“No, God no.” I tried to explain. “I just . . . it just . . . it’s so . . .” I didn’t have the words for it.
But he understood. “I know, babe, I know.” He moved faster, his grip on my hand tightening, his jaw tense. “Oh, God, you feel perfect. Perfect.”
Our bodies moved together, our hands clasped, and I didn’t know where he began and where I ended.
When he came, I came with him.
Sitting on the top of the picnic table afterward, so Riley could have a cigarette, a cliché that made me smile in secret amusement, I put my bare feet on the bench and looked up at the dark sky.
Everything had changed. But then, no, it hadn’t. It was just fuller, more.
His arm came around my back.
“There are no stars,” he murmured. “Light pollution.”
“Make a wish anyway.”
“There’s nothing to wish for. I already have everything I want.”
God. The tears rolled down my cheek, two damp rivers, as I sniffled.
“I’ve never seen you cry,” he said, puzzled. “Not even at your parents’ house. And now you cry twice in twenty minutes.”
“It’s because I finally let you in.” I wasn’t talking about sex.
And he knew it.
“I do have a wish,” he said softly. “That you’ll look at me like that every night for forever. It’s the sweetest expression I’ve ever seen. Almost as sweet as you.”
“Believe me, I will.” There was nothing I wanted more.
“Oh, I believe you,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning up.
I nudged his knee with mine, staring to smile myself. “You’d better.”
“I said I believe you. Pita.”
And we both laughed.
Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next book in Erin McCarthy’s TRUE BELIEVERS series
BELIEVE
Available from InterMix January 2014
Robin
I spent my sophomore year in college partying. I wasn’t even original about it. Just the totally typical pattern of skipping class and going out every single night. If there was a keg party I went, if there was a shot I drank it, if there was a guy I made out with him. I wore short skirts, showed as much cleavage as I could, and I felt sexy and confident while having the time of my life. I threw up in more than one toilet, made out with a taxidermied deer on a dare, and came home without my shoes, dorm key, or phone on a regular basis.
Later, I tried to look back and figure out why I had slid so easily into party girl, but all I could come up with was maybe I just wanted a louder voice, and drinking gave me that. I wanted some attention, I guess, or maybe just to have a good time where there were no rules. Or maybe there was just no reason at all.
It all seemed normal. What you do in college, right? You party. You make superficial friends. You drink. Do stupid things that you laugh about the next day and take pictures that will prevent you from ever being a senator.
It wasn’t anything I felt bad about. I mean, sure, I could have done without some of those hangovers, and I did end up dodging a few guys who wanted to date after I spent a drunken night telling them they were awesome, but nothing to make me feel ashamed.
Until I hooked up with one of my best friend’s boyfriend when she was out of town.
Then I hated myself and the existence of vodka. Because I wasn’t one of those girls. Or I hadn’t been. Never, under any circumstances at all, would I have come even remotely close to doing anything with a friend’s guy sober, so why would I do that?? How could alcohol make me cross a boundary so high and thick and barb-wired? I wasn’t even hot for Nathan. I never had been. I mean, he was cute, whatever, but it wasn’t like I nurtured a secret crush or anything.
So how did I end up waking up next to him on his plaid sheets, his arm thrown carelessly over my naked chest? I came awake with a start, head pounding, mouth dry, for a second wondering where the hell I was and who I had had sex with. When I blinked and took in the face above that arm, I thought I was going to throw up. Getting to the apartment, sex, it was completely a black, yawning hole of nothing. I didn’t remember even leaving the party. No idea how Nathan and I had wound up in bed together. All I had was a few flashes that suddenly came back to me of him biting my nipple, hard, so that I had protested, my legs on his shoulders. Nothing else.
As I lay there, heart racing, wondering how the hell I could live with this, with myself, the horror slicing through me like a sharp knife, Nathan woke up.
He gave me a sleepy, cocky smile, punctuated by a yawn. “Hey, Robin.”
“Hey.” I tried to sink down under the sheet, not wanting him to see me naked, not wanting to be naked.
“Well, that was fun,” he said, smile expanding into a grin. “We should do that again before we get up.”
The thought made my stomach turn. “But Kylie,” I said weakly, because I wanted to remind him that his girlfriend was back at her parents’ for the summer, but she still very much existed. His girlfriend. My best friend.
“I love Kylie, but she’s not here. And we’re not going to tell her.” He shrugged. “I didn’t expect this to happen, but it did and we’re still naked.” He pulled my hand over his erection. “No reason we shouldn’t enjoy it.”
And he leaned over to kiss me. I scooted backward so fast, I fell off the mattress onto my bare ass. “I’m going to puke,” I told him.
“Bummer.”
Grabbing my clothes off the floor, I stumbled into the hallway, hoping his roommate, Bill, wasn’t around. In the bathroom, I leaned over the sink, trembling, eyes that stared back at me in the mirror shocked, the skin under them bruised. I didn’t get sick. I wished I would. I wished I could vomit out of myself the horrible realization that I had done something terrible, appalling, unforgiveable, mega disgusting.
I couldn’t use vodka as an excuse. And now I knew Nathan was an asshole on top of it all.
Without asking him if I could shower, I turned on the water and stepped in, wanting to wash away the night, the dirty, nasty smell of skank sex off of my skin. I felt like a slut, like a bitch, like someone I didn’t even know, and my tears mixed with the steady stream of water from the shower as I scrubbed and scrubbed.
I spent the rest of the summer sober, far away from parties, guilt nibbling at my insides, making me chronically nauseous, and I avoided everyone. I begged Nathan to stop when he kept sending me sexy texts and I ignored my friend Jessica, who had stayed in town for the summer and who kept asking what was wrong.
By August I was consumed by anxiety and the fear that someone knew, that someone would tell, that I would be responsible for Kylie having her heart broken.
I slept whole days away and I couldn’t eat. I thought about getting meds from the doctor for sleeping or for anxiety or for depression or for alcoholism or for sluttiness. But what was done was done and a pill wasn’t going to fix it. Or me.
When Jessica called and said Nathan’s friend Tyler was picking me up whether I liked it or not and we were going to hang out, I tried to say no. But then I decided that I liked to be with myself even less than I liked to be with other people.
Besides, once Kylie got back in a week, I wasn’t going to be able to be friends with any of them anymore, and this might be my last chance to spend time with them. I couldn’t be in the same room with her and pretend that I hadn’t betrayed our friendship in the worst way possible. I wasn’t going to be able to sit there and have her and Nathan kissing on each other, knowing that he had spent all summer trying to hook up with me again.