Totally and Completely Fine(21)

I turned back. Slowly. Menacingly.

Gabe took a step back.

“Everyone?” I asked. “Everyone who?”

“You know,” he said.

It was kind of sweet, what Gabe was doing. Not for me, of course, but for Spencer. Gabe was trying to protect his best friend. From the town harlot. Who just happened to live across the hall.

“Aren’t there other guys?” Gabe asked.

Of course there were. That was the problem. There had been other guys. Too many guys. I’d gone beyond the socially approved limit of the number of boys a seventeen-year-old girl was allowed to date and now I was expected to just stop. Stop going out. Stop flirting. Stop having fun. And definitely stop having sex.

Life was short. I could be dead tomorrow.

It wasn’t my fault that all of a sudden Gabe’s annoying friend, who only yesterday had been slurping Yoo-hoo and playing video games, had grown several inches and a whole lot of muscle after spending a summer doing construction.

And had ingratiated himself back into our household just like old times.

Jessica had been right about one thing. Spencer was hot.

That wasn’t my doing.

And sure, I had taken to wearing some really low-rise jeans and “forgetting” to wear my bra whenever he came over—which was often now—but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen me in my swimsuit every summer since we were kids.

I couldn’t stop him from looking.

And it wasn’t like I’d started going to church to get his attention. When I’d heard that Spencer had gently, kindly turned Jessica down after she’d been going to his church for almost six months, I hadn’t been proud of the vindication I’d felt.

But we weren’t friends anymore.

Jessica abandoned me for Spencer. And god. Unfortunately, only one of them was interested in return.

That was fine. It wasn’t like I had anything to say to her. Unless it was “told you so.”

“Just stay away from him, okay?” Gabe asked.

I rolled my eyes at him.

It wasn’t my fault that the other night, when I’d been alone in the kitchen, Spencer had come up from the basement, where the guys were playing video games or watching porn or whatever. It wasn’t my fault that it had been hot, and I’d been standing in front of the fridge in a thin white T-shirt trying to cool off. And it definitely hadn’t been my fault that Spencer had smelled like grass and clean hair, or that his arm had brushed my side when he reached past me to get a can of pop.

If anything, I was just an innocent bystander.

But still.

Nothing had happened.

Nothing besides a few more accidental bumps and brushes against each other.

And it wasn’t like there’d be anything more than that. Spencer was the Good Churchgoing Boy. I was the dangerous man-eating succubus slut.

It would never happen.

“Go away,” I told Gabe. “I mean it.”

“But—”

“Now,” I said.

I was gratified that he jumped before scurrying off. It made me feel powerful and in control. Which was a lot better than feeling like the entire world—my brother included—thought I was the biggest slut that ever slutted.

Chapter 14

Now

I stood outside of the trailer door—the one with Ben’s name on it—with that free-fall feeling in my stomach, though it was mixed with a little queasiness, like I’d eaten too much funnel cake. My hands were clammy. My armpits damp. I felt nervous and anxious and not especially sexy, but then I thought about the way Ben had been looking at me.

I thought about how I likely wouldn’t get another chance.

I thought about what I wanted.

I knocked—a quick one, two, three—and waited.

When the door swung open, there he was, smiling down at me. His hair was wet. His eyes were…everything.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi,” I said.

He extended a hand toward me, and I took it, allowing myself to be pulled up the steep steps to the trailer.

He shut the door behind me, leaning back on it. He was wearing the same shirt he’d worn to pick me up the other day—or another identical one—and a pair of sweatpants. All black. His feet were bare.

The makeup was gone, and I could see a tattoo on his arm—it looked like…

“Is that a harp?” I asked.

He pushed his sleeve up to reveal the whole thing.

“Symbol of Irish independence,” he said. “All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.”

I stared.

“That’s a quote from Yeats,” he said. “Fran’s favorite.”

Of course. He was just reciting poetry. Who was this man?

And who was Fran?

I wanted to know, but also, did I?

Instead, I moved closer to him, lifting a curious hand. He angled his shoulder toward me, allowing me to touch.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, tracing the strings of the instrument.

“Do you have any?” Ben asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t like needles,” I said.

“It’s not so bad,” he said.

“That’s what everyone says. And they’re always wrong.”

Ben rolled down his sleeve.

“I’ve been told it’s nothing compared to childbirth.”