I figured the walk was as good time as any to get to the bottom of Levi’s relationship with her. He claimed that they had been friends since elementary school, and that she was just very protective of him. He laughed, heartily, at my suggestion that she was jealous, “Impossible. Camille and I have never been more than friends. She’s like my sister.”
I thought back to the little dance their fingers had done when I first saw her at the concert. I could guarantee she thought of him as more than a friend. In any event, I was happy to accept his assurances.
That, right there, was precisely the problem. All Levi needed to do was flash his amazing smile and I would believe blindly anything he told me. I knew this was dangerous, but I was powerless to overcome his spell. So when we pulled up in front of my house, I eagerly invited him to come inside. He quickly accepted and followed me soundlessly to my room.
Levi found the first aid kit that still lay on my desk, “Here,” he said holding my arm, “let me.”
“
I can do it,” I replied.
“
No worries. I like patching you up,” he said smiling.
“
Which do you like better, getting me hurt or fixing me up?” I asked sarcastically, but with an edge of seriousness.
“
I’m not going to justify that with an answer,” he said while he carefully cleaned my scratch and applied a bandage, “If you want me to leave, Chelsea, just say so.”
My heart sunk, “No,” I almost whined, “I was just kidding. It’s not your fault. I’m a klutz.”
He put his face in his hands, and sat silently for what seemed like an eternity. Shoot, I thought, why did I have to stick my big foot in my bigger mouth? Finally he spoke in a surprisingly pained voice, “I should leave.”
“
No,” I said firmly, “You can’t leave. The psycho in my closet might come back. You have to protect me.”
He looked at me seriously for a moment.
“
Please?” I practically begged. I didn’t wait for an answer, I grabbed some pajama pants and a tank top from my dresser, “I’m going to slip into something more comfortable,” I said in a mock-sexy voice. He smiled faintly as I hurried to the bathroom to change. I also took the opportunity to brush my teeth and hair.
When I returned to my room, Levi had taken off his shoes and was lying on my bed looking up at the ceiling. He seemed to be relaxed now, which made me feel better. As I approached my bed he reached out to me. I fell into his strong arms, and let him envelop me, noticing with pleasure his delicious scent. I kissed his neck softly, cautiously making my way to his jaw and then onto his lips. We kissed slowly for a while, my tongue exploring his supple lips. While continuing to keeps his lips to mine, Levi reached down and pulled his shirt over his head. My stomach fluttered as I took in his amazing body. I had dated other guys before Levi, but in comparison, they all seemed like prepubescent boys. Levi looked like a man, each muscle on his chest defined. His arms too, were thick with muscles. And then I noticed he had a tattoo that wrapped around the bicep of his left arm. It was an infinity sign with a double cross coming out of the center. I made a mental note to ask him about it later, when we weren’t otherwise engaged.
Levi pulled me carefully back to his body, our chests pressing against each other. I could feel the heat he emanated passing through my thin tank top. He kissed my neck and shoulders, so lightly I felt myself shiver. He smiled at this, staring into my eyes as his hand moved slowly over my stomach to my breasts, all the time on the outside of my clothes. He leaned his head down and carefully kissed my chest just above where my shirt ended and my skin began.
He looked back at me with the most sincere and intense eyes, and said, “I’m so sorry for scaring you, Chelsea. You deserve so much better than that.”
9
It was dawn when Levi climbed silently out of my window. We had spent most of the night whispering and kissing. Laughing at each other’s jokes and stories in hushed tones, so we wouldn’t be caught by my parents. Levi finally relented, after a fair amount of pestering on my part, and told me about his parents. He described them as pure evil, and the label seemed fitting after he described them.
I lay in my bed the next morning, not yet awake, but not quite asleep, and replayed the conversation in my head. Levi’s voice had spilled over with disdain, hatred even, as he told me about his parents. It made me slightly uneasy to hear him sound so cold and scornful.
“What makes them evil?” I had asked quietly.
“Well, to start with, my father loves only two things: money and power. My whole life I have watched him smash anyone in his path, with no regard for the pain he inflicts. I can’t go into specifics, but let’s just say he thinks outside of the box when it comes to accumulating wealth. He’s got a degree in law which has enabled him to know exactly how to get around following it. He is cold and vindictive. You asked me what I feared, and when I was a little kid, that was my father. Not the dark, not monsters in my closet. Just my father.
“He continually cheats on my mom. He does nothing to hide it, in fact, half the time he brings them back to our guest house. He fucks these women practically under my mother’s nose, and she’s completely powerless to do anything about it. What could she do? She knows as well as anyone that if she ever tried to leave him, he would get everything. She’d be living under a bridge within a week.
“
Then last year, my brother got married to this really sweet girl. They seemed like they were truly in love, you know? I was actually happy for them. She is super shy, but it balances out my brother who is completely, over-the-top belligerent. About a week after their wedding, I came home early from school. I walked into the house to find my father on top of some girl on the family room couch,” Levi paused for a long moment, I could see every muscle in his face tighten as he took a deep breath, “and then I saw her face. It was my brother’s wife. She was crying silently, while my father went at her.”
“
What did you do?” I whispered, feeling repulsed.
“
I pulled him off of her, and beat the shit out of him.”
“
Oh my God,” I said without thinking.
“
Yep. That’s why I spent last summer at a military school in Arizona. Punishment. Before he’d let me come home he made it clear that he could destroy my life as easily as anyone else’s, if I didn’t conform to his
expectations
.”
“
Levi, that’s terrible,” I said kissing his chest, “What did your mom do?”
“
What she does best, nothing. Well that’s not totally true, she got drunk, popped a couple pills, and then did nothing. My mother is just as evil as my father, except more incompetent. She was raised in southern Texas, by a rich oil tycoon. She has never worked a day in her life. She barely made it through high school, before she met my dad and they got married.
“
The one thing she wanted in life was the one thing that money can’t buy, or at least it couldn’t at the time, a baby girl. Soon as they got married my mom started popping out kids, one boy after the next. I am the youngest of her seven sons. When she got pregnant with me, the doctors told her I would have to be her last, that she’d developed some kind of medical problem that would keep her from having more children.
“
She prayed and prayed that I would be the baby girl that she thought would make her life complete. She figured this baby girl would take away all the pain that my father and her father had inflicted upon her. She was going to raise this little girl to be the strong, capable, and educated woman she was not. But we know how that story ended,” Levi laughed bitterly, “For as long as I can remember I have been told I was the unwanted child. It’s like she blames me personally for destroying her dreams. She can barely stand to look at me when we are in the same room. I tried for a long time to win her affection. I thought if I was smarter or better behaved than my brothers, she would learn to love me…” Levi’s voice trailed off.
I could hear the pain in his voice and I wanted to take it all away, to heal his scars. I rolled over so that I was on top of him and hugged him tightly. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“
Aren’t you looking forward to meeting my family?” he asked sarcastically.
“How did you turn out so perfect?” I’d finally said. Levi just laughed.
I finally got out of bed and took a shower. I knew I had a really long and tedious day in front of me. Before he had left, Levi told me that he was going up to his family’s cabin in Tahoe for a couple of days. My inclination was to beg him not to go, but I called upon my better judgment to not seem too disappointed. After all, everybody knows the quickest method to drive a guy away is to appear desperate.
Once I was dressed, I called my friend Becca. Rebecca Connelly and I had grown up together in Sun Valley. When we were in the fourth grade her parents got divorced and her and her mom had to move to a condo in a less desirable neighborhood across town. I liked hanging out with Becca because she didn’t think of me as Hannah’s faithful sidekick like everyone at Montecito did. I didn’t want to have to discuss how my life had dissolved without Hannah. I was done having that conversation.
Becca answered the phone on the first ring and seemed genuinely happy to hear from me. She was going to a pool party that evening at her new boyfriends’ house. She begged me to go with her.
“
I’ll know everybody when I get there, but it would be much better if I didn’t have to arrive alone,” she explained.
“I’ll try not to feel like a pawn in your little scheme,” I joked.
“Chels, you know what I mean.”
“Yeah. I do. So what time?”
Becca picked me up that evening at six. We drove across town to a little house at the end of a gravel street. We were in the part of Santa Juanita that still held on tight to its agricultural roots. The smell of cow manure was thick in the hot dusty air. Next to the house was an enormous barn, six times the size of the house itself. I assumed its contents were largely of the John Deere variety. Several wayward chickens and one freakishly large rooster scattered out of our path as we made our way to a gate at the side of the house.
I could hear the sounds of kids laughing and classic rock booming from the stereo as we approached. Becca waved and smiled broadly at a lanky boy dressed in Hawaiian shorts, who looked downright thrilled to see Becca as he dashed toward us. They kissed awkwardly, obviously a new relationship, I thought.
“Chelsea this is Milo, Milo, Chelsea,” Becca introduced nervously.
“Nice to meet you,” Milo smiled, “What do you guys want to drink? Coke? Root beer? We’ve got some jungle juice too, but I think we put too much peppermint schnapps in it.”
“What else did you put in it?” I asked curiously.
“Vodka, rum, tequila, and grape Kool-Aid,” he grinned.
“Sounds disgusting,” Becca laughed nervously, “I’ll try it.”
“A Coke for me, I’m not in the mood for regurgitation,” I said.
“Cool!” Milo raced off to get the drinks.
“What do you think?” Becca asked eagerly.
“He seems really nice, and cute. Bad taste in beverages though,” I answered.
Becca introduced me to the rest of her friends. They all seemed really nice and were unexpectedly welcoming of me. Quite a different reception from the one I had received from Camille and the rest of Levi’s crew last night, I thought.
We sat around playing cards. I wished we were playing for money, I would have won big time over my purple-lipped competitors. The pool was of the above ground variety and therefore too warm to be refreshing, but as the sun went down people began jumping in. Milo raced around making hamburgers and filling cups with his jungle juice concoction.
I was sitting alone, my feet dangling in the pool, picking off about a dozen pickles from my hamburger when I first met Conner Bianchi. He sat down next to me, with a plate of food in his lap. He put his feet in the water and glanced at the leaning tower of pickles I’d constructed on my plate.
“Have you ever been to Bruno’s?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“It’s this amazing hamburger joint out by Bodega Bay. My dad and I go there on the way to the beach sometimes. Man, those burgers are insane. The cook, this huge Italian lady who’s like a hundred and fifty, she stacks those burgers six inches high with everything you can think of…” I could tell he was picturing the burger in his mind.
“Sounds good,” I replied, thinking how ridiculously random this conversation was.
“Thing is, if you try to tell her you don’t want pickles,” he glanced at my plate, “or onions, or whatever, she just says in this really thick Italian accent, ‘You don’t a want, you leave on side.’ It’s a good philosophy for life, don’t you think?” he asked looking at me with a grin, “Think about it. What you don’t want in life, just leave it on the side and keep on going.”
“Buddhism,” I said with a grin, “For Siddhartha it was the river, for you, it’s the hamburger.”
“I’m Conner,” he said smiling at me. He had this massive smile that brightened his whole face. I found it to be contagious.
“Chelsea,” I said, smiling back to at him.
“I know. Becca told me,” he laughed cheerfully, “You go to Montecito?”
“Yup,” I laughed too, not knowing what was funny.
“Do you know Simon Miller?” he asked.