The thought flashes through my head in an instant, while I’m still coming on his boot, while I’m still holding on to his wrists, our foreheads stuck together, breathing each other’s air. And I don’t think I’ve ever felt so at peace.
“Thank you,” I whisper, without him prompting me. “Thank you for making me come.”
His grip on me tightens as I’m coming down from my climax, and he whispers, “Maybe you should add a little something to that, to your thank you. Maybe you should say: You didn’t have to do that, Shepard, because I’m a sneaky fuckingbitchwho’s been lying to you for over a year. But that’s not all I am. I’m also so fuckingstupidfor leaving my phone where anyone couldget their hands on it and find out this secret that I’ve been trying to hide for so long.” Then, pressing his fingers into my face even harder, he continues, “And you know what I’d say to that,Jupiter, I’d say, you don’t need to thank me for anything. Because what kind of a brother would I be if I didn’t help out mywhoreof a stepsister?”
It takes me a moment to understand what he means. And it would probably be longer than a moment, if he hadn’t leaned back and looked into my eyes with such anger and hatred and undiluted fury that it almost chokes me to death.
Or maybe it’s his hand that’s gone back to my throat and he presses and presses it into my windpipe as he says, a vein pulsing in his temple, “If you come anywhere near me, near my family, my sister and her family, I’ll fucking ruin your life, do you understand?”
With that he pushes me away, and he does it so hard that I fall on my side and watch him leave the room as he leaves me there, all bruised and battered. Wrecked.
Part II
Chapter Fourteen
He came prepared.
Even after three weeks, that’s the only thing I can think about. The fact that he had leather shoes on. He never wears shoes like that, highly polished with a toecap. He usually has sneakers on if he’s running or working out, and other times he has something resembling big biker boots with thick laces. I always thought I could fit both my feet in one of his shoes. I always thought I loved his shoes.
Like I loved so many things about him. Like I loved him.
I did, didn’t I? Ido. I mean, me realizing it at this point, after years and years of watching him from afar, is a little ridiculous. It’s obvious that I love him. It’s obvious that I loved him from the first moment I saw him but it’s also so complicated, like everything else about him. Because watching him from afar is so different than actually getting to know him. Imagining everything he endured growing up and how he came out of those hardships is so different than meeting the man shaped by those tragedies.
I guess I never took that into account, the effects of those tragedies. I always admired him so much for his strength, histenacity that I never really stopped to think what it cost him to be that strong. Strength always has a price, doesn’t it? I should know that better than anyone. Being strong chips away at you and it turns you into something different. In my case, it turned me into someone with no identity outside of my sister, no dreams of my own, no ambitions, just a driving need to protect her. In his case, he became emotionally handicapped, a toxic viper who bites at the slightest provocation and would do anything for his family.
So no, it’s not obvious that I loved him since the moment I saw him. Maybe I loved theideaof him, the fairytale of him. But now I love the man behind it. I love his qualities. I love his flaws. I love his jagged edges that scrape like teeth and cut like knife. I love his soft parts too, the parts that took care of me, made me realize I could be worthy of someone’s care too. The parts that made me feel so safe, safer than I’ve ever felt before.
But that’s not the point. The point is, he came prepared, or rather he came preparedtoo. In the sense that I had an overnight bag and he had leather shoes with pointed toes. And now every time I see shoes like that, black and leather, I freeze for a second.
I freeze thinking it may be the same shoes. The ones that…
“Hey, you okay?”
I turn away from the coffee machine and toward the voice—Joe’s—and make sure to plaster a smile on my face. I also make sure to carefully set down the coffee I just made on the counter before plucking a lid from the stack and putting it on. I slide it over to the take-out counter and call out the name on the label before answering Joe’s question. “Hey, yeah. Yes, just thinking about stuff.”
I’m at my shift at the coffee shop, but am about to get off in a few minutes. So I start wiping down the counters and putting things back in their places before the next person comes on. Ialso do it so I don’t have to talk to Joe and lie to him about how fine I am.
He runs his eyes over my features, and once again I make sure to school them and look really busy so he doesn’t detect I’m lying. “Okay. Care to share?”
I throw him a casual shrug. “I’m still trying to convince Snow to look at colleges and she’s still hellbent on not.”
At least it’s the truth. She still hasn’t budged on the whole college thing. In fact, to argue with me, she printed out brochures for all the dance programs she thought would be perfect for me. And every time I bring up the topic of her going, she thrusts them toward me with raised eyebrows. I love my sister but she’s a pain in the ass. Because every time she shows me these things, she makes me want. She makes me wish for things that could never be mine. College, options, adventures.
“She doesn’t want to leave her sister,” he says, smiling and thankfully breaking my thoughts. “Can’t fault her for that.”
My response is to give him another smile. Mostly because a, I know he’s trying to flirt with me and b, these days I can’t help but notice that all he ever does is flirt with me, and instead of looking at my face, his eyes have a tendency of wandering lower, to my chest area. I don’t know why I never noticed that about him, and now that I do, I can’t stop.
But more than that, it makes me ache in the center of my chest. Because I know why I’ve started to notice these things. Things like men sometimes look at me longer than necessary, or why sometimes they’re either too nice to me to get me to smile at them, or too rude so they can get a reaction out of me. I’ve always been so preoccupied with other things—my home life, my sister, trying to make ends meet, and so on—that it never really registered until now.
“Are you sure you don’t want to grab dinner with me tomorrow night?” he asks again, and my heart clenches so hardin my chest that I have to pause from filling the coffee pot with water.
Our date seems so far away now. But after the disaster of our last date, I apologized to him the very next day. I maintained my lie about my sister calling me and told him we should try to get together again. At the time, I was doing it out of spite, out of rebellion and anger. And Joe had agreed. He was relieved that I wanted to give it another try.
But since then, things have changed dramatically—first, for the better and then three weeks ago, for the worse—and I’ve been trying to make excuses to get out of it. Sometimes I think I should just tell him the truth. That I’m not interested. I never was. I may have agreed to go out with him, but that was only because I was stuck and was trying to move on. Ironically. And now, after everything, I’m trying to take my own advice about dealing with the pain and just want to focus on myself.
“Uh, actually, about that,” I begin, thinkingwhy not. “I don’t think it’s a very good idea right now. To go out, I mean. I’m just,” I search for a word or a phrase that would make sense, “trying to deal with some things and I need to focus on myself.”
Joe stares at me carefully. “Is it him?”
