Sweet

Chapter Ten

Riley gave me a soft, gentle kiss that disarmed me. I didn’t get kissed like that. Boyfriends kissed girlfriends that way, with a soft sense of worship. Guys tended to worship my breasts more than my mouth. I might have sighed. Or maybe I just imagined I did. I’m not sure. I just know that something shifted in me right then, something that told me what was happening between Riley and me was . . . real.

I blinked up at him, not sure what to say or do. This was all new territory for me. I hadn’t had a boyfriend since my junior year in high school.

“Since you wanted to go see a movie, I can take you,” he said. “We can’t have you bored. You might decide to stain the picnic table or something. Which means I’ll be staining the picnic table.”

Air left my chest with a whoosh. He had made the moment normal again and I was damn glad. I didn’t quite know how to do long minutes gazing into each other’s eyes. And if he started playing with my hair like Tyler did to Rory, I was going to get twitchy. So not my style.

The movies and mildly mocking me? Yeah, that worked.

“Now that you mention it, that picnic table is shabby. Though truthfully, we should just use it to make a bonfire and have s’mores.”

Riley laughed. “No.”

“Just a suggestion. But yes, I would like to go to the movies. What do you want to see?”

He pulled his phone out and scrolled through the movie options. “Let me guess, you will want to see a romantic comedy.”

I made a face. “Are you joking? No. Absolutely not. I find those movies embarrassingly sentimental. Kylie is the one who likes that stuff.”

“Thank God. Because I was going to have to tell you no. I can’t do chick flicks. What else is out?”

“Scary movies.”

He looked disappointed. “Why?”

“Because they’re scary,” I said pointedly. “Duh.”

“Come on, they’re not real.”

“How do you know?” I had been raised by a father who was absolutely certain evil and the devil existed. “If you want to watch a horror movie, you’ll have to take Rory. She always watches those crime shows on TV. Every time I turn around there’s a live autopsy playing on her laptop. It’s brutal.”

“She’s pretty hard-core, isn’t she?”

“Yes. Personally, I only want to see organs in living people.” I cocked my head. “Wait, that doesn’t sound right. Why would I be seeing organs at all?”

“My skin is an organ.” His eyebrows went up and down. “Among other things.”

Rolling eyes here. Though he did amuse me. I wasn’t really sure why. “What else is playing?”

“Some drama about slums.”

“No.” My hands came out to emphasize my feelings on that one.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to cry.” I hated crying, which is why I tried to never do it.

“So what does that leave us? Action/adventure and comedy of the Adam Sandler variety.”

“I’ll take action/adventure. I like to see things blow up.”

“And you say Rory is brutal.” But he read a movie description to me. “This starts in forty minutes, so we can make it.”

“Okay, I need my purse.”

Riley followed me to the doorway of my room. “So, uh, why were you buttoning your shorts up exactly?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

Really? I grabbed my hoodie and purse and shot him a look over my shoulder. This was going over what we’d already gone over, as far as I was concerned. “Because I was changing. I made him close his eyes.”

He looked pained. “Damn it. I was afraid you were going to say something like that.”

“Then you shouldn’t ask.” I crowded him in the doorway. “Because despite the fact that I’m lying to my parents about where I am, I try to be honest about my behavior.”

“You know he looked. I would.”

“If you’re going to be jealous, we’re going to have a problem. So try to keep it under control.” Then because the beard scruff on his chin was so cute, I ran my fingers through it like you do with a cat behind its ears. “But I won’t give you any reason to be jealous from here on out, since we’re doing this thing, whatever it is, and whatever we’re calling it. Cool?”

“Cool.” Then he pretended to bite my finger.

I laughed.

When we went outside, I winced at the blinding sun and pulled my sunglasses out of my purse. As I was pushing them onto my face, I saw the neighbor to the left sitting on his front step, shirtless, his gray grizzled beard meeting the rounded bare belly. He eyed me boldly, then let a stream of brown tobacco juice fly from his mouth onto the hard-packed dirt and grass of his yard. He didn’t acknowledge Riley and likewise.

“Good afternoon,” I said, with a cheerful wave. If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was to be fake friendly with the neighbors. My mother had it down to a science.

“Christ,” Riley muttered as he got in the car.

But the extra from Duck Dynasty actually lifted his hand and waved, calling back, “Hot as hell today, but you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“Thanks. Have a great day.” I climbed in the passenger seat.

“I didn’t even know that guy could talk,” Riley said. “In two years he’s never said a word.”

“A smile goes a long way.”

He snorted. “Yeah, if you’re a blond chick with long legs. If I smile at him we’re going to end up swinging punches.”

“Hm. I might need some guidance on social dynamics in your neighborhood, then. In my neighborhood, everyone kisses up to each other. It’s a finely tuned ritual of hypocrisy and envy. They’ll congratulate you on your son’s acceptance to an Ivy League school, then trash him behind your back, mocking his looks or his intelligence, or yours. Or your new landscaping, or your vacation, or your Botox, whatever has recently been done.”

“Maybe that’s the difference here. No one envies anyone else, so there’s no point in conversation.”

That was an interesting viewpoint. I was still contemplating it when we pulled into the movie theater. There was an honesty in Riley’s neighborhood. No one gave a shit about anyone else, and that was clear, whereas in my parent’s neighborhood, everyone pretended to care, but they didn’t really either. I wondered if there was anywhere that people did care, and looked out for each other, or if that was some small town ideal that didn’t exist. It was a depressing thought.

But then I remembered when a church member’s young son had died of cancer, and the outpouring of help, both emotional and financial, for that family. There had been thousands of people at the memorial service, and that had been genuine sympathy, a real desire to ease a grief that was unimaginable. So maybe there was such a thing as community.

Maybe it was the weird, melancholy thoughts, but when Riley pressed me to see the horror movie instead of the action one, I actually agreed, for whatever reason. Maybe the scary that wasn’t real could supersede the fear of the scary that was real—and what was more scary than feeling that everything is one big cynical joke?

Riley pulled out his wallet to pay for the tickets and I scrambled to get out my debit card. “Don’t pay for me.”

“I got it,” he told me. “You don’t even want to see this movie, the least I can do is pay for it.”

“But . . .” I wanted to say I knew he didn’t have a lot of money, but that would sound so patronizing and elitist, no matter what my intention was, that I cut myself off.

“But nothing.” He handed the girl behind the counter a twenty and got his change and our tickets. “You just spent a ton of money making my house less of a shithole. I can take you to the movies.”

“That was different. I only spent eighty bucks. That’s like rent for the week I’ve been staying with you.”

“Rent?” Riley shot me an amused look as we moved into the lobby area. “That’s hilarious.”

I started toward the ticket attendant to enter, but he said, “Hold up. I need popcorn.”

He bought a tub of popcorn that was basically the size of a beer keg. And a soft drink equally as insane. “Want a drink?” he asked as he encouraged the employee to pump more oil or fake butter or whatever that was on his popcorn.

“I’ll just share yours. It looks like you’ll have plenty.” Especially considering his snacks cost as much as the tickets themselves.

Riley had to sit in the middle, both of the theater and in the aisle, so we climbed over a couple in their fifties. We settled in, and he slumped down, his legs wide, turning off his phone and then proceeding to throw giant handfuls of popcorn into his mouth.

My own mouth watered. I hadn’t eaten lunch and that looked good. It smelled good.

“Aren’t you going to have any?” he asked.

I took one piece and put it in my mouth. Damn. That was some buttery goodness. Fake butter or not, it tasted like victory in my mouth. Like triumph and glory and the finish line. I chewed slowly, afraid I was going to reach out and just bury my face in the tub.

After an excruciating minute, I let myself take another piece. Riley didn’t say anything, which I appreciated. I was struggling, and I didn’t want to hear the typical male attitude, which was “dieting is stupid,” yet they could not deny that they wanted women to look a certain way.

All these various thoughts I was having were all just a little too heady for a Sunday afternoon.

Fortunately, Riley pulled my hand into his, which sufficiently distracted me. He also gave me a buttery and salty kiss that had me leaning extra close to him, tucking my feet under my legs.

“Mm,” he said. Then he popped a piece of popcorn into my mouth and I didn’t even count the calories.

I just giggled as the opening credits started.

Twenty minutes later there was no giggling going on. The movie was creepy. Like hide-my-eyes, suck-my-soul-out-of-my-chest, whimper-in-the-dark scary as fucking hell. I was practically sitting in Riley’s lap. He had put his arm around me and tucked me into his chest and armpit, but it wasn’t enough to combat the freaked-out factor as the girl in the movie screamed the eeriest scream in the history of screams. A demon was possessing her, and in the most horrific of ironies, her name was Jessica.

“Really?” I had asked Riley when we had first learned her name.

He had just laughed. “It’s a common name.”

While I had never seen The Exorcist, this seemed to me like that movie, but with modern special effects and camera angles. I wasn’t entirely sure I believed in demon possession, but I couldn’t say with any certainty that it didn’t exist, and if it did, I imagined it would look exactly like this. Snot and sweat and weird limb angles.

Something shot across the room in the film, and I jumped. I may have whimpered, because Riley moved his popcorn to the opposite side so that he could pull me closer. “You okay?” he whispered.

“I don’t think so,” I whispered back. “I think I’m going to run out of the theater screaming.”

“Just remember it’s not real. It’s just a story.”

Someone in the theater shushed us. I was tempted to throw popcorn at them. I was having a crisis here, a little sympathy, please. Besides, what did you need to hear in a horror movie? The dialogue all focused on the normal people being disbelieving, i.e., “Just go back to bed, Becky. It’s the wind.” And then the evil creature/character whispering ominously, “Murder, murder, murder.” Or whatever the case was.

In this movie it was things like, “I’ve been watching you, Jessica” and “We’re in this together, Jessica, in your body and your soul.” What, like I needed that?

By the three-quarter point, I had my head buried in Riley’s shoulder and I was clutching his shirt with both hands.

It wasn’t pretty.

But neither was Satan.

By the time the lights came on in the theater, I was sweating and breathing hard, my hands clammy. When I released Riley’s shirt, there were wet spots from my anxious fists palming him.

“Maybe this wasn’t the best choice,” he conceded, rubbing my arms. “I stand corrected.”

“You think?” I said, actually shivering from fear.

“You really are afraid. I thought you were exaggerating.”

“I don’t exaggerate,” I said with great dignity.

He snorted. “It’s the sledding all over again. I didn’t know you were really such a chickenshit. I thought you were making it up.”

Oh, yes, the sledding. I didn’t think it was that weird to be twenty years old and afraid of flying down a hill on a piece of cracked plastic, but he had seemed to think I was just stalling to be annoying. So Riley had pushed me, and I had almost fainted from lack of oxygen, a scream frozen in my lungs. “Well, from now on, you should believe me.”

As we stood up and left the theater, I added, “And I’m not a chickenshit. There are just certain things I’m afraid of, high speeds and demonic possession being two of them. You have to be afraid of something too, everyone is.”

“Nope.”

“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes for emphasis. “You’re not afraid of heights or small spaces or spiders?”

“No.”

“Flying?”

“I’ve never been on a plane, so I’m not one hundred percent sure, but most likely no.”

“Death?”

“Not particularly. I’m too busy trying to live.”

“You’re unnatural,” I declared. “Everyone is afraid of something.”

Riley held the door open for me as we stepped out into the heat and sunshine. “You know the one thing I’m afraid of.”

I glanced back at him, and I knew what it was—losing Easton. “That’s not going to happen,” I told him firmly. “The house looks great and Easton is happy. He feels safe with you, and he’ll tell the social worker that.”

Riley nodded. “And demons aren’t going to possess you, Jess. I don’t believe in guarantees, but in this case I’m willing to guarantee it.”

“I’m willing to guarantee that you’re going to hang those blinds when we get back to the house.”

He made a face. “What are you majoring in? Management? Because you’re really good at telling me what to do, while you watch me and point.”

“Ha ha.” I hesitated to tell him my major, because it sounded so stupid to me. Like a waste of a giant pile of money. For more than a year, I hadn’t even told Kylie and Rory that I was doubling with Religious Studies. They had just thought I was a design student until Rory started to get suspicious as to why I was taking so many theology classes and I had confessed the truth.

I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to do post-college exactly, and that felt like such a failure. It made me feel guilty, too, that other people didn’t have the luxury of going through the motions of a degree. They had to pay bills and survive and here I was, getting a degree to placate Daddy.

The freedom I was working so hard to ensure wasn’t really all that freeing if I was going through the motions with my classes, and aimless otherwise. I was halfway done with college and knew less about my future than I had when I’d graduated high school. Scary shit.

Fortunately, Riley was not the kind of guy who wanted me to cough up all my personal details or my feelings. Probably because he didn’t want to do that in return.

There was a safety in spending time with him, laughing and eye-rolling and teasing, with occasional moments of serious conversation. But there was no prying, no judgment.

He hung the blind. Maybe because he knew that it would look a lot better than the sheet that was currently tacked to the wall. Or maybe he just wanted to get me to shut up. Either way, in ten minutes, he had the brackets mounted to the wall and the blind clicked in place.

I clapped. “It looks awesome in here.” I had thrown away the pillows on the couch when he wasn’t looking and had replaced them with two red pillows we had scored at the dollar store for five bucks a piece. Mostly my goal there was again to cut down on the lingering smoke smell.

“I have to admit, it does look a lot better. You are a genius, my friend.” But he swatted my hand when I tried to open the window. “Down, girl.”

“Argh! Your logic makes no sense! It’s boiling in here!”

“You’re cute when you’re annoyed,” he told me, and kissed the tip of my nose.

Damn him. I forgot about the window. “Kiss me,” I ordered.

“There we go with the bossy thing again.” But he obeyed, taking me into his arms and kissing me thoroughly.

Everything inside me melted, and I rubbed my breasts against his chest as his breathing grew slower, louder, our mouths colliding with a hot intensity, his fingers gripping my hair on the back of my head. I went for his zipper.

Riley stopped me. “Uh-uh. We’re just kissing. No skipping steps.”

What steps was I missing? Kissing led to naked, which led to sex. I wasn’t sure what else there was supposed to be, but I didn’t want to get into a breakdown on sexual dynamics and dating again. Those conversations were boring and annoying. So I just moved my hands to the small of his back and bit his bottom lip to show him what I thought of that.

“Ow.”

“Be quiet,” I said in response to his clearly fake complaining. “It wasn’t that hard.”

“You know, there is something else I’m afraid of,” he said, his brown eyes crinkling in amusement.

“What?”

“You.”

That earned him a smack on his chest.

He laughed, and that was the end of our romantic kiss. He pulled away and dug his phone out of his pocket. “I’m starving. I’m going to order Chinese food. What do you want?”

A magic pill that would allow me to eat as much food as he did. Jesus. “Steamed vegetables.”

“Gross.”

“Like your face.”

He laughed. “Touché, pussycat.”

Hell, if this was dating, I could do this, no problem. It wasn’t that much different than how we had been two days ago. I felt a little more relaxed about the weightiness of the word “relationship.” Obviously it meant different things depending on the people involved, and Riley and I were not moony-eyed, let’s carve each other’s names with knives on our forearms kind of people. Nor did we need to be constantly petting and grooming each other like Tyler and Rory, or using smoochie-woochie, fakie-wakie words like Kylie and Nathan.

We were awesome, as Riley had stated, and we ate Chinese food (well, he ate Chinese food, and I nibbled on broccoli) and played video games and made out, his Szechuan breath killing my desire to stick both my hands in the food containers and shovel scoops into my mouth.

Riley kissed me old school, his hands staying outside of clothes, on my waist. I have to admit, it was making me crazy, but in a good way. He was stirring my arousal, making it simmer low, and I knew if he kept this up, I would be boiling. I tried to arch my breasts as an enticement but he ignored me.

Then he smiled at me. “I need to go to bed. I have to get up at six tomorrow to be on site by seven.”

I blinked. “Are you serious? It’s only ten.” I knew that because I had been clock watching earlier for our war of the windows. I had just opened the living room one a half hour before.

“I know. But I want to get home early tomorrow and do something with the boys when they get back. Jayden loves the zoo, and I hate the zoo, so I need a good night’s sleep to have the patience for that. All that walking and animal shit and Jayden pointing out their balls in a voice that is way too loud for public.”

Nice. “That sounds fun. Sort of. I can’t say I’m that interested in giraffe testicles myself.” I realized I didn’t know what my role in any of this was. “I should probably pack up my stuff tonight. I’ll see if Robin can drive me to the apartment I’m subletting.” I was supposed to move out the next day, when the boys came home. That’s what we had agreed on. But now that seemed like a whole lot of no fun. I didn’t want to be in an apartment by myself with a strange roommate. I wanted to be here.

“Want to go to the zoo with us?”

“I have to work.”

“Bummer.”

It was a bummer. All of it. I didn’t expect him to offer for me to stay. Where would I? The only room I could stay in would be in Riley’s with him and that was like basically living together. Real living together. That was skipping steps, and maybe not appropriate for Easton’s impressionable mind. Of course, Rory stayed there all the time, so what the hell was I worried about? That wasn’t really the point. The point was you don’t move in for reals with someone you started dating five minutes earlier. Plus Riley knew I’d rented this apartment already. It would seem weird if he suggested I stay.

So why did I want him to suggest I stay?

He was turning me into a neurotic freak. Maybe it was better I was moving out.

“When will I see you again?” he asked.

“Wednesday is my first day off.” Hmm. That was a long time to not see each other. In a week I’d gotten used to him being around, and I felt a pout coming on.

“Text me your new address and I’ll pick you up after work, and we can do something. That cool?”

“Yep.” Sort of. I guess it would have to be.

“Good night.” He kissed my forehead. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

So apparently I was supposed to sleep in my room. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Actually, yes, I did. I thought it sucked.

I really hated it when he closed the door to his room and I realized how dark and quiet the house was. I got up and checked the front and back doors. The front had been locked already but the kitchen wasn’t, and I did a quick search of the closets and the pantry to make sure no one was lurking there, having snuck in while the door was unlocked all afternoon. Then I closed the living room window because really, anyone could just pop the screen out and climb in. It was huge, unlike the bedroom windows.

Trying to watch TV, I bit my fingernails and told myself there was no such thing as demons and that the weird scratching sound was the cat who came and went at random through the pet door. He must be back in the house, wandering around. My feet were on the coffee table and I was hot now that I’d closed the window, yet I shivered like something had touched the back of my neck. Spinning around, I expected to see the cat on the back of the couch, but nothing was there.

Suddenly the room had shadows everywhere, and the kitchen looked like a big yawning black hole, the back door glass giving off a weird reflective shimmer.

The scratching got louder, and I went from slightly unnerved to scared on a level of pure panic.

When the scratch was followed by what I swear was a sinister whisper, I shut off the TV, jumped off the couch, and went down the hall, my back sliding against the wall so nothing could attack me from behind. Reaching Riley’s room, my heart racing, I whispered, “Riley?”

He didn’t answer.

I lightly knocked. “Riley?” I had to keep it down. I didn’t want the demon to know where I was precisely. Or the serial killer. Whichever it was.

When he still didn’t answer, I turned the knob and slowly pushed the door open. “Riley?”

“Yeah?”

Thank God. He wasn’t dead in his bed.

“I heard a noise. In the living room. Like a disembodied voice whispering.” I didn’t wait for his response. I was already moving into his room, closing the door behind me and locking it. “I think someone is in the house.”

He sighed. “No one is in the house.”

“How do you know?” I tripped over something in the dark and stumbled into the bed. “Fuck.” I crawled up onto it, accidentally putting my knee down on Riley’s shin.

“Ow, Jesus, what are you doing?”

“I’m scared.” I started climbing Riley, trying to get over him to the free side of the bed. We were a tangle of limbs, my balance off as we rocked slightly. “Why are we moving? OMG, is this a waterbed? Who the hell has waterbeds?”

“People whose mothers were fourteen in the eighties and in love with hair bands.” The light from his phone suddenly glowed in the dark. I could see his squinting eyes looking less than pleased.

My elbow went into his gut and he made an oomph sound as the air left his lungs. “Sorry. But there’s someone in the house.”

Riley helped me off of him, tucking me along his side. “There is no one in the house.”

“You keep saying that but you have no way of knowing if that’s true or not. I heard scratching.”

“That’s the cat.”

Pulling the sheet over me, I threw my leg over his, wanting the reassurance of his masculine body. He could probably beat the crap out of a serial killer. Or at least stall him so we could escape. A demon I wasn’t sure about, but I still felt a lot better being next to him. “Cats don’t whisper.”

Riley sighed. His phone went dark, and I could hear him set it down on the nightstand before sitting up. “I’m never taking you to see a horror movie ever again.”

Thank God. I grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?” I knew I was being insane, but I couldn’t help it. I was scared and I didn’t want him to be killed. Nor did I want to be left alone.

“I’m going to check the house to give you peace of mind and to give me sleep.”

I started to get up, too, but he added, “Just stay here.”

“That’s what they always tell the female protagonist to do in movies and that’s when she gets killed.”

“You’re not coming with me. Just lay down and I’ll be back in two minutes.”

I didn’t lay down, but I did obey him, despite my desperate urge to jump on his back like a baby monkey. That would hinder him from fighting off a killer though, so I cursed my stupidity for leaving my phone in the living room and rested on my knees, peering through the open doorway, trying to see and hear what was happening. I was wobbling from the waterbed, but Riley flicked the lights on as he went, which helped my state of mind.

In a minute, he was back, filling the door frame with his near naked sexiness before he flicked off the hall light. “There is nothing and no one in the house. The cat isn’t even here.”

“Oh. Are you sure?”

“I’ve never been more positive of anything in my life.” Riley got into bed, further rocking me.

I held onto the headboard for balance. “Well, that’s good.”

“Come here, princess.” In the dark, his arms reached out for me.

Grateful, I tumbled back onto the bed with him, letting him pull me against him in a spooning position. His arm was heavy and comforting tucked under my breasts, his legs warm, the cotton of his boxer briefs soft against my thighs.

“You okay?” he asked, his breath a hot whisper above my ear. He sounded sleepy.

“Yes. Thanks.” I hadn’t been planning to go to bed this early, but I was reluctant to go back out there by myself. I knew if I heard another random noise, I’d flip out again.

Besides, it was nice being with him like this. The rhythm of the bed was soothing. I wished I could take my bra off but I didn’t want to disturb him, any more than I already had, that is. Feeling a little sheepish, but mostly relieved, I wrapped my arm around his and snuggled my ass into his crotch. It wasn’t meant to be a come-on and he didn’t respond in any way, his breathing light on the back of my neck. It was more that I wanted to be close to him.

“Night, Pita,” he murmured.

“Pita? How am I like a Middle Eastern flatbread?” Was that better than princess? I wasn’t sure.

“It stands for pain in the ass.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t even particularly insulted. I was a pain in the ass. I didn’t mean to be.

He kissed my bare shoulder.

And it felt more intimate than oral sex.

I shivered in the dark.