gaze again. “I have a girlfriend,” I tell her gently.
I belong to someone.
“But you’re not going to prom with her?”
I fight not to look in Clay’s direction again. “Maybe.” I hope. “I’m sorry. It’s…”
“Complicated,” she finishes for me. “It’s okay. I think I knew. I mean, how could you not be taken, right?”
Yeah, right.
“See you this weekend,” I tell her.
I leave, heading to my locker and feeling a little badly. If Clay weren’t in play, I would’ve accepted. How nice would it be to have someone any time I want?
I stop at my locker and look down the hall, seeing Mark Calderon leaning into Sophia Herrera, the whispers between them and everything in his body language telling me they’re getting it on.
How nice would it be to be as close to Clay as I want, any time I want, and wherever I want like them?
I could have that with someone like Chloe or Megan. I can have that when I leave for college.
But I really like my crazy-as-fuck Barbie doll with a mouth that pisses me off one minute, and arms that hold me so tightly that I don’t care if I can breathe the next.
I open my locker, a paper dropping onto the floor from inside.
Bending down, I pick it up and unfold the half-sheet.
Fear grips me. It’s probably a hate letter. A threat. It wouldn’t be the first time.
I almost crumple it up, but I see the words and start reading.
It never looks like me, the person in the mirror, the black script reads.
She looks like everyone else.
I look around, not seeing anyone else in the hall, except for a few loiterers down by the doors to the lunch room.
I keep reading.
She’s like every woman on his arm—the same hair, the same clothes, the same smile, because to beat she has to compete, right?
I stood in front of the mirror this morning, a mouthful of toothpaste and my hair tangled by your fingers. You sucked my lips swollen last night, and I can still smell your kisses on my skin.
The world swims, how hard I’m used by you.
How all I have when you’re done with me is my bones.
I don’t care what I look like anymore as long as I look like yours.
Marked, raw, tangled, sore, and scented like you—I don’t care.
As long as I look like yours.
My eyes burn, a baseball lodged in my throat as I read it again and again. As long as I look like yours.
A tear spills down my cheek, and I hear a locker open. I look over my shoulder, down the hall, and see Clay watching me as she pulls out a book.
Even from this distance, I can see her eyes pooling too.
The hall floods with students, afternoon classes about to get under way, and I lose sight of her, but my body overheats under my skin, and I’m so hot.
I need her. I need her skin on mine like I need food. More than I need food.
I love Clay Collins.
A text rolls in, and I click it, seeing it’s from her.
As long as I look like yours.
I hover my fingers over the screen, nothing I want to say good enough. I just want to haul my ass over there and press my mouth to hers in front of this whole fucking hallway.
I can’t breathe.
Clay, I’m dying, I type. You’re killing me. Please stop.
A text rolls in a moment later. Can you?
I PULL UP in front of Mimi’s house, parking right behind my mother’s Rover. I check my phone before I get out of the car.
Liv never texted me back.
It was a rhetorical question anyway. I don’t believe for one second that she wants me to stop. She’s capable of walking away when she wants. She’s proven it.
I want to give her everything she deserves, and I will. Prom is coming. Almost at the end of the school year. After the debutante ball. Near graduation.
I’ll face everything, then. I guess I just thought this would be easier. I thought it was just sex. I didn’t expect...to never want to walk away.
I type out a text. Send me a pic.
I wait, a cool breeze sweeping through the trees as the sun starts to set. I’d stayed at school, knowing Liv had rehearsal today and then had to babysit her nephew, and did my homework in the library, killing time before my weekly meeting with Mimi.
Her reply rolls in, and I click on the image she sends.