“Ah wait.” Holding my hand up, I paused.
“Come here, the water should be warmer the first few seconds but it’ll get cold quick.” He almost looked remorseful. We both knew the first few seconds would be ball-shrinking cold but that was a punishment I was willing to take for my shitty behavior.
I punched his arm gently. “Aw, you care?”
“More like my balls are going to care when I’m struck with ice shards. Come on woman, let’s go.” True to his word, Demon kept the hot spray on me, getting most of the blue out. The water turned cold quick and my nipples pebbled painfully when he let up to clean himself off. He gave me the hose to spray him and he shook under the water like a big dog, making enough noise for the neighborhood to hear him. His hair, slightly longer on top, took on a spikey style and his blue jeans stayed darker either from the water or from the blue gunk. I didn’t really want to know which it was, but his legs were outlined with the slick denim clinging to his thighs and my mouth dried up thinking about peeling them off of him. I needed to get out of there before I did something stupid like jump his ass out there in broad daylight. Demon’s eye held a similar look, and we groaned when Taylor found us nearly shivering but slightly cleaner.
“I think you two are going to need these.” Taylor stood to the side of our mess holding old towels she must have found in Hunter’s truck. We didn’t care as long as we could dry off and get warm. As soon as I finished drying my face off, Damien was long gone, having walked inside the house leaving me out there. Asking him about planning Taylor’s bachelorette party would have to wait.
Taylor peevishly raised her eyebrows, silent recriminations aimed at me. “I can’t believe you—” She held her hand up, stopping her own thought mid-sentence. “No, I absolutely should have known you’d do it.”
I shrugged, hands up. “What?” If she was looking for an explanation, all I could say was that the opportunity to torment Demon was there and impulsively I couldn’t pass it up. Tormenting him was my drug and I was addicted.
“Uh huh.”
“What?” I shrugged again.
Drolly she said, “Make sure you dry off good before getting in the car, please.” She walked away, leaving me there. And to think that this day had started out so well…
8
Damien
“She is an evil, evil woman.” I looked at Pebbles’s older brother, bracing myself for a good ribbing. Chase Calloway didn’t even try hiding the shit-eating grin on his face with his hand flailing. There was a time Chase would have beaten me to a pulp on and off the football field for picking on his baby sister, but since then he’d seen she was as much at fault as I was for our current hate relationship. His shoulders stretched his shirt with thick, defined muscles. Everyone had wanted to be Chase Calloway, and even though he suffered a career-ending injury right before college, he still had it. We all thought he would go pro, but it wasn’t meant to be.
“I uh… heard about your little art show the other day.” He snickered.
I hadn’t planned on attending this picnic party, but every year Kristen and Chase’s mother hosted a Fourth of July party to welcome in the summer. I was never technically invited, but considering we were all neighbors growing up and there were like six degrees of Kevin Bacon between us, it was sort of a given I’d show up. Mrs. Calloway would give me the side eye and I’d tal
k sports with Mr. Calloway for most of the night until the fireworks started. Those were the traditions that kept me in town, making it hard to walk away.
Chase kept snickering and I wanted to tip his beer over. Instead I said, “Fuck you.” Was I in the mood to explain how a port-a-john got tipped over on the jobsite with me stuck inside of it? Nope. But I also knew our friends wouldn’t leave out the opportunity to humiliate my jackass self either. That’s love for you.
“I can see you’re less blue today.”
Grunting, I wondered how long it had taken him to make that up. He was laughing and I wanted to hit something, but Chase was solid muscle. He remained built like a brick house since our football days, and I didn’t feel like rolling around in the backyard in front of his parents.
“She tipped over a freaking port-a-john like she had guns of steel. What the hell is eating her these days?” My question was rhetorical, but no less valid. I had been searching for years for someone to help me make sense of this girl.
“What do you expect? My sister is crazy.” Chase handed me a new beer and sat down, opening them up to clink them together, chugging the contents down. I was still attending those Intoxicated Driver Groups and I was supposed to remain sober because if it wasn’t humiliating enough to be in them, they also did weekly urine screens. I wasn’t an alcoholic and I hated being told what to do, but it was a holiday and I wasn’t going to have more than two before I walked home. Since group wasn’t until the following week, I wasn’t worried about alcohol remaining in my system that long. It was shitty, and yes I was breaking the rules, but I was pretty sure my life couldn’t be any more humiliating right then.
“I don’t know how you do it, being related to her.” If anyone should have understood, it was Chase, having lived with her all those years.
“I swear she’s a nosy pain in the ass. Damn spirit animal must be a raccoon the way she tries getting into my business and everyone else’s.” Chase laughed.
“Yeah, but only if it’s one with rabies.” I joked watching him shudder in agreement. Kristen was vicious when crossed. She didn’t need to dye the ends of her dark hair flame red; she had a bit of the devil residing in her already, and I envied the man who tamed that.
“I’ll have to save that one for later.” Chase said. We laughed, drinking our beers.
“Did she rope you into the auction?” he asked.
“No, but she managed to finagle a hundred bucks from Hunter and a tuxedo. I figured the only monkey suit he would wear was to his wedding.”
“This is my sister we’re talking about. She could convince you to buy sand in a desert.”
I didn’t want to talk about the girl I would never get, and switched gears to find out more about Chase’s mystery woman. Cute, Asian, and—from what I could see—being harassed by Kristen and Taylor not even five minutes into the party. “So who’s the girl with you?”
“Winnie Grey.”