
float through my mind. A laugh almost bubbles up from my throat because it
is
quite fitting.

“I’ve been to Concord,” she says. “Just not this station. It’s much better than our rickety old building.” Something’s in her voice. Fear? Anger? Nervousness? I can’t tell.

Outside the throng of tourists disperses, and Cam and I make our way to the street. She looks up at me.

“You hungry?” Her eyes, in the sunlight, shimmer like gold flecks stuck in the mud. She seems better out here, her voice steady, standing a little taller.

“A little. You?”

She nods. “There’s a donut shop not too far. Down off Highland.”

“Lead the way.” I swoop my arm in front of us. She takes one more glance back at the station and steps into the street. Without my hand on hers, I wouldn’t have felt her shiver, and I’m so distracted with that thought for the next few blocks that I don’t realize she’s led us straight to Alessi’s studio on Beverly Glen. Quickly I start to guide her across the street, but she grabs my arm and—

“Glassblowing!” Cam
announces, smashing her face up to the window.

Fuck.

Chapter Ten

Alessi’s got some new tumblers and a lilypad-ish flower sculpture in the window display. The blue piece I noticed last time on the felt-covered table, the trio of towers, is gone. Probably sold to Tiffany’s or Restoration Hardware or some other elite corporation who’ll want to use it for a photo shoot or display décor. I stay near the curb, out of sight from the back of the shop.

“Have you ever done it?”

I jam my hands into my pockets to hide my white knuckles.
In fact I have. Right here in this studio. Up until my father went to jail for killing your mom.

“What’s so fascinating about it?” I ask, ignoring her last question.

She purses her lips, still gawking into the window. “I’ve never done it or anything. Just the idea of manipulating this mushy mess into something so beautiful and breakable is sort of incredible.”

It’s not really mushy, so much as lava-like. But she’s right: it is incredible.

Or, was.

Suddenly, she starts for the door. I rush forward and grab her arm. “What’re you doing?”
My words slice into the warm air. Her eyes grow wide. A long second passes, and then she gestures to the sign in the window.

“It says open to the public. Let’s look inside.
”

I’m shaking my head before the last of her words register. “I don’t think—”

“Stop thinking,” she says, loud and assured. Her hand finds mine and, with a yank, she tugs me over the threshold. Into Alessi’s.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Cold air blasts my arms and neck. Glass pieces displayed all around glint with rows of track lighting above. The room is dead quiet, familiar and strange, and I can’t breathe because it feels like the glossy, wooden floor has hands and is reaching up, dredging its long, splintered fingernails into my legs.

A few steps in and Cam
stops. She turns and, unexpectedly, her lips touch mine. Gently. Hesitantly. If only I could blink the setting around us away, or close my eyes and wish us somewhere else. The park. Fucking Disneyland. Anywhere but here.

“You’re not going to break anything,” she whispers against my lips, “if that’s what you’re afraid of. And we won’t be long. I j
ust want to look at one thing.”

Those fingernails have clawed their way up my chest, stabbed into my throat so it’s
impossible to speak.

Her sweet
breath warms my face. “Please?”

Alessi
never came in on Saturdays. His brother, Enzo, ran the showroom. That thought eases the hold on my chest a bit. I nod, and she skips over to the display case to a blue, cone-shaped pendant strung on a piece of brown leather. Rusty-orange swirls snake around the edges, and it’s not something Alessi made. He’d never use a mold. If he wasted any time on beads, they’d be wound or drawn.

Cam
leans over the glass case. “It’s the same color as your eyes. I like it.”

To my left, in the tiny polishing room, a kid—okay, not a kid; he’s about my age, maybe a year younger—looks up from the fire polisher. The tongs in his hand, holding a glass bead, hang in the flame. The glass glows brighter and brighter orange, and I laugh to myself. Only a rookie
would get distracted like that.

“Cam?” the kid says, eyebrows tipped together. Suddenly, the room stops.
Then: “What’re you doing here?”

“Seth?” she replies, and immediately I take a step closer to her. How does she know this guy? And why is he smiling at her like that?

“I work here,” he says then shakes his head. “Well, sort of. I’m interning. What’re
you
doing here?” He flicks his eyes between me and her, his smile fading like the fiery glow of cooling glass. So Alessi’s replaced me. Taken on another intern. I’m not sure how I feel about this.

Seth comes around to the front, pulling his goggles down around his neck. “If you like these colors,” he says, “I have some others I made. They’re in the back.”

“You made this?” Cam’s voice lifts, and I try to swallow, but suddenly there’s a cupful of sand in my mouth. “Of course I want to see them!” She glances back at me, eyes doing a once over on my face. I’m not sure what my expression looks like at the moment. She tips her brow so obviously there’s something.

“No problem,” Seth says. He pushes through the beaded curtain and returns a few seconds later holding out a wooden display box. He sets it on the counter in front of us. Standard black felt coats the bottom and sides, and in it are a variety of beads
, all bluish-brown with orange.

“These are five for twenty. Singles are five dollars.” He speaks with confidence. Like he’s been here fore
ver, and all I can think is these beads are not worth five dollars. The insides are scratched, a sign they weren’t polished completely. Others are misshaped or littered with nicks, and I can’t believe Alessi would let him sell these here at all. Unless Alessi doesn’t know.

“They’re flawed,” I say, thinking at the same time I really need to work on keeping my mouth shut. “You might be able to take other people’s money. But not hers.”

Silence.

The two of them stand, frozen. Seth narrows his eyes,
red sidling up his neck. Cam’s fingers hang midair over the box. Sweat prickles my forehead. She touches my arm.

“
It’s okay, Krister.”

“Wait.” The kid holds up his finger, looking at me with curious eyes. “
Krister? As in
the
Krister who used to work here?”

“I never worked here,” I snap.

“He interned,” a voice from the back announces. Big and bold and, godfuckingdammit, could this get any worse? I swallow hard. Alessi glides through the beaded curtain, his face a serious mask behind his goggles. “Thought I heard your voice.” He comes around the counter and engulfs me in his big arms. I don’t know if it’s an Italian thing or an Alessi thing but he’s always been a hugger. “How’s life treating you?”

When I left here six months ago,
Alessi knew everything going on with my dad. Didn’t agree with, but understood, my need for space. He tried to convince me to stay, though. Even after I scorched my hand on the kiln, he thought I could put all of my frustration into my pieces.

It didn’t exactly work out that way.

“I’m sure Seth here is sick of hearing about you,” Alessi says, nodding to the kid. Seth pries his eyes from Cam and adjusts the goggles dangling from his neck. His hair’s sticking up in the back and is the same color as the rusty-orange swirls in the beads he’s holding. Freckles darken his pale skin all over his arms, face, and neck, and I shouldn’t care at all about him standing behind the counter with his eyes glued to the girl beside me, but then why is there an invisible hand crushing my throat?

“You live in
Chanton?” I force out. To him I probably sound pissed, but really I’m just stalling, scrambling for an excuse to leave because there is no way this can end well. I want to punch him in the face and disappear from Alessi’s sights all at the same time.

“Moved here for college,” he replies, setting down the box and opening the display case. “I go to U of C with Cam.” He removes the cone-s
haped bead and hands it to her.

“We have English together,” Cam
clarifies, eyes cemented to the shit-worn bead. As if I give a rat’s ass about him. Alessi skims his dark eyes to the small space between me and Cam, completely insensible to the simple fact that I’m staring at my replacement and it’s more than a little awkward.

“I take it this pretty girl’s the reason you haven’t come back
, yet?”

I cringe.
In a domino sort of way, yes.

“This is Cam
,” is all I can say.

“Hi.” She reaches past me and shakes
Alessi’s hand. “So Krister knows how to do all this?”

“Knows?”
Alessi belts out a hearty laugh. The sound ricochets off the white walls like a burst of gunshots. “Quite an understatement if you ask me. He’s the best intern I’ve ever had. No offense, Seth.”

Seth blushes but recovers with a bob of his chin. “None taken, boss.”

“He didn’t mention that.” I can feel Cam’s eyes on me, but I don’t meet her gaze. I don’t want to know if the strain in her words is interest or anger. I’m betting on the latter because…well, we were just standing outside and I didn’t mention any of this.

“I still have some of his pieces in the back,”
Alessi tells her. “Would you like to see?”

“No,” I say sharply.

Cam tilts her head to the side, the tips of her hair sweeping her elbow. “Why not?”

Standing here, with three sets of eyes staring at me, I have no answer for her. Getting out of
here before Alessi clues Cam in to who I am—my last name—is what we should do. But it’s not like I can say that.

“Whatever,” I mutter
through my teeth instead. “Follow him.” Cam grazes her questioning eyes over my face for a moment longer then starts toward the back, through the beaded curtain, and down the hallway. Seth pinches a grin as we pass him, and it takes all I have to not tell him to mind his own fucking business.

“Flame them longer
,” I spit out over my shoulder.

Alessi
leads us to his office, a small room adjacent to the workroom where most of the glassblowing is done. Yellow light streams through the windows in zigzags, across the cement floor, and settles near the foot of his desk. He’s moved it from one side of the room to the other, and apparently half a year plus a new intern have robbed him of his ability to be organized. Papers and folders form a mound three feet high.

Across the room,
Alessi points to the lower ledge of a bookshelf under the window. Looking at them—the heart-shaped paperweight with ribbons of purple and pink, the tumbler with curls of blue and green that always reminded me of an ocean wave—doesn’t feel real. Like they’re an illusion of something I vaguely recall seeing before. Pieces my brain wants to recognize, pieces that tug at my gut as if each one had a string attached.

The “before
Krister” created those. Not me.

That’s why.

“You made these?” Cam asks, her voice dangerously curious. If I close my eyes, could I pretend to be that Krister again? The one who’d take her into the workshop and show her how it’s done. The one to explain step-by-step how I twisted the pink and purple together to look like a piece of twine, or how I hiccupped, accidentally jerking my hand, and that’s how the blue and green got that curl.

I ball my hands until they start to ache.

“Couldn’t bring myself to sell’em,” Alessi tells her. Or me. I can’t tell which one of us he’s talking to. “They’re the last pieces Krister made before leaving.”

Cam
leans down, hands on knees, and if we were anywhere but here I might be a little turned on by how her skirt lifts a bit in the back, revealing more leg than I’m sure she’d want to. “I was just telling Krister how incredible glassblowing is.” She stands and looks across the room at me, shaking her head. “I can’t believe you made these.” Dark strands of hair fall around her probing eyes. It was a mistake allowing Alessi to bring her back here.

“We need to go,” I say as even as possible.
Alessi watches silently as I take Cam’s hand and lead her out of the room. He follows us back to the front, and I think I’m going to make it out without a word, but then his hand clamps down on my shoulder.

I freeze.

“You know where I am if you need to talk,” he whispers close to my ear. They’re words I’ve heard before, when I left the last time. Only now, they send aching prickles throughout my entire body. Six months ago, I didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want anything more than my old life back and vaguely remember saying something in the vicinity of “fuck off” to him. But since this ugliness has engrained itself inside me, like a fucking alien clinging to my bones, his offer sounds rather tempting. Even though it’d be impossible.

“Go ahead and sell them,” is what I say to
Alessi instead as I walk out the door without looking back. Cam and I pass block after block, not saying a word to each other. I know she wants me to explain what that was about—glassblowing and Alessi and the fact I told her about neither. She watches me through our reflection off the storefront windows. At the corner we stop to wait for the light, and she steps in front of me.

“Something’s wrong.”

The light turns green, the crosswalk says
GO
, and I move to step off the curb but she pushes her hand firmly to my chest. I stiffen. Despite being small, her arm’s got some strength and, standing a full head below me in combat boots and a thin line of black around her eyes, she looks a little like a rebellious schoolgirl. The sight softens me.

“What’s going on,
Krister?”

I force a wide grin, meeting her eyes. “What do you mean?
I thought you wanted to eat…”

She glares up at me. And this would be the moment I deny everything, to the point she leaves out of frustration and never talks to me again. Maybe that would be best, consid
ering who she is. And who I am.