hope to get super inappropriate with your body. You sweaty right now? It’s hot as Hades for May.”
“The weather?”
I stifle a smug laugh. “Yeah, the weather. I’m not talking about your body right this second.”
“Yes, it’s hot. Yes, I’m sweaty. I’m hiding under my blankets.”
I close my eyes and lay my head back on the glass wall of the phone booth. She’s sweaty. In bed. In silk. Under the blankets. And she’s choosing to talk to me. “Let me come to you. Let me show you what it could be like.”
“You gonna go to another girl if I say no?”
No chance in hell. “Maybe, if someone’s offering up what you aren’t.”
“Pig.”
“I’m a man. You’ll love that about me once you let me show you.”
“Shit! I’ve gotta go.”
My eyes snap open. “No, wait! Don’t run off now. I’ll stop talking about my dick, I promise.”
“No, I’ve really gotta go. Daddy’s awake. See ya, Bry.”
“Nelly! Wait.” But she doesn’t. The line falls dead and my world suddenly snaps back to reality.
Like a rubber band stretching, stretching, stretching; for ten minutes, I was right there with her. I was in her bed, sweating under the sheets, sliding my legs between hers and sharing her oxygen.
But now I’m standing at the top end of Gordon Avenue in an orange and silver phone booth as fruit flies zoom around my head. I’m still sweating, but that’s because even at ten at night, the temperature’s still in the eighties.
I stand in the booth for a full minute in hopes she might call back.
I move out slowly and lean against my car for ten more. When she doesn’t call back, I go for a walk.
Six blocks. A hundred and eighty second round trip on foot.
I stop across the street from her place and study the darkness. All the lights are out. No TV lights flickering between the curtains. No cries of pain or help me.
He woke up. She had to go.
But she wasn’t caught.
Safe for tonight, with my hands dug deep in my pockets, I wander back to my car and drive back to Geo’s apartment.
Chapter 4
Nelly
I skid out of last period math and practically sprint to the parking lot.
I don’t want Shane to catch me. I want Bryan.
Ignoring my friends’ calls, ignoring the teacher when she calls me back to discuss my not-an-A, ignoring Shane’s eyes when I sprint past him to the parking lot; I run, and I exhilarate in the feel of my backpack slapping my butt as I move.
I don’t have a car. I’ve never driven to school.
I drive my daddy’s truck on the weekends to go grocery shopping.
I learned on my first lesson how to drive stick. I crunched the gears once.
Once.
The welts on the backs of my legs ensured I never did it twice. It also ensured no skirts that summer, and no swimming at the lake with my friends. Or Bryan.
I emerge from the concrete hall leading out of the main building. With a smile plastered over my face and wings of anticipation battering at my heart, I stop in the middle of the lot with a cry of frustration at the lack of a Mustang.
Bryan Kincaid graduated last year – and by graduated, I’m pretty sure he just dropped out at the eleventh hour – but despite the fact he’s no longer a student here, he’s stood in this parking lot watching me for three years. He wasn’t always as bold as he is now. The ear licking is fairly new. The hands on my hips are new.
Just like the phone calls he’s been answering the last three nights are new.
My daddy’s gonna kill me next month. He’s gonna kill me so bad.
But the phone bill is nothing when I spin a full three sixty in the parking lot and find no sign of Bryan Kincaid. The thought that I might see him, the promise that even if I continued to say no – ‘because I have a boyfriend’, thus leaving my conscience clear – he would still touch me; those were the imagined daydreams that got me through the day.
And now, nothing. He’s not here.
Tears of disappointment burn my eyes, then a scream of excitement rips from my throat when hungry hands wrap around my waist and tug me from my feet. Like a rollercoaster, I close my eyes and enjoy the wind in my hair as he practically runs, carrying me like a football, through one hall, then another, out the other side of the school to