Текст книги "Quarterback Bait "

Автор книги: Celia Loren

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Chapter Seven

Ash

July 12^th

 

Anya fluttered around the house like a parakeet—she was a dervish of clinking bangles and twirling hair. From our garage sale couch, I watched her reposition our modest furniture, as if end tables shifting an inch or so to the left would make a world of difference. She chewed on her lips. She lit incense.

“You could help, you know, Miss Ashleigh,” my mother tutted, invoking a scarcely established hierarchy. For in most ways, I considered Anya Bennett to be my sister, rather than my mother. We were like the Gilmore Girls. My mother wasn't exactly young, but every part of her appearance conspired to present this fiction. She had long, flowing hair, which would have been as close to black as mine in color but for the constant henna streaks. She wore amulets, six of them—little Buddhas and stones meant to ward off “evil spirits” hung freely between her ample breasts. There had been times in the past when I'd been jealous of my mother, who was such a blithe hippie Goddess that boys my age tended to gravitate toward her excessive chill. The handful of times I'd brought a boy home, Anya had a way of appearing in some flowy, gauzy, see-through dress with perfect lipstick and cat eyes. And the few times I'd confronted her about this brazen sexuality, she'd smiled coyly and told me that “attraction was a game.” You know, as if that explained anything.

“Pastor Sterling will be over in fifteen minutes, Ash. I'm not playing around. Get dressed!”

“I am dressed.”

Anya put her hands on her wide hips. She'd gained some curves in the past few weeks of her whirlwind romance, which wasn't at all a bad thing considering her typically skinny, recovering-addict frame. I had to admit it: my mother did seem happier and healthier these days. Not wanting to credit the creepy storefront church guy, I told myself it was something to do with the Texas air. Maybe everyone who moved to the lone star state enjoyed a certain spike in vitals.

“PS—you don't actually call him Pastor Sterling, do you? Like on dates?”

“That's none of your beeswax, butterfly.” She swatted me with a Tibetan throw pillow, but I could see the smile in her eyes. It was the same look that I was sure had prompted Carson to press me about boy stuff on our thrifting expedition all those weeks before. Anya was definitely smitten.

With a pang, I imagined what my half-sister was doing that night. Probably playing some open mic venue, or hosting a dinner party with Gonzo and the rest of her bohemian friends. We'd hung out earlier in the week, at which point she'd given me my birthday present. A red Schwinn, with a big wicker basket hanging from the front. “So you can zip over faster!” she'd cooed, eyes all hopeful and sweet. It was easily the nicest present I'd ever been given, but something about it still managed to make me tear up. Perhaps because zipping over wasn't good enough; if I was being honest, I actually wanted to live with my sister. I'd have given anything to truly feel like a part of her life, to kick it on the daily with her and her cool, adult, misfit friends. Even dealing with Tex, the clown boyfriend, seemed superior to all the sleepless nights I spent, worrying about my mother's mental health—and now, presumably, a wacko country Pastor's.

“If not for me and Bill, you should consider getting cute for the son.” I rolled my eyes harder, and added a groan. Anya had been talking about Pastor Sterling's mystery son for days now—she'd almost been as giddy about his existence as her fiancé’s. “Bill tells me he's an athlete!” she'd said several times, wiggling her eyebrows at me over a Lean Cuisine meal. Meanwhile, I'd spent my last day at Lee High avoiding an army of jocks roaming the halls with unwrapped condoms, each apparently having been tasked to pelt me with lubed-up prophylactics. Mr. Dempsey had mentioned last-day-of-school hazing as a big thing for East Texas upperclassmen, but that hadn't been any solace for a girl who'd been bullied all year long. If I was leaving high school with anything, it was the fairly strong conviction that I'd never go out of my way to befriend an athlete as long as I lived.

“He's a Longhorn, sweetheart!” Anya plowed on, obliviously fanning out the curtains she'd made from old bed sheets. “You can ask him about school! I'm sure he knows all the good dorms and dining halls.” Having never been to college, my mother had retained a pretty starry-eyed view of the place. Dorms and dining halls? I had no doubt in my mind that a Longhorn would be better versed in which classes could easily get a footballer a passing grade, or which dealer sold the best roofies.

“Not interested, Ma. And Carson told me to focus on my studies next year. I'm not trying to get in with some son of a preacher man.”

Anya whirled on me and grinned, a little madly. She started to twist her hips to and fro, in a way I'd long ago learned to recognize as certain doom.

“The only boy who could ever reach me...” she began to warble. I threw the pillow back at her face, but this only seemed to make Anya louder. “...was the son of a preacher man! The only boy, who could ever teach me –,”

“Anya, cut it out!”

“...WAS THE SON OF A PREACHER MAN!”

She bent over the couch and grabbed my wrists, turning my palms upward and covering them with her own. I laughed, in spite of myself. My crazy Mom did know how to have fun, I'd give her that. I grumbled out the rest of the chorus:

“Yes he was...was...”

“Ooh yes, he wa-as!”

Before we could butcher any more Dusty Springfield, the doorbell rang. My mother immediately righted herself, smoothing out her ankle-grazing skirt like a woman in a Jane Austen novel. She reached for her hair and mouthed at me, “How do I look?”

I rolled my eyes a final time, but conceded my mother a thumbs up. I'd decided, under Carson's advisement, to try being optimistic about this new step-father. Maybe Pastor Sterling would be the one to make my mother happy. If he was a man of the cloth, that at least eliminated certain other vices—he probably wasn't an addict, for instance. And his having a son at UT had been a grounding fact to learn. People with sons at good schools couldn't be huge failures at life, could they? Even if the sons were Neanderthal jocks?

My mother ran to the door and I stood to take stock of my own appearance. Today, I'd opted for ratty jeans, a maroon tube top, and a navy blue hoodie that had been part of my mother's wardrobe since before I was born. I had blue streaks this week, though my hair was getting longer, so the dye was looking patchy. I wasn't trying to impress anyone, though. If anything, Pastor Sterling and his dickie-clad frat boy son needed to impress me.

“I'm so excited!” my mother mouthed again, with one hand at the ready on the door knob. She'd tried to arrange this meeting weeks ago, but I'd successfully hedged. There had been whirlwind boyfriends before, I figured. Some could be waited out. But not, apparently, Pastor Sterling.

“Baby!” she cried, in a strange, high voice on opening the door. I leaned forward to get a gander. Pastor Sterling wore a pristinely white Houston Astros cap, starched-looking pale blue jeans, and a terse smile. He had big whiskers, in the way of the Marlboro Man. I was surprised to see that he was tinier than my mother; the top of his head just barely reached her cheekbones. His entrance was preceded by a long, mahogany cane.

“Pastor, this is my daughter, Ash,” Anya gushed, guiding her man-friend towards our single armchair. I raised a hand in hello, but Pastor Sterling only spared me a glance from the corner of his eye. His attention, to his credit, seemed fixed on my mother. He held her forearm lightly as she eased him into the La-Z-Boy.

“Now, where is your handsome son?” Anya asked, turning her head around the room like the son of her preacher man could be hiding in some corner. “I made lasagna for four!” I stared at the grubby area rug. Actually, Russell Stouffer had made a lasagna for four, but this didn't seem to be the time to quibble.

“Landy's running late. He just got back from training camp last night, and has been making some rounds. Tooling about with his lady love, and all that jazz.” For whatever reason, this pronouncement made Pastor Sterling break out into a croak-y laugh, which my mother echoed. They gazed into one another's eyes for a freaky moment. I pulled a face in the direction of the street.

“I didn't know he had a lady love,” Anya said carefully, in a tone I understood was for my benefit. I felt my face flush red. What was it about mothers? Even the craziest among them were like, programmed to be embarrassing. Suddenly hot, I took off my hoodie and tossed it aside.

“That'll be his highness!” croaked Pastor Sterling, who appeared not to have heard Anya's implication. We all three turned our heads in the direction of the darkening sky, and the road in front of our condo. Ours was a poorly-lit street, so the headlights of the Saab tooling towards our driveway stood out against the twilight. I stepped closer to the window, as if I'd been pulled there. There was something about that Saab...it reminded me. But then again, plenty of people had Saabs.

“Anya, do you need me to take the lasagna out of the oven?” I asked, sweeping my hair behind my ears. Pastor Sterling seemed to stiffen at my address, but I didn't spare him a glance. I'd been calling my mother by her first name for as long as I could remember.

“Would you, baby? You're a peach!” I turned toward the kitchen as the car's lights clicked off in the street, and the driver shifted his vehicle into park.

My mom and the Pastor murmured softly to one another as I attempted to negotiate the pasta pan without oven mitts. (We'd never owned oven mitts. Bennett women bunched towels to extract their Bagel Bites from the oven, or they didn't use their ovens.) I listened to the sounds of footfall, winding up the walkway. I still felt nervous, and hot for some reason disconnected to our lack of central AC. The doorbell rang, even though I knew the screen was open.

“Landon!” Anya cried, as I bent low over the melting cheese. The meal didn't seem quite done, but I'd never minded a slightly gooey Stouffer. Carefully, using a handful of rags I kept handy for just this purpose, I began to remove dinner from the oven. “It's so wonderful to meet you properly! Welcome to our little home.”

“You've got a lovely place here, ma'am. And it's nice to meet you, too.”

My throat caught. I fumbled. And suddenly, the lasagna had slipped from my hands and clattered all over the floor. Hot, violent streaks of sauce popped against my legs, seeming to sizzle against my bare skin. I yelped.

“Jesus! Sweetheart?”

“Jesus what?” The Pastor gasped.

Anya caught herself.  “Oh, Bill—forgive me…”

“Never mind. What was that banging?”

“That's my baby, Ash—honey?”

I scanned the kitchen frantically, like it might contain some hiding place I hadn't thought of. But of course it was too late. I could hear the whole trio approaching the swing door, the Pastor moving slowly with his cane. I reached for some of the rags scattered across the floor, but there was clearly no masking the mess. Or me. I braced myself.

He was the first one through the door. Landy. The nickname seemed strange—somehow at odds with the breezy, impulsive oddball I'd met on that roof.

Yet he looked the exact same, if not tanner and more... ripped. I wondered if it was the harsh aluminum light that was somehow enhancing his skin and contours. But then, that would be insane. His arms seemed to swell out of their linen t-shirt, his forearms were dark with hair. Then it occurred to me that I'd never seen him in the daylight before, in any case. I wasn't exactly equipped to catalogue how he'd changed.

“Hi,” he breathed. Then he frowned, and his jaw fell open with realization. I swallowed, before hiding my face in a handy rag. Toddler logic: the problem will just go away if you can't see it.

“What a mess!”

“Oh, Ashleigh! What happened? Are your hurt?” I felt my mother's hand on my back, soothing and heavy. Oh God. Oh God. Oh, just make them go away.

The Pastor tutted some more in the ensuing silence, but for once my mother was playing her part. She continued to rub my back with one hand as I could hear her bending low over the destroyed lasagna, beginning to wipe up the glass shards and mozzarella with the bundled rags. “Accidents happen. We'll order in, is what we'll do.”

“I'm so sorry, Mom.”

“Hey! Don't fret,” my mother said, beginning to wipe at the mess on my legs. I must have been burned by the sauce splatter, but to this day I can't recall feeling any pain. “The whole point of today was just to introduce you to your new stepbrother, anyways.” Then Anya peeled the rag from my face, forcing my gaze up. He was still standing there, looking uncomfortable and freaked out in a white t-shirt and the same starched jeans his Dad wore. I noted a light gloss of grease in his hair. And the fact that he was so much more handsome than my memories had made him. Cartoonishly so.

Landon Sterling.

My new stepbrother.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Chapter Eight

Landon

July 12^th

 

“Now I know she didn't want me to tell anyone,” Ms. Bennett growled, through a mouth full of pizza. “But at midnight tonight, my baby turns eighteen.”

The old man nodded in a way that told me he already knew, then smiled a half-assed smile at...Ashleigh. It was frickin weird to say her name. She'd been Doll in my mind, and for so many weeks it was like she'd lived exclusively in my head. The whole freaky evening felt like having dinner with a dream.

Ash blushed fire-engine red, before dipping her fingers into her water glass and flicking them in the direction of her mother. Anya ducked and giggled like a child while her daughter's eyebrows met in the center of her forehead. Their dynamic was the exact opposite of me and my old man's—Anya was like the talkative, giddy teenager, and Ash was like the harried Mom. She'd been the one to order the pizzas. And she'd paid for them (despite very minimal protest from the Pastor) out of a little cloth cashier's bag I’d watched her pull from the freezer. While she hadn't said a word to me since the lasagna incident, I was enjoying watching the expressions moving across her face. I wondered if Doll was some kind of actress. I wondered a lot of things, on realizing that I didn't actually know anything about this girl except what her mouth tasted like, and how she operated in my Spank Bank.

Her hair was the same ebony rat's nest, except the streaks were a different color—a kind of acid blue, like cartoon rain. Twice, I caught her laughing. These were laughs directed at her Mom, but they came out kind—it was the sort of sweet laughter that lets you know the person is making fun of herself, too.

I watched her eyes lots, as they'd had been so hard to pin down color-wise during our one crazy night. In the living room light, they looked bluish grey. They matched her streaks. I thought I could sometimes glimpse in her eyes this well of sadness and smarts, a whole gamut of feelings a teenage girl wasn't supposed to have. They kind of scared me, her eyes. They made me think of me how complicated everything was about to get, between her, me, our parents.

...But she also looked fly as hell in this tube top that showed off her tits. Twice, she bent low over the coffee table to get another slice of cheese pizza, and both times I had to look away for fear of a stirring in my pants. And Lord knew that in those bounce-a-quarter jeans Pop insisted I wear for “company,” there would be no hiding a boner.

“Eight-friggin-teen. I can't believe my baby's a woman now,” Anya was saying, moving her glittering hands around the room. She directed all of her words to the Pastor, who smiled a little more than usual but said his typical amount of nothing. It was funny—for a Pastor, my Pop was a pretty anti-social guy. He basically only spoke to his congregation, God, and me—and the latter only when I did something wrong.

“I don't think people just turn into women the day they're eighteen, Anya,” Doll—I mean, Ash—grumbled back. She had this habit of flicking her hair behind her ears when she was annoyed. It was a gesture I recognized from the rooftop, and the memory's reappearance made me bite my lip to keep a stupid grin from cracking across my face.

“You're right, baby. It takes a village.” Anya nodded her head several times. I was shocked to see her concede to backtalk so quick. That kind of shit never flew in my house.

 “She means under the eyes of the law, young lady.” To my shock, this proclamation had been Pop's. He leaned forward in the armchair—just the way he did at home—and turned his flinty gaze on his girlfriend's daughter. He looked the way he did when he was about to deliver me a fable or a parable, whatever warning would precede a physical lesson—all thin lips and furrowed brow. I hated to see him echoing that shit in a stranger's house, even if Ash had mouthed off. I mean, she wasn't his daughter.

But then I remembered: she wasn't exactly a stranger, either. And she would sort of be his daughter, if he and Crazy had their way. And cue the chunks rising in my throat.

“Excuse me—umm, where is the bathroom?” The shitty pizza wasn't sitting well in my stomach. Well, the pizza and the images I kept failing to fend off—images like Ash, sitting in my childhood kitchen, doing her homework. Or Ash, in my childhood bathroom, in printed pajamas. Or Ash, in my childhood bed, in nothing at all...

“What'sa matter with you, boy? Your face is like death warmed over.”

“Nothing, sir. I just have to use the head.”

“We're in the middle of dinner. You sit tight.” Pop shot me a furious look. I thought I could sense Ash and her Mom exchanging glances over the Pastor's head, and dared to hope that his rudeness would make a lasting impression. Maybe, as soon as we left the house, Anya would turn to her daughter and say, “Phew. Looks like I dodged a bullet there. We'll call the wedding off, but you should keep in touch with that nice young man.”

But the smart part of my brain understood this was probably too good to be true. Instead of registering shock that her fiancé had lashed out at her daughter, Anya simply leaned over the couch and put a bejeweled hand on Pop's knee. I watched her squeeze his skinny leg, with the kneading gesture of an old, close friend. Pop immediately softened. The smiles returned. That's when it occurred to me: they could actually really love each other. In which case, I was truly doomed.

“Ash will show you the bathroom, sweetheart,” Anya said, while continuing to rub the Pastor (in an increasingly sexual manner). The hostess tipped her chin, and I let my gaze return to Doll, who stood, flicked her hair, and edged past me down a narrow, dark hallway. I tried not to watch her ass swish as I followed at her heels like a puppy.

The Bennett's condo, if tiny, had a labyrinth's lay-out—the first hallway t-boned into two branches. I assumed the bedrooms lay to the left, as Ash took us down a curving path to the right that seemed to lead to a single door. We weren't far from the living room. I could still hear Pop and Anya, speaking in dull, sweet tones.

She whirled on me before I could reach for the doorknob, forcing me to contend with the nubile body I'd been trying so hard not to size up all evening. Her eyes locked into mine, like keys in a door. Before I could even think what to say, I had my hands hovering over her waist.

“So. Eighteen, huh?”

Her eyes narrowed. I thought she might rear back and swat me, like she had on the roof. But instead, oh-so-coolly, she pressed her palms against my grasping fingers and pushed me away. It was a gentle gesture, but a final-feeling one. My heart sank.

“We can't do this. Landy.” Back in the living room, Anya let out a ridiculous, high-pitched laugh. I watched Ash's eyes flick in the direction of the living room. The maternal look had returned to her face. It was like she was worried about leaving her mother alone, for even a few minutes. She spoke to me next without making eye contact.

“This is the first time, do you understand me? I'm Ash. You're Landon. And it's nice to meet you.”

“I'm not an idiot, you know.”

Her eyes snapped back to me, and I shivered as they seemed to bore through my skin. Her chest heaved with a sigh, and then she tilted her pretty head back, so it fell against the flimsy wall with a soft thud. Her lips parted slightly. If we were anywhere else, I would have pressed myself against her. I would have sunk my mouth into the white, soft expanse of her exposed neck, like I was fucking Dracula or something.

“If you're not an idiot, you need to stop drooling.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I'm not an idiot.” She peeled herself off the wall. Though she was beautiful even in this harried state, I decided I could do without the whole careworn teenager shtick. Sure, Anya seemed flaky—but I'd seen nothing so far to suggest that the woman couldn't take care of herself. Why did Ash need to act so very protective? So wise, so holier-than-thou?

“Eighteen means you're still kind of an idiot,” I tried. But the air had gone out of my flirting tires. She didn't laugh. She didn't even crack a smile. She just looked mad at me.

“If this is you playing my older brother, we can just skip past that noise right now. I'm not looking for a role model, ‘kay? Especially not some guy who would have fucked me but for an inconvenient peep at my driver's license.”

“How about you cut it with the lip, Ashleigh? I'm just trying to make the best of an awkward situation.”

“Where did your Dad even meet her, huh? What is he? Some cult-leader, who preys on recovering addicts? How much medical debt are we gonna have to bail you out of?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” I could feel the nausea returning to my stomach, and transforming itself into rage. She couldn't talk about Pop like that. Only I was allowed to talk about Pop like that. “You don't know me. And it's not my fault that your hippie-dippy Mom wandered into his church. For all I know, she's the one trying to scam us.”

“Don't you dare talk about my mother that way!”

“Oh, is she your mother? I thought she was your Anya. By the way, what the fuck is that about? Are you some celebrity kid? Who calls their mother by her first name?”

Her face was beginning to stripe purple, too—she was becoming blotchy with anger before my eyes. Her eyes darkened, her eyebrows knit, the rat's nest suddenly struck me as witchy and unkempt. The tube top suddenly looked like it was trying too hard. Maybe the spell is lifting, I thought to myself. And it must have been a spell to begin with, right? How else could I have gotten so hung up on some smart-mouthed, punk-ass, eye-rolling teenage girl? Hadn't they been bad enough the first time around?

“You don't know a single thing about me, jock boy. So why don't you and Father Hillbilly just fuck back off to your storefront operation.”

“Ooh, I just love it when jailbait feminists think they know shit. Whatever absent Daddy made you this twisted, please slap him for me if you ever find his address.”

By this point, our faces hovered within centimeters of one another. But her pouty red lips had lost their whole appeal. It was as sudden to my attraction to her in the first place—in the span of thirty seconds, she'd become just a yelling ball of evil. No different than the sophomore fan club, or Zora. One day, I'd have to find out why almost all the girls I was attracted to were crazy brats.

Ash quivered with rage, and her long, dark lashes seemed hell-bent on preventing a few shining drops of moisture from falling down her face. I was breathing through my nose in short, bullish bursts. We stared at one another for what felt like a long time, before she finally whipped her hair in my face in her haste to return to the living room. I got a mouthful of cucumber melon and Virginia Slim—that familiar smell, from the party—and spat it out with a grumble. I didn't watch her ass as she flounced off that time.

After one of the angrier pisses I've ever taken, I returned to the living room determined not to look at Ash. I'd eat my pizza, then shuffle the old man home. I'd find some sneaky way to avoid dinners like these in the future. And heck, in a few weeks, I'd be back at school—and Ash would probably be returned to whatever progressive love-in high school she'd wandered out of. I'd graduate, and in the worst-case scenario, I could avoid her for all but certain, very special, Christmases.

It will be good for Dad to have a lady. I can't begrudge him that. But I’m not about to put up with the devil's spawn so he can be happy. I’m a star quarterback. I’m a motherfucking contender.

When I returned to the living room, Anya greeted me with a manic grin and a plate of stale grocery-store coffee cake. “Your father and I were just talking, Landon, and we've had the most wonderful idea.” I should have known enough by then to brace myself. But Anya, to her credit, knew how to surprise a guy.

“It's getting so late, and we're having such a blast—why don't you both just sleep over? I can make up the couch for you, and we've got a whole big box of extra night clothes...then maybe we can all do a big family brunch in the morning!” Her eyes were wide, appealing. It took concentrated effort not to pull a face at Ash.

“I think we can have a little sleepover,” Pop said, his tone as lecherous as it had been a few weeks before, when he'd been sizing up Zora in the shower. As if this night couldn't be any more nausea-inducing, now I had to imagine my derelict father getting his D wet for the first time in thirty years, or whatever it was.

Meanwhile, Anya was nodding her head like the matter was decided. She stood and stretched elaborately, before holding out a hand to the Pastor, who took it. She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, engulfing me for an instant in a hot cloud of patchouli. I watched Ash bending down to gather the dinner dishes, over her mother's shoulder.

“Happy birthday again, sweetheart!” Anya murmured at her daughter—but she spoke into my ear. It somehow sounded seductive. I was aware of the moisture popping off her lips as she spoke. “We love you! Take good care of your step-brother-to-be.” Ash didn't so much as shrug, she just continued stacking plates. I realized there had been no presents, no cards, no heralding of this eighteenth birthday at all. I wondered then if she really had turned eighteen that night. I wondered if she really had asked her mother not to celebrate it, or if that was just bunk for our benefit.

Anya repeated herself, as she pulled away from me. “Take good care of him, baby.” And I thought I spied a wink.