Painting Sky (17 page)

“He apologized and one thing led to another. Forget it. Maybe it’s good you came home. Maybe this was a mistake,” I murmured, dislodging my chin from his hand.

“‘Maybe?’ You’re capable of doubt when he leaves this fast, leaving you…” He nodded to me, wrinkling his forehead.

I shrugged. I didn’t know what was going through my head, anymore. “I need to take a shower. Can you leave?” I tried to sound nonchalant; I didn’t want him thinking I was unappreciative of his concern.

Keith didn’t answer. He stood up, looked at me once again—measuring my level of depression, for sure—and then left for the attic. The shower came an hour later, when I finally found the courage to get up from my curled-up position. I had been a few seconds away from losing my virginity to a guy I’d thought was my world. Then he’d left me, without any explanation, to go who knew where with who knew whom. That girl’s face popped into my head again. She wasn’t innocent in this. I felt it.

Cody and Ryan left me alone all the time, and then claimed some hold on me. Well, not tomorrow. The party would be a new start for me. They had taken my good girl side for granted and they would regret it.

There were a couple of things I still needed to do the next afternoon: some not-so temporary things, like going to the hair salon and the piercing shop. The thought had popped into my head out of nowhere, but I was set on it. I was rebelling, damn the world. I was tired of being the good girl.

Jane was a good girl’s name. In my head, I was starting to be Skylar.

T
he second I entered the hair salon, my confidence started to fade.

“Hello. What can I do for you today?” The hairdresser asked me after her co-worker sat me in one of the chairs.

“I want very thin light blue streaks—somehow discreet—on the lower half of my hair. Do you think that would look good?” I asked, meeting her eyes on the mirror in front of me.

“Sure, honey, that will look good on you. With those eyes, anything would look good, though.” I resisted the will to roll my eyes at the comment. If only she knew how freaky I thought the color was.

The result was good and I surprised myself by liking it. I’d never had a rebellious bone in my body, but maybe college was changing me.

The piercing in my nose hurt a little bit, but I liked the outcome, as well. Maybe I could pull it off. The stone was so small that it was barely visible and only shone when light hit my face. I stood in front of the mirror for half an hour before starting my shower. My adrenaline was gone and I was starting to fear my decisions. I had to go home for the holidays and knew for a fact that my dad was going to murder me. He would possibly blame Cody, Ryan, or even Keith.

Keith was going to laugh at me like crazy over my weak display of rebellion.

Ryan and Keith spent the afternoon cleaning up the house and stocking it with supplies for the party. I had managed to sidestep them and avoid showing off my new look before the guests arrived. I guessed that Ryan wouldn’t have been so supportive of the way I was going to dress, but I was beyond caring.

Cody texted me that he would be here later and that he would be bringing some friends. Whether he was going to introduce them to me was unknown.

I dressed in black stockings, black shorts, a dark purple corset, and some black boots I rarely wore. I started pinning my hair up in a messy bun. The makeup was the tricky part: I wanted to look sexy, but not overdo it and look slutty.

The teeth were uncomfortable, but I had to wear them if people were supposed to believe that I was, in fact, a vampire, and not a prostitute. The blood on the corner of my mouth affirmed that, but I only used a little bit to avoid looking like I had eaten an entire family.

When I gathered the courage to go downstairs, the house was already packed. As soon as I stepped on the ground floor, my eyes started burning again. I wasn’t used to the contact lenses, and the cigarette smoke, which was already filling up the air, was irritating my sensitive eyes. Black eyes with real red around them would be even a freakier look.

The first person who spotted me was Ryan, who was, as I had expected, mad as hell about my outfit. It had taken him a couple of seconds to recognize me. Good: that had been my plan.

“Jane Keaton, come here right now,” I heard him yell at me, but I managed to get lost in the crowd. My brother had his arms full of bottles, so he couldn’t chase me throughout the entire house.

I felt lost in my own living room. The space had been cleared out to allow people to dance. The music choices were cool, with an edge of darkness, as it was Halloween.

Almost everyone was dressed up in the usual attire: ghosts, witches, famous people, and even a vampire or two. Most of the girls were dressed in as little clothes as me, so I didn’t feel out of place—just lost and alone.

The alcohol table had a line formed and two guys I’d never met were serving everyone, not bothering to check IDs. I guess nobody was worried about police coming to end this party, as we lived so far away from town. I asked for a soda and they laughed at me, pouring me a vodka tonic, instead. I shook my head in disbelief, but picked up the cup and cleared the space for the next person.

I drank three more before Cody arrived. The bartender guy must’ve been pouring me more vodka than tonic, because I was starting to get dizzy.

“Cody.” I smiled at him and hugged him, not acknowledging the girl next to him—the one from campus.

He eyed me from head to toe, his eyes popping from his face. He wasn’t used to seeing me like this.

“Jane, have you been drinking?” he asked, suddenly upset. “You were never a drinker.”

“These are the times to pick up new habits, right?” I asked, looking to the uncomfortable girl next to him. I wasn’t planning on being a drunk any time soon, but the line had flown from my mouth, while the corners of his turned down, disapprovingly.

“This is Alexis. You met her the other day.” He looked at me, as if asking me not to make a scene—like I usually made him look bad.

“Hi, I’m Jane Keaton, Cody’s girlfriend of four years.” I extended my hand and smiled politely. I had to add the last part, as it seemed she had forgotten he was taken. She flinched momentarily and I saw the little wrinkle appear on her forehead, before she could plaster a smile and shake my hand quickly.

After they had drinks in hand, we sat in a corner, where there were two empty chairs. I sat on Cody’s lap and sipped his drink, which seemed to have even more alcohol than my previous ones. Alexis and Cody made small talk, but the girl avoided looking our way and I started to think she had feelings for my boyfriend, which was not good—at all.

“Come dance with me, baby,” I cooed in his ear.

“Not now, Jane. Maybe later.”

He hadn’t even said that I looked good. What a disappointment.

“Fine, whatever. I’m going to dance alone.” I pouted, looking at him for a second to check his reaction. Figuring he wasn’t going to backpedal, I got up and searched for a place to dance on my own, like a loser.

I ended up leaning against the table for drinks, nursing my second beer, while sulking.

“I don’t really like you all alone in the house, as packed as it is.” Keith leaned against the table, as well, while greeting some friends who had come to get their next drink.

“Tell that to your brother,” I mumbled, looking away. I’d tried avoiding looking at Cody for the past half an hour, all cozy, and absorbing every word his friend said.

“Want to dance?”

I looked at him finally, raising my eyebrows. Keith looked as if he regretted the words as soon as they’d come out of his mouth, but I didn’t care. I wanted to dance and I wanted to be Skylar, not the goody-good, Jane.

“Sure.” I grabbed his hand and pulled him to the middle of the room.

The first minute was tense and awkward. He didn’t touch me and I kept bumping into his legs. The music changed and a song from one of my favorite bands came blasting through the sound system. I stepped closer when another guy grinded against me. I didn’t think Keith noticed, though, or he would have put him in his place.

Keith grabbed my waist, instead, and pulled me to his body. I tensed for a second, but the alcohol was clouding my judgment. The decision of not continuing to be the Jane everyone stepped on all the time came to my mind, so I put my arms around his neck and we started dancing—really dancing, and boy, Keith knew how to dance. His hands came to rest on my lower hips while he moved us along. I could feel the heat between us. I could smell his cologne. I could almost feel his heart beating against my own. After a while, I lifted my eyes to his face and the serious look there almost made me step away.

His lips were set in a straight line and his eyes were locked on mine, dark in the dimly-lit room. I usually felt exposed when someone stared at me like this. With Keith, even knowing the black lenses blocked my real eyes, I still felt exposed, as if he could stare straight into my soul. I didn’t move or look away.

His eyes dropped to my lips, a jolt of electricity ran through my body, and I suddenly remembered we were dancing in the middle of a room. The way our bodies connected and the way my skin tingled under his hands wouldn’t please my brother, or Cody.

I looked around, stepping away from the heat of Keith’s body, and felt the cold instantly. Apparently no one was looking, and Cody hadn’t even been in our line of vision. I looked up to Keith’s face and his eyes were cold again. They had lost their intensity, as if he, too, was coming to the conclusion that we weren’t supposed to dance like that.

“I’m sorry. I need to look for Cody.” It was the only thing that came to my mind. It seemed to be the wrong thing to say at the moment, because Keith’s face turned to his usual and fake smirk.

“Sure. I just don’t know if you’re going to enjoy dancing with him after doing it with me.” He crossed his arms, distancing himself from me even more. The way he’d said “doing it with me” sounded like it meant a lot more than dancing. I hated when he played the womanizer—it wasn’t him.

“Oh, cool it, Keith. You didn’t ruin me for other men.” I crossed my arms, mimicking him, and feeling exposed in my lack of clothing.

He moved to get past me. “Yet,” he whispered in my ear before going to the kitchen and leaving me in the middle of the crowd. How infuriating. If I was feeling restless before, now I was furious, with both Keith and his brother. I started looking for my boyfriend when Shelby jumped in front of me.

“Jane! I was looking for you, but, in this crowd, it’s really difficult.” She was slurring her words from the alcohol, I’m sure, and held a red cup in her hand, while gesturing around with the other. She was dressed as an angel in a short white dress and fake feather wings on her back. She sure was attracting attention from the guys around us.

“Hi,” was my only answer. We couldn’t talk over the music, so I dragged her to the side. “When did you arrive?”

“A while ago, but people kept interrupting my search for you and offering me drinks.” She smiled and raised the cup for me to see. She meant guys had been interrupting her and offering her drinks, but I didn’t correct her.

“Have you seen Keith? I was looking for him, but I haven’t found him, yet.” Shelby kept looking around and lifting to the tips of her toes, as if it would help her see better over the crowd. I didn’t like that she’d come for him and not because we were friends, but I was already pissed at the only people I knew in this town, and I didn’t want to add Shelby to the equation. I just shrugged. Maybe they would miss each other completely.

“Oh, there he is.” She beamed. I peeked over my shoulder to where she was looking. He looked over at us and waved, smiling at Shelby. He was such a playboy, and it irritated the hell out of me. Shelby disappeared without a word to me, leaving me, once again, alone.

I found Cody snuggled against Alexis and went to claim my territory. I put a hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear in the sexiest voice I could come up with, “Do you want to come upstairs?”

“Alexis doesn’t know many people here. It would be rude, Jane.”

My smile faded and a frown set upon my face. “Oh, sure. I’m going to grab a drink, then.”

He grabbed my wrist after I turned away. “Don’t drink too much. You’re not used to it.”

Could he humiliate me more? I couldn’t believe he was telling me how to behave in front of his friend, as if I was a misbehaving child. I yanked my arm back and stomped to the stairs.

I was done with this party.

My outfit had gotten me nowhere. Cody hadn’t been able to wait to jump my bones a couple of days ago, but, now, with Alexis here, he barely looked my way. Shelby had come to keep Keith company, and my brother was up against a wall, making out with a redhead. I wanted to call my mother for comfort. How childish was that?

I stepped around the mass of people, and it took five minutes just to get to my bedroom door. Before I could unlock it, Keith came out of the bathroom with a pleased smile on his face and Shelby trailing behind him. She winked at me before disappearing into his room.

My mouth was probably wide open, because he stopped in front of me, and, with his finger, tapped on my chin. “We don’t want you eating a fly, now, do we?” I just stared at him, not believing that he would be so low as to go against what I’d asked and sleep with my friend. Shelby couldn’t give a crap about me, but Keith? He turned before I could come up with something—anything—to deter him from going into his room and closing the door in my face.