Sweet: (Intermix) (True Believers) (12 page)

“Yes. I was bored and lonely.” So there. “I didn’t want to take the bus and he has a car and offered to pick me up. That’s it, though I’m not sure why you’re so jealous when you’re not offering me anything anyway.” It wasn’t pretty, but I wanted information. If I was fishing with a pole and line off a boat before, now I was wading in the river, hillbilly hand fishing. I might as well have said, “Click Like if you would date me.”

Pathetic. But I needed an answer, a solid yes or no so I could move on either way. Limbo land doesn’t work for me.

Riley made a sound of exasperation. “Jessica, you drive me crazy. I said I want to date you. What is so unclear about that?”

Part of me wanted to ask for clarification, but then I would be doing exactly the thing that had been making me crazy about him. So I just shrugged, pulling my arm from his touch and crossing them. “Nothing, I guess,” was my stellar and petulant answer.

But I couldn’t help it. Being emotionally vulnerable sucked. It was why I never did it.

Riley reached out and pried my arms off my chest.

“What are you doing?” I asked, feeling even more out of control with my chest uncovered, my arms forced down to my sides. I actually turned my head, unable to be that exposed.

But he took my hands and placed them on his waist. Then he gently tilted my head back toward him, his hand cupping my chin as I fought the urge to close my eyes.

“Hey,” he murmured.

“What?” I was fighting the urge to bolt.

But then he said, “I like you, too. In fact, I like you a whole helluva lot. So let’s just do this thing, see what happens. You good with that?”

There was an honest-to-God lump in my throat. It was like I’d swallowed a marshmallow. So I just nodded.

Chapter Ten

Riley gave me a soft, gentle kiss that disarmed me. I didn’t get kissed like that. Boyfriends kissed girlfriends that way, with a soft sense of worship. Guys tended to worship my breasts more than my mouth. I might have sighed. Or maybe I just imagined I did. I’m not sure. I just know that something shifted in me right then, something that told me what was happening between Riley and me was . . . real.

I blinked up at him, not sure what to say or do. This was all new territory for me. I hadn’t had a boyfriend since my junior year in high school.

“Since you wanted to go see a movie, I can take you,” he said. “We can’t have you bored. You might decide to stain the picnic table or something. Which means I’ll be staining the picnic table.”

Air left my chest with a whoosh. He had made the moment normal again and I was damn glad. I didn’t quite know how to do long minutes gazing into each other’s eyes. And if he started playing with my hair like Tyler did to Rory, I was going to get twitchy. So not my style.

The movies and mildly mocking me? Yeah, that worked.

“Now that you mention it, that picnic table is shabby. Though truthfully, we should just use it to make a bonfire and have s’mores.”

Riley laughed. “No.”

“Just a suggestion. But yes, I would like to go to the movies. What do you want to see?”

He pulled his phone out and scrolled through the movie options. “Let me guess, you will want to see a romantic comedy.”

I made a face. “Are you joking? No. Absolutely not. I find those movies embarrassingly sentimental. Kylie is the one who likes that stuff.”

“Thank God. Because I was going to have to tell you no. I can’t do chick flicks. What else is out?”

“Scary movies.”

He looked disappointed. “Why?”

“Because they’re scary,” I said pointedly. “Duh.”

“Come on, they’re not
real
.”

“How do you know?” I had been raised by a father who was absolutely certain evil and the devil existed. “If you want to watch a horror movie, you’ll have to take Rory. She always watches those crime shows on TV. Every time I turn around there’s a live autopsy playing on her laptop. It’s brutal.”

“She’s pretty hard-core, isn’t she?”

“Yes. Personally, I only want to see organs in living people.” I cocked my head. “Wait, that doesn’t sound right. Why would I be seeing organs at all?”

“My skin is an organ.” His eyebrows went up and down. “Among other things.”

Rolling eyes here. Though he did amuse me. I wasn’t really sure why. “What else is playing?”

“Some drama about slums.”

“No.” My hands came out to emphasize my feelings on that one.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to cry.” I hated crying, which is why I tried to never do it.

“So what does that leave us? Action/adventure and comedy of the Adam Sandler variety.”

“I’ll take action/adventure. I like to see things blow up.”

“And you say Rory is brutal.” But he read a movie description to me. “This starts in forty minutes, so we can make it.”

“Okay, I need my purse.”

Riley followed me to the doorway of my room. “So, uh, why were you buttoning your shorts up exactly?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

Really? I grabbed my hoodie and purse and shot him a look over my shoulder. This was going over what we’d already gone over, as far as I was concerned. “Because I was changing. I made him close his eyes.”

He looked pained. “Damn it. I was afraid you were going to say something like that.”

“Then you shouldn’t ask.” I crowded him in the doorway. “Because despite the fact that I’m lying to my parents about where I am, I try to be honest about my behavior.”

“You know he looked. I would.”

“If you’re going to be jealous, we’re going to have a problem. So try to keep it under control.” Then because the beard scruff on his chin was so cute, I ran my fingers through it like you do with a cat behind its ears. “But I won’t give you any reason to be jealous from here on out, since we’re doing this thing, whatever it is, and whatever we’re calling it. Cool?”

“Cool.” Then he pretended to bite my finger.

I laughed.

When we went outside, I winced at the blinding sun and pulled my sunglasses out of my purse. As I was pushing them onto my face, I saw the neighbor to the left sitting on his front step, shirtless, his gray grizzled beard meeting the rounded bare belly. He eyed me boldly, then let a stream of brown tobacco juice fly from his mouth onto the hard-packed dirt and grass of his yard. He didn’t acknowledge Riley and likewise.

“Good afternoon,” I said, with a cheerful wave. If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was to be fake friendly with the neighbors. My mother had it down to a science.

“Christ,” Riley muttered as he got in the car.

But the extra from
Duck Dynasty
actually lifted his hand and waved, calling back, “Hot as hell today, but you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“Thanks. Have a great day.” I climbed in the passenger seat.

“I didn’t even know that guy could talk,” Riley said. “In two years he’s never said a word.”

“A smile goes a long way.”

He snorted. “Yeah, if you’re a blond chick with long legs. If I smile at him we’re going to end up swinging punches.”

“Hm. I might need some guidance on social dynamics in your neighborhood, then. In my neighborhood, everyone kisses up to each other. It’s a finely tuned ritual of hypocrisy and envy. They’ll congratulate you on your son’s acceptance to an Ivy League school, then trash him behind your back, mocking his looks or his intelligence, or yours. Or your new landscaping, or your vacation, or your Botox, whatever has recently been done.”

“Maybe that’s the difference here. No one envies anyone else, so there’s no point in conversation.”

That was an interesting viewpoint. I was still contemplating it when we pulled into the movie theater. There was an honesty in Riley’s neighborhood. No one gave a shit about anyone else, and that was clear, whereas in my parent’s neighborhood, everyone pretended to care, but they didn’t really either. I wondered if there was anywhere that people did care, and looked out for each other, or if that was some small town ideal that didn’t exist. It was a depressing thought.

But then I remembered when a church member’s young son had died of cancer, and the outpouring of help, both emotional and financial, for that family. There had been thousands of people at the memorial service, and that had been genuine sympathy, a real desire to ease a grief that was unimaginable. So maybe there was such a thing as community.

Maybe it was the weird, melancholy thoughts, but when Riley pressed me to see the horror movie instead of the action one, I actually agreed, for whatever reason. Maybe the scary that wasn’t real could supersede the fear of the scary that was real—and what was more scary than feeling that everything is one big cynical joke?

Riley pulled out his wallet to pay for the tickets and I scrambled to get out my debit card. “Don’t pay for me.”

“I got it,” he told me. “You don’t even want to see this movie, the least I can do is pay for it.”

“But . . .” I wanted to say I knew he didn’t have a lot of money, but that would sound so patronizing and elitist, no matter what my intention was, that I cut myself off.

“But nothing.” He handed the girl behind the counter a twenty and got his change and our tickets. “You just spent a ton of money making my house less of a shithole. I can take you to the movies.”

“That was different. I only spent eighty bucks. That’s like rent for the week I’ve been staying with you.”

“Rent?” Riley shot me an amused look as we moved into the lobby area. “That’s hilarious.”

I started toward the ticket attendant to enter, but he said, “Hold up. I need popcorn.”

He bought a tub of popcorn that was basically the size of a beer keg. And a soft drink equally as insane. “Want a drink?” he asked as he encouraged the employee to pump more oil or fake butter or whatever that was on his popcorn.

“I’ll just share yours. It looks like you’ll have plenty.” Especially considering his snacks cost as much as the tickets themselves.

Riley had to sit in the middle, both of the theater and in the aisle, so we climbed over a couple in their fifties. We settled in, and he slumped down, his legs wide, turning off his phone and then proceeding to throw giant handfuls of popcorn into his mouth.

My own mouth watered. I hadn’t eaten lunch and that looked good. It smelled good.

“Aren’t you going to have any?” he asked.

I took one piece and put it in my mouth. Damn. That was some buttery goodness. Fake butter or not, it tasted like victory in my mouth. Like triumph and glory and the finish line. I chewed slowly, afraid I was going to reach out and just bury my face in the tub.

After an excruciating minute, I let myself take another piece. Riley didn’t say anything, which I appreciated. I was struggling, and I didn’t want to hear the typical male attitude, which was “dieting is stupid,” yet they could not deny that they wanted women to look a certain way.

All these various thoughts I was having were all just a little too heady for a Sunday afternoon.

Fortunately, Riley pulled my hand into his, which sufficiently distracted me. He also gave me a buttery and salty kiss that had me leaning extra close to him, tucking my feet under my legs.

“Mm,” he said. Then he popped a piece of popcorn into my mouth and I didn’t even count the calories.

I just giggled as the opening credits started.

Twenty minutes later there was no giggling going on. The movie was creepy. Like hide-my-eyes, suck-my-soul-out-of-my-chest, whimper-in-the-dark scary as fucking hell. I was practically sitting in Riley’s lap. He had put his arm around me and tucked me into his chest and armpit, but it wasn’t enough to combat the freaked-out factor as the girl in the movie screamed the eeriest scream in the history of screams. A demon was possessing her, and in the most horrific of ironies, her name was Jessica.

“Really?” I had asked Riley when we had first learned her name.

He had just laughed. “It’s a common name.”

While I had never seen
The Exorcist
, this seemed to me like that movie, but with modern special effects and camera angles. I wasn’t entirely sure I believed in demon possession, but I couldn’t say with any certainty that it
didn’t
exist, and if it did, I imagined it would look exactly like this. Snot and sweat and weird limb angles.

Something shot across the room in the film, and I jumped. I may have whimpered, because Riley moved his popcorn to the opposite side so that he could pull me closer. “You okay?” he whispered.

“I don’t think so,” I whispered back. “I think I’m going to run out of the theater screaming.”

“Just remember it’s not real. It’s just a story.”

Someone in the theater shushed us. I was tempted to throw popcorn at them. I was having a crisis here, a little sympathy, please. Besides, what did you need to hear in a horror movie? The dialogue all focused on the normal people being disbelieving, i.e., “Just go back to bed, Becky. It’s the wind.” And then the evil creature/character whispering ominously, “Murder, murder, murder.” Or whatever the case was.

In this movie it was things like, “I’ve been watching you, Jessica” and “We’re in this together, Jessica, in your body and your soul.” What, like I needed
that
?

By the three-quarter point, I had my head buried in Riley’s shoulder and I was clutching his shirt with both hands.

It wasn’t pretty.

But neither was Satan.

By the time the lights came on in the theater, I was sweating and breathing hard, my hands clammy. When I released Riley’s shirt, there were wet spots from my anxious fists palming him.

“Maybe this wasn’t the best choice,” he conceded, rubbing my arms. “I stand corrected.”

“You think?” I said, actually shivering from fear.

“You really are afraid. I thought you were exaggerating.”

“I don’t exaggerate,” I said with great dignity.

He snorted. “It’s the sledding all over again. I didn’t know you were really such a chickenshit. I thought you were making it up.”

Oh, yes, the sledding. I didn’t think it was that weird to be twenty years old and afraid of flying down a hill on a piece of cracked plastic, but he had seemed to think I was just stalling to be annoying. So Riley had pushed me, and I had almost fainted from lack of oxygen, a scream frozen in my lungs. “Well, from now on, you should believe me.”

As we stood up and left the theater, I added, “And I’m not a chickenshit. There are just certain things I’m afraid of, high speeds and demonic possession being two of them. You have to be afraid of something too, everyone is.”

“Nope.”

“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes for emphasis. “You’re not afraid of heights or small spaces or spiders?”

“No.”

“Flying?”

“I’ve never been on a plane, so I’m not one hundred percent sure, but most likely no.”

“Death?”

“Not particularly. I’m too busy trying to live.”

“You’re unnatural,” I declared. “Everyone is afraid of something.”

Riley held the door open for me as we stepped out into the heat and sunshine. “You know the one thing I’m afraid of.”

I glanced back at him, and I knew what it was—losing Easton. “That’s not going to happen,” I told him firmly. “The house looks great and Easton is happy. He feels safe with you, and he’ll tell the social worker that.”

Riley nodded. “And demons aren’t going to possess you, Jess. I don’t believe in guarantees, but in this case I’m willing to guarantee it.”

“I’m willing to guarantee that you’re going to hang those blinds when we get back to the house.”

He made a face. “What are you majoring in? Management? Because you’re really good at telling me what to do, while you watch me and point.”

“Ha ha.” I hesitated to tell him my major, because it sounded so stupid to me. Like a waste of a giant pile of money. For more than a year, I hadn’t even told Kylie and Rory that I was doubling with Religious Studies. They had just thought I was a design student until Rory started to get suspicious as to why I was taking so many theology classes and I had confessed the truth.