Not sure I want to, either. That boy felt too much. Too much pain. Too much humiliation. Too much. Too much too much. It’s easier to be blissfully numb than it is to let emotions alter my life.
“Well fuck,” Dylan coughs after taking a hit off the joint. “Aren’t you two straight people lucky. Why couldn’t you have found a hot gay guy for me to fuck all winter?”
I just shrugged my shoulders. But the weed must be kicking in for Mara cause she bursts into a fit of giggles that infects Dylan as well. Their little laugh fest earns an eye roll from me.
“Ugh,” Mara sighs, “I’m so tired and I know this one will be busting downmy door at six in the morning for chores.” One pointy nailed finger is thrust in my direction. “I’m going to bed. Happy new year, guys. Oh wait—” she stops suddenly. “We missed the countdown to midnight.”
“Sorry, toots,” Dylan says with a smirk, “guess you’ll have to come back next year and try again.” I don’t know why, but that comment makes her look sad, especially when she raises her gaze to me.
Mara bounds back to Dylan, grabs his chin, and plants a kiss on his cheek with more force than she probably intended.
“Night, guys.”
Seeing her stumble to the door, I figured I should help her get upstairs. I can almost hear my mother screaming at me from beyond the grave to be a gentleman.
I catch up to Mara inside and place a steadying hand on her waist before she shrugs me off.
“I don’t need help. I’m fine,” she insists.
Hoping she might eat her words and trip, I let go of her as she starts up the stairs. But that part of me that wanted her to admit I was right is overpowered by the part that doesn’t want her to get hurt when she actually does trip and fall to her knees with a smack that sounds painful.
I scoop her up in my arms like a sack of potatoes and head up the stairs.
“Why aren’t you more clumsy?” She asks.
Because I have a higher tolerance. And I haven’t been drinking all night.
I lay her down on her bed still burritoed in her blanket. She rolls over on her side, face smashed into the pillow.
“Night.” She says curtly, my que to leave.
Guess we won’t be fucking tonight.
Chapter Seventeen
Mara-Present
High-Stephen Sanchez
He made his point perfectly clear. And although I’m not looking for anything serious with Jason, I don’t like being treated like trash and then used for my body. I’ve already done that. I don’t need to repeat that toxic dynamic again.
I’m trying to right the wrongs of my past. I’m trying to make amends with him. I understand holding a grudge all this time, but I did apologize and I’ve been trying to be cordial. The least he can do is treat me with a little more respect.
Isolated in a cabin in the woods, it’s not like I can publicly apologize or make any grand gestures.
But despite my actions in the past, two wrongs don’t make a right. Maybe I deserved the degradation at first. Actually, I definitely deserved it. But I’m not the one who dragged him naked into a room full of people.
Who am I kidding?I’m just as bad. Bryce humiliated Jason. But I toyed with his emotions and gave false hope to a kid who suffered his whole life at the hands of his peers. I was a bully, no different than Bryce. And I’ve paid for it ever since between the shit treatment I got from Bryce and the crappy relationship I had with my ex—if it can even be called a relationship.
Tanner, my ex, was a real piece of shit. I didn’t want a purely physical relationship so I told him I wanted to wait a bit to have sex. He pressuredme into intimacy of other forms until I finally gave in. And then I was never good enough.
When my body started changing because I wasn’t working out as much, he made comments about it. He complained I wasn’t as active in the bedroom as he was, insinuating that he did all the work while I just layed there. And if I gave him a blowjob every day, it still wouldn’t be enough and he’d tell me I didn’t make enough of an effort.
His comments live rent free in my head at all times.
“Do you really need dessert?”
“Why is it always me who has to do the work? Sometimes I’d like to lay there and get fucked instead.”
