Kiss and Break Up - Ella Fields Page 0,53

me, and I cried as I explained what happened while we waited for a cab.

Dash

I’d waited outside the gym, drinking with the guys in the far end of the football field, as the rest of the school acted like a bunch of dingbats, all trussed up like peacocks as they fawned over who looked best and whose shit didn’t stink.

Then we hightailed it to where the real fun would begin at the after party.

But they never showed.

Not Peggy, and not Byron, hell, even Daphne and Willa were only there for a few minutes. All weekend, I’d tried not to let what that could mean send me careening over the edge I’d been balancing on for weeks. But fuck if it wasn’t becoming harder and harder to keep pinwheeling my arms around with the constant state of whiplash that kept slamming into me.

“No friends to be a teenage dirtbag with this weekend?” Dad asked as he flicked through the Sunday paper.

I removed my glasses and set my book down, pinching the bridge of my nose as Mom flitted around the dining room, pretending to reorganize things and look busy.

“Go pour a martini, Mom. You’re making me jittery just looking at you.”

“So don’t look at me and mind your tongue.”

“Dashiell,” Dad said in a tone that conveyed he didn’t want to reprimand me, but he was about to anyway. “Don’t speak to her like that.”

I pushed away my half-finished plate of scrambled eggs. “She tell you about the fight she had with Peony?”

Dad looked over at Mom, lowering his glasses on his nose to peer up at her. “Fight?”

She dropped the frame she’d been holding, and it hit the cabinet with a clatter. “It was a minor squabble.”

“Is that what you call telling someone she’s a classless whore?”

Dad removed his glasses, tilting his head. “Come again?”

“I did not call her that. I called her a classless idiot.”

I smothered my laughter behind my hand. Dad blinked at her.

She swiped a wayward strand of hair from her face. “Oh, come on. Don’t look at me like that.”

“What else did you say?”

It was one of those rare times in my life when I saw my mom’s cheeks color with something other than makeup. Feeling. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“She said she was a hog and selfish.” I drained my orange juice. “Among other things.”

Dad’s mouth gaped open. “Really?”

Mom growled, stalking over to me. “For once in your life, could you at least pretend to love me?”

“Pretending takes effort.”

Now it was Dad who growled, and I pushed my chair back. “Okay, I’m out.”

Book and glasses in hand, I made my way to my room, but what I heard trailing me had me almost missing a step and then stopping.

“Come here.”

“Mikael, I don’t need your reprimanding and reminders right now.”

Dad said it again in a tone that brooked no room for argument. “Come here.” I could almost picture her dramatic sigh before she did as he’d asked. “What happened?” he asked, voice soft.

Then came the tears. “Oh, it was just horrible.”

I shook my head, then escaped to my room.

Kicking my door shut, I dropped my book on the nightstand and shoved my glasses back on as I flicked on the TV and waited for the game to load. As much as I didn’t want to call her to find out why she never came to find me—and whether that meant what I feared it did—it was killing me not to know for sure.

But I think I’d rather die slowly than be put out of my misery via the sound of her voice.

She wasn’t online, and after playing a few games with Jackson, I tossed my glasses and controller on the bed and decided to distract myself with happier thoughts. If only to keep from texting her until my fingers bled.

Thoughts of when she’d been in here, in this very room, rushed in. Her legs spread between my own, opening like a blooming flower for my fingers to explore her soft depths.

My hand tunneled beneath my plaid pajama pants, wrapping around myself. My eyes shut, my head falling back as I remembered how she’d looked, all innocent, curious eyes and lust-stained cheeks, as she’d swiped her tongue beneath my shaft.

Combined with the sound of her panting breaths, the mewls of surprised pleasure I’d pulled from her, and the way she’d soaked my hand, I came, frantically reaching for the tissue box by the bed to catch everything she’d caused to erupt.

After tossing them into the trash and rolling