Letter Eleven #4
“Shut up.” I raked my fingers through his hair and kissed him again, long and hard.
A little while later, we drifted off to sleep, fully clothed, Michael’s fingers laced through mine.
The following day, wispy clouds stretched thin across the sky, a gentle breeze coming off the ocean, the water calm, gently lapping at the shore. We sunbathed on our beach towels, facing each other, my green-striped towel overlapping Michael’s light blue one on the sand.
“I want to ask you something,” I said.
“Okay.” His eyes held mine as he stroked my braid.
“When Sienna accused me of being with you that time, she asked to see my shoulder. What was that about?”
Michael dropped his gaze. “She thought you might have a bite mark there.”
“A bite mark? Why?”
“I…have this thing about biting,” he said, slow to lift his gaze back to mine.
“Biting.” My chest crackled at the thought.
“Yeah. It’s something I do when I’m…” He trailed off.
“Hooking up with someone?”
He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”
“Who else knows about this biting habit of yours?” I asked.
“Casey.”
“How?” It came out hard—like an accusation. I didn’t think Michael liked guys, but I didn’t know he liked to bite people, either.
“Sienna. She showed him the marks on her shoulder sometimes. We joked about it.”
My stomach unclenched. “Have you always done it?”
“I’ve bitten every girlfriend I’ve ever had—after asking for their consent, of course.”
“It feels weird that I didn’t already know this about you,” I said, feeling a strange mixture of excitement and irritation. “I thought we knew everything about each other.”
“But it’s okay if we don’t, you know? That just means there’s more to learn.” When I didn’t say anything, he picked up my hand, brushing his thumb over the ring. Tilting it back and forth, he watched the center stone catch the light. “This is new. It matches your eyes. Where’d you get it?”
“Casey. He gave it to me for my birthday.”
Michael stared at the ring, lost in thought.
“It’s beautiful, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, dropping my hand. “Beautiful.”
I pushed a lock of hair off his forehead. “I’m glad you got to hang out with him this summer.”
“Me, too,” he said, sweeping his fingers up my arm.
The new way he touched me felt weird and exhilarating at the same time. I nearly swatted him away a couple of times before reminding myself I liked it.
“Hey. Do you think your mom and my dad have ever hooked up?”
Michael pulled a face. “I try not to think about my mom hooking up with my dad—let alone yours.” He thought for a minute. “Besides, I can’t see them hurting my dad like that.”
“I don’t mean now—when they were our age. The way they tell it, your parents were on and off a lot. So maybe at one point Libby and my dad were together. Before my mom came along, that is.”
“I don’t know,” Michael said, trailing his fingers down my thigh.
“You’ve never noticed how close they are? Libby’s always laying her head on my dad’s shoulder. He gave her those crystal candlesticks this summer—just because. And he’s the only one who calls her Lib. It makes me think they know each other intimately somehow.”
“Maybe,” Michael agreed. “But if they have hooked up before? I don’t care to know about it.”
Michael’s fingers drifted to the birthmark at my bikini line. He traced it so lightly I squirmed on my towel.
I pushed his hand away. “Stop that.”
“Why?” he asked, gaze burning hot.
“It tickles.”
He pulled my face close. Against my lips, he whispered, “I’ve been dying to trace you there for years.”
My pulse quickened as I pushed him onto his back and deepened the kiss, eliciting a groan that rumbled in his chest. Then I ripped my lips from his and said, “Race you to the pool.”
The next few days were more of the same.
Movies turned on and forgotten, his mouth on mine.
Kisses stolen in the pool house, heat coming off his skin.
The zipper on my rash guard pulled down, his teeth grazing my bare shoulder.
Conversations had in the dark, his woodsy scent all around me, both of us teasing and testing, but never crossing that line.
I kept us from crossing that line.
I needed a drink of water, or another dip in the pool, or to sleep in my own bed.
It didn’t make sense. With Willoughby, I’d been ready—to give it up and get it over with—but with Michael, it was different. With Michael, it would mean more, and I didn’t think I deserved more. Not with him.
But the biting intrigued me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“Bite me,” I whispered one night as he hovered above me, propped up on one elbow. I almost laughed, because it sounded so ridiculous.
But his breathing slowed.
His teeth dragged over his bottom lip.
His hand, roaming lightly across my chest the moment before, clutched my camisole.
All this, over one breathless little command: bite me.
“Where?” he rasped, gaze hooded as he twisted my spaghetti strap between his fingers, dragging it slowly down my shoulder.
“Wherever you want,” I said, curling my fingers against the nape of his neck.
Michael lowered his head, his hot breath fanning across my shoulder, followed by the warmth of his mouth. Open. Sucking. Tongue on my skin. Teeth grazing.
I grabbed the back of his neck, pulling him closer. Then—
Liquid hot pain. His teeth sinking in. I couldn’t even cry out—that’s what a shock it was. His fingers dug into my arm as he bit down harder.
I gasped, eyes burning with tears.
Now this…
This felt like something I did deserve. Something I could have without breaking us both. A pain that rippled across my chest and burst me open and filled me whole. A pain that temporarily blotted out the darkness.
Afterward, Michael slid my camisole strap back into place, kissing me tenderly on the lips.
“Remember that time I begged you to hurt me?” I asked, resting my head on his bare chest.
It happened the summer I turned thirteen.
I’d shot him at close range in paintball on purpose, leaving painful bruises all over his shoulder.
He stopped talking to me for days, but hid the incident from my dad, because he didn’t want to be read one of those letters.
But I needed to be punished, because that’s what happens when I hurt people.
So I begged Michael to hurt me back. I followed him around, crying and begging, until he finally did what I asked.
He hurt me back by pulling my hair, and when he saw how much I needed the pain, he pulled even harder.
“Elliot,” Michael said sharply, a warning. He wanted me to stop.
But I kept going. “When you pulled my hair, it made me feel better. It made me feel…free.”
“Free from what?”
“The guilt.”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” he said, his grip tightening on my forearm.
“Why?” I whispered, a hard knot forming at the back of my throat.
“It upsets me to think about it.”
“Because it’s messed up, right?” My voice cracked on the words.
“No. It’s messed up that I did it. I couldn’t take the begging. I wanted you to shut up. I wanted you to let the incident go and never bring it up again. I didn’t want it to be one more thing you needed to punish yourself for. So I did what you asked, and I ended it.”
I curled my body against his, brushing the tears from my face.
“I wish you’d forgive yourself,” he whispered into my hair. “At some point, you have to forgive yourself.”
I tried telling him why I couldn’t. But the words were stuck, like they always were, too painful to say. Too dark and horrible to confess.
The following night, while John stayed in Boston, we had dinner with Libby and my dad.
But something was off.
Nic poked at his salmon, barely touched his salad, and scarcely added anything to the dinner conversation.
After the fourth time he asked Libby to repeat herself, I began to worry. The two glasses of scotch he’d rapidly drained before we sat down to eat—plus the two glasses of wine with dinner—seemed a matter of concern, too. My dad never drank that much at dinner.
When he came back to the table with a second bottle of sauvignon blanc, Libby laid her hand across his arm. “Are you okay, sweetie?”
Nic dropped his hand from the bottle and squeezed her fingers. “I’m fine, Lib.”
“Are you sure, Dad?” I asked.
His hazel-green eyes swung over to mine as he took his seat. “I’m sure,” he said, scratching his dark jaw, covered in overgrown stubble. He hadn’t shaved in days. A rarity for him. “What have you and Michael been up to the last couple of days?”
Michael coughed beside me, so I kicked him underneath the table. He quickly rallied, gulping down some water.
“Just lounging by the pool,” I said. “Playing card games. Going into town. Stuff like that.”
“That’s nice,” Nic said, nodding in a way that suggested he hadn’t actually registered my response at all.
Later that night, when I couldn’t sleep, I texted you. It was seven a.m. in England, which meant you’d already be up, prepping your kettle for a cup of tea before your coffee.
I said, Hey. Are you okay?
Your response came a minute later: Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?
I don’t know, I texted back. I haven’t heard from you in a couple days, and my dad’s acting weird.
You asked, How so?
Withdrawn, I said. Quiet. Hasn’t shaved. Drinking a lot.
A couple minutes ticked by before you replied, Well, now you’ve got ME worried.
I asked you why, and you said: He wants to talk about something important when I get back. Maybe it’s to do with that?
You asked if I’d been good, and I claimed I hadn’t been. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but you took it to be one, anyway.
I told you the truth, Casey: I snuck out. Went to a party. Kissed a boy.
The boy in question happened to be lying beside me—shirtless, tousled, and fast asleep.
And that definitely niggled at my conscious. I promise it did. I’d been having some hot make-out sessions with your best friend. He might’ve been mine first, but he was yours, too.