We laughed so loudly that Mr. Falls came stalking over to our table, “What’s all the noise over here?”
“Um. Nothing sir. We were just doing the icebreaking exercises you asked of us,” Jase answered, smiling brightly.
“Really?” he sneered, pushing his thick-framed glasses up the oily, thin, bridge of his nose. “Well,dotell me what you’ve found out about a few of your tablemates.”
Jase leaned his elbows on the table and his smile got wider. “Sure, no problem. This here is Margo,” he said, nodding towards some girl I didn't know. She was dressed head to toe in pink and had a giant New Kids on the Block pin that hung from her collar. “She loves the color pink, gets a kick out of boy bands, and loves a good romance story,” His face turned to me and he gave me a little wink. “And, directly across from me is Charlotte, but she would rather be called ‘Charlie.’ Her favorite band is Avenged Sevenfold. She thinks their music is awesome, and she secretly has a crush on the lead singer.” Then Jase points to the boy sitting next to him, “We were just about to get to this big guy over here. I believe I remember from last year, his name is Jonathan. Oh, and me? I’m Jase Delaney,” he stood up to shake the teacher’s hand, the rest of the class snickering low at his clowning around. “My favorite color is green, and I’m desperately in love with my BFF…”
“Okay,” Mr. Falls clapped his hands together. “That’s good enough, carry on class,” he called out, walking away as he glanced around the rest of the room.
“Holy shit, dude.” Jonathan said, “You got balls.”
“Yeah, two of ‘em,” Jase answered with a straight face. “Why, how many do you have?”
Sliding down in my seat to try to reach him, I nudged his foot. “Hey, I thought your favorite color was blue.”
“Not anymore. My favorite color is the exact shade of green in your eyes.”
A low fluttering nipped at the bottom of my belly, and when I looked up into his eyes directly, the fluttering dropped to a dull throb in a very private place on my body. “Shut up, Jase!” I whispered, giggling.
“Nuh uh, Charlie. Tell me your favorite color isn’t the color of my eyes.”
Yeah, it was.
He chuckled, “Yeah.” His hand raked through the layers of his dark hair and his eyebrows pulled together seriously. “And I promised myself, well I promised Joey, to never keep my feelings to myself again, to always speak my mind, and be fearless, especially about you. You never know how little time you have left with someone.”
Oh.
Hell, he’s right.
My hand shot up in the air to get the teacher’s attention and I asked in a quick-snipped voice to use the restroom. Before I left the table, I stood up and leaned in close to Jase’s curious face and whispered. “Second floor, girls’ bathroom. Last stall. Five minutes.”
He didn’t even ask. Jase just pushed away from the table and jumped up, knocking the chair back, and ran out behind me. The murmurs and whispers of the classroom silenced as soon as the door shut behind us. I ran ahead, down the empty hallway, and turned into the back stairway, thinking the bathrooms were just too damn far.
Not caring one damn bit about where we were or who would be watching, I turned to face him; my chest hammered with thick, loud, heartbeats I swore the whole school could hear. Jase quickly devoured the distance between us, pressing my body with his up against the cool, tiled wall of the stairwell. The hungry, hooded look in his eyes made my knees tingle, and an explosion of sparks flamed between my thighs. His hands grasped both sides of my face, and like two magnets that had been held apart and suddenly let go, our lips collided together in need. His warm mouth covered mine; his wet tongue devouring my senses as my hands clawed at his shirt, pulling him closer. His hands slid into my hair, pressing my lips harder against his. Hard and fast his mouth moved with mine, like we were trying to melt into each other and sink into each other’s skin.
A low, tingling pressure was building steadily between my legs as he pressed his body firmly against mine. Releasing my hair, he reached down, pulling my hips harder against his, and slipped his hands to grip my bottom, grinding himself into me.
Somewhere around us the sound of footfalls echoed against the stairs, and low voices fluttered through our minds. We were too consumed with each other to care—too overwhelmed with the taste and feel of each other after such a long time apart. Jase reluctantly pulled his lips from mine and his hands reached up from where they pleasantly were to cup my face. The heat from his mouth fanned across my skin, making it a struggle to keep my tongue and my mouth away from his.
His blue eyes met mine, our faces close to each other. “Every time I’m with you, close to you, my chest feels so damn tight.” His voice shook and tears spilled from my eyes. He lowered his gaze to the floor and gently rubbed his thumbs across my cheeks, wiping the salty tears across my skin. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save him. I’m sorry I didn’t kill Slate with my bare hands. You know I tried, and I would have if they didn’t rip me off him.” He stepped back, letting me go. and ran his hands along the back of his neck and over his face. “But the thing I hate the most, the thing I feel the most messed up about. is my father taking me away from you. And you dealing with this all alone. I am so sorry, Charlie.”
“Stop, Jase,” I whispered, grabbing his hands in mine and pulling him back against me.
Two students walked past us gasping, and gave us a disapproving look while shaking their heads. Jase blew them both a kiss and flipped them the finger.
I tugged on his hands to focus his attention back on me. “Jase, you did nothing wrong. This wasn’t our fault; it’s all on Slate. And the only way I’ve been dealing with this is by just saying to myself that Joey’s away on a long vacation, and I’ll meet up with him when I get the chance.” Tears were pouring down my face now. “I know it’s sort of crazy, but I just can’t face the fact that I’m never going to see him again.”
“No, Charlie. That’s perfect. Joeyison vacation. And we definitely will see him again.” His arms were around me instantly, and he crushed me into his chest. “Yeah, baby. He’s just taking a little holiday, cutting a few classes. At the beach or something,” he whispered in a hoarse voice.
We walked back to the classroom, hand-in-hand, and the rest of the day passed in a sad, hazy blur. Both of us missed him so much, and both of us suffered with the guilt of having to go on with the rest of our lives without him.
We never made it to the bonfire that night. Nope. We drove out to the cemetery and ate a picnic dinner of fast food with Joey and spoke to his gravestone like he was really there. You may think that we were both certifiable, but that was how we were dealing with our loss. We were young, we were devastated, and we were completely and utterly alone. All we had was each other.
Sometime after dusk fell over us, we walked side-by-side to his truck, our arms occasionally touching. Each time his skin brushed against mine, my entire body felt like it was engulfed in flames. Every time our skin made contact, he would glance down at me, like he was feeling the same strange inferno. After the third time, I reached my hand across and rubbed the area and wondered how I could possibly feel so much from such a small touch. After I climbed into his truck, he pulled me close to him, making every surface of my skin tingle and burn, causing flutters to roll through my belly. I wanted to keep feeling him, tattoo that feeling permanently on my skin. I wanted to surgically remove my heart and hand it to him wrapped in a little red box, because seriously, he had it already. Andthatfeeling, thatneed, was the only thing that let me forget about Joey being gone.
The ride back home was full of songs and holding our hands out the windows, feeling the wind whip past us. He pulled his truck into a clear spot in front of his house and walked me to my door, placing a soft kiss on my lips.God, I wanted more.But, too nervous to tell him, I just opened my door and walked into an empty house, not even bothering to lock it behind me. No doubt my mother was with her newest sleazy boyfriend, the one that didn’t mind when I walked in on them screwing on the couch.Owen. Owen just winked at me and held my mother’s hips tighter and kept plowing into her. Vomit central. Honestly, I was pretty much used to it by now. It was like a college frat house around here, and my mother was the freaking slutty mascot.
Walking into the kitchen, I checked for messages and grabbed a bottle of water. Sipping it, I listened to two different, extremely drugged out, slurred messages of my mother telling me she’d be staying over at Owen’s place. His own slurred, drugged out, laughter spilled out of the background, and she giggled uncontrollably into the phone. The third message was from my father explaining to me that he might be able topencil me infor a visit on the fourteenth of October, which was over a month away.What an ass. He could shove his pencil right up his ass for all I cared. I hadn’t seen him in over seven months. He was way too busy at the theater, watching the ballet, eating at the finest restaurants, or sailing around the world in his shiny new yacht with his shiny new plastic-tittiedwife. Screw him and the Barbie doll he rode in on.
