“Oh, okay. Cool.”
“Huh, well have fun, Scout.”
I’m relieved. At least Nate and I didn’t settle for begging for Scout to stay, though I’m getting more and more curious about her attachment to Steph. Nate and I have to talk at some point in the future anyway.
She winks at us and leaves Nate standing in front of me. Of course, I happen to turn and face his crotch. Seeing that lump in his jeans flushes me with hot shame. I’ll break out in an all-out sweat in the next five seconds if I stay so close. Maybe I could reach out, and jerk him off here. Show the girls to stay away, even just for tonight, while I figure out what I want.
I scoot back and say, “Want to sit?” remembering I have to do something.
He looks back to his group. One guy is licking between his fingers, two just smile, and the other picks at his chair.
I’m ruined. They know, Nate knows, everyone knows.
“Outside?”
I nod and follow. I burn up seeing the same spot Nate and I sat at when I made that bet and gave him head. Thankfully, that memory must be too painful for him at the moment and we sit under a different gas heater at a different set of chairs.
The next amount of never-ending time is silent torture. We must look serious because no one drops in to chat, to offer a drink. There are no interruptions besides Nate and I trying to bury away from this tense moment without moving. Nate sits with his legs open, arms on either side of the chair, picking at the armrests. I keep my eyes down and follow every scratch, change of position, and noise he makes under my lashes where he can’t see me.
The gas heater is hot but I’m shivering regardless. The shiver is exactly like the one I have when I’m sick, like that time I had the flu and I’d shiver despite having no sheets on me and it being the middle of summer. This is a shiver that goes all the way to my bones, that feels like my skin is going to slip right off me and I’ll die right here.
From shame.
From confusion.
Why am I feeling so strongly? I’ve never cared before. And I shouldn’t. I don’t have feelings for Nate. He knew that, and didn’t ask me to go out exclusively.
I don’t owe him anything. Yet it feels the opposite.
After timing fifteen whole agonising minutes of silence and cutthroat tension, Nate dismisses me with a look I’ll never forget. Which is fitting, considering I cut his heart out.
Tonight, I didn’t just dress up as a whore for this party, I embodied one.
At the same time I think, Good, you slut, you deserved to be raped by Him, Nate says, “Click, click.”
It sounds like click, click forever.
I finally got to where I want to be. Public sex, exposed and stripped. I proved I wasn’t attached to Nate.
Is it everything you wanted it to be, Kalli? I don’t want to think about the answer to that but I feel it in my mind and in the shaken state of my body.
13
That night into that morning, I lie for hours, staring at the blackness of my ceiling. Thoughts don’t end and sleep won’t come.
How long will Nate be mad?
Is Scout hiding the fact she’s a lesbian? She’s never given an afterthought to female hook ups—at least not in gossip to me. Why is she so into this girl?
When I hear a noise, I jump out of bed since I’m doing nothing else anyway. It’s from the twins’ room. Wide awake, I pad down there. I need the distraction.
“Tris, baby,” I say, crawling into position near him. I plonk him between my legs and cuddle. “You okay?” I say, lips to his soft hair.
“I saw it again,” he whispers.
“Saw what?”
He dips his head back so he’s staring up from under my face. “Mummy drowning me.”
I clamp my lips to restrain the cry that is begging to escape. Since it won’t go, I rearrange my arms, holding his knees in close, and holding him so tight to my heart that no monsters can scare him.
“From the pool?”
I feel him nod.
“Tris, Mum … she’s different. She’s weird and crazy and mean sometimes, but she loves you and would never want to hurt you. You know Mum always wants you to have fun. That’s all she was trying to do.”
He starts whimpering. I flip him around and wipe the tears, then kiss both spots on his cheeks. Why give us so much feeling? Why must we love so hard and feel so damn low? He’s a child.
“Sorry I cried.”
“Hey, I’m not like Mum. I don’t expect sorry for how you feel, ‘kay? Cry if you need to.”
So he does, for a few minutes, until my soft lullabies stop his chest-stuttering sobs.
“I’m just scared to tell you something.”
“Don’t be, Tris. What is it?”
“I peed in the pool. I was so scared and—” He hangs his head. “—and … it happened!”