Forever Dark(14)

If only I knew. I get drunk and I know I’ve had sex but I’m not sure with who. Thankfully I’m on birth control because there are even times when I know they don’t use anything. It disgusts me that I allow this. That my life is made up of moments that mean absolutely nothing to me, that I can’t even remember, yet I continue on.

I look at him now. “I don’t need this shit from you, Landon. You’re not any better.”

“I’m not sleeping around on Macy.” You can’t miss the defensiveness to his tone. There usually is when we talk about Macy, or Cash. Neither one of us want to admit there’s anything wrong. When everything so clearly is.

“You might as well be.” I stare out the window at the glow around the street light that sits not twenty feet away, an angelic halo comes off of it that has me mesmerized. “How’s Amber? Or what’s that chick’s name you were kissing the other day? Kendra?”

I turn my head to look at him when he doesn’t answer me.

Landon rolls his eyes but says nothing more. He knows the truth. He may not be sleeping around with girls but Landon can’t keep his hands off women. He’s always been that way.

I’m not in the mood for this so I give him a nod and open the door to the truck. When I do, I let the smoke out, it rolls in waves around me as I step outside into the cool crisp fall air. I keep the joint in my hand and walk across the campus, still smoking. I don’t care who sees me. Sure, if campus security sees me I could get in trouble but I bet you ninety percent of the kids at this school smoke.

The longer I walk, the more my mind drifts. I’ve made a few circles around the building when I find my eyes looking up at Cash’s dorm room. We both have lived in the Global Scholars Hall and have since freshman year. They don’t let you choose the building you’re in freshman year but strangely enough, Cash and I were in the same building along with Macy and Landon. We’re separated by one floor, I’m on the second, he’s on the third. For three years we’ve practically been on top of one another but we’ve never quite been able to get back to where we were.

When I count over from the far left to find his window, I see that his light is on. I let my mind drift as I inhale and sit down on the concrete bench outside. I kind of feel like a stalker for a half a second.

Then I remember why I do this. I miss his smell and the warmth of his body. I miss him. It’s hard to say why I can’t let him go. It’s because I have to have the connection.

We’re not the same anymore.

After the accident, I was lost in more ways than one. I turned to those I shouldn’t have, destroyed everything and everyone around me by making alliances with the devil.

Now here I am three years later and I’m still destroying everything. After Steven died, nothing was the same. I’ll be the first to admit a part of me died right beside him on that road. Landon would agree.

After Steven’s funeral, Cash and I stayed together, until prom. I can’t even say we stayed together and that be entirely true. We were together in the sense that we were swept away just like the shattered glass that caked the street that December night.

And then I made my life, and his, worse the following spring.

Our senior prom that year, I decided I was getting high in a broom closet and decided to make everything a lot worse.



I felt the bass of the hip-hop song pumping in the background as Landon pushed himself from the wall. He was drunk, slow movements and heavy lids, he twisted around and started dancing, shaking his ass to the beat of “Goodies.” I laughed so hard it hurt, but he knew exactly how to make me laugh. We had a dance-off in the janitor’s closet, all the while, forgetting forever. Fuck forever. I didn’t want to think about forever. At least not right then.

We’re right now.

I shook my hips, my ass, and Landon watched. His eyes low, hooded but cold, marred by misery. There was some amusement there, captured by an innocence he was afraid to let anyone see anymore. Anyone but me. I saw it because he’s comfortable. He knew I never judged him.

Landon stepped forward, his left hand reached out to touch my hips as I moved. It was a tentative touch, unsure, but it’s still there and shocking. Landon didn’t touch me like that. There was something in the way he watched me that should have warned me.

As the song changed, his head bent, his ear pressed to my cheek. My head twisted at the same time his did. He paused, another unsure moment, and then he moved his lips against mine, urgent and needing pulling my lower lip into his mouth. I gasped, trying to figure out what was happening when Landon let out this low rumble of a groan. His consuming kiss was warm and tasted of smoke and whiskey. Shocked at first I lost my bearings when his tongue moved against mine. He grunted, pushing me with his strong body against the wall. Every inch of him was in line with me. I moved slightly, parting my legs as one of his moved between mine, his thigh against my center. It was a touch I craved from anyone and I wanted so badly to feel that sensation without the words I knew might come, “Are you okay?” but in my pain-filled heart I knew that he wasn’t going to ask that. He didn’t care.