Breaking Nova (21 page)

She’s sitting on my lap and she shouldn’t be. For many different reasons, one being that Tristan is sitting right next to us. But he’s pretty stoned and doesn’t seem to care. He even says something to a few girls that wander by with their tops off, smiling when one of them blows a kiss at him. Still, I don’t deserve any of this. Nova. Tristan’s forgiveness and understanding. What I deserve is to be fucking dead instead of Ryder and Lexi.

But Nova said she went looking for me. No one ever goes looking for me or cared enough to worry about me. When she says it, I’m pretty certain my worthless heart shatters inside my chest, and she steals one of the pieces. If it didn’t already belong to someone else I probably would have handed her all the pieces right then and there.

She sits on my lap for an eternity, chatting about music, while Tristan and I take turns passing the cigarette back and forth. She seems happier than she did a little while ago, and it makes me happy watching her eyes light up as she talks about lyrics and her favorite bands, always putting an emphasis on the
s
.

“No way,” she disagrees with something Tristan has said, and he grins because he has her attention. “They’re not better, and their drummer totally sucks.”

Leaning over, Tristan grabs the handle of the cooler and hauls it over. He puts it in front of his chair and uses it for a footrest. “What makes you the expert?” he asks Nova.

“Because I’m a drummer and therefore I know these things.” Nova shoves his feet off the cooler and, bending forward, she lifts the cooler lid. Her shorts slip down a little as she digs a beer out of the ice, and I have to fight back a smile because her panties are black and lacy. Honestly, I would have pinpointed her as a white-cotton kind of girl, considering how embarrassed she got when she made a joke about popping her outdoor-concert cherry.

“Just because you can play the drums”—Tristan grazes his thumb across the bottom of the cigarette, scattering ashes onto the ground “—doesn’t mean you can decide who plays the drums better and who sucks.”

“Yeah, it does.” Nova’s getting sassier with the more beers she drinks. She extends her arm out toward the cigarette, like she’s going to grab it and take a hit.

This time I choose to do things differently and put a moment of good in the world, despite the fact that I have to be a hypocrite to do it. I swat her hand out of the way and shake my head. “No way.”

“Hey,” she protests with a frown. “What the hell was that for?”

I shift my arm so my hand falls down into my lap, just beside her hip. “So do I ever get to see you play?” I dodge around the subject to keep her mind diverted from getting high.

“The drums?” she asks, still frowning, and when I nod, she seems reluctant to answer. She tips her head back and places the mouth of the bottle to her lips, sipping out the beer. Her hair falls down her back and softly brushes my arm, and it sends a silent quiver through my body. She lowers the bottle and licks her lips. “I don’t know…” She inquiringly looks me in the eye. “Do you want to watch me play?”

“Of course,” I say, reminding myself that we’re just friends.
Just friends.
“That’s why I asked.”

She wets her lips with her tongue, deliberately this time, and I wonder if she’s doing it on purpose so I’ll focus on her lips. “When we get back to town… if you want… you can come over and watch me play.” Her voice shakes as she says it, like the words are thick in her throat and she’s struggling to enunciate each letter.

“Hey, what about me?” Tristan asks, offended, as he flicks the cigarette onto the ground and stomps on it with his bare feet. Then he starts cursing as his skin begins to burn. “Shit, that’s hot.”

She ignores him, her eyes fastened on me as she takes a faltering breath, balling her hands into fists. “But I get to pick which song.”

I nod, nervous about how personal this is getting. “Okay, sounds like a plan, Nova Reed.”

Tristan huffs a frustrated breath, then takes his cell phone out of his pocket and starts texting.

Nova rotates around so her back’s to me and she’s facing the stage. She relaxes against my chest with her legs hanging over my knees. I tense, but she doesn’t seem to notice. In fact, I think she’s extremely comfortable, and the more she stays there, the more comfortable I get.

“My dad taught me to play,” she says and downs another mouthful of beer. “When I was six.”

“He taught you to play the drums?” I keep my tone light, remembering how when I first met her she told me her dad died.

She nods, spinning the bottle around in between the palms of her hands. “He also played the guitar, but for some reason I could never figure out that instrument.”

She sounds like she’s choking up, and I want to console her. I open and close my hands, then place my palms on the tops of her thighs, so she’s trapped between my arms. Her leg muscles spasm underneath my touch, but she doesn’t move away.

“How old were you when he died?” I ask, kneading her soft skin with my fingertips.
What the fuck am I doing?

“Twelve.” Her breath hitches in her throat. From the stage, the singer shouts out something about every girl taking their top off. She clears her throat multiple times. “Can I ask you a question?”

Even though I’m certain I’m not going to like her question, considering the topic we’re on, I nod. “Sure.”

She wavers, staring up at the stars across the ash-black sky. “Have you ever lost someone close to you?”

I hear Tristan cough several times beside me and then he turns to the side in his chair, like he wants to escape this conversation. The band starts playing again, hammering on the drums and shouting in the microphone, and Nova starts thrumming her fingers on top of her legs to the rhythm.

It takes me a while to respond. “Yeah, I have.”

She nods and doesn’t say anything more. Most people would have asked me who and how. I remember right after the accident everyone wanted to know what happened, not just to Lexi and Ryder but to me, too. I was in the hospital for quite a while. Miraculously the guy I hardly knew that was kissing Ryder in the backseat barely had any bruises and scrapes, and the driver of the other car broke her leg. That was it. Two with minor injuries and three deaths, if I include myself, which I do. Even though I was revived that day, I still think of myself as dead.

“Are you okay?” Nova turns her head to look at me. “You seem tense.”

“I’m fine,” I assure her.

“Are you sure?” She looks doubtful as she searches my eyes.

It’s been a while since someone has been so concerned about me. Not even Lexi worried about me this much, even when I’d get low about my dad’s distant parenting tactics.

“I’m sure,” I tell Nova. “Now stop worrying about me.”

“Okay,” she says, working to smile, like she doesn’t believe me. She coils a strand of her brown hair around her finger. “Do you think that somewhere in the world, at this very moment, someone is doing this exact same thing?”

“What? Sitting around and getting high?” Tristan jokes, glancing up from his cell phone screen.

“No, sitting under the stars, listening to music.” She unwinds her hair around her finger.

Tristan shrugs, sliding his finger across the screen of the phone as he gets to his feet. “You’re a very strange girl,” he says and heads for the tent, then at the last second veers off in the direction the topless girls went.

“I’m just curious,” she mutters to herself. “About what other people do with their time… with their lives.”

I sit there for a while, drinking in her words. Somewhere between the weed, watching her lips move, and her strange yet insightful words, I get caught up in it all—in her—and suddenly I’m pressing my lips against hers. I’ve done this a lot before, as a way to distract myself from my life. But this isn’t the same. This
means
something, but I’m still trying to figure out what and if I want it or even deserve to get it.

At first she stiffens, but then she hooks her arms around the back of my neck and inches closer, opening her mouth to me as she spreads her legs open, and my hands travel higher toward the bottom of her shorts. She tastes like beer and smells like pot. Tristan’s gone, but he could come back at any moment. I should stop this. I should care enough to stop Tristan from seeing this, but my will to care about doing the right thing at this moment has died. My thoughts are blurred by the lingering high and the scent and feel of Nova. All I seem to care about is caressing her tongue with mine and feeling her skin because it’s soft and soothing, and in another life I’d touch it all the time.

I’m about to pull away, because emotions are prickling inside me, when she swings her leg over me so she’s straddling my lap, then she grips the sides of my neck and pulls me closer. She kisses me fiercely, to the point where it feels like my lips are going to bruise, then she’s crushing her chest against mine as she gently rocks her hips. I dig my fingers into her waist, bringing her even closer, before I push her back, breaking the connection.

She’s panting, wild-eyed, her hair falling out of the braid. She glances at Tristan’s empty chair and then looks back at me.

“We should stop,” I say, but it sounds like a lame attempt, my voice drifting off at the end.

“W-why?” She stutters a protest and I have to admit that it’s nice there are no tears in her eyes. “I don’t want to.”

I brush her hair back from her eyes, and let my fingers linger on the bruise on her cheek. “You don’t even know me, Nova. I’m no good for you… you deserve so much better.”
Please run away. Because I can’t seem to do it myself.

Her jaw tenses, like I struck a nerve. “I think I should get to decide that.”

“Whether I’m good enough for you?” I ask.

“Yeah, which I can only decide if I get to know you,” she says.

I motion my hand in front of myself, pressing the point. “This is pretty much it. What you see is what you get.”

“That’s never the case,” she disagrees, flattening her palms onto my bare chest right over the scar and my body goes rigid. “In fact, most of the time people hide who they really are.” Her throat bobs up and down as she swallows hard. “Most of the time you think you know someone, but you really have no clue.”

I think about her boyfriend and how he took his own life, and I can’t even begin to imagine what that did to her. I wrap my fingers around her scarred wrist, still concealed by bands, and graze my palm along it as the truth pours out of me. “But sometimes people are exactly who they are. And what you see is what you get.” I press my fingertips down, feeling the beat of her erratic pulse. “I’m exactly who I am. I have no job, I get high and drunk all the time, I have no purpose. Even my fucking art doesn’t have any meaning anymore.”

“But it did once.” She glides her free hand over my shoulder and grips my shoulder blade, her skin searing hot against mine. “And all those things are what you do, not who you are.” Her hand is trembling, and her pulse throbs with the beat of the bass coming from the stage. “Please, let me get to know you, Quinton.” Begging laces her voice and her big blue-green eyes, and I wonder if this is about me anymore, or someone else, and I should get up and walk away because she’s too good for me to be kissing, but she’s so also sad and the little tiny piece of my old self—the one who loved to help everyone—wants to make her happy, make her smile, make her laugh—help her. Even if it’s completely unrealistic.

Then she’s kissing me again and lightly tugging on my shoulder and I still have my fingers on her pulse and my hand is gripping at her waist. Passion and heat consume our bodies as she traces her finger up the back of my neck. I gently pull on her wrist, drawing her even closer, until there’s no more room left between our bodies, then I slip my hand around to her back and underneath her shirt so I can feel the heat exuding from her skin.

She lets out a gasp as I move my mouth back, gently biting at her bottom lip. Then I descend lower, down to her jawline, sucking soft kisses on her neck, and she arches it back. When I approach the top of her chest, I can tell she gets nervous by the acceleration in her pulse. She moans as I start to slip the straps of her shirt down, and the sound nearly drives me crazy, my body responding in ways it hasn’t in a long time, as my mouth reaches the curve of her breast. I picture myself standing up, taking her to the tent, and peeling her clothes off, knowing that if I slipped inside her it would feel different than it did with the other women I’ve been with over the last year. I’m trying to decide if I want it—the connection—when someone in the crowd shouts something profane at us and it’s followed by whistling, and the moment scorches into ash and separates into pieces.

We break away from each other, and I’m relieved to find that she’s not crying this time around and neither am I. But this time is different, and maybe it’s because it’s not the first kiss. Or maybe it’s because I understand her a little bit better, and that she’s not just some girl that giggles and laughs and doesn’t get what it means to hurt inside. She’s been through stuff, and for some reason, I’m drawn to her. Why she’s not crying, though, is a mystery.

Her lips are a little bit swollen and her chest is heaving. “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this out in the open,” she breathes, tracing circles on the back of my neck, as she eyes the tents behind us.

“Do you want to try and get close to the front?” I ask, trying to avoid going into the tent with her, because I know what will happen if I do. “I think that band you said you love is about ready to start playing.”

She cranes her neck and looks over her shoulder at the stage with uncertainty in her eyes. “I’m not sure if it’s worth it.”

The people surrounding the stage are rowdy, and a lot of girls have given into the singer’s demands and are walking around topless. It’s a really bad scene, and a year and a half ago I’d never have dreamed of coming to a place like this. But sometimes stuff happens and we find ourselves lost, and suddenly we’re standing in a place we don’t recognize and can’t remember walking—or falling—there, and we’re unsure how to get back or if we even want to.