“Wait, did you just lie to me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I spin round to face him. Confusion is etched around his eyes.
“I don’t want you talking to Izzy like that, that’s why.”
Confusion rapidly tightens into rage. “I’m not sure that’s up to you, Luke.”
“Yes, it is.”
“How’d you figure?” His voice is like ice and if he was a cartoon character there would be heat waves vibrating around his head.
It takes a hell of a lot to anger me. It really does, but I haven’t slept well in days, I’m barely eating four meals per day, and I haven’t been able to think straight since the second he walked into our house two weeks ago. My heart is thumping and blood is rushing around my head so hard I swear I can hear it. Feels like I’m all set to have one of my twice per decade meltdowns.
“How’d I figure? I’ll tell you how I figure. I know my value,that’show. And you’re not going to talk to her likethat,” I point furiously back to where we’ve just been, “and talk to me the way you talk to me through the wall.”
His mouth gapes open and he blinks several times. I wait for him to say something, but his eyes have gone dull and the conversation has ground to a dead halt. I turn back around and head to the car, leaving him with no choice but to follow. When we get to the car, I take my time turning the music down and making sure the air vents are pointed exactly how I like them before I start driving. I’m buying time to cool down and get my heart rate down to normal, or to give Jessie another opportunity to talk, I’m not completely sure which.
Neither of us say a word the whole way home, nor do we utter a sound when we get to the guest house. He showers first and takes his goddamn time about it. When I finally get into bed I put my AirPods in and listen to white noise until I fall asleep.
He’s up before me. I find him in the kitchen, desperately punching buttons on the coffee machine. I fully intend to continue the treatment I gave him last night, but he’s wearing checked pajama pants with a white tank that’s stretched out at the hem and he’s slept a crease into his left arm. I force my eyes up to his face, not allowing myself to pause to see if I can see his piercings through his top. My gaze lands on his jugular. I see it pulsing once, then twice. His hair is a mess and his eyes are bleary. I bet if I put my lips against the skin on his neck he’d still feel warm from sleep. His face doesn’t change when he sees me. It’s completely neutral. There’s no hint of emotion. I give him a tentative smile because that’s how I’m made. I can’t help it and even if I could, I don’t think I’d want to. His face stays neutral, but the deepest, darkest shadows in his eyes flicker briefly. It’s not much. Most people wouldn’t have noticed it. I do, and it’s enough for me to abandon my anger and lapse back into a state that can best be described as simping – my default setting when it comes to Jessie Lewis, it seems.
The rest of the day drags by. I find it physically painful to pretend things are normal between us. I feel like I’m playing a part; Luke Bennet, happy-go-lucky small-town boy who loves his mom and thinks people are inherently good. Even though I have years of experience living this very role, it feels foreign to me now. I’m clutching at straws, constantly trying to think what my normal reactions and responses would be. I try to keep talking to Jessie, asking him questions and telling him about this and that. He suffers through it like always, trying not to roll his eyes. I can’t tell if he notices that I’m off, or if he thinks everything’s A-okay.
It's a relief when the weekend ends. I find myself looking forward to my mom and Greg going to work on Monday, which isn’t like me. My mom felt my forehead twice yesterday and I can feel a trip to the GP coming my way if I don’t snap out of it soon. The second they leave, the place feels echoey and too quiet. The careful dance Jessie and I have been doing around each other changes from feeling fake to fraught. It’s awful. It feels worse than it felt when my parents were around. I drag him out for a run. We swim. Chase drops in with the things I left at the beach. Dinner with my parents is hellish. I’m exhausted from impersonating myself. I leave the table first, heading to the guest house and throwing myself onto the sofa. He follows not long after. He calls his mom and they talk for a while and then he joins me on the sofa, wordless like always.
I’ve been trying really, really hard not to think about what happened at the wedding, it clearly meant something completely different to me than it did to him, since he doesn’t even have the decency to remember a damn thing about it. It’s hard not to think about it though. I’ve spent years replaying it in my mind. I remember everything about it. The way the air felt stagnant and humid one minute and electric the next. I remember the soft glow of the fairy lights in the acacia tree winking behind the leaves as a soft breeze picked up. I remember the sounds of the wedding, a low, happy murmur broken now and again by my aunt’s piercing laughter. I remember the song that was playing. It was the first time I didn’t just hear music, I felt it. Most of all, I remember Jessie standing beside me. He was close. So close, I could feel his body heat against my arm. It made the hair on my arm stand on end. Not just on my arm, on my back and my side, too. I looked into his eyes and I swear, it was like looking into flames. I knew what was going to happen a full second before it happened. I had time to prepare, though it didn’t help. I was still wholly unprepared. I was frozen. I couldn’t move. I’d never been so excited. Or terrified.
I was in awe of him then. I probably still am. He’s so different from me. He’s different from everyone I know. He stands out and I don’t think he only stands out to me because I’m infatuated with him. I think he factually stands out. He’s different from most people. Dark of spirit. Broody as hell. Always skulking on the perimeter, looking in. When he’s around, everything seems to be on a knife-edge. I’m acutely aware that I’m living and breathing when he’s close by. Shit seems real, like someone flicked the switch changing things from a game to playing for keeps. I don’t know if he casts his presence so wide on purpose, or if he can’t help it. I only know he does it.
I’m sure he affects lots of people, but I’m willing to bet he doesn’t affect anyone as much as he affects me. There’s no way he could. The second I met him, I felt it; an uncanny sureness, a knowing, an irrefutable feeling; a feeling that Iknowhim. We couldn’t be more different if we tried and I don’t know how or why I feel the way I do, all I know is I know things about Jessie I have no business knowing and more than that, I get him. We’re connected. I thought it came from both of us, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe I imagined it came from him too because I want it so much.
From my side, at least, I feel like there’s something between us. Something strong and right. Something I’ve never felt before. He doesn’t know this about me. He probably has no clue whatsoever. That’s what’s been messing with me more than anything since he got here. I know him. I understand him. I look into his eyes and I swear I can feel what he’s thinking. I feel his gaze on my body, I see the judgement in his snarl and the subtle shift in the way he moves his hips when he approaches me. Every single thing about what I see and what I feel tells me he wants me. He wants me now like he wanted me then, I’m so sure of it I’d stake my life on it. That’s why I can’t understand why he’s being this way. Messing with me at night and cutting me dead when I try to talk to him, making his eyes pitch black and closed off, turning his back on me when I smile, snapping little pieces of me off and crushing them to dust in the palm of his hand.
How can he not remember the wedding? Why does he talk to me the way he talks through the wall and then act like he doesn’t know me?
It’s making me feel insane. Certifiable. Half the time, when the sun comes up, I don’t know if it really happened or if I dreamed the whole thing. I’m second guessing everything. The Jessie he is in the day is so different from the Jessie who torments my nights it’s giving me whiplash. My life has this weird duality now. Above the surface everything’s normal, we eat and swim and talk to each other or I talk to him, and he pretends not to listen to what I say. Beneath the surface, the tide crashes into rocks, swirling, smashing them into pieces, grinding them down.
Why do I let him do it?
Okay, I guess this one’s not rocket science. I do it because the way his voice caresses me while I stroke my dick is the single greatest pleasure I’ve ever felt. It feels so much better than what I do when I’m on my own and that’s saying something because believe me, I’m something of a masturbation enthusiast. It’s not just the way his voice sounds, though God knows his hoarse voice is sexy as hell, it’s what he says, too. He’s mean to me. He makes me hurt and then he makes me feel good. I like the way he makes me feel good but to my surprise, I like the way it feels when he’s mean just as much.
I’ve never considered myself a spoiled brat. I try hard not to be and I’ve never thought of myself as someone who’d ever want something from someone that they don’t want to give, but I’m telling you, if Jessie doesn’t lay his hands on me sometime in the very near future, there’s no telling what I might do.
Every night that he’s spoken to me through the wall I’ve found it harder and harder to stay in my bed. The urge to get up and go next door is so strong I can taste it. I can almost feel the smooth timber floor under my bare feet. I’ve counted the number of steps it would take to get to his door. Eighteen. It would take eighteen steps. He sleeps with his door closed. I normally do too but since he got here I’ve been leaving mine open in a pathetic attempt to send him the message that he’s welcome to come in. All I’d have to do is reach out, put my hand on the cool wrought iron door handle and twist it down. I’ve done it before. I did it when he and his dad went out together the other day. I opened his door and went in. I’d been in his room lots of times before he got here. I helped my mom choose the decor for his room. The space feels different now with his things in it. His chucks were strewn on the floor along with an inside out pair of socks. His kindle and laptop were on his desk and the sketch pad we left on the desk had been put away. There was a photograph of him and his mom in the bookshelf that wasn’t there before, and the comic my mom framed for him had been placed face down on one of the top shelves.
Snooping is not something I normally do. I felt really bad about being in his room uninvited. I also felt horny. The whole place felt like him, like it had absorbed his energy or something, and his energy is intoxicating to me. I knew I was being a shit when I put my hand in my pants. I felt awful about it, but that only made it hotter. I was quick and I used his tissues to clean up.
“You’re quiet.” The sound of his voice makes me jump two or three inches off my seat.
“Thought that’s what you wanted,” I say when I’ve recovered.
He eyes me for a while. He quirks the left side of his cheek thoughtfully. Other people would think he was smiling. They’d be wrong. “I guess.”
I want to scream at him.Your words and thoughts don’t match up, you ass!I hear your words, but I canfeelyour thoughts.Irritation swells in my chest and I’m starkly reminded that I didn’t get to act on the rage I felt at the beach. It’s still inside me. It’s been pushed down by well-worn pajama pants and dark, careless hair, but it hasn’t been pushed down far enough. I roll angrily onto my side on the sofa, pulling the throw blanket over myself and beating the pillow under my head till it’s comfortable. Then in a moment of sheer madness, I kick my legs out so one foot is pressed against his outer thigh and the other foot is on his lap.
