AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ever since that day, he would tease me by calling me Princess. Later — after we became more than friends — the nickname became something more. It became tender. Intimate. He called me Princess, and sometimes I would respond by calling him my Prince Charming. The boy who woke me up from the sleepwalking existence that was my life before I met him.
And then, after I betrayed him, the word became what it was when he said it today. An insult to be hurled at me. A word with barbs so real I was surprised they didn’t draw blood.
When I left Ironwood, I stopped going by my full name. I couldn’t hear it without thinking about what I did to him. What I used to have with him.
What I would never have again.
As I pull my car into the parking lot of my motel and park it in the space in front of the door to my room, I can’t stop my mind from going back to those exciting first few months with Brody. We might have never even met except that my father hired his father as our landscaper and gardener. That summer, after school let out, Brody’s dad started bringing him along on jobs. I, on the other hand, was spending an idle, boring summer. With my two best friends away — one at a fancy summer camp in Massachusetts, and the other on a European holiday with her parents — I had few companions except my books. Maybe if Emma and Olivia had been around, I wouldn’t have noticed him as quickly. But whatever the reason, Brody Hicks, with his tanned skin and easy, crooked grin, captivated me. I started spending as much time as I could lounging by the pool, reading. And it was no coincidence that I was often out there on the days when Brody was mowing the lawn or trimming the hedges.
“You’re already donewithCrime and Punishment, eh?” he asks me, flipping the trowel he’s holding like he’s a drummer in a rock band. “Whatcha readin’ now?”
I tilt my face up to his, hiding behind my sunglasses. Since the day he noticed me rereading theTwilightseries a couple weeks ago and made that crack about it, I’ve only been bringing books down to the pool that would make him take me more seriously.
“Lolita,” I say, holding up my paperback. “By Nabokov.”
“Shit. Ain’t that book like, about a pedophile or something?” He gives me a dubious frown.
“Yeah. It’s pretty grim. But it’s intense, too, and brilliantly written. People think the author wrote the main character as a hero, but it’s exactly the opposite. He’s meant to be a villain. Nabokov wrote him as a horrible person who is trying to convince us he isn’t. That’s the point.”
I shift on the chaise as he sits down on the one next to me, conscious of the new black-and-white polka dot bikini I’m wearing. That, too, is meant to impress him.
Brody’s tan is deepening with the summer. Today it’s especially hot, meaning he’s taken off his shirt. His bare skin glistens in the sun, his reddish hair tousled and appearing more golden with the contrast to his tan. His dad is sick today, so he came to work by himself. He finished mowing about an hour ago — as I saw from my perch at my bedroom window — and when he moved to the back yard, I hurriedly changed into my bathing suit and came downstairs to the pool.
“Shit, it’t hot,” he says, reaching his arm up and wiping his brow with the inside of his bicep. “I’m fucking melting.”
“Why don’t you jump in the pool?” I say, nodding toward the cool, pristine water. “It’s okay, no one’s home but me. I don’t care.”
My voice is nonchalant — I’ve been practicing my ‘nonchalant tone’ in front of my bedroom mirror almost since the day I met Brody Hicks. Seemingly overnight, my adolescent fantasies have shifted from A-list actors and rock stars to the boy with the golden-brown eyes and the mocking smile.
“You don’t care?” he asks, flashing that same mocking grin at me now. “You’re not gonna turn me in to Daddy?”
My face flushes with embarrassment. I hate when he makes me feel like some spoiled rich girl.
“So, if I jump in the pool, are you gonna jump in with me?” he teases. “Or are you too afraid of messing up your hair?”
Screw that. Never one to back down from a challenge, I stand and pull my sunglasses off, tossing them on the table beside my book. Giving him a pointed look, I swivel on my heel and saunter over to the diving board, conscious that I’m giving him an A-plus look at my ass. As I step onto the long plank, I can feel his eyes on me, and, ignoring the sudden rush of blood in my ears, I take a couple of bounces, spring off the board, and execute a perfect dive into the middle of the pool.
When I’m still under the water, I hear a muffled whoosh. Seconds later when I come up to the surface, he’s there beside me when I open my eyes.
“Nice dive, Princess,” he grins. “Nice view, too.”
I toss him a smirk and dive back under the water, so he won’t see how pleased I am.
Later that afternoon,when my dad came home, Brody was back at work on the garden. I hustled into the house as soon as I heard his car coming up the drive. I turned on the shower in my bathroom on the second floor, and from the bathroom window I could see Dad chatting with Brody.
Dad liked him at first, which I found strange. Usually he judged people primarily by their incomes or the cars they drove. But Brody passed Dad’s likeability test because he was a hard worker. And because he looked more like a star football player than the burnout he presented himself as at school.
Maybe, too, as the son of the gardener, it never occurred to my father to be suspicious of Brody as a threat to my honor. Or whatever he thought of as my value as an attractive young girl to be married advantageously in the future.
Back in my motel room,I eat soggy, lukewarm fries and channel surf for a while on a beat-up flat-screen TV with a crack in the screen, before giving up and shutting the thing off.
I need to call my mom before I go to bed anyway. She’ll be worrying about me otherwise. I heave a deep sigh and pull out my phone. Normally, I love talking to my mom, but this isn’t a normal situation.
The phone rings twice before she picks it up.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
“Hi, Mom. How are you?” I say back, forcing a cheeriness I’ve become accustomed to using whenever I talk to her.
