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“You shouldn't listen to gossip,” he sneered. “I know I didn't listen when I heard that you'd been putting out for every rich boy in the senior class.” It was a lie. Part of Holly Grace's appeal lay in the fact that nobody had managed to get any further with her than a few incomplete gropes and some tongue-kissing.
Her knuckles gradually turned white as she clutched her chemistry book, but other than that she didn't betray a flicker of emotion at what he'd said. “Too bad you won't ever be one of them,” she jeered.
Her attitude infuriated him. She made him feel small and unimportant, less than a man. No woman would have ever talked like that to his old man, Jaycee Beaudine, and no woman was going to talk like that to him. He moved his body closer so he could hover over her and she would feel the threat of six feet of solid male steel getting ready to run her down. She took a quick step to one side, but he was too fast. Pitching his cigarette down on the blacktop, he sidestepped with her and then moved closer, so that she either had to retreat or bump against him. Gradually, he backed her up against the brick wall.
Behind him, Hank and Ritchie made smacking noises with their mouths and let out catcalls, but Dallie didn't pay any attention. Holly Grace still held up her chemistry book gripped in her hands so that instead of feeling her breasts against his chest, he felt only the hard corners of the book and the contours of her knuckles. He braced his hands against the wall on either side of her head and leaned into her, pinning her hips to the wall with his own and trying not to pay any attention to the sweet scent of her long blond hair, which reminded him of flowers and fresh spring air. “You wouldn't know what to do with a real man,” he sneered, moving his hips against her. “And you're too busy wrestling the pants off those rich boys to find out.”
He waited for her to back down, to lower those clear blue eyes and look upset so he could let her go.
“You're a pig!” she spat out, glaring at him defiantly. “And you're too ignorant to know how pitiful you really are.”
Ritchie and Hank began to hoot. Dallie wanted to punch them... punch her.... He would make her deal with him! “Is that so?” he scoffed. Abruptly, he slid his hand down along her side to the hem of her navy skirt, keeping her body pinned against the wall so she couldn't get away. She blinked. Her eyelids opened and closed once, twice. She didn't say anything, didn't struggle. He pushed his hand up beneath her dress and touched her leg through the diamond-patterned white tights, not letting himself think about how much he'd been wanting to touch her legs, how much time he'd spent dreaming about those legs.
She set her jaw and gritted her teeth and didn't say a word. She was as tough as nails, ready to take on any man who looked at her. Dallie thought he could probably take her right then, right against the wall. She wasn't even fighting him. She probably wanted it. That's what Jaycee had told him—that women liked a man who took what he wanted. Skeet said it wasn't true, that women wanted a man who respected them, but maybe Skeet was just too soft.
Holly Grace glared at him, and something pounded hard in his chest. He curled his hand closer to the inside of her thigh. She didn't move. Her face was a picture of defiance. Everything about her told him how tough she was—her eyes, the flare of her nostrils, the set of her jaw. Everything except the small, helpless quiver that had begun to destroy the corner of her mouth.
He backed away abruptly, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans and hunching his shoulders. Ritchie and Hank snickered. Too late, he realized that he should have moved more slowly. Now it looked as if she'd gotten the best of him, as if he'd been the one to retreat. She glared at him like he was a bug she'd just squashed under her foot, and then she walked away.
Hank and Ritchie started to tease him, so he began to brag about how she was practically begging for it and how lucky she would be if he ever decided to give it to her. But all the time he was talking, his stomach kept twisting on him as if he'd eaten something bad, and he couldn't forget that helpless quiver spoiling the corner of her soft pink mouth.
That evening he found himself hanging around in the alley behind Purity Drugs where she worked for her uncle after school. He leaned his shoulders against the wall of the store and dug the heel of his boot into the dirt and thought about how he should be meeting Skeet at the driving range right now and practicing shots with
his three-wood. Except right now he didn't care about his three-wood. He didn't care about golf or hustling the boys at the country club or anything but trying to redeem himself in the eyes of Holly Grace Cohagan.
A ventilation grid was set into the outside wall of the store a few feet above his head. Occasionally he heard a sound coming from the storeroom on the other side—a box being dropped, Billy T calling out an order, the distant ringing of the telephone. Gradually the sounds had died down as closing time approached, until now he could hear Holly Grace's voice so clearly he knew she must be standing right beneath the grid.
“You go on, Billy T. I'll lock up.”
“I'm in no hurry, honey bun.”
In his imagination, Dallie could see Billy T with his white pharmacist's coat and his florid face looking down his big putty nose at the high school boys when they came in to buy rubbers. Billy T would pull a pack of Trojans off the shelf behind him, lay them on the counter, and then, like a cat playing with a mouse, cover them with his hand and say, “If you buy those, I'll tell your mama.” Billy T had tried that crap with Dallie the first time he'd ever come into the store. Dallie had looked him straight in the eye and said he was buying them so he could fuck his mama. That had shut up old Billy T.
Holly Grace's voice drifted out of the vent. “I'm going home, then, Billy T. I have a lot of studying to do for tomorrow.” Her voice sounded strange, tight and overly polite.
“Not yet, honey,” her uncle answered, his voice as slick as oil. “You've been slipping out on me early all week. The front's all locked up. You come on over here, now.”
“No, Billy T, I don't—” She stopped speaking abruptly, as if something had settled over her mouth. Dallie straightened against the wall, his heart pounding in his chest. He heard the unmistakable sound of a moan and he squeezed his eyes shut. Christ... that's why she was holding out on all the senior boys. She was giving it to her uncle. Her own uncle.
A white-hot rage settled over him. Without any idea what he planned to do once he was inside, he flung himself at the back door and swung it open. Empty cartons and packages of paper towels and toilet paper lined the walls of the back hallway. He blinked his eyes, adjusting them to the dim light. The storage room was on his left, the door partly ajar, and he could hear Billy T's voice. “You're so pretty, Holly Grace. Yes... Oh, yes...”
Dallie's hands curled into fists at his sides. He walked toward the doorway and looked inside. He felt sick.
Holly Grace was sprawled on an old ripped couch, her white Woolworth's tights down around her ankles, one of Billy T's hands pushed up under her skirt. Billy T knelt by the couch, huffing and puffing like a steam engine while he tried to pull her tights the rest of the way off and feel her up at the same time. His back was to the doorway so he couldn't see Dallie watching them. Holly Grace lay with her head turned toward the door, eyes squeezed shut, just like she didn't want to lose a minute of what old Billy T was doing to her.
Dallie couldn't make himself look away and as he watched, the last of any romantic notions he might have had about her died away. Billy T got her tights off and started fumbling with the buttons on her blouse. He finally jerked it open and pushed up her bra. Dallie saw the flash of one of Holly Grace's breasts. The shape was distorted from the pressure of the bra band, but he could still see that it was round and full, just like he'd imagined, with a dusky nipple all puckered tight.
“Oh, Holly Grace,” Billy T moaned, still kneeling on the floor in front of her. He pushed her skirt up to her waist and fumbled with the front of his trousers. “Tell me how much you want it. Tell me how good Ï am.”
Dallie thought he was going to be sick, but he couldn't move. He couldn't turn away from the sight of those long graceful legs sprawled so awkwardly on the couch. “Tell me,” Billy T was saying. “Tell me how much you need it, honey bun.”
Holly Grace didn't open her eyes, didn't say a word. She just turned her face into the old plaid pillow on the couch. Dallie felt a prickle travel along his spine, a creeping of gooseflesh, as if somebody had just walked over his grave.
“Tell me!” Billy T said, louder this time. And then, abruptly, he drew back his fist and hit her in the stomach.
She gave a strangled, horrible cry and her body convulsed. Dallie felt as if Jaycee's fist had just landed in his own stomach, and a bomb went off in his head. He sprang forward, every nerve in his body ready to explode. Billy T heard a sound and turned, but before he could move, Dallie had shoved him to the concrete floor. Billy T looked up at him, his fat face puckered with disbelief like some comic book villain. Dallie drew back his foot and kicked him hard in the stomach.
“You p-punk,” Billy T gasped, clutching his stomach and trying to get out the words at the same time. “Sh-shit-eating punk—”
