Lily of the Valley (Flowering, #1.5) Page 2

  “I was thinking. That girl, Alana. Do you talk to her about these things?” Sandee asks.

  I think of Alana. Beautiful Alana. Alabaster skin, dark hair, eyes that could destroy you. It’s been nearly six years since I met her and I still can’t believe how beautiful she is. We had our fun, our requisite, fumbling high school relationship, but it didn’t work.

  Alana looks like a doll and, inside, she’s like a doll. Hollow. I don’t mean shallow or vapid. The girl is brilliant and could challenge me academically. However, I’ve known her long enough, and known her in every single way, that I also know that her eyes go dead after she has sex, even though it’s only for a split second. It’s a deadness I recognize and it terrifies me. Sometimes I think she’s reflecting my own eyes back to me.

  I shake my head and focus on Sandee. “We talk.”

  “Do you talk talk?”

  “What kind of question is that? Yes, we talk. We talk about all kinds of things.”

  Like how Alana was eleven when her father started to touch her. Like how when she fucks, she’s an animal, because she can’t stop seeing his face. Like how she knows I know and yet she continues to sleep with me, because neither of us thinks we belong with anyone else.

  “Maybe she would be good for you.”

  “We don’t date,” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, she dated my friend, Dave. And I would rather see them work than see us fail.”

  “You don’t know you would fail.”

  “I do. Besides, she only comes to visit to get laid.”

  “She comes to visit because she loves you. As much as you love her.”

  I eat the chicken faster, because if my mouth is full, I can ignore what Sandee said. She’s right. I know how Alana feels, but I can’t give her anything of myself. I hate myself when I’m with her for everything she knows about me. There’s too much history between us. For some people, that makes a relationship, but when you’re people like me and Alana, it destroys it.

  Sandee is also correct that I love Alana. I just don’t love her in the way she still hopes I will. Thinking about it only depresses me, though. Because now I feel undeserving of both Sandee and Alana.

  “You know, Sandee, you really suck at cheering people up.”

  She looks sad for a second and I regret teasing her. What was I thinking? She’s been through as much as I have, if not more, and here I am acting like I have the right to claim misery for myself.

  “Well, then, finish your chicken and get the fuck out.”

  Is our friendship normal? No. I doubt it. But she knows how to make me feel. Feeling is good, as long as it’s in small doses, and in safe places, like here - with Sandee, the truckers, my chicken, and the whiskey-soaked dregs of my coffee.

  Chapter 2

  Day one of school and I forgot to set the alarm. Sandee was kind enough to bring me my own bottle of whiskey, which I finished immediately upon returning to the dorm. And now, with a headache and a hangover, I run to my first class, managing somehow to get there just as the professor shuts the door.

  “I do not tolerate tardiness,” he says and makes a point to look directly at me. What the fuck? I was here before he shut the door. “And you will earn every last decimal of your grade. Do not come to me at midterm with a sad story about your alcoholic father and your poor abused mom and tell me that they are the reason you could not write a paper on digital design. Because I do not care for your stories, as you do not care about mine.”

  Part of me hates him, but another part of me respects him for being honest. I know how many kids do exactly what he said – cry to their professors at midterm and end of term, even though they wrote no papers and attended no classes. The worst part is that the professors always say yes. Always. Then the assholes go back to the dorm and brag to their friends about how they pretended daddy was a drunk. And two weeks later, drunk old dad shows up in his Lexus and the family rides off into the sunset, both assholes still ignorant as fuck. Meanwhile, I actually do earn every last decimal as this professor – I look down – Dr. Ahorn has suggested we do. I can’t afford a school like this, but all that math homework in high school got me near perfect SATs, which then got me a nice scholarship package. It’s just too bad this school is overrun by douche satchels.

  I don’t pay attention to class today – any of them. I can read. For some reason, we waste a day each semester reviewing everything in the syllabus. What I don’t understand is why a prestigious college would use a day of learning – which equals approximately $443.75 – to ensure that we can read a piece of paper. Sometimes two pieces. Ideally, every single student here has the basic reading skills to do just that. But no, we read the paper. Four times for me today.

  Sometimes, I wonder why I came here. I hate almost all of them. Living on campus can be really tough. There was the option of commuting, although it wasn’t an easy drive, but I’d done almost the same commute working at the café. My grandmother makes the same commute every weekend for the prison. So it could have been done. But the scholarship came with a dorm room and it was a change of scenery. It isn’t far enough, but it was something. Finishing here will mean opportunity – a chance to get farther away. I just wonder if there is anywhere far enough.

  I need to get off campus, but when I get out of classes, I have a text from Alana. She wants to come see me. I sigh. I can’t say no. With Dave overseas in the military, I’m all she’s got. She’s still stuck at home, fortunately with just her mom now, while she takes a few classes at the community college at night. I don’t know where her dad went, she doesn’t tell me, and neither of us cares.

  I know Alana. Wanting to come see me means she sent the text when she was halfway here. There’s no way to stop her when she wants to visit. I text her back that I’m looking forward to seeing her and hit the shower.

  She’s quick, which means she drove way too fast. I’ve barely made it out of the shower before she’s at my door. I almost lecture her, but I can’t speak as she starts pulling my clothes off, her hands moving faster over my body than my brain can process. I don’t even know if she shut the door, but it’s closed, so I guess she must have.

  She has my shirt off and moves to my belt, and then to my pants. I should stop her. I should tell her she’s better than this, but she’s hungry and my cock is not listening to anything. Every time I touch Alana, I feel a hint of guilt, but then she gets ahold of my cock. Broken or not, caring or not, a beautiful woman’s mouth wrapped over my shaft is not something I can say no to.

  Alana’s lips envelop me and Christ, she is amazing. I don’t even know how I stay standing. Her fingers tease me behind my balls and I feel like I’m going to come almost instantly. Her tongue swirls around the tip of my cock and when she slides it under the head, I lose it. I grab her head and push her against me, my cock all the way down her throat. I come and she swallows, continuing to move her head slowly along the length of me while the shivers subside. When I’m coherent again, I unclench my hands in her hair and she looks up at me. She runs her tongue along her stunning lips and smiles.

  “I missed you,” she says.

  “You missed fucking.”

  She stands up. “That, too.”

  Alana’s body is amazing. There are tiny white scars reaching across her thighs from something that happened to her when she was a kid, but she’s never told me what caused them. If I touch them, she shuts down, so I’ve learned not to touch them.

  Now, she undresses, and my cock stirs again at the sight of her. Her tits are my favorite part of her. I reach out and caress them. After she steps out of her jeans, she grabs one of my hands and slips it between her legs. The wet heat of her pussy is all it takes to make me rock hard.

  “How?” I ask her.

  Alana always dictates how things go, the position we use, and how long it lasts. She needs to be in control of something. We tried switching roles a few times, but she can’t be submissive and I can’t argue with her.

  “Ju
st real. Nothing kinky. I just want to be with you. We haven’t been together lately. You were so busy with packing and everything.” She pouts and I hate myself a little bit more. I should break this off with her. It isn’t fair and I know she doesn’t think she deserves more, but she does. Yet all of my logic and emotion disappear when she pushes my fingers further into her cunt. “Touch me, Jack.”

  I do as she asks, bringing her body to the edge before sinking to my knees in front of her. The smell of her, the taste of her – so familiar. I slide my tongue inside of her pussy. Her fingernails dig into my scalp and I tease her clit while she pushes herself against my face. I need more than this, though, so as she starts to crest, I move away, knowing what will come next and how needy she will be.

  On cue, Alana pushes me to the bed and straddles me. She slips her wet, hot pussy over my cock and it’s fucking heaven. All of my reason and doubt disappear as I feel her contract around me. She rides me until we’re both satisfied – and I am extremely satisfied.

  “I wish you weren’t so far away. It’s so hard without you,” she says after.

  I stroke her hair. I know her mind races after we fuck. I’ve seen it when her dead eyes come back to life – the fear that it’s a mistake, that things will change between us. Despite my shitty lack of self-control, I would never hurt her. She’s my best friend, my only friend now that Dave’s gone and left us behind with nothing.

  She dozes off and I will myself to love her, to be more for her, but I can’t change anything. It’s weak and pathetic, but those are the traits that seem to define me.

  ****

  Alana comes back one more time during the first week of classes, one night after I finish work at the café. It’s late and I’ve just parked my bike when I walk up to the dorm and see her sitting on the grassy hill nearby. I join her on the hill; it’s still warm and the night seems more comforting than the sterility of my dorm anyway.

  “I missed you again,” she says. I sense her wariness in the way she bites her lip, the way that the words don’t fall from her as they should. “I needed to see you.”

  “I know, and I miss you, too. But you’re going to spend all your money on gas.”

  She only works part time, between classes and dealing with her mother. It’s unfortunate; she’s too smart to be where she is. She could have had scholarships, too, but she didn’t want to leave. I’ll never understand that and it’s what divides us more than anything.

  “Why didn’t you stay?”

  We’ve been over this and yet we have to rehash it at least once a month during the school year. I know Alana’s moods well now. This one is neediness, driven by fear of losing me, of losing us. We aren’t an us, we haven’t been an us in years, and yet she still imagines a future where there is an us. Every time, I try to let her down gently, but it doesn’t work. And, of course, every time I end up in bed with her, and then I wonder why she believes there’s a chance.

  “You know I couldn’t. I needed out of there. Fucking bullshit and the way they looked at me. I need this, Alana. I need something new. I need to prove that I’m not this guy, that I can be something else.”

  “You can do that at home.”

  I shake my head. “No. I can’t. And you know it. What’s going on?”

  She lies back on the grass and I join her. She slips her hand down to my crotch, but as much as my cock says one thing, I let my brain take over this time. I move her hand back.

  “I’m losing you,” she says. “I can just feel it. Something is different. The air is different.”

  “You’re being ridiculous. The air is exactly the same. And it smells like ass.”

  I get a laugh out of her, but the sadness returns. “I’m not enough for you.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “Why is it so hard with us, Jack?”

  “Because you’re my best friend, and I adore you, and I want to love you always. I can’t love you always if I have to love you. You know I can’t be in a relationship.”

  “You’re not him,” she tells me.

  We’ve trodden over our pasts endlessly in the time since we met. I’m not him and she’s not the victim she was. Either way, though, I refuse to talk about this. I need school, I need to get out, and I need not to have roots here. The farther I get away, the better. And I will never give Alana what she needs, which is someone to love her unconditionally. For me, everything has a condition. She’s just lucky she gets the shortest list.

  “You wanna go for a ride?” I don’t really feel like going back out now that I’m mere yards from my room, but I also don’t want to invite her back there. Some nights, there is too much promise in what’s supposed to be fun.

  She shakes her head. “I miss him, you know.”

  “Dave?”

  She nods.

  “Me too. Asshole never even said goodbye.”

  “He didn’t want us to hurt if he dies. But I hurt already.”

  I say nothing, only hold her against me. I miss him, too. At the end of high school, we had a fallout – something stupid, my own anger at everyone tearing me away from the two friends I actually had. Although we fixed things before he left, I still imagine the day we get a telegram that he’s dead and I know that guilt will destroy me for good.

  “Everyone leaves me,” she says.

  “You’re being whiny as fuck.”

  She smiles. “You’re a shitty friend.”

  “The worst,” I agree.

  And we’re okay. It’s not a mood shift; it’s not a sudden acceptance of anything. It’s simply realizing that, for all of the ways we hurt each other, we are still better together than apart. Alana kisses me, but it’s a resigned kiss. I’m not sleeping with her tonight. She’s too volatile and as much as her skin sets mine on fire when her hands slide up my arms, it’s dangerous to be with her like this.

  “You want me to go, don’t you?”

  “I want you to wake up tomorrow and not hate me.”

  There have been a few times in our friendship, early on – after we broke up - when I didn’t listen to the warnings in my head. She would have moods like this and try to solve everything with sex. And every time, I conceded. In these moods, the sex is better than it’s ever been. Alana loves to prove that I need her and she gets creative when she wants to show me something.

  I get hard just thinking of it, but I resist the urge to have sex with her here on the grass. In the morning, I won’t be her boyfriend. And she’ll feel used, like she did those other times. To outsiders, we may have a fucked up relationship, but I know the rules now and I make sure I follow them, even if Alana cannot.

  “You’re still a shitty friend.”

  “Yup. And you’re still whiny as fuck.”

  Chapter 3

  By Saturday morning, I feel like I’ve been back at school for the whole semester. Not having a roommate has its perks, but the biggest one is that I wake up at noon, undisturbed by anyone else. I have to work, but first I need coffee. I grab my work clothes – black pants, black shirt – except for the apron, and I get dressed before heading into the lounge.

  The girl sitting on the couch looks like everyone else at this fucking school. Blonde, clean cut, dressed in clothes that probably cost more than my grandmother’s house.

  “Lost?” I ask.

  It’s her eyes that get me. I don’t even know what color they are. They seem to swim across the entire palate of blues and greens, no color enough to own the eye completely. There is something else in those eyes. A strange innocence mixed with a subtle sensuality that I bet she doesn’t even know she possesses. I can’t look away from her.

  “I’m waiting for my boyfriend.” She gestures to the hall. I guess she’s saying this boyfriend is in the bathroom or something. It figures she has a boyfriend. Something about her, though, is causing things to happen that I don’t understand. The voice in my head knows how poorly this could go and I try to act cool, to distance myself from her.

  “Innocent thing like you?
I wouldn’t let you out of my sight.”

  That was not cool and certainly not distant. I’m standing here flirting with this girl who probably thinks I’m a creep. I see in her face a wary curiosity, but girls like her think of guys like me as nothing more than a challenge. Anything that could happen after this moment would just turn out bad, likely with a lot of anger and her calling upon the aforementioned boyfriend to kick my ass. I don’t even have to see him. I know his type.

  She meets my gaze and her mouth turns up in a wry smile. “I’m not that innocent.”

  The challenge is there and I would love to test it. This girl looks like she’s just one wild night away from becoming an entirely new woman. I wouldn’t mind being the guy to help her out, to give her that one wild night. I’m tempted to touch her, to play with her damp hair, to see how she’d react if I kissed her right here. Her challenge would surely result in me being slapped, though.

  “Sweetheart, I am sure we have very different understandings of the term.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me, but I don’t know that I mind being your idea of innocent.”

  There it is. The judgment. She may have something hidden in her that’s more than what she appears to be on the surface, but the superficial persona is too important to her. Fuck her and her judgments. I’m going to watch her squirm.

  I step closer and lean down slightly in her direction. She smells like she just showered; her wet hair carries the scent of a strawberry field.

  “I don’t doubt it, but I just wonder what would happen if you let loose a little. You know, had a bit of fun.”

  She backs away. I can almost hear the words in her head. Freak. Loser. What would her parents think of her for talking to me? What would her boyfriend think? She’s still nervous, but I can sense that our closeness makes her feel something. I just don’t know that I want to test it.