Chapter 16 Sweet Sixteen
sweet sixteen
Dolly Beckett
I texted my cousin in California, then spent the next hour lying in bed going between wallowing in heartbreak and planning the future. Around dark, a soft knock came at the door. I sat up, my heart lurching in my chest.
Had Devlin changed his mind already?
Before I knew it was coming and could crush it at the root, a dart of something unsavory went through me. Something like sinking dread, like disappointment, like resignation.
The door opened slowly, and Preston stuck his head in, and the feeling was gone.
“Hey, Doll,” he said. “Dev told us what happened. Can I come in?”
I nodded, even though I looked a puffy, splotchy mess. He’d seen me without makeup, before I even wore lip gloss. “Wow,” I managed. “Word travels fast.”
Peanut ran to the door, and Preston stooped to give her a few scratches behind the ears and let her jump up with her front paws on his knee and lick his chin. When she was done checking him out, she scampered out and down the hall.
“Should I grab her?” he asked.
“She’s fine,” I said, scooting up the bed to sitting.
Preston stepped into my room and closed the door behind him. He was carrying a big rectangular basket with folding lids on the top.
“I’m not allowed to have the door closed when boys are here,” I said, the words coming automatically.
I had to say something, and I didn’t know what to say around this wild boy who always made my heart ache.
I’d once known him as well as I’d known myself, but somewhere along the way, we’d both been lost to me.
I was a good girl, one who liked to make others happy.
But at some point, I’d forgotten to make myself happy, too.
I’d told myself that what they wanted made me happy, that making them happy fulfilled me.
Now, I wasn’t sure I knew myself at all, that I really knew what I wanted apart from Devlin and my parents.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever let myself think about it.
Preston wasn’t the little boy who got dragged from under the bed and whipped with a belt while being denied even the humanity of his own tears, for something as simple as accidentally breaking a vase.
I thought of all the times I’d broken things as a child, the hundred more times I probably didn’t even remember because they were inconsequential.
My parents weren’t overly permissive, but they saved their spankings for times when I’d done something intentionally harmful—pushed a kid off the swing because she wouldn’t give me a turn, stolen the neighbor’s My Little Pony collection, locked Preston’s sister in the shed because we didn’t want to play with her.
I hadn’t talked to his sister in years, only saw her in passing at community events or the Darling annual Christmas party.
She didn’t go to Willow Heights, and if she came to the big parties, she hung out with Faulkner High kids and only smiled in passing.
And I’d lost sight of Preston in my single-minded determination to keep his cousin.
I only knew that he was volatile and unpredictable, a boy who slept around and still occasionally got in fights at school, who might go from a casual conversation to pulling my top down and biting the hell out of me in seconds.
“You’re a senior,” Preston said, coming to the bed instead of opening the door again. “And it’s a little late for your parents to be concerned about your virtue.”
“Excuse me?”
“Come on, Doll,” he said, sitting down on the foot of my canopy bed. “There’s not a person in this town who believes you and Devlin were waiting until marriage.”
I couldn’t even speak past all the space his audacity was taking up. “You don’t think Devlin would be with me if I wasn’t sleeping with him?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“You said no one would believe it if I told them we were waiting,” I said, crossing my arms and glaring at him. “You don’t think Devlin would wait for me if I wasn’t ready?”
“Through all of high school?” he asked, giving my boobs a significant look. “Uh, no.”
“So you don’t think I’m worth waiting for,” I said. “That maybe he could be with me for other things besides my body.”
“I don’t think there’s a man on this planet who could look at you and not want to fuck you six ways to Sunday,” he said, flipping open the lid to the picnic basket.
“And there’s definitely not one in high school with the self-control to resist those tits for four fucking years, no matter how sweet the rest of you is. ”
“You’re a pig.”
“And you’re in denial about the way men think,” he said, taking out a couple napkins and laying them on top of my comforter. “If you don’t think every man in this entire town has jerked off picturing himself in Devlin’s place, you’re na?ve.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming in here and calling me a slut.”
“What?” he asked, drawing back with his hand inches from dipping back into the picnic basket. “I wasn’t calling you a slut.”
“Really?” I asked. “Because you just said everyone in town knows I’m not a virgin.”
“There’s a good long stretch of territory between virgin and slut,” he said, reaching into the basket to pull out a bottle of wine. “Trust me, I’ve been trying to reach the other side for a year now.”
I sat back on the pillows. “Now who’s in denial? Look around, Preston. You’ve been in slut territory for a hot minute.”
“I have?” he asked, quirking a brow as he turned the corkscrew. “You think I’m a slut?”
“I think you’re a player,” I said. “Which is worse than a slut.”
“How so?” His eyes stayed trained on me, alight with curiosity, as he twisted a corkscrew into the cork and then popped it out of the bottle.
“A slut enjoys sex with different people,” I said. “A player enjoys hunting people for sex like it’s a sport and then leaving them with no regard for their feelings in the matter.”
“Huh,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But if that’s true, then you’re right. I guess I am a player.”
“I don’t understand you,” I admitted, watching him pour the burgundy liquid into a glass. “How can you not care about hurting people?”
He shrugged and handed me a glass. “I don’t know. No one ever cared about hurting me. It goes both ways.”
I took a sip of wine and watched him pour himself a glass.
His words broke my heart, but he said them so casually, so matter-of-factly, it was like it never occurred to him that people might actually have feelings.
I realized that was why he always said things that came across as offensive.
It wasn’t that he wanted to insult people.
He just didn’t care if he did. He chose his words so carelessly, like he had no more emotion for himself than anyone else.
“Who hurt you?” I asked.
“No one hurt me,” he said. “I don’t care enough to be hurt.”
His gaze flickered to mine, and then he set his glass on the end table and started laying out little round wooden boards on each cloth napkin on the bed—assorted crackers on one, slices of different cheese varieties on another, little slivers of meat on another, grapes on yet another.
“How’s Devlin?” I asked after a minute of silence.
“He’s pretty torn up,” Preston said.
“He is?” I asked, hope flaring inside me. But then that little tendril that had sprouted when he knocked on the door twined through it. I’d never been on my own. It was scary, but part of me was excited as well as terrified.
“How are you holding up?” Preston asked, setting the basket on the floor and picking up his wine glass at last.
“You’re looking at it,” I said, gesturing at my face.
“You look fucking gorgeous to me.”
“Preston…”
“Eat something,” he said, nodding his chin toward the little spread.
I swallowed and glanced at him, then moved down the bed and settled awkwardly on the other side of the food.
I’d thought about going downstairs for ice cream earlier, but even the thought of the sugary richness made me feel queasy when I was crying.
Now I’d settled down a bit, aided by the distraction of Preston’s odd visit, and the salt seemed a much more appealing option.
“Can I ask you a something?” I said, laying a slice of cheese on a cracker and topping it with a thin fold of prosciutto.
“You can ask.”
“What are you doing here, Preston?” I asked. “Did Devlin send you to check on me?”
“No,” he said, frowning. “I know how much you love my cousin, and what a clueless ass he can be. I figured you’d be upset, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“But he’s your cousin,” I pointed out.
“You’re my friend.”
“Am I?” I asked. “I mean, I know we hang out at school and have the same friend group, but it’s not like… Like when we were kids. We’re not real friends anymore, are we?”
“What are real friends?”
“You know, the kind you cry on after a breakup,” I said, gesturing at the food. “The kind that brings you a picnic in bed and makes you feel better.”
“You don’t like it?” he asked, pausing to watch me.
“I do, but… Shouldn’t you be doing this for Devlin instead?”
Preston laughed. “You think Devlin wants me to make him a picnic in bed? Trust me, there’s only one thing guys do in a bed after a breakup, and it’s not a picnic, and it sure as hell isn’t with their cousins.”
I gulped reflexively, swallowing cracker crumbs the wrong way, then had a coughing fit while Preston swore and moved over to my side of the bed, patting my back until I was done.
“Sorry,” he said. “That was a stupid thing to say. That’s not what every guy does. You know Devlin’s not like me. He wouldn’t do that right after a breakup, especially not to you.”
I nodded and grabbed a tissue, mopping the tears that had formed from coughing so hard. “Have you ever tried thinking before opening your mouth?” I asked, halfway joking but not entirely.
“I asked my sister what she’d want after a breakup,” he said. “I was trying to make it better. But I’m making it worse, aren’t I? Do you want me to go?”