“Futon.” Dev pushed himself to his feet, the muscles in his biceps flexing. It was impossible to get tired of looking at him. I dragged my eyes back up from the oddly masculine lines of his ribs and the definitely masculine lines of his abs, giggling stupidly. His arm reached out to me again as Cleo walked away from him to the couch, too narrow for more than one person. “Come ’ere,” he repeated. “Please, Biz?”
Combine Dev and alcohol, and my self-control is gone. Especially true since I never really had any in the first place. I stumbled back across the room to the futon I’d slept on earlier and fell on it, giggling. He landed next to me and pulled me on top of him.
His lips were soft and the aftertaste of whatever he had been drinking was sweet. I almost expected him to keep pushing it further, but his hands settled on my bare waist and stayed there.
Alec’s return to the basement, stomping heavy feet and holding another beer, broke the mood. As he sprawled on the other futon, chugging another beer, I slid down Dev’s body until my head rested on his chest. My body curled away from the abrasive fabric of the futon, closer to his familiar heat and smooth skin. “Night.”
He didn’t say anything.
When I woke up, Dev was gone and light was streaming through the window next to me. I had a bad case of déjà vu, and a worse headache. I didn’t want to deal with any of it, this, until after I had some Advil and a lot of coffee.
The good news was that ibuprofen, caffeine and nicotine were readily available. The bad news was that there were too many makeups and breakups and fights going on for me to really keep track of it. In hindsight, we probably shouldn’t have crammed the seven of us up in one house for four days with all the drama that had already been brewing. Amie was pretending (badly) that she wasn’t mad at me. I was pretending (better, I hoped) that I wasn’t irrationally pissed at Cleo. Dev and Alec were together the whole time, hovering just on the edge of wherever we were. Nicky and Scott went AWOL, probably having more fun than the rest of us put together.
I spent the day in the hot tub, alternating between Diet Coke and coffee and discovering the joys of chain smoking. Thinking was almost as low on my to-do list as talking to Dev. Now that I was sober, I was back to being mad at him. The second was easy enough to avoid, since he seemed to return the favor. The first was a lot harder. I was angry at Dev for being Dev, but more at myself for being stupid and girly and giggly and for being stupid enough to start liking him in the first place.
That’s probably why, later that night, I got much, much drunker than I planned. The original idea was to get just drunk enough to relax, but not so drunk I did something stupid. But they do say strategy never survives the first encounter with the enemy.
Somewhere along the line, I decided that vodka had taken the newly vacated position of best, best friend. The giggles were uncontrollable, my inhibitions had linked arms and exited stage left. I knew before anything happened that I was going to do something incredibly, unforgivably stupid. I had just stopped caring.
In that moment, I was drunk on not caring.
I woke up before Dev the next morning for a change, both of us tangled in the sheets of one of the upstairs rooms. Thankfully, we had somehow avoided Nicky and Scott the night before. Both of us were sweaty and sticky, body heat condensing under the covers. My hair stuck to my face and neck. We weren’t touching. For a minute, I almost freaked out, imagining the stereotypical drunken night scenario complete with
Knocked Up: The Sequel
. It only took a minute to remember everything else embarrassing I had done the night before which, while enough to cause serious regret, thankfully excluded actual penis-in-vagina, babymaking sex. Unfortunately, I was still scarlet lettered. Fortunately, I had a chance of remembering the de-lettering. Last night had a very blurry quality to the memories. If I was lucky, no one else would remember them at all.
This definitely would not help the sex rumors. Might even create new ones. Lucky, lucky me.
Slowly, to avoid waking Dev and my latent headache, I slid out from the sheets and his arm, thrown haphazardly over my body. Shower time. I smelled like sex. Even if it wasn’t actually, technically, by the textbook, will-give-you-diseases-and-babies sex. I made sure a change of clothes was in the bathroom and the door securely locked before I pulled off the oversized shirt and underwear I’d slept in. Afraid of who might wake up, I barely savored the feeling of the fat drops rolling down my increasingly sore body. A night in a real, comfortable bed that was meant for the number of people in it would do great things for my back.
Now I sounded geriatric.
My hair was still wet, soaking into the back of the sweatshirt I threw on over my pajama shorts, before I threw it up in a messy bun. A little bit of eyeliner and a hint of concealer hid the worst of my face and toothpaste healed my morning breath before I slipped out of the bathroom. Dev was still asleep, now somehow taking up the entire bed. It kind of made me want to get back in bed with him and pretend I had never woken up. Maybe he’d even believe that I was one of those rare people who woke up with minty fresh breath and a blemish-free face.
But I couldn’t and I stifled a sigh. Even without a public walk of shame, the morning after blew. Absolutely no pun intended.
My steps down the stairs were light, and I slipped into the kitchen to see the microwave blinking 11:32 in red neon. No one had set the coffee maker the night before, so I filled it as well as I could. I didn’t think I could mess up coffee. I hoped not. That would be embarrassing, although why I was still worried about embarrassing, I had no idea. It couldn’t get much worse.
The Advil was on the counter next to two boxes of cigarettes and an empty beer can. I swallowed three dry. Watching the coffee make itself was a little less exciting than watching paint dry, and I toasted a Pop-Tart mostly just to keep myself occupied. The sprinkles were way too happy pre-caffeine, and the strawberry filling stuck to the roof of my mouth. I ate it anyway. The coffee was still not quite done. This had to be the slowest coffee maker ever.
I heard the steps on the stairs behind me, but I didn’t turn around. Whoever it was, and I had a feeling I knew, I really, really didn’t want to deal with them pre-caffeine. Mornings were not my favorite. Too bad I didn’t have a choice. Arms wrapped around my waist and pulled me against a bare chest, still warm from sleeping between body-heated cotton. “Hey, you.”
I wanted to pull out of Dev’s arms, but the energy to do that was somewhere inaccessible. Instead, I bit my lip. It still tasted sweet from the Pop-Tarts.
“How’s your head?”
A lot better now that I’d had the Advil. Still aching. My smile was weak. “Fine. You?”
His grin turned into a wince that spoke volumes. It was what I finally needed to pull free of his hands and pass him the Advil I had nearly made sweet, sweet love to when it had helped my head. Too bad the reason for walking away was only to walk back again. I was hopeless. And the coffee was still not ready.
There was suddenly a really awkward silence hanging over the kitchen. Dev seemed totally unaffected, opening the fridge to look for the orange juice. Guess he was going for the original hangover cure. “You want?” He raised the OJ and the vodka he had found in the freezer. I shook my head. So far, getting drunk with Dev never ended well. “Your loss.” Throwing back his head, he drank half of what he’d mixed in one gulp. I saw him coming closer, and I knew I should walk away. Too bad for me, I had already proven a thousand times over that I couldn’t walk away from him. His lips were soft and warm and tasted sweet. They made me want to cry.
I turned my head away, his lips falling off mine and planting a friendly kiss on my cheek. As if Dev was ever friendly. His muscles tensed next to mine, and I could feel the confusion in the lines of his body.
“Biz? Everything okay?” It was almost impressive that after all this, he still sounded concerned and confused. He was so damn clueless. There was a small, purpling hickey on the exponential curve of his trapezius muscle, running from neck to shoulder.
“Yeah.” I contemplated the floor, watching the grain of the wood underneath our toes. It wasn’t even. The smooth brown of the wood clashed with the chipping purple of my toenails.
“Bizza?”
I tried to ignore the finger on my chin, the hand on my shoulder, all his unspoken request for eye contact. Usually I gave him whatever he asked for. “I’m fine.” It came out a lot less fine than I meant it to.
“Headache?”
Stupid asshole. “No.” There was starting to be a forbidding, unwelcome lump in my throat. My eyes flickered to the patterns in the marble counter, unpredictable and asymmetrical, random black whorls and splotches on the pure white mineral. I traced one of them with the tip of my finger, trying to force my throat back to normal.
“Bizza, this isn’t about those stupid rumors, is it?”
So close, and yet so far. Damn him. Why didn’t he get it?
“Because you know they’re just stupid,” he continued. I guess he interpreted my silence as “affirmative” rather than “asshole.” “I mean, they’re wrong, it doesn’t matter. And who cares anyway?”
“I do.” My voice was balanced between shaky and screaming. I wanted to yell and scream and hit him. I wanted to break down crying. And then I wanted him to kiss it and make it all better. Sometimes, I hated myself. “I care,” I repeated. “I don’t want them to think I’m a slut.”
He was dismissive in the way only testosterone-fueled boys who don’t think with the right head can be. Men. “Who cares what they think?”
“I do!” What was so complicated about this? “When nobody knew, when everyone assumed we were dating, it was fine. But everyone’s saying we’re having sex. My teachers probably think we’re having sex.”
The grin on his face was much too proud. “I know my Spanish teacher does.”
“Oh, is she the one who caught you running ten minutes late?” There was an edge to my voice that I had tried to hard to never allow back in. That edge got Sunday morning phone calls, if it even got any. “Or the one who almost walked in on us during lunch? Or the one who caught us after quiet study?” He didn’t say anything. Too bad I had enough to fill up any silence that remained.
There was another blot of purple rising over the line of his hip.
“We’ve been doing whatever this is for what, two months?” It felt like forever. “So you tell me, Dev. What are we? Because I’m not waiting around anymore for you to figure out what you want. Don’t expect me to sit and wait while you make up your mind about what we are. And if the answer is just friends with benefits, don’t bother coming to tell me. There’s a freaking line in the sand and you have to freaking choose, because I’m sick of this back and forth crap.” I sounded like a deranged, jealous ex. Too bad I still couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “You’d think you could avoid screwing around with my best friend. At least I stay away from my ex’s friends.”
Did I mention I was a hypocrite too?
He looked up, his eyes less familiar than I had ever seen them. The already strong lines of his face looked harsh, accentuated by the shadow of stubble around his jaw. His lips were chapped, pressed around the edge of an angry swallow of OJ. “You’re not my ex.”
After the hangman pulls the lever, I imagine there would be a second of slack silence where you just hover, before gravity takes hold and yanks you down. That kind of silence hung in the kitchen as his words passed from neuron to neuron until they sunk in. I shook my head in mute disbelief, shoving down the prickling warmth of tears. “You asshole.”
I turned away before I could see him not respond. The entire seventeen-step walk out of the kitchen, I was fighting the desire to look back at him, to apologize. Seeking an alternate focus, my eyes fell on the white plastic that had caused this whole stupid fight in the first place with its stupid, slow-moving red analog timer.
Of course the damn coffee would be ready now.
Pounding something sounded good. Something painful and physical and angry. Hate sex sounded good. Damn it. I could settle for a run. The one sports bra that had somehow still made it into my stuff was on top of the bag in a (thankfully) empty room and it didn’t take long to find the shorts I’d packed just in case. My iPod took a few minutes longer to dig out, but it wasn’t hard.
I ran out the door feeling self-righteous, virtuous and extremely pissed. It lasted three feet down the beach. Then the only thing pounding was my head and the only thing racing was my uneven breathing. Running with no sleep, a hangover and a good first attempt at chimney sweep lungs is not a good idea.
My limping jog lasted until I’d gotten past Cleo’s property line, where my legs gave up on me. At least I was behind the rock wall that delineated the separation. Nobody from the house could see me as I wrapped my arms around my knees, hugging myself closer.
I couldn’t cry. The energy to cry over Dev again had completely failed me. It sucked in a way. Tears were romantic and tragic and besides, at least they had a beginning and an end.
Coked-out rockers crooned in my ear, singing about sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll. None of them were virgins. They sang about being alone, being in love, being in lust in gravelly voices backed by amps and amphetamines. I suspended belief in managers and synthesizers and the manipulation of the masses through mainstream media to strip and swig and stop eating. So I listened, letting them scream and cry on my behalf as I stared.
When you dive into the pool at the beginning of a race, the incessant pull of gravity takes its time to catch up with the vanished pressure beneath your feet. You are weightless, hovering, hanging. And then you hit the water. It stings your body, chlorinated and chemical, bitter on your tongue and sharp on your skin. And while it’s supposed to look somewhat graceful to the outside observer, there is always a violence to breaking the surface of the water.
The last few weeks, I had been weightless, running around with Cleo and Dev and all their friends, thinking I was like them, forgetting the lessons of freshman year. Hitting the water had been inevitable the whole time, and I’d been an idiot to think I could avoid it. My lack of forethought ensured that instead of the controlled entrance of a dive, I had just belly-flopped.