Keep From Falling (Markson Grove Series Book 1) (2 page)

The elevator dings and the paint-chipped doors open up to reveal a badly lit elevator car with what used to be a royal blue carpet but now is closer to a pasty grey.

We both scurry inside and as soon as the doors close behind us, we crash into one another and kiss passionately. I run my hands through her beautifully long, black hair, getting my finger stuck where the clips and braids are as she pushes me up against the wall of the elevator. I gasp, clutching her hair tightly. She begins to kiss my neck, then my shoulders, and then starts to unbutton my shirt. I take her hands into mine instead and press my body to hers, pushing her up against the adjacent wall. She lets out a surprised gasp when her back hits the wall. She smiles, pressing her lips to mine harder than before.

The doors to the elevator open abruptly. We both look to the door in surprise and gather our composure as we distance ourselves from one another. I peer at my left shoulder and realize my shirt and bra strap have been pulled down. I yank them up quickly.

Mrs. Grand, an old woman with blue hair who lives on the third floor, stands in front of us with a look of horror on her face. I clear my throat uncomfortably.

“Going down?” she asks, coolly.

“Going up,” I say with a wink.

“I’ll take the next one then.” Her eyes move back and forth between the two of us in disapproval.

Skylar sneers and just before the doors close, she sticks up her middle finger at the old woman.

“Skylar!” I gasp, grabbing ahold of her hand. “You can’t be doing that kind of shit every time someone doesn’t approve.”

Skylar shrugs, unaffected. “She deserved it.”

I smile and move in closer to her. “I love you,” I tell her as I wrap my arms around her neck.

She smiles back and kisses me hard on the lips. “I love you too.”

Once the elevator reaches the eighth floor, we walk down the hallway hand in hand until we approach apartment sixteen.

“Is your aunt home?” I ask, loosening my grip of her hand in the off chance that her answer is yes.

Skylar shakes her head. “She has another new boyfriend, so what do you think?”

I sigh. I hate that she’s stuck living with this careless woman. I actually don’t even understand how Cecelia’s managed to maintain custody of her all of these years, especially after Skylar’s older brother, Keegan, overdosed in this very apartment when he was only fourteen. That was eight years ago. It feels like yesterday.

Skylar notices the look on my face. “Like it matters anyway,” she says with a careless shrug. “More alone time for us.”

I laugh as she pulls me through the kitchen toward her bedroom. “I’ve been wanting to hold you all day,” she says, pushing me down onto her unmade bed.

“Me too,” I reply. It’s the truth. I have been thinking about Skylar and our relationship for the greater part of the day. Not about making out like I’m sure she’s been thinking about, but about our relationship, in general. Where it’s going; where it can or can’t go in the future; where we want it to go. It’s not something we’ve ever discussed at length before because we know my parents would never understand. Homosexuality isn’t something embraced in the Porter household. It isn’t even something tolerated. And if they can’t understand it, then we can’t be public about it. Skylar needs them in her life; they are all she has.

For us, though, our attraction to one another has never really been about sexual orientation; it’s always been about who our souls are to one another. We are connected, and our love is deeper than something so simply defined as a gay relationship. We are more than that. But
more
isn’t enough of a label for the outside world and we know that. I’m ready to tell people who we are to each other. I need it. Desperately.

Skylar leans in to kiss me but notices something is on my mind. “What’s up?”

I press my lips together for a moment, contemplating how to begin. “We need to figure out what we want… for our future,” I say finally.

Skylar looks deep into my eyes for a long time before finally speaking. “We are with each other and we love each other. What more is there to figure out?”

“Well,” I begin, “if we are going to continue being together this way, I think we need to tell people. Make it clear that we are more than just friends to one another.”

“Why? We’ve already talked about this, we can’t.”

“I think it’s time.”

I see the uneasiness in her hazel eyes. This conversation scares her. “Do we really need to decide this right now?” she asks, biting down on her lower lip so hard that I think it might draw blood.

“Yes,” I say, refusing to back down.

“If we tell people, everything will change.”

“I don’t care what everybody thinks, and I know you don’t either. I just want a life beyond our bedroom walls. This is real. If we want to keep going with it then we have to tell people. It’s not going to stay a secret forever and I don’t want it to anyway.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right. I’m just scared that once we tell people things will get complicated and I’ll lose you.”

I shake my head and take her hand into mine. “That’s never going to happen,” I whisper reassuringly.

Tears begin to well up in her eyes, but she quickly brushes them away, smudging her mascara and eyeliner in the process. She takes a slow and steady breath as if to calm her insecurities. “What about your mom and dad?” she asks.

The inevitable question. It always comes back to what Alice and Dean Porter will think. Skylar’s fear of their reaction to the news is the only thing keeping her from agreeing to this and I know it. “What about them?” I mutter. I don’t like that she’s bringing them into this debate yet again.

“They’re going to disown me, Bree. I won’t be a part of the family anymore, your mom will disown me the instant she finds out. I know it.”

As much as I want to say otherwise, Skylar has a point about my parents. They would never in a million years understand, of this I am certain, but
I
don’t care. I’m willing to drop them out of my life forever for her. She just doesn’t seem to feel the same way, and it’s frustrating.

I shrug. “We are leaving for university in less than five months. It doesn’t even matter what they think.”

“
If
I get accepted. I still didn’t get a letter,” she points out.

“Oh, you’re going to get that letter. We’ll be rooming together, loving each other every night, and what my parents think about it won’t matter at all,” I say, but I know as I’m saying it that Skylar won’t budge on this. That realization makes me sad and angry in equal measure because it means we truly are stuck like this forever, hiding in our rooms for no one to ever see us.

I pull my work uniform out from my backpack and begin to undress while avoiding eye contact with Skylar. “You should call in sick and stay here the rest of the night,” she says, not noticing my cool demeanor.

I force a smile. Although I’m not really feeling up to going into work tonight, I’m definitely not feeling up to staying here with Skylar. I’m angry with her for choosing my parents over us. I hate it. I hate how this conversation always has to come back to them. Always.

I finish dressing and then turn to face her. “I can’t call in sick today. I’m training someone.”

Skylar gives me a little pout, “are you sure?”

I flop down on the bed next to her. “I’m sure,” I say and give her a quick kiss on the lips so that she doesn’t realize how upset I am with her. She doesn’t handle that sort of thing well, so I try to avoid it as much as possible.

She grabs ahold of a pillow and hits it playfully over my head. She doesn’t seem to notice my anger in the least, which is fine because I’m not in the mood for a fight anyway; at least not that type of fight. But a pillow-fight, on the other hand…

“Oh no, you didn’t!” I shriek, grabbing the other pillow beside me and hitting her with it as hard as I can. She tumbles to the floor in a fit of laughter, and as she struggles to get up, I launch another pillow at her face.

“Ok, ok. I give!” she yells out, holding up her hands in surrender.

I freeze on the bed, still sitting up on my knees ready to smack another pillow in her face at the first sign of movement. She’s smiling mischievously, so I’m not sure if I should trust her. I don’t ease my grip on the pillow.

Suddenly, she launches herself on top of me full force and has me pinned on my back with my hands above my head.

I laugh. I can’t stay angry with this girl. She’s too perfect. “How the hell do you always do that?”

She leans into me, pressing her chest against mine as she kisses me hard on the lips. She lets go of my hands and sits up. “Do you want me to walk you to work?”

“Nah, it’s fine,” I say, gently pushing her aside and getting up off the bed. I look in the mirror and pull my hair back into a messy ponytail as I examine my navy blue uniform shirt that has ‘Pete’s Convenience Store’ written across the front. It’s wrinkled from being stuffed into my backpack so I run my hands over it in an attempt to smooth out the wrinkles, but I’m unsuccessful.

I sit back on the bed beside her and reach for her hair, which is flowing down her back in a messy cluster of braids, beads, and barrettes. I run my fingers through a piece that isn’t braided or beaded yet and move myself behind her, sitting crossed legged, as I begin to braid another piece of it. “I wish I had your hair,” I say.

She laughs. “I don’t know why anyone would want this mess when they could have those perfect strawberry blond locks of yours.”

I reach my hand around to the front of her neck where the black heart-shaped pendant I bought her last year hangs on a thick silver chain. I let my hand linger on it for a moment, thinking about the day I gave it to her.

“What are you thinking about?” Skylar asks, breaking into my memory.

I smile dreamily. “I was just remembering the day I gave this to you. The day I told you that I loved you for the very first time.”

She smiles, as her mind seems to drift back to that day as well. It was such a scary day for me. Even though she had already made the first move by kissing me the week before, it was up to me to decide where that kiss would eventually take us. I was petrified, but I wanted to be with her. I wanted it so much. I needed to find a way to show her that my first reaction to the kiss; of gently stopping it, was a mistake.

So, I bought her the necklace and told her how I really felt; that I was in love with her and had been for a while. I was just too scared to admit it to myself.

After that, everything fell into place;
we
fell into place. And we’ve been together ever since.

She tickles my waist. “My little romantic,” she says. I fall to the bed in hysterics as she lies on top of me and kisses my nose. “You better get going. Don’t want to be late for your first training session.”

I nod and hold my hand up to her so she can pull me to my feet. She does, and as I’m walking through her kitchen to the door, she gently slaps my ass.

“You’re crazy,” I say with a laugh.

“Yeah, but you already knew that,” she replies.

I blow her a quick kiss, and then walk out the door.

As I’m walking to work, my thoughts drift back to our past, before we became lovers. At times, I’m surprised it ended up the way it did for us. Happy and in love. Sometimes, when I allow myself to remember everything, I can’t be sure how it ever did.

At the beginning of the ninth grade, Skylar and I were nothing more than devoted friends to one another. We had sleepovers, talked about boys, and gossiped about the latest happenings around school. We loved each other wholeheartedly, but there were never any thoughts of our friendship becoming ‘more’ than that.

In fact, at the age of fourteen, Skylar was actually pretty experienced in the guy department and was what some might call ‘slutty’. I, on the other hand, hadn’t even experienced a crush. I simply wasn’t interested. I hadn’t even kissed another person before Skylar and that only happened in the eleventh grade.

Was I jealous of Skylar’s ease with the guys in our school? Absolutely. And it wasn’t that I was shy, because I wasn’t, but I didn’t have the womanly figure she already had by the age of fourteen and the full B-cup breasts to accompany it. I had very little curves, wore an A-cup bra (if that), and had the messiest hair, which was seriously impossible to tame. My face was cute, but its roundness made me look ten, rather than fourteen. Needless to say, guys weren’t lining up in all directions to have a chance with me in bed. Not that I’d want them to.

But guys were lining up for Skylar.

By the time Skylar had turned fifteen she’d already had sex with many guys and was becoming known in some circles as the girl who would open her legs for anyone. This upset me, not because I was embarrassed for her, but because I was protective of her. I didn’t want people to think so lowly of her. She was better than that.

But Skylar didn’t care or she didn’t let on to care. She embraced her slutty popularity and used it to take advantage of guys, which gave her a sense of self-accomplishment, it seemed.

I loved her regardless and lived vicariously through her stories of sexual encounters with the guys of Markson Grove.