Playing Hurt

Chelsea

charging





After a Road Runner cartoon, the opening credits reveal that the night’s feature is an Alfred Hitchcock number—Vertigo, with Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart. The movie makes me wonder what it’d be like to love someone so much, you’d stalk their double. Really—what would it be like to be that infatuated?

I glance sideways at Clint. In so many ways, this black diamond of a man, his insides obscured by darkness, is nothing like the overtly romantic Gabe, who wears his love for me like a screenprinted message on a T-shirt. Is it completely bizarre to be drawn to two guys who are practically polar opposites? What does it mean about how I feel for Gabe when I’m drawn to someone else who’s so completely different?

Clint begins to run his fingertips down my arm, erasing the question marks that have been swirling through my mind, replacing them with bold-print exclamations. His touch is gentle, but I feel like he’s just lit my skin on fire.

He’s never reached out and touched me this way.

I lean toward him, locking his gaze for a minute before closing my eyes and finding his lips on mine.

God, he tastes as good as the butter-laden popcorn—better. Forget Jimmy and Kim—Clint and I are the night’s hottest couple.

Wait—couple?

“Chelsea,” he murmurs in my ear. “Do you give a crap about this movie?”

I flash what feels like a devilish grin, shake my head no. He throws himself back into his seat, starts the engine, and reaches for my hand as he steers out of the drive-in.

I’m soaring as I feel Clint’s hand in mine. I swear—Publishers Clearing House winners couldn’t be any happier when they peer through the curtains to see balloons and a five-foot check waiting for them on the porch.

Clint and I ride quietly back toward the edge of the lake. The eerie shriek of loons and the creaky-screen-door call of crickets fill the cab with their music.

He cuts the engine in a secluded area—a rough and rugged section of shore. No dock, no kayak rental, no signs proclaiming when the next fishing boat will leave the dock. Just the moon, the crickets, the loons, and the trees.

Without a word, Clint covers my lips with his own. I savor the feel of him a moment before deciding to test him a bit; I strengthen the kiss. But Clint doesn’t pull away. He answers back—his mouth plunges deeper against my own, no reservations. I sink my fingers into his hair.

We make out for who knows how long. Kissing like that—deep, soulful—it just doesn’t seem to have any time attached to it at all. We kiss until kissing’s not enough. Until Clint’s hand starts to stroke one of my thighs.

A need builds deep inside of me, more powerful than anything I’ve ever felt before. A hunger unfolds—only it isn’t coming from my stomach. It’s coming, to be honest, from a region decidedly lower. I close my eyes and nearly drown in our seclusion, our solitude. Clint reaches up beneath my sundress as his lips start to rove toward my neck. But I wiggle until our mouths meet again.

Clint draws his hand out from underneath my dress and slowly begins working his way up, resting gently on my breast. In a single swift tug, he pulls the top of my sundress down.

A gasp escapes my throat—it had still been too hot, in the early evening hours when I’d dressed, to mess with a bra. My mind starts swimming. I’m not quite sure how to handle being naked from the waist-up, in full view of any die-hard fisherman who just might happen to wander by. But when Clint’s tongue starts tracing my nipple, my mind falls quiet. I’m immersed—only instead of being underwater, I’m under-desire. My hands race all over Clint, even though I’ve never made a conscious decision to touch him. My fingers dive under his shirt, exploring his skin.

Clint tugs at my thighs until I start sliding, my back coming down to rest against the bench seat. His kisses grow deeper as he stretches out on top of me. He slips his hand between my legs, rubbing me through my underwear.

When Clint lifts his face from my mouth, a moan, unlike anything I’ve ever heard coming from my own body, peels out from between my lips.

But it isn’t just that I have this itch I want scratched. It isn’t that I want Clint to do something to me; I want to do as much to Clint. I want to devour every single inch of him. Boyfriends and pasts and right and wrong be damned. I want Clint—wildly.

My hands travel down Clint’s side. I massage his thigh, inching my fingers around to the front of his body. Inching closer to the fly on his shorts.

“Wait,” Clint barks. He flinches as he knocks my hand away. He pushes himself away from me, sits himself up in the driver’s seat, turns his face toward the window.

“Sorry.” I hastily adjust my sundress as I hoist myself back up. “I thought—you seemed like—I didn’t mean to push—”

I stop, wondering if I’m still the same Chelsea Keyes who’d been nervous about losing her virginity in one of the most romantic locations of all time, a swanky room her boyfriend had rented at the Carlyle. Why would I want to give up that kind of first-time perfection? Had I really been ready for—that—to happen here? At the muddy fringes of a lake, with torn-up upholstery scratching my back?

“I do want to,” Clint says. “That’s the problem. I want to so bad that if you touch me, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.”

“Would that really be such a bad thing?” The words pop out so quickly, I wonder for a moment if they’ve actually come from my own mouth.

“I don’t know,” Clint admits, pushing his hair back from his face. “This is so far from where I thought this night would go—so much faster.”

“I’m scared, too, you know.”

“You don’t exactly seem like it.”

“I am—have been—” I sigh. “First time is scary.”

Clint’s frown has crevices deeper than the Grand Canyon. “I thought you had a boyfriend.”

“I do. Hip surgery doesn’t put you on the fast-track to losing your—” I stop short. There’s that word again: virgin.

Clint’s face grows a cloud. He seems to shrink a little, in that moment.

“Don’t freak out on me,” I say, reaching for his hand again. “I know it’s a lot—the boyfriend. The broken hip. The … virginity. I’m not the easiest girl in the world to take on. But I’m not about to add to your load, you know? My issues are mine, not yours.”

“But if I’m complicating things—”

“Then I’d have to smack you upside the head. Don’t forget, you’re the one who just put the brakes on me.”

Clint leans away from me, puts an elbow on the door, rubs his eyes. But there’s far more than just space between us. Including, I remind myself, Rosaline Johnson. The seriousness of the moment weighs as much as Clint’s truck. My mind drifts back to our laughter—and I want desperately to find a path back to it.

“You know what we need?” I ask him, grinning playfully. “A small step. To tackle something that scares the both of us. Together.”

Clint stops rubbing his face to stare off into the distance. He’s wearing a look like a dead-end road sign. My stomach starts to sink in on itself, as I think he’s about to tell me it’s too much, all this history, heavy as an eighteen-wheeler, that the two of us are dragging around.

But I know I have to be delicate here. As much as I want to hang on to him, stay with him until this mood has passed, I know the worst thing I could do would be to press him, turn clingy. Strategy, Chelse, I tell myself. You’re a smart girl. Get yourself a game plan.

“Tomorrow,” I say, nudging his side. “Something that scares both of us. Actually, me more than you.”

“What would that be?” he asks, perking up a little.

“Nope. Tomorrow. Not a word until then.”