Chapter 5 #2
“About you,” he almost rasps. “In your St. Mary’s skirt. In fact, I had one yesterday. Would you like to know what it was about?”
“No,” I snap, fisting my skirt, squirming in my seat.
As if I’d ever believe that he dreamed about me.
As if I ever crossed his mind in the last two years.
He’s only saying these things to make me uncomfortable and I’m this close to standing up and walking out.
But then he begins to talk and I can’t move.
Because he leans forward and pins me in my place with his heated gaze.
“So in my dream, you have this skirt on. It’s short and pleated and so fucking you, all good girl and innocent.
It flutters around your thighs every time you move and it drives me so fucking crazy, watching you walk in that thing, watching you smile and look at me with your big blue eyes, that I ask you to dance for me.
I ask you to jump and leap and spin on your toes, and you do it.
But it’s not enough. I’m fucking greedy.
So I tell you to spin faster. And you do that too.
You do it so beautifully, so gloriously, like you were made to do this.
Like you were put on this earth just to dance for me whenever I want, wherever I want. So I start to feel guilty.”
Don’t ask.
Do not ask, Callie.
“Guilty about what?”
“About the fact that I’m tricking you and you’ve got no clue.”
“Tricking me how?”
His lips twitch with a secret knowledge that I don’t have yet.
But his eyes are all grave and intense as he replies, “The only reason I asked you to spin on your toes for me is because I wanted that skirt of yours to flip up. I wanted that skirt of yours to spin with you. Because I wanted to see. I finally wanted to get a peek of what’s under your pleated, good girl skirt. ”
By the time he finishes with his story, my legs are all sweaty and sticking to the seat.
My thighs are clenched as well.
They’re all tight and tingly and restless and…
“I think I should go.”
A soft voice breaks my fog.
It’s Wyn.
Who’s been sitting here all this time — at my insistence, no less — and who heard everything. Every single word. Every single dirty word.
Crap.
How did I forget about her?
How did I forget that my friend was sitting right here?
From the looks of it though, he didn’t.
He didn’t forget that she was here.
In fact at Wyn’s words, his mouth tips into a tiny smile as he drawls, “Yeah, I think so too.”
And then without moving his eyes away from me, he stands up and makes way for her to do just that.
As she’s leaving, Wyn presses her lips together — no doubt to keep her smile or laughter or whatever at bay — and mouths good luck before disappearing.
As soon as Reed sits back down, I snap, “You did that on purpose. You said all those… dirty things in front of her on purpose.”
He looks at me calmly and picks up his coffee mug, which I didn’t even notice he had up until now.
He takes a sip of it as if he has all the time in the world, before putting it down and deigning to speak. “I gave you a choice. But you kept insisting.”
I growl, wrapping my fingers around my half-drunk lemonade and thinking about throwing it in his face.
But I won’t.
I’ve already displayed a lot of violence ever since he came back into my life. Which was not even twenty-four hours ago.
“How did you even know I was going to be here?”
As soon as I say it, that question — how he knew — becomes big.
It becomes the question of the hour. Of the day. Of the week even.
How did he know I was going to be at Buttery Blossoms today? And what about Ballad of the Bards? How did he know I was going to be there last night?
I look at him with parted lips. “Are you stalking me? Are you really stalking me? Like, really, really.”
For some reason, my heart starts to pound.
My fingers slip and tremble around the glass and I can’t catch my breath.
I wouldn’t put it past him.
If he can lock me up in closets, he can stalk me too.
He cocks his head to the side, still calm as ever, as he asks, “Why, does it make your little ballerina heart spin in your chest? Knowing that I’ve been keeping tabs on you.”
No.
Absolutely not.
It doesn’t make my heart spin in my chest. It shouldn’t.
I’m not that girl anymore. I don’t like to be locked up or chased after.
I don’t.
I’m smarter.
“No,” I tell him, trying to sound all authoritative.
“Maybe it makes you tingle a little bit to find out that even after two years, the first thing I do when I come back to town is to hunt you down and watch your every move.”
“It makes me feel violated.”
He watches me a beat.
Then, “Relax. Stalking isn’t an interest of mine. I hear it’s something crazy ex-girlfriends do. Or girls who fall in love with you even after having been warned. No, wait. I think they steal cars.” He throws me a mock boyish look as he sips his coffee again. “My bad.”
I clutch my glass tightly. “Are you —”
But he continues, “Anyway, you have a bad habit of writing really long emails to my sister. And my sister has a bad habit of blurting it all out.”
“Tempest?”
“The one and only.”
I frown, trying to put all the pieces together. “She told you I was gonna be here?”
“A word of advice: if you want to keep secrets from me, don’t tell them to my sister.”
Tempest.
My best friend from my old life and the sweet little sister of the guy I fell in love with.
I did tell Tempest where I was going to be, yes.
I usually do.
We pretty much email each other every other day.
After the whole car-stealing debacle and him pressing charges against me and me almost landing in juvie, I thought I’d lose Tempest’s friendship as well.
Even though she helped me and stole his keys, she’s still his sister and so I thought she’d inevitably take his side.
But she never abandoned me.
She still came over to my house whenever she was in town; I wasn’t ready to go to her house though. She still visited me, hung out with me.
In fact, she was the one who got me through that last month of school, after the championship game and my dance that I didn’t get to do, and the whole horrible summer before I came to St. Mary’s.
We still see each other.
Although not as often as I’d like because of all the stupid outing rules of reform school, but I love her. Not today though.
Today I want to strangle her.
Because I thought we had a pact.
Like our brothers, we made a pact too after everything happened.
A pact of no brothers.
Meaning our brothers would have no place in our friendship.
We wouldn’t talk about them. We wouldn’t mention them. It would be like we had no brothers.
Although one thing never made sense to me.
I knew why I was making the pact, but I’m not sure why she did.
Why she never wanted to hear about Ledger, whom I know that she liked two years ago, and I never asked; she respected my space and so I respected hers.
So I don’t know why she’d rat my whole schedule out to her brother.
But anyway, right now I need to deal with him and ignore the slight sinking in my chest.
The absurd sinking.
That feels like disappointment.
Because he wasn’t really stalking me as I’d assumed.
See? Absurd.
“So she sent you here?” I ask, confused, my mind going two years back.
To that closet when he came to give me his sister’s birthday invitation. The day he gave me his name, Fae.
“No,” he says with an irritated frown. “No one sends me anywhere. But she does think that I should apologize.”
“For what?”
“She had a long list.”
I look at him for a beat. “I’m sure she did. But apology not accepted.”
“You should probably wait for me to apologize before you say that.” I open my mouth to say something but he goes on. “That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to ask you something.”
I draw back slightly. “What?”
His jaw moves back and forth in annoyance before saying, “Do you sneak out to Blue Madonna every week?”
“That’s none of your business.”
He studies my features for a few moments before sighing sharply.
“I’m going to be honest with you, I didn’t want to see you again.
It wasn’t my plan when I came back to this fuckhole town.
But now I’m assuming you sneak out every week to go to your ballet studio.
Like you do to go to that shitty bar with your friends. Is that correct?”
“It’s not a shitty bar,” I say, offended.
That frown on his forehead grows. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not. It’s a great bar.”
“It’s a dance bar, Fae. The only dance bar where when they put on the music, instead of dancing, you want to kill yourself.”
I ignore the flutter in my chest at Fae and say, “You only think that because you have crappy taste in music.”
It’s a lie. He doesn’t.
I like his taste in music.
It’s usually a mix of vintage rock bands and modern hip hop, and well, it’s not a secret that I love it. He knows that too; I’ve danced to it quite a lot, haven’t I?
So before he can make a comment about it — dirty, of course — I continue, “And their whiskey is excellent too, don’t you think? It’s so excellent that people steal it just to have a sip.”
“If you think that then you should probably just stick to your lemonade and leave the hard liquor to the grown-ups,” he says, tipping his chin to my half-drunk glass of lemonade, not taking my bait.
“You’re such a —”
“The point is,” he speaks over me, “that I’m willing to give you a ride to your ballet studio.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Just so you can stop being stupidly reckless and taking the bus at midnight. Where at worst, you could be kidnapped and murdered and at best, robbed and raped.”
I have no words right now.
I don’t.
He’s insane.
“You’re insane,” I tell him.
“And you’re lucky.” He sips his coffee coolly. “That I’m willing to drive you around on your foolish errands.”
“Foolish errands?”
“Yes.”