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We watched the news without really watching the news, sitting on the edge of our seats, waiting anxiously for my son to fall into slumber.
Unlike other thirteen-year-old boys who were perfectly content to stay up all night and then struggled to wake up for school the next day, Bear went down like a log.
The kid could sleep his way through a third World War. I suspected it was due to his busy schedule during the day, which normally included lots of skateboarding from place to place, school, homework, and helping his papaw with some handiwork every afternoon.
“Think he crashed?” Cruz asked when the clock hit eleven.
“There’s a good chance, but let me double-check.”
I got up and padded to Bear’s room, feeling Cruz moving behind me. When I got to the narrow hallway, I pushed Bear’s door open, revealing a cozy room full of posters of Zelda and Halo and Tony Hawk and Rodney Mullen.
Bear was snoring, sleeping sideways, his entire upper body out of the bed. I resisted the urge to shift him into a normal position.
“Out cold,” I whispered.
We tiptoed our way to my room and closed the door. As soon as we were alone, surrounded by the silence of the night, my queen-size bed and nothing else, I felt self-conscious again.
I moved to my old, door-less closet, removing my cheap earrings as I spoke.
“Don’t say things like that again. About getting married to me, I mean. It’s unkind to Bear. He is going to start thinking you mean it. He’s a kid. He’s literal.”
“You’re a grown-up and you’re literal.” Cruz began unbuttoning his black dress shirt. “And besides, I wasn’t kidding. I refuse to let other people’s opinions fuck me if they’re not giving me an orgasm, too. I reserve the right to do whatever I want to do to you, and with you.”
“When did you decide that?” I asked, outraged.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Sometime this week, when I found myself being given a phone number of a woman I didn’t want to call, then heard a rumor that you were selling weed at Fairhope High to pay for your Botox, but found myself completely unfazed by what it said about me if I went out with you.”
It was bull, and we both knew it.
He had too much to lose.
Even if he didn’t, dating him wasn’t worth the wrath of my family and the townsfolk. I opened my mouth, but he shut me up with a scorching-hot kiss, soaked with sweet memories and hunger and the garlic from the pasta sauce he’d made.
Biting down on his lower lip, I tugged his slacks open, fumbling unsuccessfully with the buttons and zippers.
“What is this thing, a darn chastity belt?”
He laughed into our kiss gruffly, pushing down my uniform from my shoulders, clawing it off me.
“I still have the clothes I bought you at my house.” He unbuttoned the front of my mini dress. His fingers sank deep into my skin, leaving dents.
“Burn them.” I bit down on his stubbled neck, pushing a hand into his pants and cupping his massive erection brazenly.
It jerked happily into my palm in greeting.
Hello to you, too, handsome.
“Only if you come and help me,” Cruz challenged.
“I plan to come, all right.”
But weirdly, when I thought about those clothes, I wasn’t full of stubborn, defiant dread. I happened to quite like those ridiculously expensive garments and some of the memories created in them.
Especially the floaty bohemian style ones that made me look like one of the Olsen twins taking her trash out. I missed them (the dresses, not the Olsens. I mean, they were great in Full House, but I never got into their newer stuff).
A minute later, I was on my back in my bed, watching him slap a condom on. He rolled his hips, sliding into me in one, achingly slow movement, grinning down at me.
He rotated his hips, gathering my hair in his fist and tugging it to extend my neck and make me look at him. The planes of his face, his heartbreakingly stunning cheekbones, were too much for me.
