7. The Worlds Stupidest Question
The Worlds Stupidest Question
My pen makes its sixth loop around the small heart in the corner of the page I’ve been sketching on, an old English letter G scratched into the middle.
“What are you drawing?”
I screech, slamming the notebook shut as Gideon’s shadow falls over me, blocking out the summer sun that was pleasantly roasting my skin moments ago. “I’m going to put an actual bell on you if you don’t stop creeping around.”
His eyes flash toward the river, the large group of my classmates splashing and screaming in the shallow water of the lake.
The annual last hurrah before school starts back up next week.
His thick brows furrow before he gently wedges the toe of his boot under my shoulder, rolling me onto my back.
My wet blonde hair sticks to my chest, my navy blue one-piece still soaked as he stares down at me.
We’ve been here for three hours, and this is the first time he’s spoken, only getting up to lurk by the shoreline when I finally bulked up the courage to get in the murky lake water.
“What were you drawing, Audrey?” he asks again, his dark voice sending a chill down my spine.
“Hey Auds, I need a top for chicken!” Trent calls from the water.
I don’t hesitate to take my expedited escape. “Be right there!”
I’m wiggling out from underneath Gideon’s shadow, his presence alone enough to pin me, leaving me flushed and… confused. I don’t get far when Gideon crouches abruptly. “You’re not going to be his top.”
“What?” I chuckle, but my heart is pounding. My head feels light as he reaches out, twisting a wet strand of blonde hair around his finger.
“You were drawing them… weren’t you?”
My lips part. “Who?”
“One of them... out there.”
I wish the lake would swallow me whole. “No, I—"
“Then let me see what you were drawing.”
My grip tightens on my notepad. “No! Stop being a jerk.”
“Auds!” Trent calls from the water, but I can’t move.
My chest is heaving, and Gideon sees everything.
His eyes making a now familiar track of my collarbone before dipping lower.
Mom said I was a late bloomer. My chest was flatter than a board until this summer.
Now the straps of the small swimsuit I bought at Deb’s summer blowout last year are digging into my back.
His jaw clenches, and I can tell for a moment he debates ripping the notebook from my hands. Thanking the powers that be, he decides on mercy. “We’re going home.” An uncharacteristically benevolent choice for Gideon.
My mouth gapes as he straightens, his large hands gripping me tightly before he tosses me over his shoulder, my pen falling to my forgotten towel.
I kick, slapping at his warm back, his broad shoulder digging into my gut. “Gideon, what are you doing? Put me down!”
“You’ve played with your friends enough.”
“That’s not your decision!”
“Hush, Audrey.”
Hush. HUSH!
I smack him on the back with my notepad. “Let me down now! If you want to leave, fine, go! I’ll get a ride from someone—”
His grip only tightens, making me snap my teeth together, my heart fluttering wildly in my chest. His arm is the only thing holding me up, his palm slipping dangerously high on the back of my thigh.
I swear his thumb caresses… no it twitched.
Definitely a twitch. It’s the call from close by that disrupts the wayward course of my thoughts. Even then, his palms sear my skin.
“Hey, put her down!” Harry yells, joined by Trent.
Gideon spins on his heel, and I don’t need to see his glare to feel the potency of it; his body is rigid against mine…
but so warm, his icy demeanor can’t touch me like it does them.
He doesn’t speak, the silence stretching on.
His dare hovering in the air, choking me.
They don’t speak up again. They know better, and Gideon's reputation precedes him. It started with that day on the bus with Jeremy a few years ago. My dad had handled it with his parents and a stern talking-to. A few weeks later, Jermey transferred to another school. Gideon never said either way, but I don’t think he learned his lesson.
I don’t think what happened on the bus was the end of it for Jeremy either, but I have no proof.
I can’t say I mind regardless. Just that Gideon didn’t meet me that night at our spot, I assumed it was because he was in trouble.
But Jeremy didn’t come back to school for a month, soon after the teacher told us he transferred.
Good riddance, that little shit had made my life miserable.
I groan as I lift my head, giving Harry and Trent a smile. “I’ll catch up later!”
A gasp leaves my throat as Gideon's hand tightens on the backs of my legs before I’m slung down and abruptly placed in the passenger seat of his car, my notebook still clasped in my hand. “Christ, Gideon!”
I watch him closely as he stalks around to his side, the bracelet I made him dangling from the rearview.
Funny, I hadn’t really noticed that what was once just a grown-up air about him had changed, that at some point my best friend had turned into an actual adult.
Maybe it’s the long hours at the funeral home or that he started working out, but…
Gideon looks different now. Heavy blue eyes are contained within his metal-framed glasses.
His muscles are pronounced in a lean way, toned but not bulky.
His veins seemingly always straining against his pale skin.
The spots where his hands rested on me still burn as we drive in silence, Stop Dragging My Heart Around by Stevie Nicks playing on the radio.
The silence doesn’t last too long. Maybe it’s the beer and schnapps I chugged an hour ago, or that I don’t like the quiet.
Perhaps even that I’m just a blabbermouth, but the words tumble from my mouth abruptly.
I can’t seem to stop them. I don’t even think I try.
“Gideon, do you love me?” God, tears bud in my eyes before he can even respond.
His hands flex on the steering wheel and already I’m dying inside. I don’t think it could possibly get worse until he speaks, confirming it totally can. “I can’t meet you at our spot tonight. Dad needs my help with something.”
“Oh, okay. I, uh, I had a project to work on anything. You know, for h-history.”
Not even Stevie Nicks can puncture the silence that follows or hide my pitiful sniffling.
Gideon, Eighteen Years Old, 1984
Mom is already pacing the porch when I pull up, her hair unbrushed and kinked at the greasy roots.
A byproduct of her running her hands through it constantly.
I don’t meet her eyes, not because it bothers me, but because that unease has been building in my chest all day, working its way up my throat.
The bitter, numb anger that makes it hard to swallow.
“Gideon, do you love me?”
I couldn’t even bring myself to look over at her wide hazel eyes; I knew how pretty they’d be, shining with tears.
Audrey has always cried, but now? There’s not much that doesn’t make her sniffle; it’s cute, so it doesn’t irritate me like I think it should.
I like her tears, how alive they make her.
I don’t think I remember a time when I cried.
Can’t even recall ever wanting to. Everything is muted, like I’m watching my life happen to someone else.
Until I’m angry. Until I’m with Audrey.
Then, suddenly, it’s all happening to me; it’s liberating and overwhelming.
It’s everything. Right now? I feel like that.
Which means it’s time for Audrey to go home, as much as the idea of parting from her disturbs me, especially since she won’t tell me what she was drawing on the shoreline.
Her tiny body is hugged by her even tinier swimsuit as she all but slams out of my car, water droplets cast by her hair adorning sunburnt thighs she’ll complain about all week.
“Do you want to head down—"
“There’s a client waiting, I should—" She cuts off my excuse, sparing me from having to complete it.
“Yeah, no, that’s fine...”
I frown, her sentence trailing off unfinished.
When she turns back to her side of the car, hitting the lever so she can bend through the narrow opening to grab her things from the backseat, jerking her shorts on.
They’re riding up so far she might as well have left them off.
Like always, I can’t look away. Like always, I can’t help but picture her as one of them.
Her limber, soft body stiff, her warm skin frigid.
An uncomfortable, putrid feeling in my gut muddles with my hardening cock as she jerks out her bag, quickly tossing on a baggy T-shirt before she gives my mom a bright, Audrey signature smile she doesn’t mean, waving politely.
She doesn’t say goodbye to me, nor spare me a second glance before heading across the street to her house, the only sign of her lingering discomfort.
Her shoes gripped in her palm, her bare feet and brightly painted toes at the mercy of hot gravel.
She looks so free, so unbothered, only I know that couldn’t be further from the truth.
But she still smiles, even though right now she’s worrying about what happened in the car.
She’s anxious about ten thousand things that haven’t happened yet and likely won’t for the next twenty years.
She smiles and, more disturbing… most of the time, she means it.
I’m only halfway up the porch steps when Mom speaks, the worry clear in her voice. ”You need to leave her alone, Gideon. You aren’t right. She needs to be with kids her age, kids that are like her and—"