Page 64 of People Like Us

“I’ve got a lot of homework to do.” I said.

“I have to go to work.” Emily said at the same time.

Each of us knew the other was lying, but we smiled at each other like it was funny.

”Did you buy the dress?” August asked as he slid my heels off.

“No.” I balanced on his shoulder as he did the other.

“Why not?” His hands slid up my legs as he rose.

I didn’t answer his question. Instead I said, “There’s going to be a party across the street after the formal. You should come.”

“What for?” he laughed, moving around me toward his couch.

I shrugged. “It will be fun. It’s just across the street.”

I kept my back toward him as I said it with all the casualness I could muster. I didn’t want to see his face when he rejected me.

He came up behind me, his chin resting on my shoulder as his ringed fingers moved a lock of hair away before he whispered in my ear, “Is that what you want, Sin? For me to sit in the shadows of a party just to watch you have fun with your friends?”

I closed my eyes, leaning back into the feeling of his breath on my skin. I hummed in agreement.

“Need someone to witness how happy you are with them?”

“I hate when you do that,” I said, breathless.

“Do what?” His cool fingertips traced along my collarbones.

“See me.”

“Sorry, Sin. I have other plans for that night.”

“Oh?” I started to turn, but his hands found my hips and held me firmly in place.

He chuckled against my shoulder. “Keep your eyes closed.”

I did as he said as I lost the heat of his proximity. When I heard his voice again it came from in front of me. “Alright, open.”

August was on his knees, holding up a single white rose. “I know it’s less than you deserve, but I was wondering if, after winter formal, you’d come over and dance with me alone in my room?”

A wide smile split my face as I took the rose from him. “Will you dress up for me?”

He nodded. “Anything for you.”

“Then I’d love to dance alone in your room with you.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

If there was bigger middle finger to God than fucking the pastor’s son in a cornfield after youth group, I hadn’t found it yet. And I’d looked for one. Hard.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was mad at God for anymore. Maybe for making me a woman in a world that seemed to be stacked against them. This was always something that twisted through my thoughts when Andy was inside me. Though lately, especially after watching August come the way he had on Friday, I was beginning to wonder if being a woman was perhaps the closest any person could feel to being a God.

Pastor Spires would often declare: God is good, to which the congregation would reply: All the time; and then we would switch and he would say: All the time, and we would have to respond: God is good. He did this at the end of long rants about God’s wrath, or a disciple’s unjustified sins. It always felt like a magic trick to me.

‘David, a war mongrel and adulterer, was God’s favorite’ had the same condescending tone as ‘Look at this card, so I can distract you while I pull this rabbit out of a hat’ to me. You know it isn’t real, but you’re impressed anyway. That’s what faking orgasms felt like to me. That brief moment of showmanship to really keep the crowd believing in what you have to say.

The quilt Andy’s grandmother had made him from his pee-wee football shirts was the only cushion my poor knees ever got over the broken stalks of corn Andy had cleared months ago deep enough in the field that no one could see us from the church or the road. We’d enter through the treeline at the back of the church’s property—walking directly through a corn field is a great way to end up with a thousand tiny cuts so we did our best to avoid it—and spread the blanket out over the soil. Though it had rained a lot this week, causing the thing to slide back and forth through the mud as we moved, the smell of wet earth mixing with sweat and ripe corn.