Dare Me

“It’s a little early.”

“Really? Feels like I’ve been with you all day.”

I laughed. “You have. But that’s because I’ve been here forever.” I seemed to be the only person in the park who couldn’t sleep through dog barking. I forgave it when it was Shanna’s dogs though. She explained to neighbors that they were simply “chatty” and that made their late-night yapping a little more endearing to me. “Yeah, it’s only,” I glanced at my phone, “noon, actually.”

“Well. It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

“True.”

“I got the booze. You got the fruit.” She laughed as I got right up to go next door for the watermelon I bought that week. It was one of few things I could buy and know would stay uneaten till I needed it because Trish hated watermelon and Hunt actually never touched my things.

I’d just opened the fridge when I heard a crash, a shatter and Trish’s reedy “shiiiit!” though it was her dribbling, “fuck it” kind of laugh that made me realize she’d shot up since I’d gone over to Shanna’s. I paused in front of the fridge, trying to decide if I wanted to go take care of whatever happened or just not deal with it at all. But then I imagined her rolling around in broken glass and being a bigger mess for me to clean up later, so I heaved a sigh, closed the door and went to her room. When I opened the door, I stopped in my tracks. She was in bed with just a sweaty, stained bra on, nothing else. My eyes traveled to the man humming deliriously next to her, completely naked with a condom on his flaccid dick.

It was Hunt.

My stomach reeled as the smell of sex wafted up my nose. There was a broken bong on the floor. No other paraphernalia but I knew they were both in other worlds, sprawled on the sheets, fingers intertwined as they laughed and moaned at the ceiling. I was nauseous, ready to heave bile on the floor. When Trish finally saw me, she lifted her head an inch off the pillow and gave me a big, lazy grin with those little, worn down teeth. “Hi, baby, hi,” she cooed excitedly. She was in another galaxy but still processed the blood-drained look on my face with delight. Her laugh crackled in my ears. “See it? Like mother, like daughter, baby girl. You and me, baby girl. Two peas in a pod.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Callum

It was closing in on 8AM and I was sitting in the lounge that Lake had run from this morning. Yesterday morning, really, but it all felt like the same day because I hadn’t slept yet and neither had Oz, Ana or the crew that sat with me, all of us downing some early morning Scotch. The sun was up but we drank like the night was young. Apparently, there was no such thing as last call. Not here. The bar stayed open till everyone left, and I had no place to go. I had no idea where Lake was. I had no hint, clue or lead. Not a single direction. I rarely felt helpless and I detested the feeling so I drank it away and considered a move to Scotland. Some American bars had the audacity to last call at midnight. That was grounds for abandoning my country. At least it was tonight. Rather, this morning.

“Anything I can do to make you feel better?” I lifted my heavy stare from my drink to Ana. Her hair was everywhere now and there was booze or water or something spilled all over her chest. I didn’t have the capacity to laugh but she read my amusement. “I know I look like a hot mess.”

“Yeah.”

She giggled. “That’s the key. Look it sometimes. Never be it.”

“Cheers to that.”

It was sarcastic but she touched her glass to mine. “So this is finally it, right? You’re calling it? Giving up the futile fight?” she smirked. “Oh, don’t make that face, Callum. You’re insanely fucking sexy when you’re mad but I like it so much better when those pretty lips are smiling.” She pushed my hand off the armrest and sat her ass on it. “Though what I prefer most,” she sipped slowly on her drink, “is when those lips are somewhere on my body. Preferably starting here.?? She fingered a line across her tits. “And then moving down to… oh, I think right around here.” Her hand trailed to her stomach and then down to her lap, settling between her thighs.

I said nothing. I’d hoped that drinking this much would erase the furious tornado spinning in my brain. Of course, all it did was give it the energy to bounce off the walls of my head like an inmate in an asylum, raving incoherently in his straitjacket. My mind still spun with activity – it was just completely fucking useless aside from driving me quietly insane.

Ana swung her long legs over and rested them onto my lap. “Someone needs to relax.”

“You’re observant.”

“I am. And I’m actually not sure why I asked if there was anything I could do to make you feel better. I know there are lots of things I could do.” The rest of the guys were too hammered to pay attention to us. Probably a good thing because Ana’s skirt was hiking all the way up as she crossed one leg over the other. The bartender caught my heavy-lidded gaze from across the room. He raised his eyebrows, gave me two thumbs up and then went on with his business.

I was slow to respond to Ana. “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.” She took my hand and ran it up her naked thigh. She held it there, took my glass and drank from it. “Mm.” She sighed. Half-moaned. “You know, hotel bars are always my favorite.”

“And why’s that.”

Her hand slid mine up her skirt till I was far enough to feel nothing underneath. She whispered in my ear. “Because it’s so easy to get a room the second you need it.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Lake

The same nausea that churned my stomach the day I found Trish and Hunt was making its return years later, across the ocean, with new life. It asked me what Callum would think about the fact that I cared and sometimes ached for a man who had sex with his stepmom, my mother. How Callum would feel about the fact that the relationship with Trish, it turned out, was the very least of Hunt’s faults. Just the tip of the iceberg. I’d been merely too stupid to see it.

I was in Scotland for God’s sake. My eyes stared out vacantly at the sea of blue before me but my nails clawed desperately at my skin, trying to get rid of every time Hunt had ever touched me, made me the same as my mom. My mind wasn’t relenting. It refused to stop dragging me by the legs through the dirt, the gravel and the filthy memories of Sunstone.

I threw up outside after I saw Trish and Hunt in bed together. Shanna came running. I don’t remember what I did to make her worry so much that she went to get Dean from the management office. I protested weakly for her to stop but eventually, I was on my hands and knees, hovering over my own vomit and too weak to say or do anything. I didn’t move or make a single noise when Dean came along, threw me over his shoulder and took me to where he now spent most of his time. Over the course of my fifteen months there, he’d gone from living one or two nights to almost full-time in the office. Trish said it was because he used the money I brought to spruce up the place real nice and he was having an affair with some girl. She said she didn’t care as long as it kept his hands off of her. Hunt agreed. So did I. He checked on her once a week, I heard a fight every time and after he left, Trish would come to me shaking, brushing back my hair and saying, “It’s okay. He’s gone. He’s crazy but he’s gone.”