Fat Girl (10 page)

I stab the off button, wishing I had a cradle in which to slam the receiver down in his ear. Tempted to hurl the phone across the room, instead I return to bed, curl into a ball, and pull the blanket up over me. Whatever numbness I achieved is gone. Desire beats in my every cell. And with the vodka diluting my defenses, my woozy mind takes an unstoppable trip to the past.

IT’S BEEN TWO MONTHS SINCE Mick first parted my lips and French-kissed me into paradise. Two months since we’ve layered one shared secret on top of another. Not only haven’t we told Mama and Papa T about Malcolm Peters’ abuse, we also haven’t told them—or anyone—that we’re dating. Okay, not what some people would consider dating. We don’t actually go out on dates. But we spend as many evenings as we can together at the lake.

Sometimes I think I’m dreaming. I mean, really, a guy like Mick is so far out of my league. But I’m hopelessly crazy in love with him. Not that I would ever tell him. I think he knows. How could he not? Still, I don’t say the words.

Unlike me, Mick’s not stingy with his feelings. He tells me he loves me. Often. As if he’s trying to convince me. Even if he totally means it, I know he’s going to break my heart. Everybody I ever love does in the end. That’s why I give him only small pieces, not the whole thing. That way, there’ll be less to break.

In July, four months from now, Mick will be off to NYU for creative writing and in the fall I’ll be heading to Amherst to work on a bachelor’s degree in family studies before law school. I don’t feel the excitement I should about college, but it’s because I hate the idea of being separated from him. So I’m preparing myself for when we part, and I’m nothing more than a girl he once cared about because I kept his secret and understood his dreams.

“Everything okay? You’re quiet tonight,” he says of my silence during the twenty-minute drive to Riverstone Lake, seven miles outside of Springvale.

I look over at his beautifully sculpted profile. His coffee-brown eyes are focused ahead as he concentrates on navigating his car over the gravel road. It’s a black 1968 Mustang that Papa T helped him restore to mint condition. Being low to the ground, it scrapes every bump that leads to the shore, and his hands tighten on the wheel. Mick has large hands; the palms are calloused from years of basketball, and the fingers are long and tapered. They’re strong and sure—just like him.

When he parks in our usual spot; a secluded area hidden by towering bluffs and muscular peaks, I assure Mick I’m fine. “I can do quiet with you.”

He cuts the engine and turns to me with a smile that flutters my stomach. He likes what I’ve said. Sometimes I feel as if I’m Mick’s experiment. That he needs to have these real experiences with me to prove that he’s capable of more than detached sexual encounters.

Because of this need of his and because of my hang-ups, our physical intimacy has grown slowly. This is new for Mick, and I know he’s restraining himself. There are times when I want to tell him to stop holding back. We’ve gone as far as second base. The first time Mick touched my breasts through my clothes, I panicked—for all of five seconds. Then I was consumed by hot tingles of pleasure. I wanted to feel his touch in other places. I wanted to experience what I read in romance novels and what I overheard girls whispering about in the bathroom. I wanted to feel Mick inside me.

“I’d love to know what’s on your mind,” he says, interrupting my very private thoughts. “Especially just now. I hope I was involved in that one.”

Mick winks at me and I blush. He makes my body heat up just by looking at me.

We release our seat belts and remove our jackets. It took four days for us to figure out a way to sneak away. Eager for his kiss, I wait in anticipation. But when Mick turns back from tossing our coats onto the back seat, he’s handing me a blue manila folder. Disappointed, I say, “What’s this? Homework?”

He laughs. “Look inside.” His excitement is palpable.

Curious, I flip back the cover. The typed text reads
Princess Dionna and the Dark Shadow
by Micah Anthony Peters.

I run my fingers across the title and look up into his smiling face. “Is this your story about the princess who kicks butt?”

“Yep. I was thinking about you the entire time I wrote it. You’re my Princess Dionna.”

I’ve never been anyone’s princess before. Anybody’s anything. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. Just promise me one thing.”

“What?” I ask, gazing into those warm brown eyes that melt all my defenses.

“Don’t read the ending first. I want you to experience it the way I wrote it, from start to finish. Will you do that for me, Dee?”

In that moment, I couldn’t refuse him anything. “Yes.” I loop my arms around his neck. “Thank you.”

“Welcome,” he says, nuzzling my neck before taking the book from me and tossing it in the back with our coats. “Now, where were we?” He grins. “Oh yeah, you were thanking me.”

“Yes, I was.” I reach out to touch his face, the chiseled angles and bold lines. My fingertips ghost his right cheek, tracing the red scar. Then I caress it with my lips, wishing I could take away the angry mark and the memory.

He sighs. “I love you, baby.”

My heart swells and I glide my mouth over his, pouring everything I feel but can’t say into that kiss. He slides his hands around to my lower back, pulling me as close to him as the confines of the front seat will allow.

Outside, the March evening air is damp and chilly, but inside, it’s warm and getting warmer. Soon, the small enclosure is ripe with passion. The tinted windows fog up, and our ragged breaths and wet, fervent kisses are the only sounds.

“God, Dee,” he pants and levers me across the center console.

The move is so sudden I don’t have time to prepare for it. In the graceless crossover, my long skirt rides up above my knees and my too-big behind hits the horn, causing an obnoxious blare. Honestly, I could die right there on the spot. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he says, pushing his seat all the way back to make room for me to straddle him. “Holding you like this is so much better.”

Mick can always do that. Stop me from feeling embarrassed or self-conscious.

He spins a cluster of curls around his fist and tugs my mouth back to his, while the other hand, at the small of my back, draws me down and closer to him.

His kiss swallows my startled gasp. It’s not as if I haven’t ever felt his erection. But the feel of a big bulge against my stomach is far different from the feel of him, hard and insistent, between my legs.

He releases my hair to massage my breasts, gently squeezing and teasing me through the layers of my blouse and cardigan. The rapid beat of my heart pumps into his touch.

“You feel so good,” he murmurs. His thumbs stroke my nipples. They bead in response to him, and his breaths quicken. He moves one hand to the top button of my blouse, secured at the neck. With deftness he releases the first three buttons from their moorings and brushes his fingers down the column of my throat to the center of my chest.

Goosebumps pebble my heated flesh.

“I want to see you, Dee…and touch you all over.”

His intentions douse the dizzying flames of my desire in a downpour of insecurities. I clasp his wrists, stilling his hands on the next button.

After a soft peck, he pulls back to look at me. The space between his thick eyebrows is drawn together. “Am I rushing you?”

I shake my head and bury my face in his neck, breathing in the familiar scents of soap, tangy aftershave, and warm skin. He’s got it all wrong. I don’t feel rushed. I want him to touch me…I think about it all the time. But that would mean him feeling my fleshy body…
God
…seeing me naked. Comparing me with all the pretty, skinny girls he’s been with. No. As much as I want to…crave the experience of feeling his hands on my bare skin…I can’t.

“You’re shaking,” he says, his voice edged with concern. “Did I scare you?”

“No.”

His arms go around me. “If I’m not rushing you and you’re not scared, then what is it?”

I don’t know how to explain something so…humiliating.

“Dee?” he urges me, his fingers strumming my back.

“I’m scared…but not of you.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“You seeing what I look like,” I mumble.

“What?...Why?”

Does he really not know? “Because.”

He chuckles softly. “That explains a lot.”

“You know why,” I say, unable to give him any more than that.

“Dee, baby.” With one finger beneath my chin, he tilts my face up to his. “You think I won’t like what I see?”

I nod. If I don’t like my body, how can I expect him to?

“I’m gonna love what I see.”

I wish I could believe that. But it’s as if I have these looped tapes playing in my head that tell me I’m not good enough. Pretty enough. Skinny enough. Lovable enough.

“What if you don’t?” I voice with gripping anxiety. “What if you’re turned off?”

“That’s not possible.”

“Then what if I freeze up?” I ask. “If I can’t do it, you might go to somebody else.”

A deep frown pinches his face. “You think I’d cheat on you?”

“Would you?” I know his reputation. Mick doesn’t have to wait two days, never mind two months, for sex.

“I would never cheat on you, Dee.”

“Promise?” That would hurt me more than anything.

“I promise.” He brings my hand to his mouth and brushes his lips across my fingers, sending shivers up my arm. “I’m done with all that. I don’t want any other girl. I want you. Badly. But I can wait. You don’t have to do anything to keep me from cheating on you. You’re expecting the wrong ending, Dee. I’m never going to hurt you,” he says with such conviction that it cracks my wall of doubt. “You’re more than a body to me. Don’t you know how much I love you?”

I look into his eyes, into the intensity of his gaze. This isn’t a guy feeding me lines. This is Mick, who trusted me with his deepest secret. Who defended me against the likes of J.T. Who writes stories about me being his princess. With my wariness completely overruled, I’m no longer listening to the tapes—or even to reason. In that moment, I don’t care about my childhood rejections. Or what will happen when we part. I care only about now. I take a deep breath and let the words I’ve been hoarding spill out of me: “I love you, too, Mick.”

His face softens into the happiest of smiles. A joy that takes my breath away. “Say it again.”

I realize then how much he’s needed to hear this. “I love you.” It’s not so scary the second time around because I know the words are the truest I’ve ever spoken and the emotion behind them the purest I’ve ever felt. “I love you,” I repeat, giving Mick my fragile heart and trusting him to keep it safe.

His mouth covers mine and I know only a momentary twinge of panic when he goes for my buttons again. If anything, my flicker of nerves is driven by the anticipation of his hands on my skin.

Seeming to feel the same anticipation, Mick’s passionate breaths pant a rapid staccato as he opens both layers and reaches around to my back to unfasten my bra. It’s nothing pretty or lacey. It’s the full support, functional kind. But I don’t have time to think about that when his palms slip beneath the loosened cups and mold themselves over my breasts.

I thread my hands into his hair as desire streams through me. I moan against his mouth, lost to the overwhelming sensation of his fingers coaxing my nipples into tight, hard points.

But the nerves sneak back in when he divests me of my top layers and my bra falls away.

Mick breaks the kiss. His gaze lowers to my large breasts, bare in the moonlight. He stares at me for so long without speaking, my chest knots with anxiety and the tapes start playing again. I put my heart out there. Now my body. And I don’t know what he’s thinking. “Mick?”

His eyes travel up to mine. “I’ve pictured you a million times,” he says, his voice hoarse, the emotion in it resonating inside me. “I’ve dreamed about you and written about you. But nothing compares to the real thing. You’re beautiful, Deeana Rae. Perfect.”

I know I’m not beautiful or perfect. Not like girls in magazines or even the ones he’s dated. But the heat in his eyes makes me almost believe it.

Mick skims his knuckles across my pouting nipples and a gravelly groan rises from his throat. “I knew they’d look like chocolate chips. I want to taste you.”

I close my eyes, expecting him to go right there. Instead, he presses his damp, hot mouth to my neck and slides his tongue along the pulsating vein, taking detours to my ears, to my shoulders, to my collarbone, burning everywhere he touches. When he finally reaches my breasts and bathes my nipples with gentle strokes, my whole body catches fire.

The feel-good noises crowding my throat escape my lips. “Mm…oh Mick…” He sucks one nipple deep into his steaming mouth and strokes the other between his fingers.

Alight with desire, I move my palms under his shirt and across his broad chest. He’s lean and athletic. There’s just a dusting of soft hair covering his toasty skin. With minimal knowledge of how the male body works, when my fingers drift over the pads of his pectorals and encounter his minuscule nipples, peaked like mine, my senses zing with the thrill of discovery. I imitate his motions.