Dead People (28 page)

“No, you don’t have to—”

“I want to.”
 

And she rolled him onto his back.

And she spread his legs.
 

And she knelt between his thighs.
 

And she grabbed his erection.
 

And she showed him she knew how to play his instrument just fine too.

Chapter Thirty-six

“This will never happen again.” Adjusting her top, Cassie sat cross-legged on the carpet, less than three feet from where they’d lain a few minutes ago.

Standing, Luke zipped up his jeans and looked down at her with slumberous eyes. She read the message in them.
Hell yeah, we will.

She stopped fiddling with her top and scrambled to her feet, her legs unsteady. He had his shoes on—how did men dress so fast? With hers off, she was at least another half-inch shorter than him. Right now she felt like she needed every fraction of an inch she could get.

“I’m not saying that to make you ask me for it.” She put her hands on her hips.

He outlined his lips with his tongue.

Arrogant jerk. If her body wasn’t still singing “I’m the Happiest Girl in the Whole USA,” she’d tell him where to put his tongue. But since it so recently had given her a level of satisfaction Hunk couldn’t match, she let it pass.

“What I’m saying,” she spoke slowly, taking time to consider her words and avoid sounding like an idiot, “is we really don’t like each other.”

He shrugged. “I like you.”

The simple sentence made her heart skip a beat and her lungs constrict. She took a deep breath and ignored her body’s reaction to him. “You don’t like what I do. You think it’s freaky. You think
I’m
freaky.”

He shrugged, but she saw the change in his face, a door slamming. The brooder back, the strutting rooster gone. “You weren’t talking to ghosts while we were together there.” He gestured at the now infamous—in her mind—rectangle of carpet.

“We’re not always going to spend our time locked in the tower. There’s Erin, remember?”

His face tightened. “She won’t know about this. It has nothing to do with her.”

“I deserve better than a man who disapproves of me.” She looked him straight in his eyes, holding her head high. “I deserve someone who’s proud of me. All of me, all that I do. I won’t accept anything less.”

One side of his mouth turned down. “You want to talk about emotions, you’ve got the wrong guy. I don’t do emotions.”

“You’re right, I do have the wrong guy.” Her eyes burned and she didn’t know why. She’d already made the decision not to do this again.

This should be a happy time. She should be patting herself on her back saying
Good choice, Cassie
. Any regrets were misplaced fantasies that came from reading too many happily ever after stories. Sure, she believed happy every after happened for a few fortunate people. She just wasn’t one of them.

He strode to a window overlooking the lake. She crossed to another window. They were locked in the room together and there was nothing else to do unless she suddenly learned how to play a guitar.

Instead, she peered at the lake. It looked murky today, clouds covering the sun. Not a happy day for Mother Nature either.

“For myself, I don’t give a damn if you talk to ghosts,” he said, the words sounding forced out of him.

She turned her head to look at him, but he continued to face away from her, his back rigid.

“It’s Erin I’m protecting,” he continued. “She likes you. Maybe she’d come to accept you as...something in our lives. But I went through life with a mother who was different and kids can be mean. You saved Erin today, but if you stick around she’ll be a joke among the other kids. I was a guy and I could take it. But Erin’s fragile. She’s gone through enough already.”

Her heart felt heavy. It wasn’t only “different” parents other kids avoided. They shunned the kids with the “different” label pinned on them. Even the nerds hadn’t wanted to be her friend.

“That shouldn’t stop us from enjoying each other.” He turned away from the window, the slight smile on his face not reaching his shadowed eyes. “You’ll be leaving soon. Why not take advantage of the time left? You can come an hour earlier, before Erin gets home.”

She stared at him. Was he saying what she thought he was saying? “Screwing you isn’t what you’re paying me for.”

“Consider it a perk of the job.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. The only good use for his tongue was what he’d been doing to her before. And after that comment, would never do again.

Did he want her to hate him?

He scratched his head. Maybe he wasn’t a complete idiot and was having second thoughts about—

“Better yet, consider it like a coffee break.”

She wished she had a cup of coffee in her hand right now. The hotter the better. She’d pour it over his head. The lower one that resided between his legs.

“A sex break?” she asked in a sugary voice laced with venom.

“Christ. Now you’re pissed.”

“Really?” She smiled tightly at him. “You have a way with words. Have you ever thought of being a songwriter?”

His lips twitched. “You make me laugh. No one else does that.”

“Let me see.” She lifted one of her crossed arms and tapped her fingernail on her chin. “You like sex with me, I make you laugh, it’s convenient, and—here’s the closer—I’m only here temporarily. Have I covered everything?”

He got that look on his face that said
there she goes again.
“I’m being honest.”

“I’m being honest too when I say no thanks.” She held up her hand before he could speak. “And no arguments.”

Someone knocked on the door. They both swiveled to face it.

“Luke?” Tricia called. “Luke, are you there?”

Luke strode to the door. Cassie followed him, her feet dragging for no reason she could think of.

“I’m here,” Luke yelled. “Cassie’s with me. We’re locked in. Do you know where a key is?”

“I do, but...” The door handle turned. A second later, it was open. From the top of the door, a key clattered onto the floor. “It’s not locked.”

“It was locked,” Luke said.

“It was locked,” Cassie said at the same instant. Tricia looked at her, her eyes narrowed, a frown between her eyebrows.

Heat scalded Cassie’s cheeks. She and Luke might have sounded a tad defensive.

Lifting her nose in the air, Tricia sniffed. “What’s that smell? I just cleaned here—” She slapped her hand over her mouth, her face turning red.

Cassie sniffed too. Oops. There was no mistaking the sharp smell of semen. She shared a look with Luke. Tricia backed out, pink blotches on her cheeks. “I’ll see you downstairs.” Her voice was muffled and her eyes shocked.

The next second, her footsteps tapped down the stairs, racing away from them. Cassie turned to Luke. “That was uncomfortable.”

“It didn’t bother me.”

She stalked past him out of the room. Men were so different from women, she sometimes wondered how the world got populated.

When she reached the first floor, she heard pots and pans clattering in the kitchen. Cassie swerved into the family room. What could she say to Tricia? Nothing. Tricia would just have to deal with it.

Isabel waited in the family room, hovering a couple feet above the gleaming wood floor in the middle of the room, smiling gleefully.

Cassie set her hands on her hips. “Why did you do that?”

“I wanted to see if you managed to have that good sex you were telling me about.” She smirked. “It seems you weren’t lying.”

Cassie turned away. What she most wanted to do right now would leave her with a frozen hand and a flaming hot temper.

But with every cell of Cassie’s body, she wanted to smack her.

***

Luke watched Cassie get in the car and a spark of light inside him blinked off. He turned and walked to the back window, not wanting to watch her drive away. Without the sun shining, the lake looked bleak, as if vicious creatures lurked in its depth.

He shoved his hands in his pockets. Why did women make everything so complicated? From all Cassie’s screaming and moaning he knew she enjoyed the sex as much as he did. But the few minutes of sexual release weren’t worth the twenty minutes after-game rehash.

So why did replaying her squeaks and cries in his mind cause his blood to flow downstream? Why did remembering the feel of her breasts—full, soft, warm—make his dick swell? Why did he want to run down to his bedroom and grab a handful of condoms?

Why did he want to do it again? And again? And again?

It wasn’t as if he’d ask her to stick around after Isabel left. She was wrong for Erin. With her “talking to ghosts” gigs, she’d be the death knell to Erin’s social life.

The memory of his mother moondancing in front of his grade school still made him wince and—an unexpected side effect—shrink his erection. Even in sunny California the incident sealed his fate for his school years, and the other kids didn’t even know about Joy’s string of live-in loser boyfriends.

Erin was a hundred times worse off than he’d been, raised by a junkie. No wonder she rejected the normality of Tricia and responded to Cassie’s oddity. She was used to odd. Her way of life was odd.

The wrong way of life.

He took his hands from his pockets and splayed them on both sides of the window, dropping his head forward and closing his eyes. Closing out the emptiness.

Cassie was right. Better to stay away from her.

Still, he supposed it wouldn’t hurt to keep a few condoms in his pocket.

He seemed to have a low level of resistance when he was around her.

Apparently, so did she.
 

A smile grew inside him. Who the hell was he kidding? If he had an opportunity, he’d jump her bones faster than he could pull down his zipper.

If it happened again, he’d be prepared.

***

Cassie parked in front of her room, and a wave of claustrophobia hit her. She wanted out of here. This motel, this town, this state.

Squashing down the emotion, she trudged into her room. The phone on the table blinked at her. When she picked up the receiver, a mechanical voice told her a package awaited her at the front office.

A middle-aged woman with garlicky breath behind the motel desk handed Cassie a padded envelope. Printed on the return address label was Cassie’s stepmother’s name and upscale suburban address. Cassie frowned. This was the first time her stepmother had sent her anything.

It felt like a book. It couldn’t be anything worthwhile or Noreen would have kept it for herself or given it to Cassie’s half-brother. She’d used the diamonds from her mother’s engagement and wedding rings and put them into a cocktail ring for herself. Upon hearing about the breakup of Cassie’s engagement, her only concern was Cassie’s ring. Cassie told her she’d thrown it at her ex, who used the woman he’d been screwing as a shield. The ring had bounced off the back of her head.

Her stepmother had opened and closed her mouth soundlessly, like a guppy on dry land, gasping for water, shocked at her misuse of the piece of jewelry.

After all these years, Cassie didn’t know what made her stepmother so hateful to her, and she told herself she no longer cared. The woman was toxic, and Cassie’s best defense was to stay as far away as possible.

Cassie carried the package back to her room, a frown pulling at her forehead. She thought of tossing it in the trash—Noreen wouldn’t send her anything she would like. But her curiosity wouldn’t let her do that. She ripped open the envelope and pulled out a purple journal with a cartoon figure of a cherub on the front.
Talk to Me
, the title said.

Cassie opened it and saw her mother’s handwriting. A moment later, she cried out in pain.

Chapter Thirty-seven

I’m cried out. My eyes are as red as a clown’s nose and it feels like there’s a sixth-grade drum class inside my head. It happened today. Cassie is like me. We stopped off at McDonald’s and we both had Happy Meals—her because it’s the right size for a six-year-old, and me because I was hoping the name might infuse a little afternoon delight into me. Instead, the horror of what happened took away my appetite and I ended up throwing my meal in the trash.

Cassie looked at the chair next to her and said, “What’s wrong with your face?”

The chair was empty, there was no one there. I clung to the hope that she was talking to an imaginary friend. Many children have pretend pals. Nothing odd about that.

“It’s a man,” she told me. “His name’s Bob. He was hit by a truck over there.” She pointed out the window at the crossroad. “Bob says it was before the stoplights were up.” She dropped her hand and bit into her happy hamburger.

I leaned forward, looked at the empty chair, and said, “Go away,” grateful that no one sat near us. My choice. I hate it when I’m trying to eat and I feel other people’s emotions and sorrows. Very distracting.