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Fiona
Staring down at my phone, I drag my eyes across the screen for the millionth time, my fingers poised over the car door handle, everything suspended in time as my heart thunders inside my chest.
Boyd: Go to dinner with me.
My father’s voice snaps me from the cyclone of panic forming in my brain; I glance up, meeting his dark gaze in the rearview mirror. His forehead creases. “Did you hear anything I just said?”
“Um...” Stealing a quick look at my mother, whose chin rests on her hand as she stares out the window, I shake my head. “Sorry, I was reviewing midterm grades and calculating what I need to get on the finals to pass each class. Did you know that for the undergrad psych degree, you can get C’s in all your courses except the core ones? It’s like—”
“You’re not getting C’s though, right?” he cuts in, raising an eyebrow.
“Of course not,” I say, swallowing. My stats class teeters on the threshold between a B and C, but he doesn’t need to know that if I’m planning on acing the final.
“Atta girl.” Nodding, he unlocks the doors, as if giving me some sort of signal. “Remember, we’re on a strict curfew right now. Home by nine and no guests past then.”
His jaw tics when he says this last part, and I wonder if it has more to do with Kieran sneaking Juliet Harrison into the house last week or the fact that my father’s arm is in a sling as he recovers from a bullet wound. The day after Boyd stayed the night, my father had been mugged while changing his tire in the Ivers International parking lot, and even though he’d been discharged the same day, I can tell the incident has taken its toll on both my parents.
My mother slips farther from reality, sliding headfirst into one of her own making, and my father is cracking down on his rules while he otherwise pretends getting shot is a totally normal thing. Which, maybe for an ex-con it is, but I’m having a difficult time keeping up.
Still, I don’t want to cause any ripples that might hinder his recovery, and I don’t want to cause problems that might make my mother deteriorate faster.
So I nod, pushing open the door to his Aston Martin, and climb out, slinging my purse over my chest and starting up the front walk toward the community theater.
Tapping my thumbs absently over my keyboard, I contemplate my response to Boyd, truly afraid at this point that he only wants to hang out because he thinks I’m easy. Me writhing on top of him until I came last week like some sex-starved maniac certainly didn’t help matters, and he’s been pulling me into dark alcoves and away from prying eyes every chance he gets since.
I can’t stop the anxiety from spiraling inside when I think he’s only interested in young, virginal flesh.
Why else would the single most attractive, mysterious, terrifyingly stoic, and secretly violent man in town, possibly the world, want to kiss me?
“Maybe because he likes you?” Bea says when I pose the question to her, sucking on a red heart-shaped lollipop. We’re situated down left onstage, the front corner, flipping through the script of Macbeth that Olga passed out a few moments ago.
“All of a sudden, though?” I say, smoothing the pages of my copy so they sit squarely on top of each other. “When I say this went from zero to a hundred real quick, I’m not just referencing that Drake song.”
Bea rolls her eyes, running a hand over the tightly coiled braids in her hair. “He’s not, like, declaring his love for you, or anything, Fi. Cut the guy some slack.”
“I don’t know,” Heidi chimes in, rolling her script into a cylinder. “You’ve never dated guys with any sexual experience. Men like Boyd take what they want; they don’t ask first, and they certainly don’t take their time getting there. Are you sure he’s the one you want to be your first?”
My finger taps against the script in front of me, the urge to reach over and rip her blonde hair out almost overwhelming.
It’s not even that I’ve never been with guys that have sexual experience—it’s just that I never found myself interested in pursuing that route with them. If not for the way my body thrums with electricity when Boyd is around, I’d think I’m not attracted to men at all, but the truth is that’s just a difficult place for me to venture to.
In high school, I went on dates with some of the guys in our inner circle other than Nico, even participated in some exploration of certain degrees of sex, but I could never lose myself in the act, always too preoccupied with me to relax fully and enjoy myself.
Eventually, I just stopped trying.
But with Boyd, from the very start, there’s been no hesitation. No chance for my brain to falter and wonder what I’m doing, if I’m doing it right, or if it should be happening at all.
When we come together, it’s an explosion of heat and passion that I find myself lost in, and that’s what scares me.
My identity is already wrapped up so fully in the existence of other people. I can’t help the fear accompanying the notion that whatever scraps I’ve got now might be erased in his presence.
Men like Boyd. Heidi’s words play on a loop in my mind, twisting my stomach into knots.
Truth is, I don’t know what kind of man Boyd is. Don’t know how far his violence extends, don’t know about the evils penetrating his soul beyond their obvious existence. The mystery lurking inside of him is part of the appeal, but it’s part of the concern, too.
What do I do if I lose myself to a man not interested in finding me?
“Sorry not all of us were sucking dick behind the bleachers at every football game in high school,” Bea says, pointing her lollipop at Heidi.
