Chapter Nine
Pierce
Going out with the hottest chick in town is wild.
Sitting at the carpeted wall overlooking the skating floor, I just watch as Paige sails around the circle, moving to the music. Blair is with her, the two laughing and holding hands as Brenden and I look on. I cannot take my eyes off her, and I still find it hard to believe she is really mine.
We might be too old to hang out at Skateland but when I suggested it and her eyes lit up, I couldn’t say no. Not that I can say no to anything she asks me. I’ve taken her to see Beetlejuice twice, out to dinner again—I paid this time—and even to a carnival. We have the best time and often wind up in bed together. Yet, we haven”t done...the big it.
“Why the holdup, dude?” Brenden asks as his eyes track his wife as she circles the room.
“Because I have no damn clue what I am doing. Do you see that woman? Have you taken a good look at her, and at me? What is that woman doing with me?”
“Dude, yeah, your girl is hot. Never let Blair know I said that. But yeah, so what? That girl is your girl because she wants to be. Because she wants you, you big idiot. Seize the moment my dude. Feed the kitten.”
“Gross. Feed. The. Kitten? The hell does that even mean, dude?”
Chuckling, he shoves me, almost knocking me off the narrow ledge. Laughing with him, I shake my head. I am too much in my head about us going further in bed. It has been fun finding out what we like. I will spend hours between her thick thighs, eating her sweetness until she is shaking and chanting my name like some magical prayer.
My girl can make me shake too. Her sitting naked astride me, her soft, round tits swaying as she rocks on my cock, makes me come so hard, so fast, I ought to be embarrassed. She loves kissing, and just lying with her naked body against mine, my hardness tucked between her folds after she came all sticky for me is enough to make me come.
We’ve played plenty—we just haven’t gotten to home base.
“It means you both need to get laid and fast. If I gotta’ watch you two eye fucking each other while doing PG shit like skating at Skateland or holding hands at a movie, I might blow my load.”
“Dude you’re totally disgusting,” I accuse with a shake of my head.
Paige sails past me, shaking her ass at me playfully and I groan. He might be gross, but my best friend is not wrong. I have thought of nothing but getting her naked beneath me since the moment I saw her. I have her beneath me every night, waiting for me to take her, begging me to, and yet…. I wait.
Because I am afraid I will never be good enough for her.
“Come on, Pierce, come skate,” Paige pleads as she skates past me then spins back gracefully. “Someone might think I am here all alone.”
That does it. I cannot have someone thinking that, can I? “Here I come, baby. Don’t mind my awful attempts, I never claimed to be good at any of this,” I warn her as I stumble after her a little.
“Nonsense. Far as I can tell, you are tops at everything. Cooking. Date nights. Being a boyfriend.”
Grinning at her, I take her hands, letting her pull me along with her. I stumble a few more times before getting the hang of it. We twirl, twist, and stumble together to Pat Benatar, Tiffany, and Poison. With the lights dimming, a glittering ball throwing shadows over us, I hold her close.
“This is nice,” she whispers as we glide across the floor to the beat of a Debbie Gibson song. “Being with you is…Pierce, it has been so good, so perfect from the very first moment. I never thought it could be this way. That…well, I guess I never thought I would get this kind of happiness.”
“Neither did I, baby,” I admit, brushing my nose against hers. “That first day, you walked in like a dream girl stepping right out of my dreams. Never thought I would get the dream girl. Here I am, living a dream.”
“Me too. Now we get to live a dream together, huh? No more being alone. No more feeling as if we don’t belong anywhere. We belong together, honey. I belong with you.”
Closing my eyes, I nod. Because before her, I did feel alone. That I would never have anything worthwhile. I feared I would flip burgers for the rest of my life, hiding behind the diner pass-through watching the rest of the world living. Now I can have a life and have something of my own.
I can have Paige because she wants me to have her.
“Want to go home, baby? I think…” I trail off to press kisses along the slope of her neck, a spot that draws out the hottest little moans.
“Yes,” she pants the word, her chest heaving against mine, her eyes wild as they stare up at mine. “I want to go home, honey.”
Smirking, I nod, even if I am shaking inside. I have taken my time for all the wrong reasons. I have been waiting for the perfect moment. Doing all I can to impress her. To prove I am worth her time. Truth is, I have just been afraid she would suddenly realize she had made a mistake. That I had no business being with her because she is well out of my league.
“Wait for me, let me go tell Brenden we’re bailing. I will be back,” I tell her with a quick kiss on her lips before I skate my way across the floor towards my best friend.
Hesitating when I see him and Blair tangled up in a heated kiss, I let out a cough to break it up. I have seen enough of that from the two of them. Not that I have been much better since I have been with Paige. Brenden sends me a glare as he lifts his head, before a smile breaks across his face. Without a word, my best friend seems to know what I am up to.
“That’s my boy. Feed the kitten,” he teases me, nodding at me as I tell them goodbye.
“Don’t be gross. See you later guys.”
Blair laughs and tells me to have a good time, winking at me playfully. Rolling my eyes at how juvenile my grown ass married friends can behave, I skate back to my girl. Or rather, I stumble across the floor until I am back on the neon-carpeted floors, dodging other couples.
Stopping short, my vision goes hazy once I spot Paige. Towering over her is a guy I do not recognize. The guy looks as if he walked out of a Calvin Klein ad. And he is staring down at my girl with sparkling eyes and a perfect smile. I cringe when I see her laugh at something he says, bile burning the back of my throat. For a moment, my entire world spins.
What is wrong with me? Am I this sort of guy?
“Hey, baby,” I call gruffly, skating past the guy entirely to slide up beside her. “We ready to go?”
Paige blinks up at me, head jerking back in surprise. I do not like how her eyes flicker past me to land on him again. My heart hammers in my chest as I will myself to calm down. To think rationally. There is no reason for me to be upset. Nothing has gone wrong. Not yet at least.
“Uh, don’t be mean, Pierce. This is Calvin, one of the teachers I will work with during the new semester. This is Pierce, my….”
“Boyfriend. A teacher too, that’s nice. You here alone tonight?”
Paige gasps at my absolutely rude question. I even surprise myself with it. It is a couple’s night, so it’s not an out-there question. It is just none of my damn business. Calvin—his name is totally Calvin —frowns at me before he puts on a smile. It strikes me as shark-like, with my girl being the chum in the water.
“I am not here alone, no. Nice to meet you, Pierce. We’re excited to have Paige on staff. Our kids will love having a real music class again.”
Frowning at him, I nod. Of course, they will love her. They’re lucky to have her at the school. Valerie was smart to hire her on the spot the way she did. No one should be foolish enough to let someone like Paige go. Me included. No way I am letting her to—not even to a better guy like Mr. Calvin Klein here.
“Yeah, nice meeting you.”
Dismissing him, I grab Paige by the elbow, steering her towards the counter to drop off our skates. To my surprise, she yanks her arm from my grasp, glaring up at me. We change from the skates to our sneakers in silence, Paige pinning me with a death glare.
Because there I went and acted like an idiot again.
Twenty minutes later, we’re halfway home in a tense silence. Paige sits as far from me as she can get, her little body humming with rage. I cannot believe I behaved that way. That I would be so stupid and so damn rude to someone I don’t even know.
Parking, I let out a sigh. I am such an idiot. I was right all along. Paige should not be with someone like me. I have always wrecked the good things in my life. That is why I thought I’d never have anything good—because I don’t know how to keep things good.
“Baby, I did not mean to be that way.”
“Yeah, you did,” she whispers as her hands swipe at her face. Looking at her, my stomach roils. I made her cry. “I have to work with him, Pierce. There is a handsome math teacher if you want to be a douche to someone else.”
“Oh, see you thought he was handsome. I thought you did. Course you did. You two would look good together, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh my God, are you being for real?”
Throwing her door open, Paige jumps down from the van—not waiting for me to lift her out like my little princess—and storms up the walk toward our apartment. I chase after her, cursing my stupid mouth the entire way.
“I did not mean that. I should keep my mouth shut.”
“No, no you shouldn’t. Tell me what you think of me. Let me know how you feel, Pierce.”
By the tone of her words, by the rage in her beautiful eyes, I know she does not mean that the way it sounds. She means I have shown a bad side of myself. A side she does not like very much. One I don’t like very much either—one I hoped I never had in me.
Growing up watching my — accuse my mother of betraying him, accusing us, his own children, of taking something that was his, that belonged to him. Meanwhile, he repeatedly betrayed our mother and never gave us a damn thing except broken promises. I hoped to never be anything like him…yet here I am.
“Paige, please, I am so sorry,” I start softly, voice shaking.
“How could you make such a fool of me? Do you know how stupid that made me look? How meek, how weak. All the things I struggle the most with. How could you do that?”
“I got jealous. Seeing you with that guy…with any other guy...it just shows me what I believed from the start. That I am not good enough.”
“Not good enough? Good enough for who? For me? Or for what you want people to see when they look at you? Or us together? Why do you think I want to be with you? What do you think I am doing here?”
“I…I guess I don’t know. I am broke, uneducated, with nothing to offer you. I can’t give you what a handsome teacher could. What a rich prick from where you come from could. I hoped I could give you enough that it wouldn’t matter. I guess tonight I….”
“You thought I would look for what I want with someone else. You believed after I offered you me, all of me,” she shouts the words as we face each other down. “Parts I never thought I’d give to anyone! I would just change my mind because some other man smiled at me?”
Hearing it out loud, in her sad, defeated voice, infuriates me. How could I think that of her? How could I behave so stupidly, react so foolishly? Am I more like my — than I realized?
I might have been right—I might not deserve Paige at all.
“No. No, I didn’t…I guess I feared you could. I am not good enough for you, Paige. We both know it. Anyone who sees us together knows it.”
Paige stares up at me before she backs up, until her back hits her door. Shaking her head, she turns, letting out a quiet, broken sob. “I thought you were good enough. I thought I looked good enough to be with you—that is all that should matter, Pierce.”
With another sob, she goes inside and closes the door in my face.