Believe

Chapter Eight Robin

When I woke up, there was no pounding head, no dry mouth, no whisper of regret. Instead there was a warm, delicious satisfaction as I slowly became aware of being completely naked in bed with Phoenix. He was lightly snoring, his hair in his eye, arm still wrapped around me. Feeling a little giddy, I studied his face, his strong jaw, his long eyelashes.

I had been telling him the truth—I had made out with a lot of guys, but I didn’t usually go home with them, except for Nathan, so I really didn’t have massive amounts of sexual experience. But that, with Phoenix, had been awesome. It had felt like he was everything, in every inch of me, like our bodies truly were one.

Not to mention that I’d had an orgasm, which happened with a guy like never.

He must have sensed me watching him, because his eyes suddenly popped open, and he jerked forward. When he saw it was me, he settled back on the pillow and smiled. “Morning.”

“Good morning.” I shifted my leg over his and felt a shiver of pleasure, both at the way he felt, firm and rough, and the fact that I wasn’t embarrassed to do it.

Phoenix rolled over so that he was on top of me. With a sigh, his eyes still sleepy, he kissed me. “Mm,” he said. “Did you sleep good?”

“Yes,” I answered truthfully. “You?”

“The best.” He reached over and got a condom off the upside-down crate that served as my nightstand.

Then he was inside me again, and I sighed with pleasure, relaxed and lazy, still not fully awake. When I came, it was an even bigger surprise than the night before. Who comes during actual missionary position sex with zero foreplay first thing in the morning? Holy shit, it seemed I did, at least when Phoenix did that thing, where his thumb stroked over my clit and he moved in a way I couldn’t explain, like stealth penis. A sneak attack, hitting the most perfect spot imaginable.

“Oh, God,” I cried.

The look he gave me was so possessive and satisfied that when he gripped the headboard and came with gritted teeth, my eyes actually rolled back in my head as I had another little mini-orgasm.

When he stopped moving finally and I could think, speak, I swallowed hard and said, “Who has two thumbs and just came twice? This girl. Holy crap.”

Phoenix laughed softly. “Glad to hear it.” He kissed me again. “Best way to start the day.”

“I concur.” The moment was worth busting out extra vocab. And I was feeling more like myself than I had in a million years.

He stood up, pulling off the condom. In the morning light, I studied him. Nice. Very nice. “What does your tattoo mean?” I asked, rolling onto my side, propping my head with my hand, tugging the sheet over me. I wasn’t comfortable just lying there totally naked when he wasn’t actually touching me.

“Which one?” He scratched his chest, flipping his hair out of his eye. He didn’t seem even remotely self-conscious about being naked, but then again, most guys weren’t.

“The bleeding heart.” I wanted to know who had broken his heart. Who I had to compete with, I guess. It was why I had asked him about Angel, which was not even remotely subtle, I know, like none of my actions had been, but I was going with my gut. And my gut said if I wanted to know something, I should ask the question.

But he just shrugged. “It doesn’t mean anything. I just liked the artwork.”

Taken by surprise, I just stared at him as he pulled on his shorts and said, “Be right back,” and left the room. I could hear him go into the bathroom and shut the door.

It didn’t mean anything? A life-size severed image over his own heart, dripping blood all the way down his rib cage and gut? That seemed a little hard to believe.

But maybe he didn’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a secret of my own.

That deflated my lazy contentment, and I got up, pulling on shorts and a T-shirt. When Phoenix reappeared we went down to the kitchen and found Kylie sitting at the table eating oatmeal. I had class in ninety minutes, but she had a nine a.m. and looked on the verge of leaving, to my relief.

“Hey,” she said, with a cheerful smile. “There’s coffee left if you want it.”

“Thanks.” Guilt rose up in my mouth like bile. Just when I started to enjoy myself, to feel human again, it was back, and rightly so. The day I could look at Kylie and not feel a twinge of guilt was the day I officially sucked.

“Catch you later, you cute little lovebirds!” she sang out, dumping her dirty bowl in the sink and leaving it as she rushed from the kitchen, blowing kisses at us.

“She’s a lot of a lot, isn’t she?” Phoenix asked, opening up cupboards until he found the coffee mugs. He pulled two down. “So what time are you done with classes?”

“Three.” I took the coffee he gave to me and took a sip.

“You doing anything? Want to hang out? They don’t need me to work today.”

I nodded. “Yes.” I did. I wanted to spend every minute with him.

Every single second.

Every nanosecond.

Without thinking about it, I put down my coffee, snaked my arms around his neck and kissed the shit out of him.

“I want to kidnap you,” he murmured in my ear. “So that I never have to let you go.”

“Please do,” I told him.

“Classes just started yesterday,” he whispered, mouth hot on my neck as he trailed kisses along my collarbone. “You can’t skip.”

“But I want to.” I did.

“I’ll pick you up at three thirty.” He peeled the top of my T-shirt down and sucked the swell of my breast. “’Kay?”

“Okay.” But I reached for the button on his shorts, thinking that it might be a much better idea to go back to bed.

Phoenix stepped away and shook his head. “Go to school. You’re, what, half done with your degree? Don’t screw it up now, not because of me.”

I saw that he would feel guilty if I skipped, so I sighed and said, “Fine.”

Phoenix laughed. “You’re adorable when you’re being a baby.”

“I’m not being a baby!” Not much, anyway.

He reached out and gently squeezed my bottom lip. “You’re pouting.”

I was. Damn it. But he just replaced his finger with his mouth and kissed me.

I went to class, but I didn’t hear a word my professors said. Instead I daydreamed about Phoenix and me running off to New Orleans and living like hippies on my art and his tattoo work. We would have a dog and a tiny apartment in the French Quarter and I would never wear makeup again and he would always think I was beautiful.

There was nothing wrong with dreaming.

Except when I left campus at three I realized it was the first day for my Tuesday-Thursday classes, and I was already behind.

My schedule was heavy with business courses, and none of it seemed like anything I wanted to do. Ever.

But I didn’t have a choice, did I? So I went to the coffee shop and started in on reading the textbook.

“I have to go to the store,” Phoenix told me when I picked him up at his cousin’s house. “Do you mind going with me?”

“No. What do you need to buy?” I pulled down the street. I had been planning to go in the house and say hi to everyone, but Phoenix had been waiting on the front step and he’d gotten into the car immediately. I felt a little guilty, like I was blowing off Jessica, but then again, I didn’t even know if she was home or not.

“Well, I went into prison with my clothes and five bucks and that’s basically all I have to my name right now since my mom disappeared. I need to buy basic stuff like deodorant and some shirts. I can’t keep borrowing my cousins’ shit.”

“Okay.” I tried to imagine only owning the clothes I was wearing and couldn’t. I had a whole bedroom full of stuff at my parent’s house—clothes and mementoes and old electronics. The thought of all of it disappearing freaked me out completely.

When we walked into the discount store, Phoenix said, “I have forty-five bucks, that’s it. So I need to do some math. I’m getting paid every day under the table, but I had to pay Riley back for my phone, and I still owe them like another hundred bucks, so it’s going to be tight for the next month.”

Forty-five dollars? What the hell was he going to buy for forty-five dollars? But I got a cart and got my phone out of my purse. “We can use the calculator on my phone. By the way, I want to buy some art supplies after we’re done here. The craft store has cheap canvases.”

In recent years I had minimized my painting to school projects or pop art. I hadn’t painted the way I had in high school in more than two years, but suddenly I wanted to really create, to take my brush and pour out my feelings in a genuine, dark oil. Maybe a self-portrait. Or maybe a lonely lighthouse. Something to express the emotions that had been overwhelming me, the ones I wanted to get rid of.

“Cool.” Phoenix picked up the generic version of everything, from toothpaste to deodorant to sports drink, and put them in the cart. “What are we at?” he asked me.

I squinted at the screen on my phone. “Twenty-two dollars. But there will be tax.”

“Okay. We’re cool.” He bought two T-shirts that were five bucks each and a pair of boxer briefs. “That’s good enough for now.”

Impressive.

What was even more impressive was that when we were near the checkout lane he decided to spend the last five bucks in his budget on a bouquet of flowers, not for me, but for his aunt’s grave.

“I know they’ll go brown in like two days, but I don’t know, it seems like the right thing to do,” he said, actually lifting the bouquet of cheerful daisies to his nose, which he wrinkled. “Well, they smell like shit, but seeing as she’s dead, I guess it won’t matter.”

Really? Boys could be so sweet and silly at the same time. “I guess not. So I guess you’re planning on going to the cemetery?”

“Yeah. I missed the funeral so I would like to do that. If you don’t want to go with me, I understand. I can borrow Riley’s car.” He started to load his stuff onto the belt for the cashier.

“No, it’s fine. If you don’t mind me being there.” Grief was a private thing, and I wasn’t sure if I would be intruding or not. I wanted to add that he really shouldn’t be driving, but I figured a guy who didn’t have much of a mother wouldn’t particularly appreciate a girl he had just started seeing to go all maternal-nag on him.

Phoenix cupped my cheek in the checkout line. “I don’t mind you being there. In fact, I would like that very much. In fact, I like you very much.”

It was official. I was falling in love with him. He was just so . . . intense, in a good way. And after the night before and that morning, it felt so natural to have him touch me. So tingly. So perfect. There was a familiarity, an intimacy with him that I had never experienced with any other guy.

He gave me that earnest look he had, the one that made me feel like I was the only human being on the planet, and I melted. I wanted him to kiss me and I started up on my toes when the cashier said, “I said, forty-three twenty-two.”

Giving me a smile, Phoenix turned. “Sorry,” he apologized to the cashier as he handed her his money.

My phone was buzzing in my pocket. I pulled it out absently, then quickly turned the screen toward my stomach when I saw it was Nathan. Shit. What the hell did he want? Casually I tilted my phone so I could read it and get rid of it.

You can’t be serious about that guy.

I made a face as I deleted the message. Obviously he was talking about Phoenix, but the real question was why did he give a shit?

My phone buzzed with another text.

He’s a loser.

That annoyed me. It was none of Nathan’s business who I was spending time with, and as far as I could tell, Phoenix was making the best of a crap start in life. Yes, he had been to prison, but it was for defending his own mother. He was completely drug– and alcohol-free, and I was pretty sure he always had been. So he wasn’t in college, so what? Plenty of people couldn’t afford to go to college or didn’t want to.

Let me see you.

Seriously? Exasperated I finally typed back a simple “no” while Phoenix collected his two bags and the flowers.

“You okay?” he asked as we walked out. “You look like someone just pissed you off.”

The idea of lying to Phoenix made my stomach knot, but I didn’t know how to tell him the truth without telling him the whole truth, which I couldn’t do. I didn’t want him to think I was a cheat or a bad friend. Which I was.

Ugh.

“I’m fine. It’s just I don’t really want to be back in classes. My school in-box is already filling up with syllabi and stuff from profs.” That was true. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t the truth either. My stomach clenched harder.

“I don’t even know what a syllabi is, but I’ll take your word for it that it’s no fun. School wasn’t really my thing.”

“No? You didn’t like it?” I pounced on the opportunity to change the subject, deleting the second and third messages from Nathan with lightning fingers as we crossed the parking lot. It was still summer hot, and I could see the heat rising off the pavement.

“No, not really. I mean, I didn’t mind the schoolwork, but we moved too much and my mom could never keep track of my records and stuff, so I was always confused about what was happening. And any sort of project that required supplies at home was impossible. I remember one time we were supposed to dress like a historical figure so I put my baseball socks on over my jeans and wore a winter scarf. I’m not sure what I was going for.” We got into the car and Phoenix laughed. “It’s funny now looking back. At the time, it wasn’t really that amusing. I was the weird kid in my class, always. Me and this girl who used to eat her scabs. The other kids gave us space.”

“She ate scabs?” That was a horrifying image. “And I’m sure you weren’t as weird as you thought.” Picturing a little Phoenix, keeping to himself, made my heart swell. “Everyone goes through an awkward phase. You should have seen me with braces.”

But Phoenix shook his head as I started the car. “Uh-uh. I’m not buying that you were ever ugly.”

I laughed. “Want to see my middle school yearbook?”

“Yes.”

“No way.” I may have come to terms with my vanity as a default positive since the beginning of the summer, but that didn’t mean I wanted Phoenix to see me at my gawkiest.

“I’d show you a picture of me, but I don’t have any,” he said, and the amusement left his voice.

He didn’t sound angry, not exactly, but when I glanced over I saw his fists were clenched, and he released them, one finger at a time. God, what would it be like, to have your memories locked only in your brain, nothing visible to remind you of them? No pictures, no report cards, no childhood toys, no baby clothes? It would be scary to me, like I was a vast nothing, history fluid as our minds tended to twist truth and the past.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it more than those simple words could ever cover.

But he shrugged. “It’s okay. There might be a picture or two at Riley and Tyler’s house. Before Easton, Aunt Dawn was somewhat functioning.” He turned his phone to me so I could see the directions to the cemetery. “Want me to turn the sound on for the GPS so you know where you’re going?”

“Sure,” I said absently. “So why did having Easton change things?”

“He has a different father, which is a bit obvious given that he is biracial. It was also obvious to my uncle, who is blond, who my aunt was still married to at the time. So when he realized she had cheated on him, he ran her over with his car. That’s why he’s in prison. He got fifteen years for attempted murder.”

Jessica had mentioned something about Riley and Tyler’s dad being in jail, but I hadn’t gotten the full story. I made a face, horrified. “How did she survive that? My God, that’s awful.”

“It messed up her back and that is how she got started on the prescription pills. But tell me about your family. You don’t talk much about yourself.” His hand snaked out and took my right one for a second before letting it go.

I shrugged as I followed instructions to turn left. “I don’t know. I told you about my family. They’re just like . . . normal people. I haven’t had a super interesting life or anything.”

“Normal doesn’t mean you’re not interesting. You don’t need drama to be interesting.”

Didn’t you? I wondered again how I would define myself if I had to explain to someone in a dozen adjectives what made up me. Creative? A good speller? Punctual? I wasn’t a good friend, not anymore. I wasn’t fun. So what was I?

“I guess I just always figured I would do what my parents did . . . get a degree, a practical job, a house in the ’burbs. Their happiness comes from each other, from family, not from any personal ambitions or their careers. They worry about bills and medical care and the usual stuff.” I looked at Phoenix, suddenly feeling like I might cry, with no idea why. “Is that happiness? Really?”

“If you ask my mother and the Beatles, happiness is a warm gun, aka heroin. But for the average person, I would say, yes, happiness is about the moment. Not the whole journey. It’s ‘Do I have what I need right now?’ and if the answer is yes, then you should be happy.”

“Yeah?” Following the urgent GPS voice, I pulled into the cemetery, suddenly aware of the irony of our conversation with the headstones rising all around us. When he put it like that, so simple, I realized that I was content. I did have everything I needed. Parents who loved me, a future income, a current job, friends for now, and a guy who looked at me like Phoenix was doing right then. “What if you make mistakes? How do you be happy knowing you’ve hurt people?”

“If you are even thinking about it, then you care enough to deserve forgiveness. We all fuck up, Robin.”

Putting the car in park so we could figure out where his aunt’s grave was, I turned to Phoenix, afraid to look at him, afraid he would see my shame.

But he took my chin and turned my face. “Hey. Want to tell me about it?”

I shook my head, mouth hot.

He studied me for a minute, and I fought the urge to look away.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “But tell me this—are you happy when you’re with me?”

Without hesitation I nodded. “Yes, absolutely.”

“Good. And are you happy when you paint?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s do more of that. Because being with you makes me happy, too.” Phoenix pulled one of the flowers from the bouquet out and snapped off the stem. He tucked it behind my ear, into my hair. “I’m alive, I’ve got my freedom, a job, two bucks in my pocket, and a beautiful woman who sees something in me. What else could I need?”

He actually meant it. I could see that. He was grateful.

And I was, too. For him.