Bad Boy Blues

His mom looks at him with a trembling chin and so much hatred and heartbreak that my eyes fill with water.

“But let’s not dwell on such things,” Zach repeats, sarcastically. “I think I like this movie too.”

And just like that, all conversation is gone.

Even if I stand here for years, I know they won’t talk anymore. All the things they could’ve said to each other, they already have.

This is it.

This is the whole reason why Zach hates love, isn’t it? This is the whole reason why he’ll never love anyone.

A self-absorbed mother who probably didn’t care when her son was getting bullied. A hateful dad who should’ve supported him but chose to beat him down, instead.

How can Zach want love – any kind of it, really, either familial or romantic – when he’s seen things like this?

I wonder how many times his parents rejected him before he realized that love hurts. Before he stopped trying and became a cynic.

They say love is the most powerful thing in the world.

But even love dies when you stomp on it enough. I don’t think it is capable of living through something this toxic and dysfunctional.

Something this violent.

My eyes go to Mrs. Prince’s wrist again, the one Zach asked about.

It’s the same one that Mr. Prince was holding on to the night of the dinner with the Howards.

The night I found out how fucked up Zach’s parents are.

I’m waiting for him in his room.

I asked Mrs. S to put me on the night shift tonight and she did because one of the other girls couldn’t do it. So it’s not really breaking and entering. Although I did use a hairpin to unlock his room.

I’m lying in his bed and watching the stars, still looking for Orion, when the door opens.

Zach steps inside and I sit up, wearing my mom’s nightie. The one he likes with pretty lace around the neck.

For all his hardness, he likes feminine things. My curly hair, my sweet smell, my soft stomach and heavy breasts. The lace around the neck of my nightie.

His eyes find mine as he shuts the door.

“Hi,” I whisper.

He tugs his white earphones off slowly as he walks in further. He’s wearing a sweaty vest-like t-shirt that’s stuck to his body, clinging to the curves of his muscles.

“Have you been running?” I ask.

He nods, dropping his cell phone on the dresser. “Have you been waiting long?”

I come to my feet and nod. “Yeah.”

I’ve been waiting for him for years. But that’s nothing compared to all the years I’ll wait for him even when I know he’ll never come to me.

“Did someone –”

“Nobody saw me,” I say, cutting him off.

We meet in the middle of his room. He looks down and I look up and there’s a rush inside me.

A shivering. A quaking. A landslide.

I take his hand and put it on my ribs. “You feel that?”

Zach stares into my eyes before glancing down where our hands are joined on my stomach. He presses his palm in my softness, grabbing onto it like he can’t help himself. Like a starved, dying plant latches onto the sliver of sunlight.

“You’re shaking,” he says.

“Yeah. It’s the butterflies.”

His brows crease up. “Butterflies?”

“Uh-huh. You give them to me. You always have.” I swallow, goose bumps waking everywhere. “Ever since day one.”

Zach moves his fingers slightly. Going back and forth on my stomach as if trying to soothe them, the savage butterflies inside. I can hear the rustle of his rough palm over my nightie in the quiet of his room.

“I didn’t know,” he whispers, sweat dripping into his brows.

I use my thumb to wipe it off. “I used to hate them but not anymore.”

His jaw flexes and his eyes get darker. More intense.

I wish I could say I love them, the butterflies, I mean. But I’m afraid.

I can’t be, though. Not tonight. I need to be brave.

I need to confess.

Not about the love I have for him but what I did this morning. How I violated his privacy and watched him with his mom.

Widening my smile, I grab hold of his t-shirt and give it a tug. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“To the bathroom.”

“Why?”

“So I can murder you and dump your body. It’ll be easier to clean up the blood,” I repeat his own words to him, tugging at his shirt again.

He shucks it off, dropping it on the floor. “Yeah, I don’t think you’ll murder me. You need my dick too much.”

And your heart.

“You got me there.” I pull him toward the bathroom. “So we’re really just going to take a shower. Because you stink.”

I hear his chuckle behind me.

“We are going to take a shower because I stink?”

Stopping in the middle of the bathroom, I face him. “Yup. That’s the plan. I’m going to clean you up. Soap you up real good.”