Fury (14 page)

“It’s creepy down here,” Ty said, as if reading his thoughts. “Let’s go upstairs.”

On the second floor, in her bedroom with slanted ceilings and white wallpaper, the house seemed brighter. Her little room was littered with clothes and shoes and ripped-out pages from magazines, just like so many chicks’ rooms he had seen. He loosened up a bit, looked at the perfumes on her dresser and wondered which one, when uncapped, would fill the room with Ty’s scent.

Ty sat on her bed, watching him. She looked so calm—not worried at all about what he’d think of her. From beneath the skirt, her long legs stretched out in front of her and she lay back
a bit, on her elbows. He’d never noticed how defined her arm muscles were.

Chase reached into his back pocket.

“I wrote something for you,” he said, heat flooding his face. “Here.”

Ty reached up languidly to take the paper, the paper with Emily’s poem on it. While she read it, Chase went to the window, trying to calm his thumping pulse. He could feel his veins throbbing. It was quiet. In the distance, he could see the lights of the highway casting their glow upward, above the trees. The moon shone high and bright. He wondered how often Ty stood here, just staring out into the night, watching the snow.

“You wrote this?” She stood and came up behind him. The hairs on his neck and arms raised in response to her nearness, to her smell. “For me?”

“Yeah. It’s not much, you know,” he said, suddenly feeling kind of shitty about the fact that he hadn’t
actually
written it. At least the sentiment had been there. “But I’ve been thinking about you.”

“It’s really beautiful,” Ty said. He turned to face her, to make sure she wasn’t just humoring him, and he felt her lips graze his cheek, just an inch from his mouth. “Thank you,” she whispered.

It was the closest they had ever been. Chase’s whole body throbbed. The smell of her skin, the slightest touch of her hair
against his arm—it made his head spin. He turned his face fully to hers, hoping for a real kiss on her red, slightly parted lips. But she’d already backed away.

“I was wondering,” she said. “Will you help me with something?”

Chase raised his eyebrows. “Of course. What’s up?”

“Well . . .” She hesitated—and for a second she almost seemed embarrassed. “This place . . .” She laughed self-consciously and shrugged. “There’s no other way to say it. It’s pretty much a shit hole right now. I was wondering if you’d help me paint one of the rooms downstairs. I’ve been trying to fix things up around here.”

Instantly, he understood. She was ashamed of the house. “You got it,” he said, grinning slowly.

She smiled and grabbed his hand. Once again, he had a creepy feeling as they descended the stairs to one of the dark, empty rooms below. Ty disappeared and came back a moment later with newspapers, which she spread over the floor in the room with the radio and paint can.

She opened the paint—a vivid red color. A bit of a strong choice, but Chase wasn’t exactly an interior decorator.

“I’ve got a roller and a brush,” she said, pointing to her supplies. “Which do you want?”

“I’ll take the roller,” he said. He felt good—helpful. She needed him. As he rolled up his sleeves—he
really
didn’t want
to get paint all over himself—Ty clicked on the radio, tuning it to a fuzzy oldies station. She hummed as she readied her brush.

The first swath of red spread like blood out of a fresh wound, quick and bright. This was fun. He liked the way the bold color covered over the dingy white. And as he drew the roller back and forth, high and low, he knew his arms looked good. Strong.

“Have these walls always been white?” he asked offhandedly, but he was dying for any speck of information she would give him.

“As far as I know,” Ty said. “But red is my favorite color. I always wanted to be surrounded by red. What’s yours?”

“My favorite color?”

Ty nodded.

“I guess I’d have to go with maroon and gold,” Chase said. “Team colors.”

“Close to my colors,” Ty said with a smile. “What about your favorite food?” She was over in the corner now, carefully brushing paint next to the window. It seemed like she was digging for more information too.

“Chinese, I guess,” Chase said, cursing silently as a few specks of red splattered onto his jeans. “I love crab rangoons.”

“Mmmmm,” Ty said, and he was so distracted by her licking her lips that he almost didn’t notice that she already had
red paint all over her shirt. She caught him staring and looked down. “Oops. I’m a slob.” She laughed and flicked her brush in his direction. “Now we match,” she said, as a few splotches of red landed on his shirt.

He forced a laugh, a guffaw that sounded hollow in the empty room. “Good one,” he said dryly.

“Sorry,” Ty said, looking concerned. “Are you annoyed? Is that a good shirt?”

“What?” He looked down as though just seeing the spots for the first time. “Oh, whatever. No biggie.” He shrugged, and as he did, more paint dripped onto his pants leg and shoe. He looked down and then at her with a bemused expression. “See? No big deal.”

Ty’s sudden burst of laughter was almost worth knowing that he’d ruined a pair of pants—and certainly enough to make him abandon all hope of staying clean this evening. She took her brush, dipped it into the paint can so that it was really dripping, and drew it up her arm, along her neck, and into her hair. The red of the paint clashed with the burnt maroon of her hair.

He laughed, too, this time for real. “Let’s finish this wall,” Chase said, and they did, flicking paint at each other between brushstrokes. Chase tried to focus on how great it felt to be with Ty, rather than the fact that he’d need to throw away these clothes tomorrow. After a while, Ty stepped back to survey their work. It was dark outside, and the only light came from
the bare bulb screwed into the ceiling. Still, the wall was practically pulsing with the vibrant red. She looked at him for his opinion and wrinkled her nose.

“You’re so cute. You’re covered in paint!” Ty said, coming a bit closer.

“No worries,” he said, hoping he sounded nonchalant.

“I have this miracle stain-remover stuff,” she said, pointing toward the kitchen. “It cleans everything. I could . . . We could use it to get the paint off?”

“That’s okay.” He really wanted to play it cool, but she was making it difficult, the way she kept inching closer. And then she was tugging at his collar, her warm fingers brushing against his neck.

“Really . . . Why don’t you take this off?” She said it playfully, pulling the little white scarf out of her ponytail as she spoke, so her hair flowed down around her shoulders. She tugged at both arms of his shirt. Then she tried a different tactic, pulling his shirt up from the bottom. His stomach showed and he unconsciously flexed his abs.

Her hands were on his skin now.

Before either of them could have time to think twice, he bent down and kissed her, hard, on the lips. It felt . . . amazing. Like a wave had broken over his head. Like he was swimming in water so cold it pricked his flesh. He could feel her lips turned up in a smile as they kissed.

“So, can I wash your clothes?” She pulled away. “Come on. Don’t be shy,” she said, motioning for him to take them off.

Chase took a deep breath. He felt pulled by the same otherworldly connection that he’d felt that first night, after Minster’s party, and again at the club under Benson’s.

“I will if you will,” he said.

And then, just like that, she was taking her clothes off, right in front of him. She stepped out of her skirt and pulled her shirt gracefully over her head. Then she stepped first out of her right shoe, then the left, then no bra, then no underwear. Chase had seen girls naked before, but this was new. This was not the fumbling, dim-lit hookups he was used to, full of tangled bra straps and annoying button flies. There was no self-consciousness. There was no strategic posing to cover the things that girls worry about covering. No trying too hard. There was just . . . Ty. Morphing from clothed to unclothed like a swimmer emerging from underwater—smoothly, sleekly, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Happy. And despite the obvious sexiness of her body, her confidence, her hair falling just so over her shoulders and onto her chest, the action felt somehow not sexy. Ty took her clothes off the same way some people put theirs on. The way Chase put his on, like they were a costume, or a shield against the outside world—the physical representation of the confident, smart, talented man he wanted to be.

Thunderous waves pounded in Chase’s skull, cold and salty.

He took his shoes off, and then his socks. His shirt came off next and he stood there, bare-chested, not sure whether to take the next step. Ty came forward and gave him a fleeting kiss. “Now your jeans,” she said, running her fingers lightly along his waistband. He felt shivers race along his spine.

“Ty . . .” He trailed off, not knowing what to say. He unzipped his jeans and stepped out of them.

Ty looked him up and down slowly. At least he knew he looked good.

“There’s a little bit of paint on your boxers,” she said. “Did you know that?”

He really hadn’t seen it. “Um, no, it’s fine,” he stammered.

“I put it there on purpose,” Ty said with a wicked smirk. She was standing so close he could feel her breath on his shoulder.

Well, what the hell. He’d gone this far. Chase took off his boxers and stood as defiantly as he could, stark naked, in Ty’s red room.

“You are so hot,” she breathed into his ear. And with that she was out of the room, holding all his clothes, shouting, “This’ll only take a second,” from the other room. Chase shifted from one cold foot to the other as he waited. His heart was pounding. He wanted her so badly.

When Ty returned to the room, she had something in her hand, but it wasn’t his clothes. “They’ll need to soak for a few
minutes,” she said, “and then we can throw them in the dryer in the basement. In the meantime . . .” She waved her hand in the air. It was holding a digital camera. “I want to remember this forever.”

Chase just stared. She wanted to take pictures of him? Like this?

“You . . . you have paint on your arm,” he said. It was all he could think of.

“So? It’ll look cool,” she said.

“I can’t even remember the last time I had my picture taken,” Chase said, “except for the yearbook, or at some random party.”

“Just a few?” She pushed out her lower lip slightly. It was the hottest pout he’d ever seen. He couldn’t go much longer without kissing her again.

As if she read his mind, Ty came forward again, nuzzling into his neck, kissing it once. “Okay,” he said with conviction.

What they were doing felt hotter, more intimate, than hooking up ever could. She started to snap photos, the lens moving like it had a mind of its own. He stood there shifting on his feet at first.

As she snapped, he felt himself becoming fixated on the flash. It was like she was hypnotizing him. Words started pouring out of him suddenly. “I’m serious. There are almost no pictures of me in the world. There is, like,
one
photo of me
and my dad from when I was a kid,” he told Ty, finding that the words just flew out of his mouth, almost breathlessly.

Ty listened while she looked through the lens, her milky body glimmering in the moonlight from the window and the dim light from the bare bulb, reflecting off the red walls. “He wasn’t around much, you know. Even when he was there—physically present, I mean—he wasn’t. And my mom . . . there are pictures of me and her, a few.” Chase was swimming; time was water and he was free-floating through it. He sat down on the floor, legs out in front of himself, almost forgetting he was naked. “But sometimes I feel like they’re supposed to be proof that she stuck around, you know? Not actual happy pictures but evidence that I even had a childhood.” His throat felt hot and sticky all of a sudden, so he stopped talking. Instead, as Ty came closer, he grabbed the camera to take a few shots of her. Her pale white breasts; her stomach, so smooth and soft looking. It was surreal, like he was taking pictures of a perfect statue in a museum. She stayed still while he snapped three pictures, then she leaned forward, taking the camera back from him gently.

“I know what you mean,” Ty said, and resumed taking pictures. “But here we are—making new memories. These are
actual
happy pics, right?”

“Yeah.” Chase cleared his throat and laid down on the bare floor, staring up at the speckled ceiling. The cold wood cooled his flushed skin. “It’s just so hard, you know? I’m all my
mom has but—I can’t help resenting her sometimes. I just get so focused on my own shitty life, obsessing that I won’t be able to make it . . . to make it better. I am so scared of just being what my dad was. Of failing like that . . .” The words were getting tangled in his head, pouring out of him from some unknown place. He couldn’t believe he was saying all this stuff, in front of a very naked, insanely gorgeous girl.

“You’re too scared, Chase,” Ty said, crouching next to him to get a better angle. All of a sudden she wasn’t smiling anymore. Her face looked pale, her bright red hair splaying everywhere. “Fear is dangerous.”

He watched her as she stood up suddenly and sashayed over to the paint can. She bent over it, and as she did, he scanned the room. At his feet was the tiny white scarf her hair had been wrapped in earlier. He decided he would take it. Later, when his jeans were washed, he’d stuff it in his pockets. He wanted to remember this day, too.

When she stood up again, Ty’s hands were dripping with red paint. She’d just stuck them into the can. He looked to her for an explanation but part of him knew better at this point than to try to guess what was about to come out of Ty’s mouth. Nothing did. Instead, without saying a word, she walked over and drew a blood-red line across Chase’s clavicle, from shoulder to shoulder. Then she laughed. She rubbed her whole hand down his left arm. “Now we match again,” she said.

She was out of her mind, there was no doubt about it. But he liked it—he more than liked it. Spontaneously, Chase went over to the can and thrust his own hands into the cold, thick paint. Then he turned her around and drew three parallel lines down her back, from the nape of her neck to the small of her back, just above her perfect round ass. Touching her was even better than photographing her. The slippery paint against her smooth skin was magical. Chase couldn’t stop, and he didn’t want to.