Sweet: (Intermix) (True Believers) (16 page)

Riley glanced back at me. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m walking.”

“When did you get so tall?” he asked me.

I lifted my food to show him my high-heel wedges, only I lost my balance. I would have gone down if he hadn’t grabbed me and held me upright. “Oops.”

But in the movement, I had accidentally kicked a guy standing by the garbage can filled with barf booze, the miscellaneous alcohol punch that anyone could pour in to, only the brave and stupid would drink out of. Before I could apologize, he shot me an angry look and said, “Watch it, you drunk cunt.”

“Ah!” I was stunned at his venomous dig. Normally I would have a quick comeback, but I was too drunk to be quick-witted.

But before I could do anything, Riley had dropped my hand and stepped in front of me. “Excuse me?” he asked the guy.

“You heard me,” Douche Bag said, his hair flopping in his eyes, lip in a sneer as he eyed me. “She’s a cunt.”

Then Douche Bag’s face was in the barf booze and it was Riley’s hand and arm shoving it there.

Robin screamed, and Aaron dragged me backward out of the way as there was gurgling and splashing and scuffling. Tyler was wedging himself between Riley and the guy, and he was saying urgently, “Come on, man, bad idea.”

Riley pulled the guy’s head back up and yanked him by the hair hard, tossing him to the side. Douche stumbled and sat down on the ground, swearing. “Asshole!”

“You don’t call my girlfriend a cunt,” Riley said. “You’re lucky I didn’t knock your fucking teeth out.”

“Trailer trash. She’s just slumming for a thrill, you know.”

For a second, I thought Riley was going to kick the guy in the chin with his boot, but he took a few deep breaths and clenched and unclenched his fists.

More sober, I realized that a fight was the last thing Riley needed right now. I reached out and touched him. “Hey, let’s go, sweetie. This asshole isn’t worth it.” I inserted myself between them and urged Riley backward.

I’m not sure I would have turned my back to the guy on the ground if I hadn’t been making friends with vodka all night, but fortunately, he didn’t do anything in retaliation. There was some grumbling and exclamations, but for the most part, everyone else seemed to want to stay out of it, so we cut across the yard. I snagged Robin by the arm on our way by and she resisted, tugging herself out of my reach.

“I’m staying. I’ll get a ride with Nathan.”

“Okay. Text me when you’re home safe.”

“K.” She blew me a kiss.

I had to walk fast to catch up to Riley, who was eating up the sidewalk with long strides. “Hey.” I tried to take his hand but he shook me off.

Tyler just shook his head at me, indicating I should leave Riley alone. My ankle turned in my dumbass shoes, and it was Tyler who grabbed me this time, not Riley.

Since I wasn’t exactly sober, and I definitely didn’t appreciate the silent treatment, I stopped walking. “I’m going back to the party.”

Riley came to a dead stop. He turned and glared at me. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Well, you’re ignoring me.”

“I’m pissed off! I’m trying to calm down so I don’t go and beat that guy’s face in.”

“I didn’t mean to kick him,” I said. It just seemed like the right thing to say.

Riley’s frown softened. “I know. Which is why he was so far out of line.”

Tyler pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “I think Riley is a little old for the Shit Shack, Jess. He doesn’t have the patience for drunk idiots.”

“Like me?”

Finally the tension in Riley’s shoulders eased up. “No. You’re the only drunk idiot I
can
tolerate. Everyone else there can go to hell.”

“I’m sorry.” I felt sad, and I wasn’t really sure why.

He sighed. “Do you really want to go back? Were you having fun?”

Was I? Not particularly. I just had a good buzz and didn’t want to waste it. But I’d rather be with Riley. I shook my head. “No.”

“If you don’t want to go home yet I’ll take you to the townie bar and we can play the jukebox.”

I wasn’t sure if that sounded fun or not. I wasn’t sure I even knew what a townie bar was. Standing there, not even moving, both ankles gave out from my drunken wobbling, and I fell off my shoes.

Riley laughed. “Alright, come here. Hold my shoulders.” He squatted down and grabbed my ankle.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m taking these stupid shoes off your feet before you break your ankle.”

I held onto his shoulders, digging my fingers into the fabric of his shirt to stabilize myself as he undid the straps on my shoes. “I’m fine.” On the spectrum of fine I was probably right in the middle, and that was good enough for me. “The ground is icky. I don’t want to be barefoot.”

“Tough.”

Then my shoes were in his hand and I was on stable ground. Or as stable as the ground is when you’ve basically had a vodka IV in all day.

“Where is your phone?” Riley asked me. “Did you bring a purse?”

“Oh, poop!” I felt my pockets and my boobs. “I had a wristlet. I think I set it on a toilet.”

“Do you remember which toilet? There were about twenty laying around that yard.”

I burped and tried to pretend I didn’t. “The pink one.”

“Alright, come on.” Shoes in one hand, Riley used the other to pull me back toward the yard.

Tyler followed a step behind and I turned and made a goofy face at him for no apparent reason. He laughed and shook his head.

As we moved through the crowd I noticed a girl from my design class was letting a guy do a shot from between her breasts. “Hooter tooter!” his friends were chanting.

She was giggling and bending over as his head tipped back so that tequila and her tits fell into his face. So maybe I could see why this wasn’t Riley’s kind of party.

Riley didn’t say anything though. He just wove us through the crowd from toilet to toilet. I wanted to offer advice on where the toilet had been, but I couldn’t quite remember. I was actually doubting that I had even left my purse on a toilet. I might have set it down when I had refilled my drink. Or when I had been dancing. But after a few minutes Riley pointed. “Is that it?”

My little red bag was on a pink toilet lid. Yay, me. “Yes!”

He leaned over and snagged it from between two girls. The one glared at him, but he ignored her. I held my hand out to take the purse but he just kept it tucked in his palm along with my shoes dangling from his fingers. I was starting to think he didn’t trust me to have my shit together tonight.

I was starting to think he might be right.

Because I actually walked into a neighborhood bar with Riley barefoot with no concern whatsoever to what might be sticking to the bottoms of my feet.

Chapter Fourteen

“Hey, what’s up?” the bartender said to Riley when we walked in.

Riley waved and pulled out a stool for me. I eyed the bartender, expecting him to card me, but he looked more interested in checking his phone than preventing underage drinking.

So this was a townie bar. It was dark, with a full display of liquor bottles behind the bar, the chairs cracked vinyl. It was nothing like the dance clubs we always went to, but more like what you see in movies, where hairy loggers are grabbing a beer before the zombie apocalypse.

Spinning on my bar stool to get a view of the room, I lost my balance and almost wiped out. I wasn’t sure why I was having so much trouble staying upright.

Riley laughed. “Settle down over there. I’m going to get a beer. I hesitate to ask this, but do you want something?”

“Let’s do a shot,” was my brilliant answer. It seemed to sound like a fabulous idea. We had dropped Tyler back off at the house, and I was thinking that tonight Riley and I could finally have sex. I was thinking a shot might increase the probability.

“Only if I can do it off your tits,” he said, with a look that said he clearly thought that was about as cheap and ridiculous as you could get. He gave a mock fist pump. “Hooter tooter. Dickwads.”

“Ha ha.”

“So who’s your friend here, Mann?” the bartender asked Riley, eyeing me with blatant curiosity.

“Maybe you should sit down,” Riley told him. “Because this is Jessica, my girlfriend.”

The guy laughed, stroking his long beard. He was bald and heavily tattooed. “No shit?” He held his hand out to me. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Jessica. I’m Zeke.”

I shook his hand and gave him what I assumed was a charming smile. “Nice to meet you, too.” Then I nudged Riley. “Why is it so hard to believe I’m your girlfriend?”

“I don’t bring girls to bars.”

“So how did you two meet?” Zeke asked. “At the mall?”

Was I being insulted?

Riley just laughed. “Screw you. No, Jess is Tyler’s girlfriend’s roommate. We’ve known each other for about a year I guess.”

“Six months,” I corrected.

He shrugged. “Six months.”

“Nice. Make Tyler do all the hard work of scoring a girl, then you just shop from her friends. I admire that.”

What, was I a pair of jeans? But I had to assume Zeke was joking.

“Yeah, well, I’m working with a handicap here.” He gestured to his face, then eyed me. “Okay, how about one shot of vodka, since that’s what you’ve been drinking all night? Zeke, you going to do one with us?”

“Why the hell not?” was his opinion as he reached back for a bottle. Shot glasses appeared from under the counter.

“Now if you’re going to do a shot,” Riley instructed me, “you have to do it right. None of this sipping on it crap.”

“I know how to do a shot.” I gave him a dirty smile. “Open my throat.”

His eyebrows went up. “You good at that?” His knee nudged mine.

“Oh, yeah.” Yes, I was flirting. Yes, I was lying. I could do a shot no problem, but I never gave blow jobs. Ever. So the implication was false, but I figured he wouldn’t care once we were naked and I was offering other alternatives.

Our three glasses filled, Zeke handed one to me. Riley took his and we lifted them. “Cheers!” I said.

Zeke just nodded and raised his glass to his lips.

I knocked my glass into Riley’s. It was meant to make a sweet little
chink
sound. Instead, I overestimated my strength and half of his shot sloshed over the glass onto his hand. “Oops. Sorry.” I leaned over and licked his hand. “Trade me.” I switched our shots and then drank the halfsie one down.

He drank his in one tilt, wrinkling his nose. “You want something on the jukebox?”

“Well, yes, I do.” The vodka was warming me down into my inner thighs and I wanted to dance with him. After I got a little closer. I leaned over to his stool, hands on the bar top, feet on the footrest bar, and kissed him.

He kissed me back, hand firm on the small of my back, gradually shifting down onto my ass. He broke away. “Every woman in here hates you right now.”

“Why? Because I’m kissing you?” That was a little arrogant on his part. Not that it was untrue but yeesh. I glanced around and saw that of the ten people in the bar, nine were watching us. The men were all in their fifties except for one and they were all gawking openly. The women were of the big hair, blinged butt jean variety and they were shooting me glares. What did I do, besides have a hot boyfriend?

Riley patted my butt. “No. Because you have legs that are a mile long and the shortest pair of denim shorts in the history of the world on and you look smoking hot.”

“Oh.” Well, that was okay then. As long as he thought I looked hot. I licked my lips. “Thanks.”

“You’re killing me.” He stood up. “Come on, let’s play pool.”

We did. Or rather, he did, and I tried, but all I succeeded in doing was almost taking my own eye out. But it had the added benefit of forcing him to lean over me and help me with my strokes. No one in the bar bothered us, and I decided I liked it there, in the dark, smoky quiet. Everyone was disregarding the no-smoking law and just puffing away, and while I didn’t love the smell, I liked the haze.

Dark and seductive, that’s what it was.

The jukebox took negotiation. “No way in hell,” Riley said to a pop song.

I flipped and pointed.

“Lame. No. Over my dead body.”

“You pick one then,” I told him, pinching his arm.

“Hey. You can’t just pinch me.”

“Yes, I can.” I did it again.

He laced his fingers through mine so I couldn’t touch him anymore and grinned. “You are asking for it.”

“You say that all the time,” I murmured, “and nothing ever happens.”

“You say that like you want something to happen,” he said, eliminating all the space between us.

My lips parted.

He bent, his expression intense. When he kissed me, he nipped at my bottom lip and I closed my eyes. I wanted him so much, the alcohol making my body feel liquid and hot, and I shifted so that his thigh was between my legs, my hips bumping against him.

His eyes darkened, the corner of his mouth tilting up. “I’m picking the song.”

He did and it was something I’d never heard of. It sounded like it was a fuck-me song masquerading as a love ballad from the seventies. Or rather a love ballad from the seventies masquerading as a fuck-me song. Something like that.

Riley pulled my arms up to rest around his neck, and right there, in the skeezy bar, with Zeke and bullet-bra-wearing women watching, he slow danced with me. He actually had good rhythm.

I sighed. “This is better than prom.” My date had been Tweeter Brinkley and he was nice enough, though with a serious sweating problem. But he had been in love with Chelsea Zane and had spent the whole night following her around while I had gotten drunk in the restroom with Kylie. At one point, I pulled out my hair extensions and wrote on my arms with a Sharpie brilliant things like
Seniors! Prom Blows! And Troy Trojans . . . because she rode the wrong horse.
My parents were not amused the next day, even though I insisted I had been held down forcibly against my will.

“I didn’t go to prom,” Riley said.

“You didn’t miss a damn thing.”

“What I was missing was you,” he said.

My breath caught. Everything inside me melted. I had never felt more female in my entire life than I did right then and I felt softer, languid.

Like I was falling in love.

“Let’s go home,” he said as we swayed to the song that was now my favorite song ever, because it had created this moment.

“You always have the best ideas.”

Riley pulled me toward the bar. “What do I owe you?” he asked Zeke.

“It’s on me,” the bartender said, drying a glass in his hand. “Thanks for the entertainment.”

They fist bumped.

“Got everything?” Riley asked.

“I left everything in the car.”

His hand rubbed my knee during the three-minute drive home, and I wouldn’t have thought such a simple thing could be so erotic, yet it was. It just went in slow circles over my bare skin and it felt as sexy as that slow dance.

As we went down the hallway to his bedroom, Riley paused once to kiss me, cupping my cheeks with his hands. “God, you’re so beautiful.”

Not only did I feel beautiful with Riley, I felt like a nicer, better person, softer, like melted butter. Maybe it was the vodka, maybe it was dark hallway or our whispered voices, the boys all asleep, but I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin if I didn’t get to have sex with Riley in the next five seconds. When he stripped off his shirt, after carefully closing his door and locking it, I yanked off my shirt and tossed it on the floor. I took my bra off, too.

He turned to me and actually jumped a little. “Holy shit, Jess.” His voice was strained.

“What?” I undid the snap on my shorts and started to take the zipper down.

“Slow down.”

“No.” I wanted to feel his skin on mine.

But Riley pulled me down onto the bed with him before I could finish taking off my shorts and he kissed me deeply, with tongue, so that I groaned, hips arching to meet his erection.

“Not tonight, honey,” he told me, breathing hard, his eyes agonized.

I froze in the act of humping his crotch, astride his body, my breasts scraping along his chest. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we’re not having sex tonight. I don’t want our first time together to be when you’re shitfaced.”

It was like a slap. Hot humiliation rushed into my mouth, a thick bile, and I sucked in a few deep breathes, suddenly feeling like I was going to be sick. “I’m not shitfaced,” I protested. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

But he still shook his head. “I don’t want it like this.”

He didn’t want
me
. That’s what I heard. I rolled off of him and curled up against the edge of the bed, feeling as rejected as I had when I had been cut from the cheerleading squad in seventh grade for fucking up a back handspring.

“I want you to remember it,” he said.

“What I’m going to remember is that you’re a prick,” I said venomously.

“Don’t be irrational.” He touched my back and I swatted at him.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Fine.”

“Whatever.” I closed my eyes, willing myself not to cry. No tears. Jessica Sweet didn’t cry. It was the golden rule.

My body was aching with the need for an orgasm and my stomach was roiling from the alcohol. I tried to breathe quickly in and out of my nose, nausea climbing. The damn waterbed was moving, further contributing to the bed spins from all the booze. It was like being on the deck of a ship. For a second I thought I was going to be okay, but then Riley rolled over and the whole bed undulated. I grabbed the lip of the frame and felt my stomach heave in protest.

Game over. I sat up and fumbled my way out of bed and along the wall.

“Where are you going?”

I didn’t bother to say anything, just clawed at the door until I yanked it open and dashed into the bathroom, topless, my shorts unzipped. I flicked on the light, blinding myself, and barely had time to flip up the lid on the toilet before I threw up, the stench of peanut butter and chocolate making me cough and choke as vodka and Reese’s and bile expelled from my stomach.

Riley appeared behind me and I waved him off, not wanting him to see me like this. After the heaving stopped, I still clung to the toilet, on my knees, drool dangling from my mouth.

He lifted my heavy hair off my face and smoothed it over my back. “You okay?”

I nodded. As good as anyone can be horking topless in front of her boyfriend who won’t have sex with her. Sinking backward, I shifted my legs and sat on my ass, leaning against the wall, wiping my mouth with my arm. My eyes were watering, and I noticed how badly torn up my knee actually was from falling. There was dried blood dripping down my leg.

The faucet turned on and suddenly Riley’s hand was in my face, and he was gently wiping my mouth, eyes, cheeks with a towel. Then he dried me off and shifted to my knee, dabbing at the dirt and blood. When he put a T-shirt over my head and dressed me like a doll, carefully pushing my arms through the holes, I wasn’t any help to him, but I didn’t resist either.

I waited for the recriminations, the judgment over taking that last shot.

But he didn’t tell me I was stupid.

That was the voice in my own head, not his.

“Are you going to throw up again?” he asked, squatting in front of me, knuckles gently drifting down my cheek.

“I don’t think so.”

“Let me help you back to bed then.”

“I can’t sleep on that waterbed. It’s moving.” Just the memory of it made me gag a little.

“Okay, you can sleep on the couch. Come on.” He lifted me under my armpits and dragged me to my feet.

With his help I stumbled to the couch and collapsed, pulling one of the new pillows under my head and sighing. I closed my eyes, but that made the spinning start again, so I kept them resolutely open as Riley draped a blanket over me. It was too hot for the blanket, but I left it, appreciating his care.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

In the dark room, he leaned over and gave me a half smile. “Vodka happens. No big deal.”

That wasn’t what I meant. I was trying to tell him that I was sorry for being me. I shook my head. “No. For everything.” For not being good enough for him, because I knew that I wasn’t. I was a liar and afraid to stand up to my parents, passive in my life, and far too willing to put out instead of make emotional connections with people.

My last name shouldn’t be Sweet, it should be Sour. Jessica Sour. That was me.

A big tart, mouth puckering, acidic mess.

That was my last drunken thought before I drifted off to sleep, Riley still petting my hair.

***

I woke up out of a restless sleep burning hot, mouth dry. I jerked when I realized that Easton was sitting on the coffee table watching me. “Hey,” I mumbled, my throat sore. I checked under the blanket to make sure I was wearing clothes, because I had a memory of being topless while puking.

But I was wearing a soft T-shirt, so I kicked the blanket off with my feet, boiling hot, hair damp with sweat.