Chapter 6
6
T he rest of the day was full of preparing for finals and a talk from the college advisor about the final paperwork that was needed and how to navigate scholarships. I completely tuned her out because I had not applied to any colleges. For one, I couldn’t afford it, and two, I wanted to own a dog rescue. I had always known that was what I wanted to do, and I didn’t need college to make it happen. As we left the classroom after the speech, Lia met me in the hall because we were going straight from class to the last football game of the school year.
“Oh my God, your outfit is so damn cute today. I didn’t get to see it fully yet. Let me look. Girl, your boobs look bangin’ in this shirt.” Lia was a master of giving compliments and a master at talking in general.
“They do look bangin’, Collins,” A guy named Travis, who was friendly with Carter, called out as he passed us in the hallway.
“I didn’t ask,” I called back, and everyone around us laughed as we made our way to our lockers.
“I bet Remi is gonna play better with you in the stands tonight.” Lia poked me in the ribs.
“Stop. You are all being crazy. What did Liam tell you?” I shoved my books back in my locker, touched up my makeup in my pocket-sized mirror, and ran a brush through my hair.
“He said that you had a hickey on your neck, that Remi never came home last night, and when he came to pick you two up, Remi was in your room basically naked,” Lia told me as she pulled Liam’s jersey over her shirt in preparation for the game.
“And that means that…” I encouraged her to finish her train of thought.
“That y’all finally fucked.” Lia sounded very confident in the conclusion of her story. “Is he big? Is he a good kisser? How big was he? Is it a solid ten incher? Oh my God, I bet he’s huge.”
“Lia, good lord girl, stop talking.” I shoved her gently in the shoulder as we walked toward the football field. “First of all, do you know that even when aroused, the average vagina is only like four inches deep? What the actual fuck would a girl do with a ten-inch penis?” I was being louder than necessary, and although I surmised that Remi had to be larger than the norm, I seriously found all of the eleven-inch dicks in the dirty novels I read to be so unrealistic. “Second of all, that is your boyfriend’s cousin’s dick that you are salivating over. Keep it in your pants!” We both burst out laughing. “And lastly, I already told you I’m not gonna have sex with someone until I’m good and ready, so no, we didn’t fuck.”
“Okay, but you definitely did something because that hickey didn’t get there on its own.” She gave me a long look, but I didn’t answer as I was saved when we entered the noisy football field and began looking for the seats that Liam had saved for us.
Usually, at the football games that I attended, I tried my hardest not to look anywhere in Remi’s direction because I had been doing my don’t let Remi turn you on thing. But now that I actually knew what it felt like to let Remi turn me on, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him. There were no cheerleaders at tonight’s game, so all of my friends were sitting with us. Eva was to the right of me, Rachel and Dee were sitting to the left of Lia. Being that the school year was almost over and it was the last game of the year, all of the seats were full because the whole town came to support the seniors on the team who were graduating and moving on. I was aware that Remi was an offensive lineman, but I really knew very little about football as a whole. So I just cheered and shrieked with Lia every time the boys did anything that we thought was good. This game started to feel different as soon as I noticed that Remi kept looking at me as much as I was looking at him. It was making me feel things, which was throwing me off because I was usually very good at keeping all of my feelings completely bottled up.
“I don’t know what is going on between you and Mr. McHotness, but he is eye fucking the shit out of you, Shaen,” Dee said loudly.
“Yeah, he is. It’s even making me wet,” Rachel chimed in as she pulled some mini bottles of vodka out of her bag and started pouring shots into our cups of Sprite. I usually said no to her offers of alcohol, but tonight, I was fully in for getting a little tipsy and shutting off all of the noise in my brain. As I sipped on my now vodka soda, Lia noticed two tenth graders in front of us who were screaming out Remi’s name in between every play and were waving around a sign.
“What does that say?” she asked when she noticed that Liam was laughing hysterically on the sidelines and was playfully punching a very embarrassed-looking Remi. The girls turned their sign around so the rest of us could see it. The sign said: “Remi, put your babies in us.” The crowd around us roared with laughter as the two girls got escorted out by our very angry assistant principal. Eva leaned over and shouted, “I’m pretty sure the only person that Remi wants to put his babies into is you, Shaen.”
My soda went down the wrong pipe, and Lia had to pound me on the back while I coughed it back out.
“Do you all know something I don’t?” I asked when I could finally breathe again.
“Honey, that boy has been half in love with you since the start of the school year. I’m surprised it took him this long to make a move,” Eva shouted over all of the noise from the game. I scoffed. “No, he isn’t. And he didn’t make a move.”
“You have a hickey on your neck,” Rachel pointed out, leaning over Lia and pouring more vodka into my cup.
“Who said it’s from him?” I took a big gulp of my drink, which was now more vodka than soda.
“I certainly hope it’s from him,” Dee said. “That boy looks like he could rock your world.”
“You’re gay, Dee,” I pointed out, reminding her of the obvious.
“All the more reason to trust me.” Dee knocked back a shot and grinned. “I’m a fan of women, and even I can tell that Remi Taylor has a magical penis.”
Lia snorted and put my cup back up to my lips.
“Keep drinking, girl. There is an after-party tonight, and at this rate, you will need to be pretty drunk to handle all of our nosey friends.”
So I did just that.
By the time the game was over and the boys had won, my friends and I were thoroughly inebriated. Lia and I were holding hands as we sang “We Are the Champions” at the top of our lungs, and Dee had Rachel on her back as we made our way to the car. After agreeing to meet at the after-party being held at the quarterback’s house, Eva and Carter took Dee in Eva’s car, and Lia, Rachel, and I piled into the back of the green jeep. Liam and Remi were in the front. Remi’s hair was wet, which meant he had showered after the game. He was wearing a loose black tank top and a pair of workout pants. Liam leaned over to give Lia a kiss.
“Holy shit, you smell like a bar.” He grimaced. “You taste like one too.”
“We’re all drunk. It was a great game, and we kept drinking every time you got a home run,” Rachel explained. Remi let out a short laugh.
“Rachel, you’re a cheerleader, and you still don’t know that saying home run is definitely referring to the wrong sport?”
Rachel just shrugged and went back to braiding Lia’s hair. Remi looked at me briefly but didn’t say anything. I didn’t like this unknown territory that we were in. Everyone else seemed to think he was madly in love with me and wouldn’t stop rubbing the hickey in my face, yet the man in question seemed to be pretty chill around me even though not even twenty-four hours ago he had come all over my hand. I didn’t need a marriage proposal, I just wanted to know what was up with us.
“Hun, put on Justin Bieber,” Lia told Liam as she took his jersey off and then knotted up the shirt underneath, turning her school-appropriate shirt into a cute midriff look.
“I am not listening to Justin Bieber right now, babe,” Liam moaned. “Did you not see the game we just played? We have testosterone oozing out of us. It will be ruined if I have to listen to Justin Bieber.”
Remi laughed as he half turned to me and asked, “Do you want to listen to the Beebs, Shaen?”
I nodded excitedly and bounced in my seat. Alcohol always made me less inhibited, and with the amount I had drank tonight, I was as chill and as playful as I ever would be.
“Put it on, Liam,” Remi told his cousin.
“Fuck my life,” Liam grumbled, but he knew he had lost the fight and handed his phone over to Lia, who immediately put on the song “Baby,” and exactly as Liam feared, the three of us screamed and sang along to it the entire way to the party.
When we got there, Liam parked down the street since the driveway and front of the house were already packed with cars. Remi got out and opened my door. I basically fell out and started laughing hysterically as Remi had to put his hand on my arm to steady me.
“How much did you drink, Shaen?” I heard his voice whisper in my ear, and I got chills up and down my body as I reacted to his nearness, his smell, and the warmth of his hand on my arm.
“Just a bit.” I hiccuped as I finally stopped laughing and moved out of the way for Lia to get out of the car too.
“Okay. Well, I won’t be drinking because I’m the DD tonight, so I’ll be able to keep an eye on you,” he told me. He was walking next to me as we all made our way toward the back of the house where the party was happening.
“Oh my God, you don’t have to look out for me, Remi.” I grinned up at him. Everything was looking a tad bright, and I felt like I was talking a bit too loud, but I also loved the lack of my anxious thoughts and overthinking in general when I drank.
“Yes, I do.” He laughed like I was missing something and kept a gentle hold on my arm, guiding me toward the back patio where music was already blaring, and people were gathered.
Eva and Carter were there and were already dancing. Dee was playing poker with a bunch of the football team. Lia and Liam went to make us more drinks, and Rachel had disappeared into the house, leaving Remi and me to find a place for all of us to sit. We found a spot on the porch with a bunch of lounge chairs and a hanging egg chair, which I immediately jumped into and then instantly regretted because the movement started to make me dizzy. I crawled back out of the chair and took the drink that Lia had brought and was holding out for me. Remi watched me but didn’t say anything as I downed it and then wiped my mouth on the back of my hand.
“What was that?” I made a face because it had been incredibly sour.
“That was an amaretto sour, my darling.” Liam came up the steps of the porch carrying three more and a water for Remi.
“Ew,” I said as I swiped Remi’s water and took a mouthful to chase the drink down with.
“You just have a little baby girl taste in drinks, Shaen. Welcome to adulthood,” Liam retorted jokingly, chugging two of the drinks he held. “Okay, maybe I was a little heavy-handed with the lemon juice,” he said, making a face.
“Welcome to adulthood, bitch,” Remi said as he drank his water, teasing his cousin.
“Oh burn,” Lia laughed, planting a kiss on Liam’s face. “It’s okay, baby, I liked it.”
“Oh yeah, show me how much,” Liam said, walking Lia backward and holding onto her waist while continuing to drink his admittedly too-sour drink with his other hand.
“Barf. Get a room, you two.” Dee announced her arrival holding a drink of her own with her other arm wrapped around a tall girl who I was positive did not go to our school. “Guys, this is Kerri. Kerri, these are my friends.”
Kerri waved, and we all said hi. Liam asked if she wanted a drink, and we all cracked up because he really wasn’t that good at making them.
I could feel the amaretto making its way through my veins, or at least that’s what it felt like, and I heard a song that I really liked come on.
“We should dance!” I announced.
“Oh man, I was hoping you wouldn’t say that,” Dee lamented, being that she looked like a baby horse who had no balance when she tried to dance. Kerri laughed and told Dee that she would lead and Dee could follow. We all made our way down to the makeshift dance floor, which was really the area around the pool, and as a group, we began to move to the beat. This included jumping up and down in one place and singing in each other’s faces, all holding hands and prancing around in a circle, drinking more and spilling them on our shirts. Then, as the rhythm changed, each of my friends broke off into couples and began to grind up on each other. This left Remi and I standing there surrounded by our friends but also alone for the first time tonight. I was unsure of what to do with my body, but then he inched closer to me and put my hands around his waist.
“Oh, so it’s like that, huh?” I was feeling very brave with all this alcohol running through me. He just nodded and said, “Shut up and dance with me, Shaen.”
It turned out that Remi could really dance. I know they definitely did not teach him these moves at his Christian school, so I assumed he was just a natural at moving his muscular body. The lights were flashing, the music was blaring, the dancers were really pumping to the beat by now, and we were crowded in close together by how many people were around us.
“Three, six, nine, damn you fine,” I screamed and then got really low to the ground as the whole group shouted in unison, “Get low, get low, get low, get low!” As I stood back up, I ground my butt up against Remi’s crotch, and I felt a tingle of pride go through my body when I found him hard. I turned around and began to dance and rub up on him while holding onto his shoulders. I smirked up at him. “Looks like little Remi wants to play.” Remi sighed and shrugged, completely unashamed. “First of all, he is not little. As you well know.” I blushed.
“And I told you last night that he always wants to play when you’re around. And to be honest, I would have to be absolutely gay not to have a hard-on right now while watching your ass shake in that little skirt.”
“It’s true,” a guy from our science class leaned over and agreed with Remi. “Your ass is looking real fine tonight, Shaen.”
“Shut the fuck up, Miller.” Remi’s voice had a lighthearted tone to it, but I saw his jaw clench as he waited for Jed Miller to get the point and go back to dancing with his friends. When Miller just winked in response and then left us alone, Remi glanced back down at me and sighed once more.
“Sorry for bringing it up, Dad. Sheesh.” I felt like he was disappointed with me somehow. It was almost like he was the mature, responsible one, and I was out here getting drunk and embarrassing him. Not that it mattered because I still had no idea what I meant to him or what any of this meant altogether. With twenty-nine days to go, it probably wasn’t worth trying to figure out anyway. As I felt the usual anxious thoughts creeping back in, I decided that was my cue to go get another drink.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Remi and darted off to find some vodka shots. They were easy and got me feeling good real quick. However, after finding myself two shots, I never did make it back to the dance floor. Instead, I had gotten looped in with a group of girls who were baking, and I found myself in the kitchen preparing chocolate chip cookies.
“I need vanilla extract!” I announced to the room.
“It’s in the cabinet above the oven,” the quarterback’s sister, who was passing by, told me. Sure enough, it was there, but it was way too high for me to reach. I tried jumping to knock it down, but that didn’t work either. Suddenly, I felt a body behind me and heard Remi’s voice. “What do you need, tiny pixie?”
“Well, for one, I am not tiny. You’re just huge. And secondly, I need the vanilla extract.”
He peered inside the cabinet but couldn’t find what I wanted, so he just put his hands on my waist and lifted me up. So much better than a step stool, I laughed to myself. I may have said it out loud because I felt his hand tighten on my hip.
“Found it!” I held the elusive vanilla extract up in the air as Remi gently lowered me back down. I measured it out, poured it into the bowl, and began mixing it in.
“Can you turn the oven on to three seventy-five?” I asked him. I heard some beeping behind me. “Thank you. You’re the best,” I said really loudly. I heard him chuckle. One of the girls I was baking with prepped the pans, and we began shaping the cookie dough and putting it into rows on the parchment paper. As they would fill up, Remi would take the pan from me and stick it in the oven.
“Fifteen minutes and then take them out, Rem. Okay?”
“Gotcha, boss,” he said back. We kept this going for a half hour and ended up making one hundred cookies. Of course, they got demolished in about five minutes, but I had managed to hoard ten cookies for myself and Remi. Remi took my hand and led me to the living room where a crowd of people were watching a baseball game. One of Remi’s teammates made room on the couch, but only enough for one person, so Remi sat down and pulled me into his lap. I was drunk enough not to fight him even when I heard some girls behind us talking about it and asking if anyone knew if we were “official.” I held out a cookie for him, but instead of letting me hand it to him, Remi leaned closer and took a bite directly from my hand.
“So good,” he mumbled around the cookie.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” I admonished, reaching out to brush a crumb off his lip.
“Okay, Mom.” He mimicked me from earlier when I had called him Dad. I rolled my eyes.
“You’re kinda sassy when you drink this much,” he told me.
“I’m sassy all the time; it just usually stays in my head,” I corrected him.
“Duly noted.” He took another bite of the cookie in my hand, and this time, I felt his lips on my fingers, and a shiver ran down my back. He was watching me to see if I was going to react to that very forward act, especially with all of our classmates and friends milling about, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I just got another cookie out of my bag and took a bite myself.
“Damn, these are so good.” I made a moaning sound as I chewed, and I heard Liam laugh from above me. I looked up, and he said, “Now Remi won’t be able to get up for a hot minute after you made that noise.”
“Shut up, Liam.” Remi smacked Liam’s arm, but his cousin just kept laughing and turned away to set up a game of pool with Lia. Remi leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “Jokes on him ‘cause I’ve been hard since you touched me on the dance floor. Although I wouldn’t mind if you were a good girl and made that noise again for me later.”
I squirmed in his lap, but he pretended that he hadn’t just flooded my underwear and started yelling at the TV.
“Catch it, you motherfucker. Fuck…” Then the whole room erupted into cheers when I guess the motherfucker did, in fact, catch the ball. Time passed as we ate our cookies, watched the game, and hung out with our friends. People kept coming over to talk to Remi as he was popular from being on the winning team as well as actually being a really nice guy. He was pretty funny too. He kept fucking with Liam every time he tried to make a shot during his game of pool, and Liam ended up losing the game because of it. The whole time, his hand was just at the edge of my skirt, rubbing circles around on my exposed thigh. Between the alcohol keeping me free of my anxious thoughts, the warm cookies in my belly, his fingers moving on my thigh, and hearing Remi telling me to be a “good girl” earlier, I was positively aching. I wondered what I needed to do to get him to take me upstairs and find an empty room. It was pretty funny how I had gone from a totally uninterested virgin to wondering how I could seduce this beautiful man in public. I started by running my foot up Remi’s leg a few times, and although I felt him readjusting himself in his pants once or twice, he kept talking to the guy next to him about the game. So I switched to gently massaging his shoulders or whatever I could reach of them while sitting in front of him. He smiled at me but kept talking. So I leaned forward and licked his earlobe. That got his attention. His body jerked slightly, and he made a “what?” face at me. I squirmed in his lap again, feeling his erection against my butt.
“Shaen.” His tone sounded like he was giving me a warning. “What are you doing?”
I made a face back at him. “I’m bored.”
“Well, by all means, give me a lap dance in front of my whole team then.” He laughed and tugged at a piece of hair that had fallen in front of my face. I went silent.
“You know I’m joking, right?” He suddenly looked panicked at the idea that I might be mad.
“I’m not gonna give you a lap dance in front of your team. I know a joke when I hear one, but maybe I won’t be so bored if you let me give you one in private.” I smiled in what I hoped looked sexy instead of creepy, but with the amount of alcohol I had consumed, it was plenty possible that I looked creepy as fuck right about now as I had zero experience in the world of seduction.
“H-here?”
Apparently, my suggestion rattled him. My cool, calm, and collected man was looking a little flushed all of a sudden. Perhaps my plan was working after all. I nodded.
“Shit, Shaen… um.” He was looking at my lips now, and I moved my hips in his lap again to be encouraging. His hands moved to my waist again, and he held me still.
“Baby, you absolutely have to stop doing that, or I am going to be very embarrassed. You don’t want to do that to me, right?” He was whispering in my ear and sounded chill in his tone, but I also knew that I was no longer playing fair. So I got up and straightened out my skirt.
“I’m going to pee,” I announced.
“Have fun,” Lia slurred at me.
“Yes, good luck.” Liam waved. I laughed at how dumb my friends got when they drank, and I made my way through the crowd, not looking back to see if Remi was following.
Upstairs, I found an empty room that had an en suite bathroom attached to it, so I peed in there. It always fascinated me how hard peeing was when I was drunk. I thought I heard the door open when I flushed and wondered if Remi had joined me. As I washed my hands, I avoided looking in the mirror because seeing my drunk self always freaked me out for some reason. My phone buzzed, but I didn’t bother looking at it as I shut off the light and started to cross the room to leave.
“Where are you going, sexy?” a voice said to me from the bed. Immediately, I knew that it was not Remi, and I instantly felt sober. I quickly made my way to the door as best I could in the dark and said, “I’m actually leaving right now. My boyfriend is waiting for me.”
“Oh yeah. Where’s he at? I bet he won’t mind sharing.” The man got up from the bed and started to walk toward me.
My heart sank in my chest and began to beat faster at the same time. This house was big, really big. And between the loud music and TV volume being so high, I doubted anyone would hear me if I screamed. I reached for the door handle and pulled the door open just as the stranger slammed it shut again.
“I just want a little taste.” He leered at me.
“Leave me alone!” I shouted and banged on the door with my fists. The man, who I still could not fully see in the dark, slapped me across the face.
“Shut up, you little brat.” His breath reeked of whiskey, and he smelled sweaty, and not in a good way. I stood there frozen for a second, processing that this creep had just hit me! I lunged for the door handle, and this time, I got the door fully open before he tried to grab me again.
“Get away from me!” I screamed just as Remi came running down the hall, followed by a furious-looking Liam, Carter, and three other guys from the team. Apparently, someone had heard me.
“Get the fuck away from her!” Remi shouted and almost pushed me out of the way as he barged into the bedroom and punched the guy so hard in the face that he fell down, completely knocked out.
“Fuckkkkk, my hand!” Remi was now cradling his right fist as he turned to me, wild-eyed.
“What the hell happened, Shaen?!” He wrapped the arm with his good hand around me as I stood shivering in the doorway. “Did he hurt you?”
I slowly shook my head.
“Did he try?” Carter demanded.
I nodded.
“Motherfucker!” Remi sounded so furious that I didn’t know what to make of it. I had never seen him this worked up about anything before; even last night with his dad, he was more calm and collected.
“Who the hell is this piece of shit?” Liam shouted from inside the room where the guy was starting to wake up. His nose was bleeding, and his right eye was beginning to swell.
“We should call the police.” Carter started to take his phone out of his jeans pocket, but that’s when I started to freak out.
“No, no police. I don’t want to start with that. He didn’t even do anything that he could get arrested for. Just take me home. I want to go home.” I was babbling and feeling really panicked. Remi had handed me off to Lia when she came rushing into the room as the news of what had happened spread. He looked conflicted at my request to let the guy go, but he nodded to Lia.
“Get her in the car. We’ll take care of this, and then we’ll meet you there.”
Liam handed his keys to Lia and turned back to the guy on the floor. But before she could lead me away, I stepped further into the room, feeling a strong desire to never be the victim. He looked at me, blood streaming steadily out of his nose, and I shouted, “You asked me if my man was open to sharing me? Well, I think you got your answer now.” And I pointed to Remi. The guy’s eyes widened when he took in Remi’s sheer size and the furious look on his face.
“Bro, I was just kidding,” he started to say.
“It didn’t feel so funny when you slapped me across my fucking face,” I interrupted.
Now Remi looked even angrier if that was possible. I left the room with my pride reinstated as Liam hauled the guy up by his shirt, and I heard the sound of a fist hitting something solid, and the guy calling out again, “Bro, I said I was joking.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I heard Remi all but growl, and then I went downstairs and walked back to the car with Lia leading the way.
So this is what being protected feels like.