Chapter 3 – Vale
I LIKE BIG THORNS
VALE
Gramps has been spending a lot of time next door with Oliver.
For the last two weeks I’ve barely seen him.
From the time he eats breakfast till dinner, he’s at Oliver’s house.
It’s the first week of July, fireworks are still booming off in the distance.
Do you know what I’ve been doing? Not a damn thing!
Fuck all, as Kat likes to say. It didn’t help that I’d already read the entire book list Gramps gave me.
I may seem a bit bitter, but I’m not upset about Gramps.
He needs friends too. Oliver though, he could use less friends.
He’s had people over there every night since he moved in.
They’re out there partying till the wee hours of the morning.
Sometimes they’re so loud I can’t sleep. If I do get to sleep, they wake me up.
I’m not spying on him. I’m not! When it’s not raining, I’m out looking at the stars from my observation deck.
I can’t help it, I see it all from there.
Then there’s the window over the kitchen sink.
I watch out of boredom while I do the dishes.
People rush in and out all night. I see all the laughter and joy I’m not a part of.
I rarely feel a part of anything, but I don’t think it used to bother me.
Oliver Byron is the definition of the worst neighbor ever, but I can’t seem to get him off my mind.
That man turned my world upside down from the minute I saw him—since he kissed my hand and strangely licked my boo-boos better.
I can’t get over it, his lips, his mouth, that tongue that makes me think of things better left unsaid and unthought. Ah!
I want to hate him. I do!
Three days ago, while I was cleaning my telescope, I saw Oliver carrying what looked like small trees from a delivery truck in front of his house.
He’s not out often during the day, probably sleeping off hangovers, but there he was, wearing heather-gray exercise pants as if he’d been caught working out when the delivery truck arrived.
Back and forth he went, taking those plants around to the back of the house.
He’d stroll back up, a smile on his gorgeous face, and I couldn’t look away.
I had to watch him because you could see the bulge in the front of his pants.
With every step, my eyes were drawn to it.
I studied the way that bulge moved and settled.
It was fascinating, the way he moved, the way he would glide over the faux cobblestones effortlessly, not a care in the world.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, he caught me watching him.
The bastard! He saw me staring at his crotch, unable to move my limbs, completely lost in the way his dick bounced with every step.
I couldn’t look away until he’d stopped moving.
God only knows how long I’d been staring, mouth agape, before I noticed he wasn’t walking away anymore.
He grabbed his dick in his fist and squeezed it like it pained him.
I couldn’t stop the treacherous gasp that escaped from between my lips.
When I looked up, over his tight white T-shirt that clung to his muscular chest, almost see-through with his sweat, I’d thought I was going to have a heart attack. My heart felt like a battering ram in my chest, trying to escape its bony prison.
He was so hot, literally covered in sweat from the southern Georgia heat. It did nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to detract from his gorgeousness. I looked up at his face, his eyes covered by black-on-black sunglasses, and he smirked!
The bastard smirked!
I hate him! More than hatred, I want him.
I’ve never wanted to have sex with anyone before.
Sex is more like an idea to me. Sexuality, overall, is an idea.
I know how it works between a man and a woman, the logistics of body parts slotting together, which part goes where, but outside of that disassociated, anatomical, textbook-like diagram or the other extreme of emotional, romance novel-like odes to body parts connecting with love, it’s just a thing I contemplated on occasion.
An act that means so much to some and so little to others.
That’s not how I feel about Oliver. I want things from him I’ve never wanted before. I can’t stop thinking about him, what his mouth would feel like, his lips, his tongue. Oh, God, help me.
At night, when I’m actually able to fall asleep because his visitors have finally dwindled to a couple carloads, he’s there in my dreams, taunting me with his very presence. He’s torturing me and he doesn’t even know it.
I hate him!
I also want him so badly I’m disgusted with myself.
I wish I’d never felt this way. Oliver Byron is too fucking sexy to live next door to my Gramps.
Why are they hanging out so much? Surely, they don’t have enough in common to actually be friends.
Gramps is old, no offense to him. He’s earned every single one of those wrinkles, but he can’t be friends with Oliver-fucking-Byron of all people.
Oliver’s a hedonist! He’s a weirdo. I shouldn’t want him.
I know better. I shouldn’t be judging him either, but I can’t help it.
I might be a tad jealous. My desire sets me up for failure.
I’m not supposed to feel things like this.
I need to fight it. Is that what my father would say?
Or is this just a setup to the pain I’ll endure by falling for Oliver’s attractiveness?
It doesn’t matter because suddenly Hell looks like an extremely inviting neighbor.
I’ve seen all the men and women he invites over, half-dressed or not even, just wearing bathing suits and a smile.
I’ve seen a man kissing Oliver’s neck while his head was tilted back against his front door.
I’ve seen the late-night chases through the front garden.
Seriously, I’ve seen Oliver chase full-grown, half-naked men and women through his front yard.
I watched with the sole hope that one of them would either step on a thorn or fall into his perfect, blood-red rose bushes so I could smile again.
I can’t help imagining what he does to them when he does catch them.
As pissed off as I was to hear them laugh while I was reading Jane Eyre, I’m curious too.
I can’t help it. Deep inside, in the place I hide so well, I want to be chased by him too.
Who wouldn’t? I want him to chase me, catch me, and fuck me against the garden wall. It’s as simple as that.
My brain’s completely on board for his kind of debauchery and it shocks me beyond belief.
I want to deny it. I don’t want to feel like this.
I swear it’s like he has some sort of power over me, although my father would say it’s the other way around.
And he might be right because the dreams I’ve had are all my brain’s doing, all my fault.
The dreams about him are something else.
They’re intensely sexual. He does things to me in these dreams I didn’t know existed until I wake up and ask the internet.
God forbid anyone see my recent browser history.
When I wake up it feels like my body’s spasming in protest, wanting to be back in that dreamworld, with him.
Back where he’s mine for just a little while.
Oliver Byron is going to drive me insane or turn me into an alcoholic.
More than once, I’d sat in Gramps’s office chair, staring at the unlocked liquor cabinet.
If I got wasted, maybe I’d have a few hours of being blacked out, a little bit of peace.
But I’ll be honest, not a touch of liquor has passed my lips.
I can’t steal booze from Gramps and that’s the only way I’d be able to get it.
It doesn’t matter how much I despise Oliver. He’s so hot, and my desire for him is changing me. I’ve even started trying to touch myself because my body’s in a constant state of absolutely insatiable desire. It doesn’t work though. Nothing cools this fire inside me.
I’m going to be miserable for the rest of the summer, especially without Kat here to chat with. I can’t tell her all about the new, beautiful asshole who lives next door. I can’t tell her how much I want him, even if I already know exactly what her advice would be.
Kat would say, Vale, get your ass out of bed and go join that party. Go make him want you just as much as you want him. Wear that new bikini and make him beg for it.
That’s how Kat is—brave.
I can’t do it.
Though if Kat was here, I probably would. She’d lead the way, and I’d follow just to experience life through her. Honestly, I’m surprised I’ve never been arrested or gone to jail for her goofy antics. Maybe I should consider myself lucky for that.
She’s gone this summer so she can be with her boyfriend Clark.
Funny thing about Clark, the name itself was a joke from his parents as their last name was Kent.
I’ve called him Superman since the day we met, then again so did everyone else.
I can’t believe Clark talked her into it.
Somehow he got her to go hiking, camping, and being in the woods for an extended period of time with no mani-pedis, no makeup, and no plumbing.
Had Kat herself not told me her plans, I wouldn’t have believed it.
Kat had bagged the perfect man, or so she claims. She swears he’s her future husband. Clark isn’t perfect, but he has abs, is popular, and plays football. Who could resist him? He’s the teenage girl trifecta.
I believe she’ll ditch Clark at some point since he’s her rebound from her fuck-boy Brandon, who’s the inspiration behind our aspirations to go full-blown “hoe-bag” in college.
Brandon and Clark had nothing in common.
Clark’s the golden boy of Silver Springs, nothing like the excitement she’s talked about wanting.
However, she says she loves him, and I need to support both of my best friend’s dreams. The dream of being a future hoe-bag and the future Mrs. Kent.
What are friends for if not to support each other’s dreams, right?
This summer has been a complete dud without her.
I’m being driven mad by a hottie next door while my best friend is off getting eaten by a grizzly bear in the backwoods of Colorado with her boyfriend and his parents.
She could be here with me, worrying about my attraction to Oliver and what I’m going to do about it, but no, I have to fend for myself.
My small world has shrunk down to this house and its immediate perimeter.
It feels like there’s no escape from the boredom that’s currently my life, and there’s no escape from my desire for Oliver, which just compounds my frustration.
This is the first time this has happened, attraction and being alone over the summer.
Maybe that’s why I can’t stop thinking about him. Who knows?
I wish I could regain a little bit of that inner peace from previous summers.
I’d accept a tranquilizer at this point.
I’m serious when I say I’d do almost anything to have a little peace away from the memory of his lips, his tongue.
Fuck, not again! Why me? Why now? What have I done in my life to deserve such a karmic fuckup?