5. Elio #2
Had it been me, I never would have followed Ronan’s footsteps. But it was too late. Jaxon had already dedicated his teens to football when Ronan’s habits were discovered.
Staring at Jaxon, I tried to look away and think of other things, but my mind kept going back to those days. He had been my best friend, and the troubles had mounted so high that I worried about him constantly.
He moved out of my field of vision, but the image of his past self remained right before my eyes. Shaggy, light brown hair, years before he’d cut it short, and bright brown eyes and dimples on each side of his lips punched so deep by his easy smiles. I couldn’t get him out of my head.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I picked up my beer and drank some more. When I looked at my reflection in the mirror again, Jaxon was there, just above my left shoulder. In the distance, surrounded by his teammates, he sat in a booth facing the bar. He looked away as soon as my gaze found him.
The night dragged on, my fingertips tingling a little after the third beer. It didn’t take much to get me drunk, and the fog was settling comfortably over my mind. And the cloudier it got, the more I let myself look at him.
It’s that easy? I thought, blood simmering in my veins. I saw him. I truly saw him now. The wrinkled nose, the narrowed eyes, the pursed lips; he hated me. But there was more to it than that. He hated something else even more.
I lifted my glass as if making a toast, watching him watch me in the mirror. He didn’t look away. It was a challenge, he understood, and he wasn’t backing down. So I toasted him and drank, emptying my glass before pushing myself off the chair.
Slowly, I turned around, looked straight at Jaxon, and left. Even as I reached the door, I could see him interrupting the conversation among his friends and getting up.
The world was a little more out of balance than I had realized. It tilted now and again under my feet, and I leaned against the wall just as the door of the bar opened and shut.
I sauntered a little and took a few steps down the street, listening for the soft footsteps following me.
Some small part of me trembled with excitement.
I wondered if a gazelle felt like this when it heard the dry grass crunch behind it.
I didn’t want to be caught and cornered.
But wouldn’t it be interesting if I were?
After a few more steps, the last gulps of the beer seemed to find their way into my head. My feet worked on their own, although they didn’t cooperate. As I tripped over nothing I could see, a pair of arms caught me from behind.
Heart leaping, I realized the snare had just snapped shut.
“Christ, you’re drunk,” he said in an angry huff.
“Yeah?” I steadied a little and straightened my back. “You’re following me.”
Jaxon let go of me and took a step back. “Don’t flatter yourself. I saw a lonely drunk about to get hurt.”
I turned around as he spoke and faced him. My vision was steady, almost sharp, as I met his gaze. “Is that all you saw, Jax?” I asked.
He glared at me, lips pursing. As he edged away from me, he partially stepped into the shadows between the bar and the print shop.
The alley was empty, open on both sides, with only trash dumpsters positioned in the middle for the plastic and glass waste from the bar and the old paper from the printer.
Jaxon receded deeper into the shadows. His shoulders squared and his back straight, he was like a marble statue that could move its legs. Pretty. He’d always been pretty. There was a softness to him that others never saw. He could be gentle, almost feminine, when you knew what to look for.
I stepped into the shadows after him. “Why do you care if I get hurt?”
He didn’t say anything for the longest time. My vision slowly adjusted to the lack of direct light, and I saw his deepening frown. “My nose,” he said. “You said you had to know. Why?”
Last night, I had watched him in the mirror, our positions reversed from those of tonight, and my gaze had gone to his nose so many times that my heart was in shreds.
Each glance ripped it further apart. And now, as I looked at the bump I’d marked him with, the corners of my lips dragged down against my will. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Jax.”
He snorted. He had every right to make that disgusting sound. I would have done the same.
“I swear,” I said hoarsely. “I’d take it back if I could.”
“How drunk are you, El?” he asked.
I pulled back my shoulders and shook my head. “Not that drunk.” If only the alley wouldn’t shake together with my head, I might even be able to prove it to him. As things went now, I wouldn’t dare stand on one foot or recite the alphabet backward.
“Liar,” Jaxon said.
I shook my head again harder. “I feel like shit, Jax,” I said. “I shouldn’t have hit you. I was scared.”
“Right,” Jaxon replied. “’Cause I’m a big, bad wolf.” He snort-chuckled and took another step back. “And you never did anything to lead me on.”
The excitement of a few moments ago was swiftly replaced by fear.
He was scratching the surface, and I didn’t think I wanted to let him go any deeper.
Tension filled my muscles, or tried to since they were already numb with alcohol.
“I didn’t,” I said, my voice too close to a growl to encourage an honest discussion.
“And looking at me all night before sauntering out wasn’t an invitation,” Jaxon said.
“It wasn’t,” I said, my voice rising. “I’m apologizing for something else, Jax.”
“Yet you’re standing two feet away from me in a dark alley,” Jaxon said. “Christ, El, can’t you see what you’re doing?”
I’d come closer than I’d realized. I towered so near him that he had to lift his head to look into my eyes. I pitched my voice low for Jaxon’s ears only. “This isn’t what you think it is.”
He cocked one corner of his lips up and nodded.
“Right.” His teeth closed gently around his lower lip, and he shook his head once.
“See, I believe that this isn’t what you think, El.
You think I believe you when I know you’re not trustworthy.
” He stepped forward, closing the distance between us.
My defensive mechanism kicked in, tightening my muscles in case I needed to do something.
Do what? I didn’t know. All I knew was that a strange buzz of excitement soared through my chest. But Jaxon rose to the tips of his toes and leveled our gazes.
He bared his teeth, but it wasn’t a smile.
“You know what you want. You just don’t know how to take it. ”
My fist was on his chest before I knew it. Had it leaned in a little too much? It was hard to tell. Everything was out of balance and out of focus. I held on to him as much as I held him away from myself. But the space was narrowing, and Jaxon wasn’t closing the distance this time.
When my lips pressed against Jaxon’s, the building excitement reached its crescendo. The wave of thrill and guilt crashed over me, but my fist tightened, holding the creased fabric of his hoodie so he couldn’t get away.
He didn’t try to get away, though. He didn’t even budge.
He liked it.
I dragged my lips hard over his mouth, taking him in, tasting him, letting all these crazy impulses run wild. An ancient curiosity bloomed within me. I remembered it all too well. It carried the scent of our summer at Still Water Cove and the warmth of the long nights in the loft we’d shared.
Some part of me—a rebellious and self-destructive one, to be sure—was dying to know what it felt like. And it felt like a drug. You knew where it would lead you. You knew what it would make of you. But you couldn’t resist it if you tried.
He was intoxicating and addictive. I knew that now. I knew I had a weakness in me that would trap me on this road to ruin. And I indulged in it.
What harm could it cause if I only wanted to know? If I only wanted to see what it was like?
My body pressed harder against Jaxon’s, pinning him against the bar’s brick wall. The quiet night was soon filled with quick breaths as I kissed him, the back of his head resting against the wall and his hands clutching my jacket.
He tasted like some fruity, minty cocktail, sweet and warm, and I felt him being absorbed by my flesh, felt him entering my bloodstream, felt him sinking into me like heroin.
A whimper, smaller and quieter than a sparrow landing on a branch, came from his lips, and he held my jacket firmer. And as I leaned in a little more, pressure from his fists pushed me away. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice gruff and raw.
I frowned. My reactions seemed to be slowing down even now.
The booze was catching up with me. I didn’t know whether to curse it for making me slow and weak or to blame it for giving me the courage to reach for something I never should have reached for.
“Isn’t this what you want?” I asked, my words coming out squished together by the numbness that slowed down my tongue.
Jaxon’s eyebrows trembled briefly. He pursed his lips, wavering a little, his hands relaxing on my chest but keeping us apart. He was about to break. I could see it in his eyes, clear as day, that he couldn’t find a reason to stop this.
Then, he gave the slightest shake of his head, licked his lips, and inhaled.
That was the moment when my stomach dropped. Or, rather, turned. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” I blurted, stepping away from Jaxon and hurrying into the bar, hoping to God the restroom was empty.