“Sweet,” Rex said when Erin found a free space to park her car in the yard. “Thanks for the ride.”
While he was scrambling to get out, Peyton turned in her seat, smiling. “Anytime, Rex,” she said sweetly. He nodded to her, tossing his cigarette butt on the grass, stubbing it, and walking off.
Peyton was practically breaming, sighing wistfully. “Isn’t he just . . . you know?”
I looked at the smushed cigarette butt by the toe of my boot. “Yeah,” I grumbled, rolling my eyes.
“Peyton’s in love with him,” Erin filled me in as she hopped out of the driver’s seat. She popped some gum in her mouth. “He wants something casual . . . with a D-cup.”
I looked over at Peyton, whose face had fallen. “I’m only a C,” she told me sadly.
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” Erin said, hitching her purse up her shoulder and carefully walking through the grass in her three inch heels. “So she’s screwed until she gets implants.”
Peyton pouted her shiny, red lips. “My dad won’t pay for them,” she moaned. She rolled her eyes like all dads paid for their daughters’ implants. “He basically said ‘natural is the way to go’.” She frowned in disgust. “My dad is such a loser.”
I almost flinched when Erin popped her gum. I hated that sound. “He’s a moron,” she said shaking her blonde hair.
When I turned to Peyton, I swear her eyes were getting glassy. “Doesn’t he want to be happy?” she asked. She was huffing breaths in and out when she looked up at the sky.
Erin reached over me to rub her forearm. “It’ll be okay, sweetie,” she said. “You can pay for your own implants. Isn’t that why you got that job at Good Greens?”
Peyton nodded, touching a thumb to each eye.
“See?” Erin smiled. “Everything will work out with you and Rex! He’ll wait.”
“But what if he finds an E-cup or a bigger D-cup while I’m working at Good Greens, asking people if they want paper or plastic?!”
Erin shrugged. “Then you steal him back,” she replied breezily.
Peyton nodded quickly. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right,” she said, smiling tightly. Peyton turned to me. “Haven’t you ever been unhappy with your breasts?”
“I wouldn’t be,” a guy passing by us said. With his hands, he made a boob-honking gesture and laughed.
After flipping him off, I turned to Peyton. “I’m a C too,” I told her and she glanced down at my breasts. “Big boobs mean you’re a hooker or a striper.”
She looked down at her own chest. “They do?”
“Totally,” I said, nodding. “You know, there was this woman who had N-cups. Seriously. I saw it on Google.”
Her brown eyes went wide. “N-cups?” she asked meekly.
I held my hands far out from my chest. “She couldn’t even get out of bed.”
“Wow.”
When someone bumped his shoulder into mine in passing, I whirled around to face the back of the guy who had the nerve, but my eyes wandered past him and found Rick.
Leaning against the garage, he smoked with one hand and held a red plastic cup, probably filled with beer, in the other. His black hoodie was pulled over his head and it covered his eyes, which meant he couldn’t see me.
I felt a strong urge to change that.
“See ya,” I said to Erin and Peyton over the thumping music. They nodded weakly. They were paying more attention to the guy ripping his shirt over his head, and then getting trapped inside.
As I walked toward Rick, I could the shirtless wonder yelling, “Yo, guys! I’m stuck!” But judging from the deep laughter following this, his friends didn’t give a crap.
Rick took a drag, then a drink, and then another drag. It was like a little system he had going on. It wasn’t until I was close enough to inhale the smoke coming from his cigarette that he saw me there.
“Hey,” he said, pausing slowly. He was wasted, stumbling a slightly on his feet even though he hadn’t moved. “I didn’t know you were coming.” He held out his cig to me.
I shook my head. “It was a last minute sort of thing.” So I edited the truth a little. I didn’t know I’d be coming this morning. “Are you having a good time?”
He pursed out of his lips with a shrug. “I guess,” he said, swirling his beer around. He held it up. “Beer’s good. You should get one.”
Rick was not the type to get girls drinks. Not if he knew them anyway.
“Maybe I will,” I said, walking around him. I wrapped my hand around the warm doorknob of the garage door. I smiled at Rick before I walked in, heels clicking.
Just like I thought, Rick didn’t hesitate to follow me in here, shutting the door behind him. Then I felt his rough hands under my sweater, caressing my skin, and pressing his sweaty neck into my shoulder as his moist lips touched my ear.
With my eyes closed, I turned around. My butt was knocked against a car, a side mirror pressing hard into my back. Rick pulled his hands out of my shirt and slid them into my hair, forcefully crashing his lips on mine.
Dull pain shot through my upper jaw.
“Ow,” I mumbled while I pulled away. My hand was touching my mouth, the pain beginning to dull slowly.
Rick blinked down at my lips. “What?”
His mouth knocked painfully into my teeth.
“Nothing,” I said, and I told myself that this happens with steamy make-out sessions. “Come on,” I commanded, pulling his lips back down to me.
He nibbled on my lip. While I ran my fingers down his chest, I tasted the cigarettes and beer. It was like familiar nectar to me.
“Here.” Rick pulled back suddenly, holding out his plastic cup, and a drop of beer sloshed out of the rim. “It’ll make this a lot better.”
I never said this, but I liked sex better sober. I liked remembering my nights with Rick and just remembering Rick in general. If any night of ours needed a beer, it would be the first night.
My first time wasn’t magically in any way. Rick isn’t the kind of guy you want for the first time. Now, I find him wild but to a younger, virgin me, he was rough and he didn’t wait for me.
It hurt more than he said it would. In the back of his car, in the Madison High parking lot, Rick told me it would barely hurt. I’d just be a little sore tomorrow, but that was all, he said.
Never once did it occur to me not to the trust the horny guy without a hymen.
I was sore before we even finished. My heart was beating fast while the pain went from dull to sharp in seconds. My eyes just stung a little at first but when he moved, I started crying.
It wasn’t a moment I was proud of. Rick got frustrated because he thought it meant it wasn’t any good, and he told me a virgin wouldn’t know what was good. I tried to say it just hurt a lot, but he wasn’t exactly in the mood for listening.
But now, as someone who didn’t cry after sex anymore, I took the drink and downed it. “Thanks, baby,” I said.
I wasn’t a star at handling my liquor.
I got a little tipsy and a little giggly, but I was good. It definitely wasn’t enough to stop me from walking a straight line or something.
Just as Rick pushed me flat against the hood of the car with my arms above my head and Rick started to roll up my shirt and exposed my stomach, lights flashed through the windows of the garage door. They were familiar.
They stopped my heart and then my skin turned to ice.
“What?” Rick said. He titled his head down to look at me.
The door pushed open, slamming against the wall with a thud, and the light were switched on. We squinted in the brightness and looked at the door. Officer Chester Ronrock stood there, raising his blonde brow to us both.
“Hello, Rick and Silvia,” he said, then gesturing for us to follow him out. “How about we get out of the Winters’ garage?”
Frowning, I rolled down my shirt while Rick straightened. He walked out first and when I followed him, I felt Chester’s eyes on me.
In the driveway were two police cars. Two other officers were handcuffing Tonya Winters and Wayne Fitzpatrick, who was smoking a joint when I went into the garage with Rick. And leaning against one of the police squad cars was Abe.
Wearing a black short-sleeve shirt with the same cargo shorts from before and arms crossed over his chest, he squinted at us as we filed out of the garage and then smirked, shaking his head.
He was lucky that his cop brother was standing next to me.
“So,” Chester said, crossing his arms just like Abe and stared at the us both as if we’d been caught passing notes, “What where you doing in the garage over there? Besides getting it on.”
Rick shuffled his feet, sighing through his nose.
“It was private,” I muttered, wishing that Abe would stop staring at us. He looked like a lion stalking out his prey.
Chester considered this. “Private,” he repeated, almost nodding. He glanced over our shoulders to Abe, frowning. He turned back to us. “Have either of you been drinking?”
Rick’s head couldn’t have moved faster. “No way, man,” he said, ironically nearly stumbling from shaking his head.
He seemed suspicious of this, but he didn’t say anything as his eyes flickered towards me. “Have you?”
I wondered what the odds were of him smelling the third of a cup of beer I had on my breath. I sighed, looking away. “I had a cup,” I mumbled.
“Of what?”
Rick was glaring at me. I’m sure if Chester wasn’t here, he’d be yelling at me for telling him that.
“Beer,” I grumbled.
“Your underage, Silvia,” Chester informed me.
“Yes sir.”
Chester considered this for a moment, and then he took ahold of my arm. “Come with me, Silvia,” he said and he led me away from Rick. In my ear, he whispered, “You should really stay out of trouble, Via.”
I almost stumbled myself when he called me by my high school nickname.
He pulled me toward the police car Abe was standing by. As we got closer, he pushed off the hood, arms uncrossing, and an eyebrow just slightly rose at me before he turned to his brother.
Chester handcuffed me and walked over to the back doors, pulling them open. Abe followed him.
From where I was standing, I couldn’t hear what they were saying, plus they were whispering, but Chester didn’t look pleased. After a minute, he scowled and then walked over to me.
“You’re free to go,” he muttered, unlocking my hands but not without shooting me look. It was a warning.
Behind him, Abe was watching us carefully.
I rubbed my wrists. “So, you’re just letting me go?” I asked cautiously, like one of them could turn into a snake and strike me. “You’re not going to tell my parole officer?”
Chester let out a sharp sigh through his nose. “No,” he replied shortly, briefly glancing at Abe. “But I will if something like this happens again.”
For a second, I thought he was saying this more to Abe than me.
Chester walked off, handling his handcuffs like he couldn’t wait to slap them on the wrist of a juvenile delinquent. I looked at Abe.
“What did you do?” I asked.
Abe pressed the car door shut with his foot. “I saved your butt,” he replied. He said this nonchalantly, but not cockily. “You’re welcome.”
I paused. “Why?”
Abe paused now. He took the time to lean against the driver’s side door and slowly slid his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts. “Because I’m you’re. . .” He seemed frustrated to say the cheesy name.
“Guidian?” I asked, smirking a little.
He sighed. “Yes,” he said shortly. He glanced at me; his blue eyes were dark in the night. “We offer get out of jail free cards every now and then.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. I can’t count how many times I got Mitch out of trouble for having fake IDs or talked to security guards about Tristan’s shoplifting.”
I thought about this for a moment. “So, you let the people in your group to just . . . get away with anything?”
That made me angry. If he could let Mitch out of trouble for fake IDs or Tristan for shoplifting, then why couldn’t he have just kept his mouth shut about my dad’s boat?
Abe shook his head quickly. “No, it’s not like that,” he corrected loudly. “We don’t expect everyone in the group to suddenly be perfect when they join. They’ll have relapses. We know that.”
“So then why do you let them get away with it? Won’t that just teach them that big ol’ Abe and Norman will clean up their mess for them?”
“They don’t get away with it!”
A girl, with long blonde hair with pink ends, glanced at Abe, rolling her eyes and muttering something under her breath.
He sighed, his chest caving. “We deal with it,” he said, calm now. “We find a way to increase their community work or make them volunteer somewhere. If they refuse, then we leave it up to the police.”
My eyes grew wide. “I have to work more at the Roberts?!”
Abe shrugged. “Maybe.” He kicked a pebble with the toe of his flip-flop. “Or . . . we could find you another place to volunteer. Maybe you could. . .”
I waited for him to say something like the soup kitchen or some hospital with dying kids or something.
“. . . Maybe you could volunteer at the nursing home with Alzheimer’s patients,” he said, almost quietly.
Something in me began to burn, hot and strong. “I think Chester said I could go,” I shot back angrily, turning around and running straight into a guy’s hard chest.
I didn’t bother looking at his face as I stormed off.
“Silvia!” Abe called out. I didn’t look to see if he was following me or not, and I frankly didn’t care.
He might have thought that what he said would strike a pocket of kindness in me but instead, he poured fuel to a flaming fire. I had no interest in watching old people forget their names, their families, everything and knowing my family is in for the same fate.
I tapped on the shoulder of a random police man. “Can I have a ride home?” I asked.
The officer looked me over, and then nodded. “In a minute.”
I looked over my shoulder as I waited. Abe was nowhere in sight.
. . .
Even though the officer agreed not to use his lights when he drove me home, I still felt like I was taking a big chance coming home in a squad car. And as he pulled in my driveway, I saw a ripple in the curtains.
If it were Jack or Dad, I was screwed. Even if I told them I wasn’t that drunk and I didn’t do anything wrong (except maybe underage drinking but everyone there was so it’s not that important anyway), they’d still throw the book at me.
When I opened the door, the house was dark. I was desperately hoping that the ripple was just the cat. I was confident that he wouldn’t say anything.
I heard someone shifting on the couch and then the lamp on the end table flicked on.
The cat definitely didn’t do that.
Scarlett sat there, her head turned so she could watch the police officer leave. Jack’s head was resting in her lap, fast asleep. She looked at me when the officer drove out of the driveway.
“I wasn’t arrested,” I said before she had a chance to ask or wake up Jack. “He just drove me home.”
“From the party?” She was whispering as she gently lifted Jack’s head up from her lap and stood up and tiptoed over to me. “What were the police doing at the party?!”
I shrugged. “I didn’t ask,” I mumbled, walking over to the fridge and grabbing a yogurt cup. I couldn’t remember if I ate dinner tonight or not.
Scarlett leaned in and sniffed. I raised an eyebrow at her. “Have you been drinking?” she asked, and then shook her head. “Silver, you’re on probation!”
I nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I know.” Where was all the yogurt? I glanced at her. “Did you eat the rest of the yogurt?”
She seemed at a loss for words, but only for a moment. “You can’t be drinking,” she hissed. She looked over her shoulder when Jack stirred on the couch. “What if your probation officer finds out? You might go back to jail.”
“Its fine,” I told her. I looked at Jack on the couch; his shirt was rolled up just a little. I squinted. “Does Jack have abs?”
Scarlett frowned, turning around. Her lips turned up in a small smile as she stared him. “Yeah,” she murmured. “He’s getting a little addicted to working out.”
Jack had never been in bad shape, but he didn’t have abs, not until now anyway. It used to be a sore spot for him. I guess he finally took my advice and did something about his non-washboard chest.
“You can’t tell Jack,” I said.
Her faint smile fell. “But . . .” she looked at Jack and then me, biting her lip. “You don’t want me to tell him because you want to be the one to tell him, right?”
Even she didn’t believe that.
“No,” I said, spotting a yogurt cup behind a jar of pickles. “If he finds out, he’s just going to go insane and turn into a freaking watch dog. Don’t tell him.”
“I can’t keep secrets from him!” It looked like she was starting to panic. “I’m a terrible liar. My mom says I’m an open book.”
“That’s because moms have heard all their kids’ lies. Starting with ‘No, mom. I didn’t shove my peas under my plate.’”
Scarlett’s mouth was open, but she didn’t say anything. Finally, she let out a big whoosh of air and sighed.
She caved, I could tell.
“Thatta girl,” I said to her, nudging her with my elbow as I tore open the yogurt cup. When she still looked miserable, I said, “Trust me. Jack is dense. It won’t be that hard.”
Scarlett shook her head. “It’s not that,” she said. “I just don’t like lying to people, especially if I’m in a relationship with them.”
I spooned the yogurt in my mouth. “If you’re in a relationship, then there’s bound to be lying,” I told her, swallowing. “Might as well start now.”
She was still unconvinced.
“Look,” I said, tossing my cup in the trash can. “If he finds out, he’s going to be mad at me for drinking to begin with and for telling you not to tell him. He’s not going to be mad at you.”
“I still don’t want to lie to him.”
I shrugged. “Sorry.”
Scarlett sighed heavily. “I better get brownie points for this, Silver.”