“George?”
Crowell spends so much time with me, even talking me out of my scheduled suicide attempt a few weeks ago. Since then, our friendship has changed and he’s picked me up from school every day.
The heat nauseates me. “I’m fine.” I poke my tongue at him, breathe in his cologne and my scent. My smell still clings to his fingers and mouth. On the way home, I washed away his taste with a mini bottle of whipped cream flavored vodka.
Guilt plagues me. Part of my attraction to him is his resemblance to my idol, Sloane Mason, especially now with his brown hair so unkempt. I dare not mention Sloane. Crowell will only scream at me again as he did the entire way home, last night, after he dragged me away from Sloane.
It wasn’t until I went over the dreamy night that I remembered he hit Crowell. Another event where reason is lost to me.
More regret surges through me at being so out of it during my lovemaking with Sloane. At first, he treated me as I acted, like any one of his legions offering him free pussy. By the end, though, an unforgettable connection had been forged between us.
Not that it matters to him. Bond or not, he’s still a figment of my adoration. I know him but I don’t really know him. Crowell is a real, flesh-and-blood man. The only person who’s willing to look after me. “Are you okay?”
“God, Josh is going to castrate me if he finds out about our oral sex sessions.”
I frown at Crowell’s proper terminology, but don’t comment. He’s nervous and still annoyed with me about last night. “We’ve done it four or five times already,” I remind him. The first time was on my sixteenth birthday when Mom gave me two bottles of Cristal and had my own personal shopper assigned to me.
Dad gave me diamonds and a car. I’m supposed to have someone with me whenever I drive until I’m seventeen, but, that’s like four months away. My parents break the rules and mostly look the other way when Josh does it.
Why can’t I? It isn’t as if they care one way or the other.
“We can’t do this shit anymore.” Crowell’s guilty voice matches his expression. Lamp light reflects in the gleaming blue of his eyes. He runs a hand over his hair that my fingers destroyed. “I got completely naked this time, George.”
“I’ve gotten completely naked every time,” I snap at him.
He glares at me, the reflection from the outside lamps and beaming from the spotlights situated in the grass, blends with the soft light behind me and turns him devil-like. “My di…penis was too close to your… vag—“
I huff in exasperation. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I whisper-screech. “Since when did your dick become a penis? Not in all the years I’ve known you.”
“Well, it is now,” he says tightly. “I can get fucking arrested.”
“I’d never tell,” I swear in truth. Why would I…?
“I have a girlfriend, Georgiana.”
My heart stops. Drops. Then starts a fast, frantic rhythm. I realize this news isn’t shocking. And that hurts a little more. I saw his girlfriend the other day at the barbeque place Crowell took me for dinner after school. Fake D-cup boobs, fake blonde hair, fake pouty lips. Just fucking fake. She came to the table and studied me long and hard. Crowell’s mouth twisted in a sucked-on-lemon expression as he introduced her to me. I hadn’t understood.
Now, I do.
Tears rush to my eyes. I’m sobering up. His announcement has killed the buzz of the alcohol, weed, coke and orgasm. I’ve already lost dad’s oldest son, and my half-brother, Cash, to his biker lifestyle. “I’m losing you, too?”
He groans, reminding me how he sounds when he’s coming in my mouth. That other, older girls know, too. I hate being sixteen. I’m caught between childhood and womanhood and it sucks.
I wish I was my mom’s age. She’s so gorgeous. So settled with her life. I ponder how that feels. Mom does so much good for so many people, but she doesn’t have a lot of time for me, anymore. Lately, Dad only has time for Mom or Josh. Josh only has time for work and women.
I only had Crowell. Now, he’s being taken away, too.
“If it’s about last night, I’m sorry.”
He stiffens. I know what transpired last night—as much as his girlfriend—is the problem.
“Nothing happened,” I lie again, as much to keep Sloane out of trouble as it is to grasp at a desperate straw so Crowell won’t leave me.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” He borrows my phrase of outrage. “His scent was all over you.”
Unable to refute that, I mumble, “He thought I was eighteen.”
Crowell’s ugly scowl makes me step back. Sometimes, even when his face isn’t bruised and swollen, he frightens me. With the added split lip, cut cheek, and swollen, purple eye, I consider fleeing without finishing the conversation.