Chapter 23 Summer of Seventeen
summer of seventeen
Dolly Beckett
For the next week, I stewed over not one guy, but two.
Finally, I swore I was going to gouge my own eyes out if I couldn’t resist checking my phone one more time.
I couldn’t believe Preston had played me, just like every other girl in our group.
I was furious with him but also with myself for letting him, and for thinking it meant something, that I was somehow different.
All I had to do was look at Becca and the ballerina necklace to know he’d do anything to cross another name off his list.
One morning, I had a dream that he’d started while I was asleep again.
When I woke up to find myself already wet but frustratingly alone instead of with his warm breath tickling my center, I wanted to scream.
Not only had he played me, but he’d set the bar so high I didn’t think I’d ever find someone else who could send me to those heights.
I guess all the rumors at school were true, I thought bitterly as I slid my fingers into my panties.
Burning with shame and rage, I hate-fucked myself to the memory of his mouth, the fantasy that he’d slid his cock inside me instead.
Why hadn’t I asked for that when he’d offered?
Afterwards, I was so pissed that I’d fantasized about an asshole who in no way deserved even one more thought from me, I asked Dad if I could go to California to visit my cousin, the way I’d planned with Destiny the summer before. Again, it hit me how much had changed in that one year.
I’d had my heart broken, not in some dramatic way that Destiny would have found suitable, but one small fracture at a time, so slow I barely noticed the constant, nagging pain until it was too late.
I’d done the unthinkable, something no one thought I’d ever do—I’d broken up with Devlin Darling, the town’s golden god.
And most devastating of all, I’d lost my best friend.
Of course my parents said yes, since Dad liked to spoil me out of guilt for the divorce and his quick remarriage to someone closer to my age than Mama’s.
Caitlyn, my resentful stepmother, just wanted me out of the house.
And Mama would never deny me anything, since she’d grown up in poverty and wanted me to experience everything she hadn’t.
I said goodbye to them, hugged Peanut Butter goodbye, and took a break from Faulkner.
In California, my cousin convinced me to start a channel on TheTea app, since everyone out there apparently had accounts and posted all the time. I cried when I set it up and followed my first account—Destiny Rose Delacroix.
Every day after that, I did my makeup and shared little bits about my life or posted an outfit of the day.
At first, it was mostly creeps asking for my bra size, but after a bit, I started getting comments from girls complimenting my nail set or relating to my commentary about embracing their love of pink.
It wasn’t much, but it kept me from wasting away with loneliness.
As we walked around San Francisco my last weekend in California, I kept randomly bursting into tears when I thought about her, that she wasn’t here with me.
She’d never ride the trolley or see the fog over the bay.
She’d missed taking pictures of her feet with the stars on the Hollywood walk of fame, hadn’t been there when I was pretty sure I’d seen Amy Bedgood stumbling out of a club one night when we’d been on our way home from a movie.
I felt unmoored, as if everything tying me to Faulkner had been shorn away.
For the first time in maybe my entire life, I thought about what life would be like if I didn’t follow my dad’s plan.
If I didn’t marry Devlin Darling after graduation.
If I didn’t become the mayor’s wife and have a little girl with Shirley Temple curls and a sweet temperament.
If I didn’t host the ladies who lunched and garden parties and the Founder’s Ball; if my best friends weren’t the same in twenty years as they were in high school.
What if I wanted a life beyond being a wife, a career instead of kids, and to go to some glamorous Hollywood party where I’d run into Zane Wilder or Harry Styles and make a fool of myself?
What if I wanted to run off to Vegas with a trucker named Red who had a tattoo of his bulldog covering the one of his ex-wife and get married by a drunken Elvis with a missing tooth?
What if I wanted to do all the things I’d been scared of my whole life—make mistakes, disappoint people, surprise them, impress them?
As I sat on the hood of my car eating street tacos by myself that evening, with cool, moist air blowing off the Pacific and combing through my hair, I had a thought that both terrified and thrilled me.
What if I never went home?
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than a text came through on my phone. I picked it up and checked the screen.
DarlingBoy: hey
No “How are you?” or “I miss you.” No obnoxious, gloating comments about the last night I’d seen him, a night I’d mostly convinced myself was an incredibly detailed, incredibly erotic dream.
But he texted me.
I tried to wipe the silly grin off my face, the soaring of my heart that made me want to leap off my car and jump up and down screaming, “he texted me!” for the whole of San Francisco to hear.
Oh, this was bad. It was so, so bad.
I’d been telling myself for a month that even if it was real, it meant nothing.
He was Preston Darling, for fuck’s sake.
He didn’t do girlfriends. He did girls and friends, and he left them all without a word, like he’d left me.
How many girls had woken up alone after a night with him, then checked their phones for weeks, hating how pathetic they were for aching with how bad they wished he’d text?
How many girls had willed him to message them afterwards, and when he finally did, just when they’d given up, they felt like a million bucks?
I wasn’t special. I was just another girl he’d played, who fell for his promise that she was different to him, that she was special.
No, we hadn’t had full-on sex, but I figured an orgasm as good as he’d given me still counted.
Oral sex was still sex, even if he hadn’t gotten off.
Was that why he was texting me? He was home from the mountains and ready to get his, so he could cross me off his list?
TheRealDollyBeckett: hey, asshole
DarlingBoy: The claws are already out, I see. I like it, kitty.
TheRealDollyBeckett: no claws, just honesty
DarlingBoy: if we r talking honestly about assholes, may I just tell u how lovely yours is?
TheRealDollyBeckett: I will block u
DarlingBoy: u don’t want to hear how much I’ve been looking forward to licking that cute little hole again?
TheRealDollyBeckett: hard no
DarlingBoy: hard indeed ; )
I sighed and sank back, the earlier euphoria disappearing. He hadn’t asked how I was, where I was, how my summer had been. He just wanted what he wanted from every girl.
TheRealDollyBeckett: Sorry, not home. Can’t be ur booty call.
I thought he wouldn’t answer. A few minutes went by, and I figured that was that. He’d gone on to the next user in his app.
DarlingBoy: wtf doll. U r the furthest thing from a booty call.
TheRealDollyBeckett: rly? Bc you sure came in hard n fast with the nasty talk
DarlingBoy: I thot we were flirting.
TheRealDollyBeckett: u got what u wanted. Y even text me again?
DarlingBoy: you are more than a hookup to me, dolly.
TheRealDollyBeckett: heard that 1 b4
DarlingBoy: from who? Bc I will kick his ass n u know that’s not just talk.
TheRealDollyBeckett: from u, asshole.
TheRealDollyBeckett: Right b4 I woke up alone and didn’t hear a word 4 a month
DarlingBoy: I’m sorry. U said something about not wanting to jump into anything that night & that D might think u were cheating…
DarlingBoy: I was trying 2 give u space. But not 1 days gone by when I didn’t think about u.
My chest tightened, and I stared at the screen, wondering if I could afford such honesty. I remembered him saying how brave I was that night, that I’d put myself out there for Devlin, put my whole heart in even though I knew I could get hurt.
Maybe it was brave, but it wasn’t smart. It was reckless and devastating, like jumping off a balcony into a pool.
So I didn’t say it back, even though I’d thought about him every day, too.
I’d put myself out there with Devlin, and I’d learned my lesson.
Preston’s slipping out had pissed me off and offended me, but it didn’t hurt.
Not much, anyway. It couldn’t, because I didn’t love him.
I’d thought about it over the summer, as the wounds of our relationship healed.
Risking it all was too dangerous. It was too dangerous to give someone every bit of yourself because when they told you it wasn’t enough, it killed some part of you. The part of me that had trusted enough to love like that, it was gone now.
If I’d held something back, something just for myself, at least I could have blamed that for Devlin’s rejection.
No one could reject every part of me if I didn’t give them every part.
They could only reject the pieces I gave, and I could tell myself that I’d saved the best parts for myself, that if I’d given those, they wouldn’t.
Because deep down, I would never feel whole again, would never feel like enough.
How could I be, if every single part of my body and soul, my heart and mind, didn’t satisfy someone?
The only thing I could do was become more, and one day, when I had more to give, maybe I’d be brave enough to try again.
Maybe.
Someday.
DarlingBoy: n tbh maybe I freaked out a little. I’m not used to that.
TheRealDollyBeckett: nice try
DarlingBoy: i’m used 2 hooking up. not used 2 feeling shit about it.
TheRealDollyBeckett: omg
DarlingBoy: what?
TheRealDollyBeckett: I bet that line works every single time.