Chapter 5 – GLENNA #5
“No, you’re not,” Cash says right in my ear, tickling my neck with his nicely trimmed beard. “You’re on a date with me.”
I shake my head. “Oh, no. That’s over. This was the fakest worst date ever. I’m out.”
Cash wraps an arm around my waist. My sling rests on his bare, muscled forearm. He sways to the music. Or I’m swaying. Or drunk. Or swaying and drunk.
“Did Addison say something to piss you off?” he says.
I harrumph, dismissively. “She wants to bang you and have your babies.”
He laughs against my jaw, and the vibration sends shivers zinging down my spine. His face is really close to mine, cheek to cheek. He’s bent a little. I’m not a short woman, but he’s a tall man.
“Is that what she told you?” he asks.
“Basically.”
I watch her lean closer to Matt, resting her fingertips on his arm. Her straight, shiny, blonde hair falls in her face. In high school, I thought she was cool because she knew how to skateboard and could grind the steel bannisters at the football stadium better than any boy. She thinks I suck.
That sucks.
My eyes water. “She called me a bitch. She said the whole town hates my guts.”
I know I’m not supposed to care, but right now, that’s the saddest thing in the world. I sniffle.
Cash’s arm tightens around my waist.
“She’s just jealous ‘cause she wants to bang me and have my babies,” he says.
“No, she’s right. Everyone hates me.” Why do I sound trembly? I am not crying in the middle of Birdy’s dance floor. There is no such thing as that drunk. I lunge forward, but Cash has me hooked.
“I don’t hate you,” he says.
I snort.
“I want to bang you and have your babies,” he says.
I giggle. It’s a very soppy, weepy sound.
“This isn’t a fake date,” he goes on. “But it does suck, and I’m gonna do it again, but right, okay?”
“I would never real date you.”
“Why not?” His voice is calm. Amused. Where did all the pissed off go?
“I thought you were gonna beat Matt up?” Oops. Should I not have reminded him?
“I’m a grown-ass man. I’m not gonna punch a dude for dancing with my woman.”
“Looked like you were.”
“But I didn’t, did I?”
“‘Cause your friends stole him away.”
“I’m sorry, baby. You wouldn’t have liked Matt Cooper.”
“I liked him fine.” Hold up. “You know him?” Figures.
“Yeah. He played ball with John. You’ve never met him before?”
“Not to speak to him.”
“You wouldn’t have gotten along.”
“You don’t know that.” We sway as I argue. The song has changed. This one is slow, so we don’t stand out as much.
“He probably doesn’t watch anything but sports,” Cash says.
“That’s not a moral failing.”
Honestly, though, I hate watching sports. Toby was into football—college and pro. I always went up the mountain to take pictures during games, and he always got butthurt about it for no good reason. He said I was being unsupportive, but like, he wasn’t the one playing?
“I could deal with it,” I say.
“Well, he hates the lamestream media.”
“The Gazette isn’t mainstream.” I feel like your readership has to extend beyond one county to be mainstream, right?
“He hates girls who dye their hair and pierce their noses.”
“He bought me a beer so that’s a bold-faced lie.” Does Cash like dyed hair and pierced noses?
Nope. Nope. Do not care.
“He’s unemployed,” Cash says.
“You’re talking about yourself.”
“I’m self -employed,” he protests.
“No, you’re not. Your clients bailed. You’ve been hanging out at my job all week.”
He laughs. He has a nice laugh. It’s not thin, not mocking or biting or wry. It’s a full laugh. A free laugh.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll be able to pay our bills just fine.”
My stomach does a weird loop de loop. “I’m high maintenance. You can’t afford me.”
“You’ve had the same pair of boots since eleventh grade.”
How does he know that?
“They are very durable boots.” I wish I was wearing them now. Despite feeling no pain, these high heels still pinch like hell.
We’re rocking side-to-side, not moving our feet, both staring in the direction of the table with my purse. He’s holding me, whispering in my ear, but projecting his voice ‘cause of the music. It doesn’t seem like he has anywhere he needs to go. Or anywhere else he wants to be.
With Toby, touching and holding was a means to an end. Sex. Stop my crying. Get me to drop an argument.
I’m sure Cash has an ulterior motive that I’m too tipsy to recognize, but it’s still kind of, sort of—only if I don’t stop and think about who it is—nice.
“You wanted to hit Matt.” I’m not sure why I bring it back up. It just comes to mind.
“I wanted to bash his face in.” It’s a simple statement, and it has the ring of truth.
More shivers race down to my toes. It’s wrong to like that he said that, but I’m drunk, so I’ll feel bad about liking it tomorrow.
“Why?” I ask.
“You were smiling at him.”
“That is really messed up.”
“Believe me, I know.”
“Why are you so messed up?” I remember earlier, in the stairwell at my apartment. “Why did you take my desserts? What did I do to you?”
He sighs, and for a moment, I don’t think he’s going to answer. “Because it was the only way to get you to look at me.”
What?
“I would have looked at you if you were nice to me, you know.”
He sighs again. “Yeah. I know. Now.”
“Why’d you want me to look at you?” ‘Cause he liked me? That’s impossible. This is all probably a setup. I’m being catfished, but with a nice version of Cash Wall who really liked me all along but didn’t know how to talk to girls.
Except he can talk to girls. Here I am, knowing better, on tenterhooks waiting for him to say “baby, it’s always been you” like a sap.
If he says anything like it, I’m gonna barf. Right here on the dance floor.
He tightens his grip again, and his lips brush my earlobes as he says, “‘Cause every time I got you to look at me, after I got home from practice, I’d lock my door and stroke my cock, picturing your face.”
My pussy spasms.
Bad pussy.
Um.
Wow.
That’s seriously messed up, right?
I swallow. We sway. Something’s poking me in the lower back. It’s his dick. He’s hard.
I should say something indignant.
If I were sober, I’d know this is wrong. I wouldn’t lean back into his hard chest. I wouldn’t listen to his heart thump. Excitement wouldn’t gather low in my belly.
“Yeah?” I say, and it comes out a squeak.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice gravel deep.
I tilt my head back to look at him. It’s hard to focus. He’s so close, and my vision’s kind of doing its own thing.
He holds me firm.
He smells so good.
I burrow my nose in his corded neck and inhale. He sucks in a breath like I hit him in the ribs.
“Glenna,” he groans like he’s asking for mercy.
“I wanna go now.” There are too many people here. And it’s hot.
“Okay, baby.”
“I need my purse.”
“We’ll get it.” He sounds very serious and also like he’s been running. He takes my hand and leads me to the table. His friends try to talk to him, but he waves them off and hangs my purse across my chest.
Matt Cooper gives me a chin dip. Addison Lane gives me a sneer.
As we walk out, Cash gets the usual attention, but he ignores most of it or grunts and keeps moving. He seems to want to leave as much as I do. Maybe worse.
We trek through the parking lot to the unpaved end where there aren’t any lights. Cash clicks his key fob, and the truck beeps. He opens my door and helps me step up. I’m not at my most graceful, but I nail the landing.
He takes longer than he should to hop in the driver’s side, and he doesn’t put the key in the ignition right away.
It’s dark. I can make out his outline, but not his expression. A moonbeam falls through the windshield and lights a strip of his shoulder.
The cab is quiet except for the sound of his breathing. And mine.
I squirm in the nicely upholstered seat. I don’t want to go home. I have an energy inside me. An aliveness.
I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t know what’s going to happen.
It feels like when I was a kid, playing Blind Man’s Bluff, when everyone was smothering their giggles, and you’d dart into the dark, knowing the others were there, somewhere, but feeling alone in a world that might go on forever.
That kind of exciting. And scary. And full of possibility.
Cash still hasn’t started the truck’s engine. He’s waiting for something.
The same thing I am.
If I say drive, he’ll drive.
But I keep my mouth shut.
His hands are clenched around the wheel at nine and three.
I want him to reach over.
I want the story to be that the bully had a thing for the art geek the whole time, that I was never a loser. The joke was never on me.
I want him to tell me again how he pictured me when he was alone in his bed at night.
But he won’t. That’d be wrong now that we’re grown, and Cash will say the wrong thing all the damn time, but there’s a line now, isn’t there? He’s turned over a new leaf.
Not that it matters. Words hurt, and his words have hurt me.
He should pay for that.
Oh, yeah. That’s an excellent idea. He should suffer.
That’s as far as my brain gets when my body hijacks my good sense, and fueled by liquor, decides that’s a good enough excuse to do what I want.
I go ahead and make a bad decision.
I twist and climb over the armrest, a mess of legs, one working arm, and a sling.
Cash says, “Glenna?”
But he’s helping me over, settling me in his lap as I clamber on top of his thighs, straddling him. He fumbles underneath the seat until we slide backwards a few inches.
“Shit, baby. You’re drunk.”
He’s rubbing my back and breathing heavy. He’s so big that there’s a stretch in my hip sockets. I prop myself on his hard chest, wriggling to get comfortable. He grunts. It’s a shaky, tormented sound.
“What are you doing, baby?” His nose glances off the side of mine. His lips brush my cheek. He’s inhaling deep, drawing me into his lungs.