Drinking Age #3
“I don’t give a single fuck what size you are,” I say, taking her chin and turning her face toward mine.
“You’re always going to be the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen, whether you weigh two hundred pounds or two thousand.
As long as you don’t turn into a pathetic little dog who follows me around begging for attention like Dixie, we won’t have a problem. Got it?”
She nods, her gaze dipping to my mouth. “I’ll do my best.”
“I can’t see you suddenly turning obedient anytime soon,” I say. “But we’ll start with this. If you call my wife fat again, I’ll spank your pussy and your ass this time.”
She gulps, her eyes widening.
A smirk tugs at my lips. “Unless that’s what you want. In which case, I guess go right ahead.”
“You can’t treat me like that when we’re married.”
I give her a look. “Why? Is there some rule in the parenting handbook that says you can only fuck in the missionary position once you have kids?”
“Preston,” she scolds.
“What? I said I wanted kids. I didn’t say I wanted a lifetime of vanilla sex.”
“I like it when you’re on top,” she protests, her cheeks going pink.
“Me too,” I say, covering her hand with mine. “I also like fucking you from the back, the bottom, and every other direction. I like to bite the fuck out of you and hear you beg for my cock.”
“Stop,” she hisses, her eyes going wide as she glances around.
I grin. “I’m just warning you. Don’t expect me to start being a gentleman once we’re married, Doll.”
“Are you serious?” she asks, drawing back.
“Is that a problem?”
“Would it matter if it was?”
I shrug. “Not really. You’re marrying me and having my kid. You must not hate me too much.”
“Do you have cameras in my room?” she demands.
“We’ll have a different bedroom,” I assure her, stroking the back of her soft hand with my thumb. “No cameras.”
“But you did?”
“I like watching you sleep.”
“We’re not married yet,” she points out. “Maybe it’s time to reconsider.”
“Keep telling yourself that’s an option,” I growl, taking her hand and gripping it tightly.
“What if I change my mind?”
“You don’t want to change your mind. You want to marry me.”
“Destiny changed my mind,” she says quietly, her eyes going serious. “What if I lose sight of myself again?”
“I won’t let you,” I promise her. “I’ll keep reminding you who you are until you never forget it again. Besides, Destiny didn’t make you leave Faulkner. That’s an excuse. You left because you were afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” she whispers.
“Of this,” I say. “If you didn’t want to leave, all the death in the world couldn’t have convinced you. You’re so fucking stubborn I can’t help but want to fuck you into submission. That’s another reason I love you.”
“I thought you loved me for my boobs,” she says, obviously trying to make a joke to ease the seriousness of our conversation. I don’t give a damn if there’s a party raging around us or if we’re the last two people on earth. I’m saying what I want to say either way.
“Those make me want to fuck you,” I say. “They don’t make me love you.”
“What about my stretch marks?” she asks, chewing on her lip and watching me nervously. “You don’t mind those?”
“If you didn’t have those, you wouldn’t have grown to the perfect size for me,” I say simply.
“I’ll get more of those when I’m pregnant. Maybe on my boobs. Will you still like them if they’re all stretched out from nursing and scarred from growing more?”
“Then you’ll be the perfect size for her, too.”
“But if you like the way I look now, and then I change…”
“I don’t care if you get a million stretch marks from the baby. You don’t just belong to me now. You’ll belong to us. I want the world to know you’re hers as much as you’re mine.”
“Really?” she asks.
“You have nothing to be insecure about, Doll,” I say, squeezing her hand.
“Every change you go through is a gift because it brings us closer to the gift of our child. If your body changes, it changed to give me a baby. Those marks are battle scars. I’ll be proud of every single one, and you should be, too. ”
“What if my body never goes back to the way it was?”
“Then every time it changes, I’ll get to love your new body all over again. I love your curves, and I’ll love every new curve. There will never be a time when I don’t love every part of you, every inch of you, exactly as you are in that moment.”
She wipes her eyes and takes a shaky breath. “What did I do to deserve you?”
“You accepted that you’ll never have anyone else.”
For a minute, we just watch our friends dance. There are no stripper poles at this party, no scantily clad waitresses. It’s classy. I guess we really are the adults now.
“Look at them,” Dolly says, nodding toward the dance floor. “So innocent.”
“Who are you looking at?” I ask, giving her a funny look. She’s watching Colt and Gideon grinding their dicks into Dixie from both directions.
Colt hasn’t been innocent since junior high. I’d bet money Gideon’s still carrying his V-card, though. The poor kid looks like he’s about to shoot his load on the dance floor. I remember being that young, dumb, and full of cum.
Maybe that’s what Dolly means. Innocence isn’t just about body count. It’s about life, how much we’ve lost. Has it really been five years since the night we all lost something we didn’t even realize at the time, something that went far beyond one life?
High school might as well be two decades ago instead of two years. Sure, we grew up fast in this house. But none of us really lost our innocence until that Homecoming party, the night one lifeline snapped and so much more began the slow process of unraveling.
That’s when everything began to change, even before the Dolces.
Before that, we were invincible, our time infinite.
Before that, even the way Colt fucked around was innocent.
He and Destiny had agreed to keep it casual, thinking they had all the time in the world to play the field before they found their way back to each other.
As I watch him with Dixie, my fingers tighten around Dolly’s.
Maybe I am fucking lucky. There’s something lost when a person gives the unopened bud of their heart to someone.
I never had to give that up. Even when Dolly was gone, there was always a chance.
I never stopped thinking about her, never stopped loving her.
Some unconscious part of me always knew she was out there waiting for me to get my shit together and come get her.
Colt doesn’t have that luxury. He can’t wait for Destiny. He’ll never get her back, never get that part of himself back. Even he wouldn’t call her the love of his life, but she took his innocence in more ways than one. None of us were ever quite the same after that night.
Dolly’s right about her cousin, though. Dixie’s been there for Colt since day one, from the best moments to the worst. She never left his side no matter how bad it got.
I guess he’s lucky too, even if he can never care about her in quite the same way he cared about Destiny.
I don’t know if he’d ever let himself feel that way about anyone again, even if he could.
I can’t remember when he started letting people believe what they wanted about him, regardless of the truth.
Was it after Destiny or after the Dolces?
Somewhere along the way, he became a chameleon, a master of adaptation more than disguise.
He leans into whatever image people have of him at any given moment—a player, an outcast, a rebel—until you forget he was ever anything else.
Even I have trouble figuring him out now.
He doesn’t cut the bullshit around anyone, family included.
I can guarantee one thing, though. He’s the furthest thing from innocent, even if it looks like he’s just some asshole grinding on his girlfriend and scoping the dance floor for something to spice up their night.
That poor girl’s going to marry him before she realizes she doesn’t know the first thing about who he is under the mask he wears, the one we all wear.
Or hell, maybe she’ll never realize it. Maybe he’ll just keep turning into whatever she needs him to be because he lost the part of himself that could trust anyone to see under the mask.
A Juice WRLD song comes on, and Harper bounces over to our table with Gloria in tow.
Magnolia tags behind, wearing a black lace mask and a pair of black bunny ears.
She’s dressed way too fucking sexy for a fourteen-year-old, and I catch Duke Dolce watching her from another table.
My ribs throb with fury so deep it hurts.
He already ruined one of my cousins. I’ll die before I let him touch Maggie.
Harper slings an arm around my neck and pumps her fist in the air. “Here’s the man of the year,” she says. “Or man of the hour, anyway.”
“Are you drunk?” I ask, detangling myself from her arm.
“You should take it as a compliment,” she says, returning her arm to my neck and leaning on my shoulder like she’s trying to get me murdered by either her boyfriend or my girlfriend.
“That you got drunk and made fun of the way I talk?” Colt asks behind her.
“That I’d trust him enough to get tipsy around him,” Harper says.
“Wait, did you just quote a Taylor Swift song?” Gloria asks Colt, gaping at him.
He grins. “What about it?”
“You like Taylor Swift?” she asks, like she still doesn’t believe it. Not that I blame her.
“What’s not to like?” Colt asks. “She’s a hot blonde who plays guitar, and her songs slay.”
“Since when?” she demands, like it’s a personal affront to her that a guy like him likes the same music she does.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably since I saw those adorably awkward, white-girl dance moves.
Do you need to see my membership card to the Swiftie nation or something?
To be honest I’m more of a country boy myself, but my theory of music is like my theory of women. Variety is the spice, right, darling?”
“It’s more proof of the brain damage from his attack,” I tell Gloria.