sadness. “That’s pettiness. That’s childishness. That’s infatuation. That’s the wrong way to seek love. There’s nothing true about it when you have to run behind it.” He opened his arms. “I’m here. Right here. That in itself should tell you something.”
I had to control the impulse to sob. “Tell me something? Are you telling me that you only came because you don’t want me to…make out with a guy? Get drunk with my friend? Dance and have fun—with a girl or a boy? Do things that anyone my age has done? I’m just starting to live! And who said anything about love?”
Something I said had made him tense, like I had hit him with all I had. “You did.”
Each step I took toward him caused me to wobble in my oxford heels. He refused to back down and I surged ahead with something to prove. I looked up at him, forcing my chin to still its tremble. “Why didn’t you take the scholarship offered to you? Why are you still here, in this town? Why do you work at the refinery?”
He bent down, meeting my eyes. We were a kiss apart. His lips drew me in, breaking our more fierce connection. I could smell sucker on his breath—chocolate. “No one here deserves you. You’re too good for this town, for everyone in it. You won’t make a mistake.”
I searched his lips, giving myself a moment to catch up. The conversation was happening, but in two separate parts—his and mine. “Not for you,” I whispered, watching his lips, licking mine. “I’m not too good for you.”
“Especially me,” his answer came fast and hot. “I made a mistake, barging in on your life. I should have stayed put. Kept my distance. I should have had Mitch or Mick deal with—” He waved his hands around.
“A mistake?” I hated how my voice sounded so small, so weak, so childish, compared to his.
His hands reached for me but I rejected them, stepping away from him. The amount of alcohol consumed had crept its way into my bloodstream and then rushed me all at once. The condition I found myself in had impaired me in so many ways. I was no longer in a blissful float but a wild twirl.
I fell into his arms because I had no other choice, while the world spun out of control.
Chapter Eleven
Scarlett
Elliott had gone with me on a field trip to the planetarium once. Eunice had instigated this field trip, since most of my life was spent homeschooled by sought-out teachers from around the world.
I hadn’t wanted him to go though. He had been shunning me ever since he had started to grow hair on his face and fell in with the popular crowd at regular school. I had been trying to be hateful to him in return, but my mother insisted that he had to go. She had said something about how there were few things in this life that he could do without sound enhancing the experience. Watching the stars did not require sound; it only required eyes that saw.
I remembered secretly agreeing with her—wanting him to come—but I pretended like I didn’t.
The same feeling returned to me then, in the back of a pickup truck, my head on a pillow, my back against a soft blanket, the leather jacket draped across my chest, staring up at a sky full of stars.
During normal circumstances the sky seems to stay put, as solid as a hard body beneath a trembling hand, even if that’s not the case. But in a planetarium the sky spins, spins, spins, like when I’d dance.
The sky spun, spun, spun around me, the actual orbit of the earth visible to my feeble eyes, even though I was not inside of a planetarium. It was not the actual orbiting of the earth that I saw, but an alcohol-induced vertigo that I experienced.
Perhaps if circumstances had been ideal, the experience would have been romantic. This group of partygoers had taken a hint from the other set, and Aerosmith sang some slow, sweet song in the background. The heat from the fire passed over me in delicious waves, controlling the chill and replacing it with just enough warmth. The man beside me, who stared at my face with such intensity that it almost felt illegal, was nothing short of a dream come true.
If he hadn’t turned himself into my nightmare.
Speaking of which, a train chose that moment to barrel through, its whistle like a poison-laced dagger to