The Stars Will Shine (14 page)

“A random bed?”

“Nah, John said to put her in one of the guest rooms.” I’m just going to assume John lives here, so I nod.

A few seconds later, Aiden says, “That was kind of funny.” He has a contemplative smile on his face, and I’m not sure what to make of it.

“It was not. Her face was stuck in my boobs.”

At the words “my boobs” Aiden absently glances at my chest, then realizing what he’s done, diverts his gaze with a flush to his cheeks. I glimpse his sheepish smile before he turns his head away and lifts his flask to drink some more. When he’s regained his composure he faces me and shakes his head.

“I meant that it’s funny she thought we were a couple.”

“Oh.” I shift a little farther away from him, and with the movement, I’m aware that I’m less steady on my feet now. What exactly does he mean by that?
Couple
. Ugh.

“Delilah.”

I’m breathless when I look up at him and into his perceptive stare. My heart beats faster when he leans in, his face inching ever closer to mine. Everything around me blurs. Aiden’s face comes in and out of focus, and I don’t know if it’s the alcohol or the fact that I don’t want to look upon something that makes me lose control of my heart like this.

“You have to know that I like you,” he says. His breath slides over my cheek. “It’s not like I’ve been keeping it a secret.” His gaze is turning my thoughts to fuzz in my brain, and I can almost feel our lips, so close together, bound by an invisible electrical wire.

“You don’t even know me,” I say back.

“I want to, though,” he explains. “Very much so.” He’s looking at my lips, only millimeters from his, so intently. But before he can move even closer, I pull back.

I feel the loss of his proximity like a punch to the gut. I want to tell him that the only part of me I’ll ever let him know is my body, and that the only part of him I ever want to know is his body.

I can’t do more than that.

Not after everything with Tommy.

My vision swims, the alcohol in my body really making its presence known now. It’s a feeling I’ve come to know so well; it’s a feeling I’ve come to love. Because when I feel like this, things don’t matter as much. Pain is fleeting. Emotions are numb. The present is bearable.

I take Aiden by the hand as I turn away, a wobble in my steps.
I want you.
I squeeze my eyes together when Tommy’s face flashes through my mind.

I want you
, Tommy told me.
I want all of you.
He was a liar. He wanted all of me but my heart.

I don’t know where I’m going; all I know is that I need to find a room, somewhere to be alone with Aiden.

“Delilah?” Aiden’s voice is tentative as I pull him along behind me. “Where are we going?”

Tommy’s face won’t leave my mind. His lies fill my head, swarming me. I squeeze Aiden’s hand and pull him along faster, trying to push thoughts of Tommy away.

I want to use you, Aiden. I need to use you.

I feel Aiden’s other hand gently take hold of my elbow, slowing me down some.

“Hey,” he says. “What are we doing?”

“Finding an empty room.” I throw open a door and barely pause to peek inside. Nope, already occupied by a frisky couple. I don’t even bother shutting the door as I move on, Aiden in tow. Aiden says something else, but I don’t hear him. He tugs back lightly to slow me down, but I trudge forward up a staircase and finally find a room devoid of people.

When I shut the door behind us, it’s eerily quiet. The music and all the voices become muffled and distant, leaving just Aiden and me and my suddenly dwindling confidence. Aiden stands five feet away from me, like he’s trying to keep his distance. I squeeze my eyes shut, memories running through my head of Dylan calling me a whore. Of the kids at school calling me easy. Of my father accusing me of having no standards and self-respect. Of my thirteen-year old self telling me over and over again that I’m just a used up slut for what I let Tommy do to me.

God, how right we all were.

“Delilah, are you okay?” Aiden asks. I breathe heavily once, twice, then reach for the hem of my shirt and wrench it over my head.

“Shit,” Aiden breathes out. I step forward, off balance, scraping my eyes over his clothed body. His own eyes widen, and he takes a step back, but I don’t give him a chance to think about what to do next.

I’m on him in two seconds flat. One hand grabs for the bedpost beside him, while my other hand goes for his ass. I press my breasts against his chest and swallow his mouth with mine. Shoving him onto the bed, I fall into his lap and keep going at him. He still doesn’t seem to have figured out what to do because with one hand he’s pulling me to him and with the other he’s pushing me away. I climb farther onto him, forcing him farther along the bed until we’re fully on it.

I reach for his belt buckle.

“Wait,” he finally chokes out. He grabs hold of my wrist and stops me. I grunt and reach for his belt with my other hand. He grabs that one too and forces me to look at him. “Delilah!” he says, shaking me carefully. Maybe he thinks it’ll knock some sense into me. “What are you doing?”

I thrash to the side, trying to break free. “What the hell does it look like I’m doing?”

He lets out a nervous laugh and delicately scoots out from underneath me. He’s still holding my wrists to contain me, like I’m some wild animal he netted on the streets.

“Um,” he says, his eyes guarded, “I at least thought we’d go on a date first.”

I roll my eyes under their lids, and when I open them again, my stare is a nail shot right into his forehead.

“You said you want to get to know me.” There is so little emotion in my voice that it sends a chill up my spine. I lean closer to him, lower my voice, and annunciate every word that follows. “Here is lesson number one for you: I don’t date.” I wrench away from him, jerking my hands from his grasp as I do so, and he lets me go. “This is me,” I say, gesturing between us and the bed. “You want me, this is how you’ll have to have me. I said I wasn’t a nice girl, Aiden. You just didn’t heed the warning.”

I retrieve my shirt from the floor and pull it over my head.
Without sparing him another glance, I leave the room.

Downstairs again, I reach for a new cup and fill it with more of that shitty beer. I feel so dizzy, so dark and empty inside, so…alone. But isn’t this what I wanted? Isn’t this what I came to this stupid party for? To substantiate the kind of person I am, the kind of person I’ll only ever be? I down the beer and fill the cup again.

“Hey.”

I spin around to find Aiden regarding me, uncertain and remorseful, having followed me from the bedroom.

“I’m really sorry,” he says. “You know that wasn’t me…rejecting you or anything up there.” He steps a little closer and scrapes a hand through his hair, which makes it stick up some. “Believe me, I want to do that with you—I’d be a fucking liar if I said I easily stopped myself up there—but this just isn’t how I want to do it.” He gestures to the party and the people and the cup of beer in my hand. “You deserve more.”

I shake my head and look away, swallowing back something thick in my throat. “Believe me…I don’t.”

“You’re so beautiful,” he says to me. His fingers reach for my face, but he drops his hand back to his side when I flinch.

“Please, Aiden, just go.”

But he doesn’t listen, and when I meet his eyes again, he’s waiting for me to say more. But I’ve already said everything I have to say to him. I’m not who he thinks; I don’t want a relationship beyond sex; I don’t want him to call me beautiful because it’s a lie and he knows it.

I’m saved from answering him by the arrival of none other than Dylan, the bane of my existence, yet my present savior, which is a testament to how pathetic my thoughts are right now.

He throws his arm around Aiden’s shoulder and says, “Whatchya two doing over here?” He eyes me like I’m a cockroach or some other disgusting vermin. “Looked like things were getting intense.”

Neither Aiden nor I say anything. Aiden keeps watching me, and I keep avoiding his eyes. Dylan laughs and yaps on, and even in my drunken state, I can tell he’s at least twice as drunk as me.

“You had this look on your face, Delilah. It was like someone just told you your mom died.”

As soon as he says it, I’m brutally stabbed straight in the heart. An icy cold swells inside my chest, and with every beat of my heart, it floods the rest of me. I see it register in Dylan’s eyes, what he’s just said, and he seems to sober up really quickly.

“Shit, Delilah,” he pleads, reaching out to me, but I jerk my arm away.

“Fuck you.” I say it quietly, but it carries so much anguish. So much bitterness. Tears burn my eyes.

Dylan suddenly looks sick. “I don’t know why I said that. I wasn’t—I wasn’t thinking at all. Delilah, you know I didn’t…”

But I don’t hear any more because I’ve dropped my half empty cup to the kitchen floor and I’m running to the front door.

It’s open so I just run right through it, to the surprise of the people cluttered on the porch, and sprint across the grass, away from the booming music and off into the shadows of the night, where I hope no one will be able to see or hear me cry. So many pent up emotions are on the verge of exploding from me, and I stop, no longer able to go on. Like I’ve been struck down, I drop to my knees and release a scream into my hands. Tearing at the grass, I press my forehead into it and sob. I cry harder than I did when Tommy tossed me out like trash, harder than when my father sent me away, harder than when he told me my mother lost her fight with cancer. Because I cry for all of that and more. For everything that’s ever hurt.

When I’ve finally calmed some, I lie there for a long time, bent over my knees, my face to the grass, and gasp for air. And when I stand again, I wipe the grass from my hair and clothes, and weakly face the house. The first thing I see is Aiden on the porch steps, sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. But he watches me, a miserable look on his face as though he feels my pain.

I wipe my runny nose with my wrist and slip out my cellphone. It’s not even the fact that we’ve been drinking that keeps me from wanting to ride back with Dylan and Aiden. It’s because I just can’t look at either of them right now.

I can’t call Aunt Miranda, obviously; that would just result in another grounding, and I have no desire to go back through the trouble of sneaking out. As I scroll through my short contact list, my eyes seek out one name.

Trevyn.

I tap the screen, glancing once more at Aiden far away on those steps. Trevyn answers on the fourth ring, his voice a croak.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” I whisper.

“Delilah?” I hear his bed creak as he shifts to sit up. “Are you okay?”

When I explain my predicament, he immediately offers to come get me.

“Stay there, okay?” he says after I give him the address. “I’ll be about thirty minutes.”

I do stay there. I stay exactly where I’ve been standing out in the grass, far away from everyone else. I make no movement toward the house or toward Aiden, who stays on those steps the whole time, occasionally looking over at me, maybe to make sure I haven’t run off, or maybe to let me know he’s there if I need someone to talk to.

But I just want to leave. I don’t want him to tell me what a jerk Dylan was; I don’t want him to ask me if I’m okay; I don’t want him to look at me with his insightful gaze and try to decipher me.

Trevyn pulls up in his peeling blue pickup truck almost exactly thirty minutes later. He reaches over and opens the passenger door for me from the inside, and I quietly slip in.

“Delilah,” he says, searching my tear-stained face. But he doesn’t ask any questions, which I silently thank him for.

I glance out the window at Aiden again. He’s standing now, his hands in his pockets, a cautious expression on his face that suggests he’s debating whether to come over. Trevyn sees him, too, and unbuckles his seatbelt.

He hands me a bottle of water and says, “I’ll be just a minute, alright?”

I watch him walk over to Aiden, who eyes him uncertainly the whole time he approaches. They talk for a minute or two. Aiden keeps glancing my way. His face looks serious—stern, even—whenever his lips move to say something.

When Trevyn climbs back into the truck, I ask, “What did he say?”

Trevyn smiles as he shifts the truck into drive. “Nothing really.” His eyes flit to me, his smile lingering. “He’s just being a good guy.” And then he takes off.

We don’t talk for a long while. Trevyn turns on some music, and The Eels blare from the speakers, but then he turns it down so it’s barely audible.

“I offered Aiden a ride, too,” he says.

“Oh, did you?” I say vaguely as I stare out the window up at the stars. You can see so many of them out here; it’s like someone took one of those bristle paintbrushes and just went wild flicking white paint across the sky.

Trevyn keeps his eyes on the dark road ahead of us. “Yeah, but he said he needed to stay and make sure Dylan didn’t do any more stupid things.”

I don’t take the bait to talk about it.