“You need to leave, Molloy,” Joey seethed, chest heaving, as he quickly stepped out of my reach again. “Now. I’m not fucking around here.” His gaze flicked to the house again and I could see the anxiety in his eyes. “You need to go,” he snarled, stalking down the driveway. “You need to go now, Molloy,” he added when he reached the garden wall. “Just fucking go. Please.”
"I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me," I argued, not giving him an inch, as I stalked towards him and reclaimed the space that he had put between us.
The rain was pouring down on both of us, but I wasn’t walking away.
Not now that I knew.
Not ever again.
I had a decent life, and a relatively stable home life. Sure, my father had a roaming eye, which mean that my parents’ relationship was off more times than it was on, but neither he nor Mam were abusive to each other or to myself and Kev.
We didn’t have a whole pile of money behind us, and we depended on social housing like most of the families on our estate, but we weren’t lacking anything, and definitely not love. It was given unconditionally and came from an unlimited supply source.
Most importantly, they didn’t beat us or starve us, and we weren’t woken in the dead of the night to the sound of glass shattering or flesh pummeling flesh.
We weren’t afraid to speak our minds or launch an opinion for fear of physical retaliation like his mother and siblings so obviously were.
"It’s okay, Joe,” I urged, imploring him to hear me, as I pushed my damp hair off my face. “I get it now.”
And I did.
Suddenly all of the aggression and mood swings began to make sense.
The drugs.
The fighting.
The vicious way he attacked both Paul and Kevin when he thought I was under threat.
It was like a raincloud had lifted in front of my eyes.
He wasn’t violent by nature.
He was violent because he wasn’t nurtured at home.
“I understand what’s happening here, and I'm on your side."
"You don’t know shit about what’s happening here," Joey warned, backing up another step when I reached up and touched the darkening bruise on his cheek. "Don't touch me."
"Why not?" I closed the space between us once more, pinning him to the garden wall. I reached up and let my fingers graze over the cut on his brow. "Are you afraid I'm going to hurt you?"
"No," he strangled out, shaking from head to toe, as he physically strained his body away from me. "I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”
His words threw us both.
“Hurt me?” I repeated and quickly shook my head. “All you’ve ever done is look out for me, Joey Lynch. You would never hurt me.”
“I could,” he argued back, running a hand through his soaked hair. “I might.”
Wide-eyed and chest heaving, he watched me warily, waiting for my reaction.
Waiting for my rejection, I quickly realized.
“That’s not going to happen.” With my eyes locked on his, and my heart hammering wildly in my chest, I forced myself not to flinch. Not to turn away at the sight of his bruised face, or the dark circles under his eyes, as I whispered, "Because you're not him."
Joey stiffened. "You don’t know that, Molloy. You don’t know me. I break everything I care about. That’s what I do. I fuck it all up.”
My heart skipped about three dozen beats.
“It’s okay to let yourself care about me, Joe,” I whispered, knowing that I was treading on some very dangerous territory right now, but not having the self-control to fall back and retreat to safer surroundings.
Not when the only place I ever wanted to be seemed to be in the middle of one of his breakdowns.
"Don’t do that.” His voice was gruff, green eyes full of dangerous heat. “Don’t look at me like I’m that guy, Molloy. Don’t look for hidden meanings in the things I say. I’m not the guy for you.” He shook his head and blew out a pained breath “I will break this…” he paused to gesture between us, before adding, “Whatever this is; this warped little friendship we’ve formed over the years? I will fuck it up.”
“But will you mean it?” I pushed, refusing to back off. “That’s the important part.”
“No.” His green eyes narrowed on me, studying me with a sharpness that was entirely unnerving and exhilarating all in one breath. “I won’t mean it, of course I won’t fucking mean it, but that won’t stop it from happening—“
His words broke off when I kissed him.
That’s right, I lost my head right there in the middle of his street, threw caution to the wind, and slammed my lips to his.
His entire frame froze for a long moment, stiff and unmoving, and I briefly wondered if I had made a terrible mistake, but then he was kissing me back, twisting our bodies around so that I was the one with my back to his garden wall, as his lips moved against mine with an air of expertise that was truly rattling.
My breath came hard and fast, leaving me feeling almost faint, as I swayed against his tall frame.
He wasn’t overly big or hugely muscular, even though I knew from watching enough of his fights that he was ridiculously strong.
Instead, he was lean, with muscles that were defined beneath his taut, tanned skin.
Reaching up, I wrapped my arms around his neck, holding on to this boy for dear life, as I kissed him back with everything I had inside of me.
This was our first kiss, and it wasn’t the comet-hitting-earth moment I had anticipated from years of binge-watching unhealthy teen sitcoms.
It wasn’t anything like what happened in the movies.
It was so much more.
This kiss was real, and raw, and gritty, and so full of unspoken emotion that I felt my legs shake from the pressure.
His arms came around my body, with one hand resting on my hip, as he knotted the other in my hair, kissing me back with an intensity that caused jolting shocks of pleasure to ripple through my core every time his tongue brushed against mine.
Drowning in both my senses and the rain hammering down on us, I allowed myself to be completely swept up in the moment, in him.
Nothing else mattered to me in this moment.
All I could see, feel, taste, touch was him.
He was everywhere.
Consuming me entirely.
I had three and a half years’ worth of kisses with Paul, and a few other boys before him, to prepare me, but nothing could have prepared me for the feelings this particular boy evoked inside of me.
He could have had all of me right there in the rain and I wouldn’t have raised a finger in protest. That was how deep the dangerous feelings I had developed for him went.
Joey kissed me like he was starving for me and no one else’s lips could sate the hunger overtaking him. I knew the feeling and returned it unconditionally as I kissed him back with an insatiable hunger of my own.
With his lips never leaving me, he lifted me up with effortless ease and set me down on his garden wall. And then his hands were on my bare legs, his experienced fingers gliding over the smooth skin of my thighs, as he pushed them apart and stepped between them.
His hands were in my hair, his tongue in my mouth, his big body cemented to mine, all of his hard edges probing against my soft ones, and even though I knew I was a shitty person for not breaking up with Paul before kissing someone else, all I could think about was how epically right it felt to be with Joey.
This kiss was going to have consequences, I realized.
Huge, heart-stopping, feeling-igniting consequences.
MAYBE YOU’RE THE DANGEROUS ONE
JANUARY 7TH 2004
JOEY
I had whiplash from the crazy twists and turns this day had taken.
It had started with a fight with my dad, the middle involved a whole heap of trouble at school, and it was ending in a kiss.
Feeling Molloy’s soft lips against mine, as she moaned into my mouth and pushed her body against mine, was entirely too much for me to handle in this moment.
I was reeling; completely fucking thrown by the girl whose hands were knotted in my hair.
Her scent, so fresh and addictive, invaded my lungs, taking me down harder than a punch from my old man ever could.
It’s this scent you remember, my brain quickly recognized, and this hair.
With my heart racing wilder than any drug had ever provoked, I held her in my arms, fought the feeling of panic that was climbing up my throat, and allowed myself to finally stop fighting against the tide of feelings overcoming me.
The feelings that had been drowning me for five years.