– Scotch –
Arrival of The Snitch
“So it’s going well then?”
I stop on the spot as I walk into my parent’s garage, and I smile at the band. They’re all here, already set up and waiting for me like they have been all week. I’ve been so slack, trading any spare minute I have, even at the expense of the guys, and willingly studying simply because my new tutor is beautiful and lets me kiss her every time I get a correct answer.
“I’m sorry, guys.” I walk to the back wall and toss my school bag to the floor, then I grab my guitar and flip the strap over my head. “We can just start. I’m sorry I’m late.”
Luc chuckles from his seat behind the opal white drum kit. “I asked you a question, jackass.”
I turn back around to face him. “What?”
“You and Sammy. It’s going well?”
“Oh.” I change gears in my head. Sammy to music. Music to Sammy. Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. “I thought that was a pot shot.”
“Nah, dude. We voted, we actually like her.”
I laugh as I finger the pick in my hand. “You actually voted?”
“Yeah--”
“That reminds me,” Angelo murmurs from behind the keyboard. “We need to vote on the band name. It’s weird we don’t have a name yet.”
“Eh. Who cares?” Marc brushes away the same argument we’ve been having for years. “People already know who we are.”
“Who are we?” Luc smarts. “Sam Turner and the others.”
“You jealous all the girls know my name, Luc?”
“Fuck off,” he laughs. “Girls know my name. Girls scream my name every day and night.”
“Jesus.” Angelo throws a balled up scrap of paper at his head. “Can you shut up? Let’s vote, then let’s practice.”
“We still didn’t hear about Sammy,” Luc argues. “You think I’m bullshitting, but we like her, even if she does take up all your damn time lately.”
“It’s going good, man. It’s going perfect.”
“That pedestal hasn’t fallen yet?” Marc asks with a smile. “You set her up pretty high. She still all shiny and perfect?”
“She’s even better than I thought.”
“Alright.” Angelo steals our attention again. “Band names. Last week Luc suggested Whiskey Business… show of hands.”
Luc lifts his hand, but no one else does.
“Alright.” Ang crosses it off on the paper in front of him. “Dumbass here also suggested The Hearing Pandas.”
“You get it?” Luc argues when my face snaps to his. “Like, they have Def Leppard, we can be The Hearing Pandas.”
“Show of hands.”
Luc’s hand snaps up enthusiastically, meanwhile I look around for something to throw at his head.
“Next.” Angelo crosses that name out too. “Abracadabra? Ya know, cause of my magic hands?”
I roll my eyes.
“Nope? Okay. Marcus? Any suggestions? You being quiet doesn’t make you thoughtful, it makes you lazy.”
He shrugs his shoulders. “Who cares? Let’s just play.”
As if on cue, Luc starts a low bass drum beat, and taking that as a group decision, Angelo moves his notebook aside and begins pressing down on the keys. Alrighty then. That is why we still don’t have a name. I don’t really care though. I just want to play.
I press my foot down on the loop peddle and Marcus chimes in with the rhythm, and we don’t surface again for over two hours.
***
Early in the morning a few days later, I jog down to the lake and I smile at her sitting on the dock in her bikini. “Hey there, pretty girl.”
Sammy’s eyes come to mine and her smile spreads across her face. She’s so beautiful. I want to be a gentleman, I don’t mean to be such a guy, especially considering the fact she’d never even kissed a boy before, making it a safe bet she’s never had sex either, but I still have to rearrange my dick in my shorts. She’s sitting in front of me in a teeny tiny sunny yellow bikini with silver buckles, and I’m an almost eighteen-year-old virgin. I’d never pressure her, but damn, my dick knows when beauty and sex is right in front of it.
“Are you cold?” Change the subject. Don’t let her look down at my tented shorts. I walk the last couple feet toward her and kiss her, instantly ruining any progress I’d made with my dick.
“Morning,” she murmurs sweetly. “No, not cold.”
I sit on the dock behind her, holding her against my chest, warmed from running, and kiss her shoulder. “Sleep tight, Sammy?”
She shrugs. “Eh.”
My brows furrow and I stretch my neck around so I can see her eyes. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing really.” Her fingers stroke my forearm as mine stroke her lean thigh. “My dad’s being a bit of a dick.”
Her father is a dick, full stop. “What’d he do?”
“Well first, we had dinner at the club last night and he was a complete jerk to Marcus.”
I smile at her protective tone. She’s like a tiny pussycat trying to protect our tribe. “Marc’s a big boy, Ricci. He’s okay.”
“But my father was so mean.”
“Marc told me you looked pretty.”
“He…” Her body turns stiff. “What?”
I laugh at her flushed face. “He told me he saw you, so I asked what you were wearing. He was crawling into bed at midnight, so his description of your blue dress and long hair made for some nice dreams for me.”
“You really have no poker face, do you, Turner?”
“No.” I laugh and kiss her shoulder. “Not when it comes to you. I’ll never keep anything from you. I won’t let miscommunication or the fear of rejection get between us.”
She sighs and melts further against me. “You’re braver than me, Sam.”
“That’s not true at all, but even if it was, that’s okay. I’m the man and I’m here to provide for you. I’ll protect you for the rest of my life.”
Her head moves to the right and turns so her desperate eyes find mine. “How can you be so sure of what you feel?”
I pull her tighter into my chest and I breathe her in. “I dunno, Ricci. I just feel it. I feel you deep in my gut. If someone else told me this shit, I’d say he’s high, but I just feel it. I know it’s not normal. I know teenage guys shouldn’t be declaring this shit when they’re barely fourteen, and he definitely shouldn’t still be feeling it years later, but I do. You walked into science that day and you became mine. If I brushed this off, this feeling I have inside me, I know with my whole heart I’d be making a mistake.”
“Sam…”
“If we were thirty, no one would even question it. If we were thirty, everyone would think it was the most romantic thing in the whole world, but because we’re so young, we’re hardwired to not believe.”
She nods softly. “You know what you know.”
I brush her hair aside and rest my chin on her shoulder. “I know what I know. We’ll be okay, Sammy. I promise.”
We sit in the silence and dark for a couple minutes, and I let my stroking thumb lull and relax her. Her soft and almost completely naked body rests against my chest. There’s no way in the world I won’t make sure we’re okay. I’ll never give this up. I’ll never give us up.
“Sammy?” I kiss the warm skin just below her ear.
“Hmm?”
“You said ‘well, first’ when you were talking about your dad. What was second?”
“Oh.” She lets out a deep sigh. “Well, he also mentioned something about a new partner coming on at his law firm.”
“Okay…?”
“Some guy named Arthur Montgomery.”
“Douchey name.”
She giggles in my arms. “Totally douchey. But anyway, the guy has a daughter. Guess how old she is and who’s gonna be on babysitting duty.”
My mouth pulls up into a sneer, because I know what this means. We already barely spend time together. We have the hour here in the mornings, then class time. Then sometimes we get a bit of time together in the afternoon, but we’re both so busy with school, work, the band, and life, plus her parents don’t like me, so we don’t really get a lot of time together. “Wait. Is she gonna go to our school?” There’s still the vague hope she might go to the other high school in this town, but Sammy’s shaking head has my heart dropping again. “Is she gonna snitch? If she’s gonna be up your ass, will she tattle about us to your dad?”
“I dunno.” Her breath comes out on a sad sigh. “I hope not. I… I just don’t know.”
“We still have tutoring though, right? And here. She won’t follow you here in the morning, right?”
“Right. We still have this.”
I kiss her shoulder. “We’ll make it work. No matter what, we make it work.”
She turns her face and presses a juicy kiss to my bicep. “Okay. You gonna swim with me again today?”
“Hell yes.” I stand quickly and rip my shirt over my head as she giggles. The water is cold as fuck in the mornings, but it’s one hundred-percent worth it, because I get to hold her soft body against mine with her legs wrapped around my stomach for most of the hour while we kiss.