Someone to Love (13 page)

I take in a breath at the sight of her. “Oh,
I totally will. I know how it feels to be crapped on by kids at
school. I bet she’s dealing with some serious bullying issues. High
school is nothing but a hotbed of bitches.”

Ally belts out a laugh. “I’ll catch you at
school tomorrow, where there will be very few bitches, I promise.”
She writes something down on a napkin and slides it toward me.
“Call me when you’re free, and we’ll get together.”

It takes another few minutes for my coffee,
and all the while, I inspect Molly from afar. She’s stunning with
her dark blond hair, her pale smooth skin—gorgeous doe eyes. My
heart breaks seeing her back shudder as she sheds her not-so-silent
tears.

I take up my drink and make my way over,
nervous at the prospect of crashing her tear fest but totally dying
to meet her and hopefully make her feel better.

“You mind?” I point down at the empty seat
beside her—half afraid she’ll bolt now that I’m here.

“Nope.” She moans and drops the wad of
tissues to the table like she’s making a statement. Her
heavy-scented perfume creates a toxic cloud in the vicinity,
sandalwood mixed with unripe fruit, something just this side of
glorified body odor. Maybe it’s not people upsetting her. Maybe
it’s the fragrance offense she’s committing.

“I’m Kendall,” I offer. “I’m actually staying
with your brother.” She looks much prettier up close, and here I
thought that was impossible. “Is everything okay?”

“Brayden Holmes is a dick.” She announces it
like a fact, and her cheeks depress with an impression of a
smile.

“Boy trouble,” I say it mostly to myself. If
it were pissy girls I could’ve given her sound advice, all of which
I’ve thought long and hard about but never truly implemented. But
people with hanging appendages were involved, and seeing that I’ve
never handed my heart to anyone on a silver platter, I don’t have
the first clue how to help her.

“It’s over, so there’s really not a problem.”
She spits it out with a viral level of angst reserved for high
school girls the world over. And judging by her visceral reaction,
it is
so
not over.

“Can I ask what happened?” I can’t help but
feel I’ve just dived in over my head. She probably caught him
looking at someone, and now she’s heartbroken.

“He tricked me into sleeping with him, then
dumped me for some slut named Tracy Schaffer.”

“Holy shit!” I bounce back in my seat. “We
need to tell Cruise. He needs to beat the living crap out this…
this…
Brayden
person.” I’m panicked at the thought of
someone taking advantage of his little sister like that. And I had
no idea we were going “all the way” in our conversation or I may
have opted to forgo the meet and greet for another time, like after
she clawed “Brayden’s” eyes out and was staring down the barrel of
a prison sentence. No wait. Preventative measures need to be taken
to ensure neither she nor Cruise land behind bars. Once cooler
heads prevail, I’m sure we’ll think up a way to inflict bodily harm
to the jackass without leaving forensic evidence behind.

She snatches my wrist so quick she nearly
knocks my coffee off the table. “There’s no way in hell we’re
telling Cruise anything.” She grits it through her teeth. “He’ll
know what a loser I am, and then he’ll tell my mom, and they’ll
both kill me.” She heaves into a spontaneous sob, and for a second,
I wonder if it’s all an act.

“Of course they’re not going to
kill
you.”
They are so going to kill her
. “Did you use
protection?”

“I’m on the pill.” Her eyes enlarge as I
writhe in front of her.

“You’re on the
pill
?” I’m horrified by
this. There’s no way I’m going to be able to keep all these secrets
from Cruise.

“Yup. In fact, I just ran out. You think you
can give me a ride to the free clinic? It’s all the way downtown
and I’ll probably freeze if I try to hoof it.”

“I…” Fuck. Should I be giving her a ride? “I
guess.”

I hope to God it’s me Cruise doesn’t
kill.

The Carrington free-clinic is situated in the
seediest part of the downtown district. Two derelicts seek shelter
in the alcove of the entry, and one of them has decided to spell
his name on the wall with a creative spray of urine. I’m quick to
usher Molly through—ready and willing to implement my ninja moves
should he decide to get creative in other ways with the disgusting
hose in question.

We land inside and I let go of a breath I
didn’t know I was holding.

The interior is a dingy grey, the color of
dead skin. A row of plants on the counter have all wilted to yellow
wisps as the sick and the desperate for birth control gather en
masse in the tiny Petri dish of a room. I’m sure sixteen different
strains of the flu are merging in our lungs as we step deeper into
the hotbed of infestation.

Molly yanks me in by the jacket. “Are you
sleeping with my brother?” she asks, almost as an afterthought.

“No.” I pull my arm back. Grabby little
thing. “Molly, you don’t have to sleep with someone to have a
relationship with them.” That doesn’t change the fact I’ve made it
my singular goal in life to bed Cruise Elton ten different ways
before Valentine’s Day. That’s a personal ambition I don’t plan to
make public anytime soon, especially not to his seventeen-year-old
sister. “Sex isn’t a sport.”

A hurt look sweeps across her face. “I do it
cause I like it.” She struts over to the front desk fueled with
anger and attitude.

I pull up behind her as she writes her name
down on the roster.

“Did you like the public boo-hoo fest you
held in Starbucks?” I ask. “Because in case you haven’t figured it
out, the asshole at point-A led to the bawling at point-B.” Maybe
not the kindest tactic I could have employed, but something tells
me Molly here isn’t the dainty flower she wants me to believe she
is either.

She wrinkles her nose. “Look, I like Brayden.
He’s special.” She rolls her eyes like he’s really not. “This thing
he has with Tracy Tramp-Stamp Shaffer will blow over. It always
does.”

“Oh my God, he’s done this before?” I take
her in with her watery-blue eyes, her trembling chin like she might
lose it right here in front of an entire waiting room of people
infected with sore throats and STDs. Molly doesn’t say a word; she
just stalks off and takes a seat in the back.

“Ma’am, would you mind signing in?” The gal
behind the counter holds out a pen. “There’s a line forming behind
you.”

“Oh.” I glance back at the angry mob waiting
to accost me if I don’t move out of the way.

The pill? Should I be on the pill? Cruise and
those heady kisses spiral through me, and I’m numb just thinking
about them. Yes, I should very much be on the pill. I jot my name
on the roster and find a seat next to Molly.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s a text
from a number I don’t recognize.

Cruise here - set up a double date for
tonight at seven. That OK?

Double date? Everything in me warms at the
thought of officially “dating” Cruise. For sure I made the right
decision to get on the pill.

Better than OK~!

I can’t wait to take my relationship with
Cruise to the next level. And dating, well, I guess that throws my
experiment out the window. I’m totally fine with that. I didn’t
really like lying to him to begin with.

“So what do you think of my brother’s
deformity?” Molly smirks before relaxing into an exaggerated sad
puppy face. She’s a peach, this one.

“What deformity?” If Cruise is deformed,
every man on this planet should be so lucky.

“You mean he didn’t tell you about his
accident?”

“What accident?” A rush of heat explodes in
my chest at the thought of anything happening to Cruise—past or
present.

“He got his balls lopped off after eating it
on a motorcycle when he was sixteen. Don’t worry, they saved one on
ice and reattached it. He can have kids and stuff one day when he’s
ready to pollute the world with his seed. Too bad it chopped his
dick in half, though. Horrible disaster.” She clicks her tongue to
annunciate her false sense of pity.

The memory of that bulge in his jeans comes
to mind, and my face floods with heat. God, if that was half, he
must have been the size of a snake. I swear it was as long as my
arm, and I thought
that
was a deformity. Not that I believe
one word out of his little sister’s not-so-precious mouth.

The only “horrible disaster” around here is
Molly needing to be on the pill in the first place.

The nurse calls Molly and I to the back at
the same time, and we each get stowed away in our own closet-like
rooms. I take off my clothes and ready myself for a check-up. I
secretly hate the gynecologist. I hate having myself sodomised in
the name of medicine and vaginal wellbeing.

I lie back and examine the photos of some
bodybuilder strewn across the wall. They’re all signed and
everything. His frame looks freakishly large, and the muscles bulge
from his body like a cloud made of flesh as if someone had blown
them up like balloons. I try to imagine him lying over me, crushing
me with his truck-like weight.

Rumor has it, pumping their muscles up like
that is lethal to the size of their joystick.

A gentle knock erupts as the door slides
open, and a tall, handsome man with a fake bake comes in flashing
an ultra-bright smile. He’s completely buffed out. His muscles
balloon from his shirt, and I can practically make out the curves
from under his coat, and hey… It’s the same guy from the
pictures.

“Is that you?” I marvel pointing at the
testament to all things steroid.

“That’s me.” He gives a chuckle while reading
over my chart. “Precautionary.” He nods. “Usually girls wait until
they’ve had many sexual encounters under their belt before wising
up and taking it upon themselves to get on the pill.” He looks up
and blinks a smile. “They’re not smart like you.” A goth-looking
nursing assistant pops into the room and gives a little sneer. “We
can start now,” he says, motioning for me to lie down. “Go ahead
and slide to the end of the table, put your feet in the
stirrups.”

“What? Where’s the doctor?” I cinch up my
legs until my knees meld together.

His features smooth out. “I’m the doctor,
Kendall.” He taps his nametag, which proudly boasts,
Dr.
Gaines.

“I want another one!” I sit up in a panic. “I
usually have a woman.” I’ve
only
had a woman gynecologist.
In fact, I didn’t even know it was legal not to. What the hell kind
of health care practices do they have in Massachusetts anyway?

“I’m the only one on staff today,” he says
with a peaceable smile.

Shit! What have I done to Molly? Hopefully,
she ran screaming and didn’t let some body builder parading around
as a doctor “examine” her. God, Cruise is going to hate me after
this and most likely have me arrested.

“We’re really busy today.” He gives a little
wink. “I promise to be gentle.”

A wink? Really? Is that what they teach male
doctors in med school? Or maybe it was the wrestling ring. He snaps
on a pair of rubber gloves, and I slip my feet into the frozen
stirrups, dying to get this over with.

Think of Cruise, I tell myself. Think how
amazing it will be to finally have his one-balled, half-penised
body inside me.

I let out a string of involuntary giggles no
thanks to Molly and the exceptional bullshit she tried feeding me.
Forget Cruise,
I’m
going to kill Molly for planting such
phenomenal crap in my mind. Of course, she was lying. Right?

Afterward, I get dressed, and Sally from The
Nightmare Before I Lose My Virginity leads me to a room down the
hall.

“We’re briefing all the first-timers,” she
gravels it out like a threat. This will take about twenty
seconds.”