Unfaithful: An Unlocked Novella (2 page)

I didn’t know what to say. Mark had never liked Darci—he thought she was a bad influence. The pause got a little longer, hanging in the air.

“Are you guys still... you know, fighting?” Darci asked. There was something unusually tentative in her voice.

“I don’t even know,” I said, and I sighed.
Thinking about Mark sucked all the happiness out of the beautiful summer day. “We fight, we make up, we have fun. Then we fight again, we make up again, we have fun again. But we fight a little more every time, and have a little less fun. I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. We almost broke up for real last week, then... I don’t know. We didn’t. Obviously.”

I took a quick glance around, then leaned closer to Darci.

“We haven’t had sex for about two months,” I said. “It’s like he just isn’t interested anymore. I don’t know what the hell’s up with him.”

Darci gave me a sympathetic half-smile.

“You know you can always call if you need,” she said.

But I couldn’t resist one last shot at Darci as I got in the car.

“Mark’s wrong about one thing,” I said. “You’re not a turbo-slut.”

Darci cocked her head to the side, a question written on her face.

“You’re a
turbo
turbo-slut!” I called through the open window. I watched her laughing in the rearview window as I drove away.

I’d just finished high school, and I couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot whenever I thought about that. Good-bye, Beacon Bay Senior High. Good-bye, locker. Good-bye guidance counselors who got frustrated and made exasperated sighs when I told them I didn’t know what I wanted to be. Good-bye gym class, and good-bye gross spaghetti sauce in the cafeteria every Tuesday.

Good-bye to the four most boring years of my life.

The best summer of all time was starting. Hot sun, easy living, and sweet pineapple and coconut piña coladas down by the shore. I wasn’t going to go to college for months. Maybe even twelve months if my mom let me take a year off to travel around Europe with Darci like I wanted (“Just tell her that French guys are babes,” Darci kept saying. “And we’ll bring her one back. But not some skeezy guy with a big nose.
One of the hot models from Paris.”).

After all those years of high school, all I wanted to do with my summer days was finish my job at the animal shelter and go over the
Moores’ place, to lay around by the pool and watch Mark working out (before I had to go to my second job waitressing).

Mark was tall and good-looking and had curly brown hair and whenever he got some sun, his skin would turn this dusky tan like the color of toast. He’d grin at me and his shiny white teeth would pop out against his tanned face.

*

Mark and I got together a little bit over two years ago, when I was sixteen. He went to a different school
; a fancy school for rich kids, not for people like me. My mom made me invite my cousin Ralph to my sweet sixteenth party. It was my first birthday after my dad died and I guess she wanted me to have family there.

And Ralph, who
was nerdy and cracked dumb jokes and had a penchant for wearing lame pick-up line t-shirts, asked if he could bring a friend. I had no idea he was going to bring this tall, hunky, total babe who played football and had muscles like crazy. Ralph was at the school for rich kids because he got a scholarship there, and he and Mark hung out because they were both in drama club. It was hard not to spend the whole night checking out Mark.

So I just spent half the night doing it.

I’ve never been brave when it comes to boys. I’m not funny like Darci is, or smart like Lucy is. I get shy and stupid and all the clever things I want to say get stuck somewhere in the back of my throat. Before too long I start to go pink and I get the giggles and I have to make up some excuse to get away. But when I saw Mark walk in the front door I thought,
no, Lisa Jeanne, you can be the cool girl who knows just how to act for once.

I finally cornered Mark over by the pineapple punch. It was this crazy yellow color with bright pink umbrellas stuck all around the bowl. I originally wanted to spike it with some champagne or vodka or something. But none of us could get any by the time the party started. 

“So . . .” I started, and then I forgot completely what I was going to say. I stared at the cup in Mark’s hand, one of those bright red paper party pitchers.

So much for being the cool girl
, I thought.

Mark flushed beetroot red all the way up to his hairline.

“Cool party,” he mumbled. Then he started telling this story about a car he wanted to buy. I don’t know much about cars. I think it was an old Mustang from the 70s, or something. I just stood there and let him talk, not saying a word myself, until Darci and Sara and Lucy came up and dragged me off, giggling.

Ralph told me the next day that Mark wanted my number.

“He thought you were like, super-mature,” Ralph said over the phone. “The way you didn’t have to talk just to make conversation. And once he realized you were making him do all the talking, he got really embarrassed.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, curling a lock of my hair over my finger. “I’ve always been mysterious.”

Darci laughed her ass off when I told her that.

So Mark called me, we went out on a date, and that was that. We went to the swankiest restaurant in town, Chicane. The
maître d’ met us at the front door and shook Mark’s hand and called him by name. The wait staff was all dressed in spotless white linen and black bow ties. At my wait job at a little family restaurant, I have customers spill coffee or Coke or creamy potato mash on me every five minutes.

The first time Mark invited me over to his place to go swimming I spent four hours in Macy’s finding the skimpiest suit I could. It was this sheer dark peach suit with black polka dots and I had to readjust it every ten steps to keep it from riding up my ass. When I finally dropped my robe and walked out to their massive pool, I nearly fell over
, I was so nervous. What if he didn’t like my body? God knows I don’t like it a lot of the time. But when Mark saw me his eyes nearly popped out of his head. My boobs were trying to escape from my top all afternoon (being a double D might suck for running but it has its perks in a swimsuit).

I’d never been at a place with pure white marble flagstones around the pool before. Or a whirlpool tub. Or one of those foaming resistance jet pools you see on TV ads.
It was the first time I’d ever been in a mansion, or met a family who didn’t have to worry about money. Ever.

It
was also the first time I met Mr. Alex Locke.

Just about everyone’s heard of Alex Locke around here. He was the golden boy of Beacon Bay when he was in high school—quarterback,
valedictorian, and, according to legend, the guy who had sex with half the girls in his grade (and half the female teachers, too). He graduated maybe ten years before I did and went to study in New York. He became an architect, and now—lucky me—he works with my boyfriend’s dad. They practically built their latest company together. Alex comes out and stays with the Moores whenever he’s got business to take care of out here in California, which is about three or four times a year.

Mark was all tongue-tied and flustered again and trying
to avoid staring at my chest. Even a dip in the pool couldn’t cool his face down. But when Mr. Locke walked by the pool he just smiled and shook my hand and told me he was glad Mark had finally found a girl worth keeping.

He was always a pretty cool guy.

*

It took me about half an hour to drive home from the Salmon Bar. My place is way out in the ‘burbs. We live on a dark, windy street that’s all overhung with droopy branches
covered in big dark green leaves. The town council always says they’ll send out a crew to trim them back. They’ve been saying that for nineteen years. I hate parking my car there. The big gray birds that nest in the trees poop all over it. I’ve spent so many hours scraping little white spatters off my windshield, only to find another coating of them the next day.

I got out of my car and walked through the litt
le yellow gate to our yard. The rusty iron hinges made this long, whinnying screech that started low and went up higher and higher the longer it went. They’ve been crying out for oil for years.

I sighed when I noticed the front lawn was all overgrown again. It was a mess of mean green weeds and dried brown tangles. I thought about asking Mark to mow it, but he doesn’t much like coming over to my house. I knew
sooner or later I was going to have to bust my way through all the cobwebs in the shed to get the old lawn mower out and mow the lawn myself.

As usual, Mom was in the living room. We don’t have big painti
ngs or fancy vases decorating our house like the Moores do. Instead we’ve got a faded set of photos from Mom and Dad’s wedding day and a busted old clock that stopped keeping time ten years ago.

Mom was parked on our couch with its frayed cushions in front of some crappy daytime TV show. I can’t remember the name of this one. I know it’s got one actor playing three different brothers. One’s got a massive beard (fake), one’s clean-shaven, and one’s got long hair and a gold earring (the long hair’s a wig, I’m pretty sure).

I know I’ll look like Mom when I grew up; I got my blonde hair and my blue eyes from her. Her hair’s paler than mine, though. And she stays out of the sun, so she doesn’t have my tan. I’ve got my dad’s high cheekbones, but my maybe-too-big nose is all from her side of the family.

She’s
still pretty, but she always looks too worried and too tired. She works too long at the flower shop down on Jetty Avenue. She loves it, though. She brings home big bouquets of wilting-just-a-little posies and carnations and tulips if no one else buys them. And she spends most of her weekends buying and selling little trinkets and weird things on eBay. She calls it her retirement fund.

I hate
how tired she looks all the time. I want her to live in a big fancy mansion like the Moores. I want her to lay by a nice cool pool all day long. With lots of sexy Latin cabana boys in white shirts and shorts to come serve her fresh Cosmopolitans and juicy, perfectly sliced mangoes whenever she wanted.

“Hey Mom,” I called out, heading to my room to pack up the bag of things I’d
need for housesitting the Moores’ place. “How was your day?”

“Boring,” Mom called back. Her voice was flat and
fatigued. “Like always.”

I winced and closed my eyes.

Goddamnit, Mom
, I thought.
Look outside. This is the nicest summer we’ve had in years. Can’t the sunshine cheer you up? Can’t seeing your daughter cheer you up?

“OK,” I said. I tried to keep my voice happy. “Well, maybe you can have some fun while I’m gone. Have some of your friends over and have a girl’s night in.
You could have a bring-a-bottle cocktail night, like you and Dad used to.”

“Whatever,” Mom said. She never looked up from the TV.

When I’d packed my bag up I stood in the hallway, unsure what to do. Mom’s been staying home more and more lately, just parking herself in front of the TV and not getting up until it’s time for bed. I felt bad, leaving her all on her own in the house, even for a little while.

“Hey,” I said, “the Moor
es are leaving me enough money for house-sitting for me to eat with too, so we’ll have a little more left over from my check at the restaurant this week. Maybe we could go out for dinner or something? Just you and me?”

Mom snorted.

“Must be nice for them,” she said. “Having all that money.”

“OK Mom,” I said, and my throat was suddenly tight. “I’ll drop in tomorrow, see how you’re doing.”

“Bye, Lisa Jeanne,” she called. She didn’t turn around.

I hauled my raggedy
-ass green canvas bag up the long, winding drive to the Moores’ house. Their place was just amazing. It wasn’t like anyone else’s on the block, even on the ritzy side of the town. Hell, it wasn’t like anyone else’s in the whole neighborhood.

Mark’s dad’s
first job was in computer software or computer hardware or something like that. One time Mark told me his dad had invented something back in the 80s that apparently made it easier to hook a printer up to any kind of computer. Mark would always get kind of embarrassed whenever I talked about it.

“Yeah, awesome, my dad’s a giant nerd,” he’d always say to his buddies, and then he’d roll his eyes. I told him once that he should be nicer about his dad, and he didn’t say a word to me the rest of the night. Until we were driving home and he started telling me off for “disrespecting” him in front of his friends. We had a massive fight over that.

All he says now is that everyone uses his dad’s software and Ed (that’s Mark’s dad) gets paid a ton because of the commission. So Ed branched out into a whole lot of other businesses and that’s how Alex Locke came into the picture.

Anywa
y, their place was up on top of one of the big hills on the east side of the city, away from the ocean, and you could see it for blocks around. It was this big white mansion with perfectly-manicured, deep green lawns, and views that went right out to the bay. They had everything you could think of: a tennis court, a swimming pool, a Jacuzzi, a home theatre . . . In the lounge room was this hydraulic thing—you pressed a button and half the walls slid back so the sound system could come out.

There was even an elevator down to the
garage and the basement wine cellar. I never even knew you could have an elevator in your house before. Their house was one of those places where you walk in and you don’t want to even breathe on anything because you know if you break it you’re gonna have to pay at least a thousand dollars for it.

It actually kind of reminded me of an Apple store. Everything was clean and white and sleek. And always spotless—they had a bunch of speedy little silver Roombas and Dino the dog would go crazy chasing them around
, woofing at them and trying to either scare them away or get them to play with him.

Except they weren’t rich jerks or anything. Ed and Michelle (that’s
Mrs. Moore) were really nice. They always asked me how I’d been and how school was going and what Mark and I were doing on the weekend.

When I unlocked the big front door Dino came charging down the stairs to bark at me.

“Hey, chill out!” I said, laughing. When he saw who it was he tumbled straight over onto his back and waited for me to come and rub his tummy. His fur was soft and short and when I scratched his belly his little eyes closed in happiness.

“OK, OK,” I said, giving up. “I gotta go put my stuff away.”

He didn’t move—but he opened his eyes and gave me a look full of sorrow and yearning.

How could you do this to me?
was all I could see in his big brown eyes.

“Knock it off, Dino,” I said, getting back to my feet. “The guilt trip
thing doesn’t work on me.”

There were two notes on the kitchen table, along with a big hamper of some of Michelle’s home-made muffins.

Lisa Jeanne
, the first note read.
Thanks again for watching the place while we’re away. I wish you could have come with us. You’ve got our numbers, so just have fun, and don’t let Dino boss you around.

Love,

Michelle.

PS—Alex has to drop by to get some blueprints off his computer. He’s got a key, though, so don’t worry about hanging around to let him in or anything.

My heart started to beat a little faster. Alex Locke was going to be coming by? Well, I might not hang around for him, but if I didn’t have anything better to do, I might just hang out by the pool in case he dropped in while I was sunbathing...

Dude!
I said to myself.
Quit it! You’re as bad as Darci!

The second note was from Mark. His handwriting was messy, like he’d written it in a rush.

Gonna miss you, babe
, it said.
I’ll try to call you from my grandma’s place. Don’t get lonely without me xx

“Thanks for the romance, lover,” I said to the empty kitchen.

*

Mark and I had sex for the first time after our three-month anniversary. Lots of girls I know didn’t like their first time. In fact, Darci told me her first time was about as much fun as being stuck on a runaway pony with a dildo strapped to its back.

I laughed so hard about that. Darci told me right as we were sneaking up the narrow hallway to her room after breaking curfew. She whispered it in my ear while we were creeping back in. We were trying so hard not to make any noise on the old hardwood floor. We were carrying our shoes and I almost fell over I was giggling so much. I had to stick my hand over my mouth and tiptoe past her little sister’s room with my shoulders shaking.

I got a nervous, fluttery f
eeling in my tummy after that whenever I thought about sex. All I could think about was the look on Darci’s when she was telling me that.

That first night with Mark wasn’t so bad, though. I was shaking, I was so nervous, but I pretended not to show it. I just smiled at him and lay back in the soft
, cool silk pillows against the headboard, pretending like I wasn’t wound so tight I was almost ready to jump out of my skin.

But I think Mark was more nervous than I was—he was getting really flustered trying to stay quiet so his parents wouldn’t hear us. He tried about ten times to get the condom wrapper open. After his fingers started shaking I got out my little scissors from my bag and snipped the top off. I watched the little blue sliver of wrapper fall to the floor and made a mental note to sneak it out of the house before his mom cleaned his room next.

Finally we were naked in his big bed but every tiny little sound made him jump. When we did it for the first time it was over pretty quickly. There was barely time for us to start getting into it when he suddenly grabbed my waist and came like a fire hydrant.

Then he got more embarrassed than I’ve ever seen anyone get, and he went red. I could feel his face burning in the dark. He mumbled something about sorry for not going longer, and he didn’t want to talk about it no matter how much I told him it didn’t matter. Finally we both pretended to go to sleep. Then he did go to sleep, and I spent the next half hour staring up at the ceiling
, listening to Mark’s sleeping breath. It wasn’t exactly the magic I’d expected. But I guess it wasn’t the magic he’d expected either.

We’ve gotten better at it since then, but we’ve still never had what you’d call a marathon session. I keep trying to take it up a level, to talk dirty to him, or to get wild. But he gets really uncomfortable with that kind of stuff. I guess that’s why he never liked Darci; she’s got a (well-deserved) reputation as a bad girl.

I don’t know, I guess I just think that sex could be—should be—something fun. And not just for boys.

*

I bit into one of the muffins. It was moist and chewy and tasted delicious—Michelle’s the best baker I know. She should have her own show on reality TV, like,
Cake Boss
or something (yeah, I know, it’s kinda lame that I love
Cake Boss
. But it’s a guilty pleasure).

All I wanted to do that summer was n
othing at all. But then the Moores decided they were going to go to the east coast to visit Michelle’s mother in New Hampshire. She was sick, though I don’t know what she had.

There was no way I could get time off from one job,
let alone two, right as the busiest season was starting. So I was relieved when they said it was family-only. I’d miss Mark, but I figured I’d take the time and just chill with my girlfriends for two weeks.

And then one afternoon Mrs.
Moore and I were in the kitchen, just chatting about stuff while she made some treats. She also makes these awesome sugar-free banana and macadamia butter cookies. She had them in the oven and the savory smell of them baking was filled up the kitchen. My mouth was watering when she sat me down and asked, “Lisa, would you be happy to house-sit for us for two weeks? We know it’s a bit of a responsibility, looking after the dog, so we’d pay you for your trouble.”

I was licking the dough off the beater when she said it. My eyes must have lit up like a puppy seeing a tennis ball.

Are you kidding me? I get to live like a princess and get paid for it? Sign me up, Mrs. M!

They made me promise not to have any crazy parties (as if I wanted anyone messing their place up and putting me in debt for the rest of my life). Then they zipped off to the East Coast. I tried to get Mark to have sex the night before he left but he said he was too tired and stressed about his grandma. So we just sat and watched a movie until I fell asleep.