Текст книги "The First Last Boy"

Автор книги: Sonya Weiss

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The First Last Boy

Sonya Weiss

Copyright © 2015 by Sonya Weiss

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights are reserved. No part of this book may reproduced by any means without the author’s written permission.

Cover design by Alison Bliss

Stock Photo by Dollar Photo Club

Chapter One

TANA

Three nights ago I’d asked my best friend, Ryan Collins, to have sex with me. The request blew up in my face and I didn’t even have being drunk to use as an excuse for asking him. I closed my laptop and rolled over onto my back, staring at the brown ringed water spot on the bedroom ceiling. Eighteen years old and still a virgin. There were half a dozen boys I could hook up with before heading off to my freshman year at Bayside College in Illinois, but I wanted my first time to be with someone I trusted, someone who made my heart beat faster just by being near him.

Grabbing my phone, I texted him. Hey, wanna hang?

Montana, no.

Usually Ryan called me Tana, the shortened version of my name. The one he’s used since the day we met. He only used Montana when he was pissed off. Like he’d been ever since I’d asked him, like I’d suggested he let me rip out his nipple piercing or something. He’d recoiled and shut me out the second I’d mentioned sex.

Whatever, I texted back, trying to convince myself I just wanted company and not specifically his. I had to get a grip and stop lying to myself, stop ignoring how Ryan affected me.

It was Friday night and since my friends went to a concert I couldn’t afford, I didn’t have anything to do. Ignoring the incoming text, I rolled off the bed to see if Mom made it home yet. If she hadn’t, it was up to me to fix something for supper so Creature, my eight-year-old brother, Mark, wouldn’t starve. We called him that because ever since he’d seen the Harry Potter movies, he’d wanted to be called Creature after Kreacher in the movies. He’d walked around for weeks after seeing them muttering insults like the house elf.

Mom wasn’t home. I didn’t mind cooking or helping out when I wasn’t working my shift as a waitress at the Blue Seagull. Mom had busted her ass for us since the divorce. My father bailed three years ago when Creature was five and I was fifteen. No big loss. We were better off without his drama. He showed up hit and miss and only stayed long enough to stir up reality show type shit.

“Hey, Creature! You want some pizza?” I yelled down the hallway when none of the options at hand in the ancient, rattling refrigerator looked appealing.

He flung open his bedroom door and poked his head out, blinking, readjusting to the real world from his virtual one. “Real pizza, not the kind you make?” he asked with a mixture of suspicion and hope.

So I’m not known for my culinary skills. “Yeah, real pizza.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the change I had left. “Let me get my purse and I’ll see for sure if I have enough.”

He followed me back to my room and did a dive landing onto my bed, narrowly missing my laptop while he made explosive noises. “Where’s Ryan? He always comes over on Friday.”

“I dunno, and careful with my laptop.” I picked up my purse and dug through my wallet for the leftover tip money. “There’s enough.”

“Yay!” He leaned over the bed and plopped the computer onto the crappy carpet I thought was left over from the seventies. He bounced up to his knees, then his feet and started jumping on the bed. “Hurry up and order it before Mom comes home and does this.” He pulled his eyebrows into a frown. “You need vegetables, young man.”

I laughed at the imitation and picked up my phone, ignoring a second text message. I knew Ryan wanted to explain the reasons why sex with me was such a god-awful bad idea but I was too humiliated to deal with it. I dialed the number of the pizza place at the strip mall a few miles away and ordered a pepperoni with extra cheese.

“Mom’s gonna complain.”

“Sit,” I said after I hung up. With my hands on his shoulders, I scowled into his face. “About Mom...don’t tell her. Problem solved.”

“She might not notice anyway. She’s always working,” he said. He swung his bare feet back and forth. “Who’s gonna take care of me when you leave for college?”

My heart twisted at the worry reminder. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I’d wondered the same thing. “There’s no...c’mon...what is it?”

“Bridge to cross yet.” He jumped off the bed. “Wanna play one of my games? I’ll let you win.”

I followed him into his room that smelled like wet socks, half-eaten Cheetos, and sweaty little boy. I wrinkled my nose. “How can you stand this? It’s almost toxic in here. You should clean.”

“You’re not Mom.” He slumped his shoulders and dragged his voice out in another weary imitation of hers. “Look at this room, son. How can you find anything? It looks like the city dump. One day, you’ll get lost in here and I’ll have to call search and rescue.”

“She’s right.” I laughed and grabbed him around the neck to scrub the top of his head. His hair was thick and chestnut brown just like mine and he also had the same brown eyes. He looked so much like me that when we were out together, people sometimes asked if he was my kid. I loved him like he was. Thanks to some stuff the absentee father put him through, Mark had what his doctor called arrested emotional development. It made him act younger than he was.

He pulled away, rolled his eyes, and handed me a controller. “C’mon.”

We’d only played for fifteen minutes when the doorbell rang. That was fast. I hoped the pizza wasn’t doughy this time. “Coming,” I yelled and tossed aside the controller.

“You can’t do that! Your man will die.” Mark made a frantic grab for the controller and saved me from virtual destruction.

I hurried into the living room and yanked open the door. Under the soft illumination of the porch light, Ryan stared back at me in all his holy hell hotness. My stomach clenched, then dropped to my feet. I experienced the suspended-in-space sensation every time I saw him.

His eyes were a mix of blue and green that made my friends talk about how beautiful they were. They reminded me of the colors found in a turbulent storm. He had a hand on each side of the doorframe and leaned slightly forward. With his dark hair, handsome face, and tattooed body, he was every girl’s bad boy fantasy. When he wore the white tank undershirts he favored, like he was doing now, it showed off his well-defined muscles and made it difficult to think about anything but how good he looked.

“What?” I managed to snap out like his being there didn’t affect me at all. I was getting good at hiding the way my body had started reacting around him.

He motioned to the storm door. “Let me in.”

I shrugged and didn’t move to undo the latch. “What for?”

His lips tightened and the storm in his eyes grew more pronounced. “Come on, Montana. Don’t be like that.”

Behind him, a car with a pizza sign on the roof pulled up. Ryan jogged off the porch, paid for the pizza, and when the delivery guy left, said, “Let me in or I’ll hold your pizza hostage.”

I would have told him so what, but then Creature ran up behind me yelling Ryan’s name in an excited tone. He thought of Ryan like a brother and sometimes I think Mark loved spending time with Ryan more than he did with me.

Mark barreled past me and shoved open the door. “Gimme.” He took the box and dashed into the kitchen leaving me alone with Ryan and the most awkward question in the world hanging between us.

“Since you paid for it, you want some pizza?” I asked, hoping he’d say no, hoping he’d say yes.

“Yeah, sure.” He opened the door and stepped too close to me.

I spun around and led the way into the small kitchen and pushed Mark back from the box where he hovered over it, shoving a slice of pizza into his mouth. “That’s nasty. Use a plate.”

“Why?” he asked around a mouthful. “Mom’s not here.”

“Because you’re dropping stuff from your mouth into the box.” I set three plates on the table, sliding one in front of Ryan harder than I intended. He caught it before it sailed off the edge and gave me his what-the-hell look.

I turned to grab three cups, forcing myself to take a deep, calming breath. “You can have water or milk,” I offered since that was all we had. Tomorrow was Saturday. I would use some of Mom’s paycheck and some of my own after I picked it up and get groceries while she ran errands and paid bills. Then we’d start the same cycle of hoping that nothing broke down and nobody got sick or injured so we could make it another week.

Mom worked full time at the hospital as a receptionist during the day and then nights at the retirement home usually six days a week. She’d dropped out of college to help support my dad’s new investment business when they first married. She’d never returned to school and regretted it. It was one of the reasons she always pushed education on me.

Ryan reached around me, his tanned arm brushing mine, causing that fluttering sensation in my stomach to increase and slid a cup beneath the faucet. “Mark is thirsty.” He filled the cup and gave me another what-the-hell look from his gorgeous eyes.

“Sorry, I was lost in thought.” I filled the other two cups and joined them at the table. Thankfully, Creature kept up a steady volley of stories and I didn’t have to contribute much. I sensed Ryan’s gaze on me from time to time but kept my attention focused on the pizza. Every bite I forced down tasted like cardboard and I’d never wished more in all my life that I could rewind time and take back the question I’d asked him.

*

RYAN

I don’t know what the hell Montana was thinking to ask someone like me to have sex with her for the sake of having sex. There were girls you fucked and walked away from and then there were girls you stuck around for because they embedded themselves into your heart so deeply that you forgot where your own heartbeat ended and hers began.

Montana had a hold on me that no other girl had ever come close to having and that scared the shit out of me. Guys that let girls get their hands around their hearts ended up falling for them and that was never gonna be me. Love kneed a guy in the balls and kept him stupid enough to keep crawling back for more. I wasn’t in love with her but I didn’t know how to define the place she occupied in my life. Every time I was near Tana, I wanted to hold her and tell her she’d be safe forever. I wanted to fight all her demons and slay all her dragons.

Three years ago, I’d found her curled on the ground crying hysterically in front of a graffiti-filled wall at the park. Because her hands were red and her nails bloodied, I thought maybe she’d tried to fight off some guy who’d wanted to rape her. I was pissed and ready to beat ass on her behalf because I’m not down with an asshole that would abuse a girl. But that wasn’t her story at all.

We’d been in each other’s lives since that day. I didn’t know any girls like her—ones that came from money but now didn’t have it. The ones I knew were like me, products of a weary foster care system that didn’t give a shit. Add judges who saw paperwork and not faces, blend in foster parents who only saw dollar signs instead of kids and you had all the ingredients needed to raise fucked-up hard asses guaranteed to do serious time. Kids who turned into guys like me who’d learned not to give a shit, too. That’s why I never made any promises to Tana. I’d only disappoint her if I did. I didn’t know the first thing about how to give of myself. Even if I ever reached the place where I wanted to, I didn’t know how to really love someone. No girl deserved that.

Mark let out a loud burp and then laughed. The laughter reverberated around the tiny kitchen, bouncing off the yellow walls. Tana and her mom struggled like everyone else in their low-income neighborhood, but their place managed to look like a home and not some transient slop house.

Tana smiled at her brother but when her dark eyes met mine across the table, her smile faded and her cheeks flushed. Her gaze darted back to her plate. I wish I knew what was going on behind that look.

“You wanna play a game with me?” Mark asked, dropping a pepperoni out of his mouth. He picked it up and popped it back in.

“Ryan has stuff to do,” Tana said before I could accept. She sounded like me sticking around was the worst idea in the world.

I bumped my fist against Mark’s. “No, I don’t. I can play a game with you if Tana plays too.”

“Can’t. Busy,” she said, sending a dark look my way. The look was tinged with desperation and I didn’t understand why.

Mark shoved aside his plate and slurped his water.

“You make a space for me and I’ll be there in a second,” I said.

As soon as her brother vacated the room, Tana started clearing the table, banging the plates together louder than she usually did.

I understood now that she was pissed off. I just didn’t understand why. If this was about sex, how could she not see that I was looking out for her? “Tana, c’mon.”

“So now I’m Tana again?”

I approached her from behind. “I don’t want to fight with you.” I hated it when we were at odds. She’d become my oasis when the demons of my past were too much to bear. Funny, sweet and gentle, she had a way of calming the hell that chased me and drove me to do the things I did.

She stopped raking out the scraps of pizza crust Mark would never eat and turned to face me, her expression a mixture of anger and hurt. “There’s no fight. You’ll have sex with a skank and a random skank at that, but not me.”

“Shit. Here we go again.” She had no idea what was at stake. Sex with someone you cared about always changed everything. When she picked up a cloth to wipe off the table, I grabbed her arm and stopped her. “I only fuck girls I don’t care about. They know the score and they’re only looking for a good time. They don’t expect anything after sex and I sure as hell don’t give them anything. There are less complications that way.”

“You know that makes you sound like an asshole.”

“I meant it to. I don’t care about those girls but you and I are friends.” I ran my hand from her arm up to her shoulder and gazed into her eyes, hoping she understood what I couldn’t even explain to myself.

She shook her head and tucked one side of her hair behind her ear. “That you and I are friends was my whole point. I figured if it was with someone I care about, you know...it’d be better. I don’t want my first time to be with someone who treats girls the way you treat your...uncomplicated ones. I don’t want to go to college a virgin.” She let out a long sigh when I didn’t answer, then bit her lip. “I guess I can try Brett.”

“Brett?” The mention of him made my temper flare. Hidden behind the smooth face, flashy car, and grin, was a guy who had a habit of not taking no for an answer. “You talk about assholes. That guy is a major one.”

She shrugged. “He seems nice and he has asked me out.”

“He’s not, and when did he ask you out?”

“Couple of weeks ago right after graduation.”

“You didn’t tell me.” Now that I knew, I’d spell it out to Brett in blood and broken bones that Tana was off limits.

“Yeah, Ryan, I didn’t. It’s not like you’re my diary or anything.” She crossed her arms against her chest and leaned her back against the sink, putting some space between us. “Just go play a game with Mark and leave me alone.”

What the fuck had just happened? I was trying to protect her and now I was the bad guy? “Tana—”

“Go!”

I hated when she acted like that. Girl drama drove me bat shit crazy. Shrugging, I turned around and left the kitchen to go into Mark’s room. He looked up at me when I entered.

His eyes were wide and sad in his small face. “Are you and Tana fighting?”

“We’re disagreeing.” I shoved aside a pile of toys and took a seat beside him on the floor at the foot of his bed. I leaned my back against the blankets and picked up a remote.

“Dad and Mom fought, then he left.” Mark maneuvered his player through a jungle and sent me a side-eye glance.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise?”

“You know it, buddy.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

Mark looked relieved, then said, “I don’t like Brett.”

I paused to look over at him. “What?”

“He came over when Mom wasn’t here and talked to Tana. He gives me a mean look when he sees me and he scares me.”

I was gonna beat Brett’s ass twice as hard. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t come back.”

“Cool.” Mark stuck his tongue out of his mouth and bit down as he concentrated on the game.

Keys jangled and the front door opened.

“Uh oh.” Mark threw the controller aside and jumped up. “I’m grounded. I’m not supposed to be playing.”

We exited the room and Mrs. Shaw smiled when she saw me in the narrow hallway. She was a shorter, slightly heavier version of Tana with eyes that crinkled in the corners whenever she smiled. “Ryan. I didn’t know you were stopping by.” She liked me okay, but that was because she didn’t know about my past. If she did, I doubted she would want me around either of her kids. Turning her head, she saw the pizza box on the kitchen counter and frowned.

“I bought a pizza. Hope that’s okay,” I said, flashing her a wide smile.

“Yes, of course.”

Tana joined us and her mom said, “I’m going to take a shower. Mark, did you already shower?”

He rolled his eyes but didn’t let her see him. “Yep.”

“Then you need to brush your teeth and get in the bed.”

“It’s Friday,” he whined.

“Now, Mark.” She said in a weary tone as she walked past me into her bedroom.

Mark stomped into his room. “When I’m an adult, I’ll do what I damn well please.”

“If Mom hears you talking like that, you won’t live to be an adult,” Tana said.

Mark slammed his bedroom door and a photograph of the three of them hanging on the hallway wall fell onto the floor. Tana picked it up and sighed as she brushed it off and put it back.

“Has your dad been around this week?”

“No. He was supposed to take Mark to an amusement park but he didn’t show. Mark waited on the front porch for hours. This is the fourth time in a row he’s blown him off. I hate that Mark is hurt, but I’m not sorry my father isn’t around much.”

From what I’d gleaned about her father, he was pretty much a selfish asshole. I hated the sadness in her eyes and wanted desperately to fix it. “I have to work at the garage a half day tomorrow but you wanna do something after that? We could hit the party at Kurt’s house. I’ll be the key man so you can have a good time and I’ll get you home safely.”

“No, I don’t want to go to the party. I decided that I’m going on a date.”

“With who?”

“None of your business.” She walked across the living room and pointedly opened the door. “So, thanks for paying for the pizza. I’ll see you around.”

When I made it out to the porch, I turned to say something else to her, but she’d already closed the door. I shook my head and walked down the steps and over to the 1968 Dodge Charger I’d rescued from the junkyard six months ago. The car was primer gray, with several beat up places on the body and it looked like hell. But what mattered to me was the 426 HEMI engine hulking under the hood. Bigger valves meant better airflow which meant it owned the road.

The old guy planning to restore it had died and his crackhead granddaughter junked the car for a few hundred bucks minutes before I saw it. My lucky damn day. I sat in the car and ran my hand along the steering wheel but I couldn’t keep my mind from thinking about Tana.

If not Brett, which I’d make sure of, she’d still probably go out with an asshole who wouldn’t look out for her. Some guy who’d use her, wouldn’t even make sure he protected her. I knew a few of the guys sniffing around and they were more fucked up than I was. She didn’t know that some of them liked to smack the hell out of girls. I don’t know how I’d live with myself if she got hurt. Or how I’d keep from putting the guy who hurt her in the hospital. Slamming my fist against my thigh, I jogged back up onto the steps to knock on the door.

Tana jerked it open, her beautiful eyes startled when she saw me. “Ryan. Did you forget something?”

“Three rules.” I ground out, trying to keep from hating myself for not being able to stick to saying no when it came to her.

She frowned, perplexed. “What?”

“First, you get on the pill if you’re not already. Second, we don’t ever talk about it afterward because we’re not a couple and we’ll never be together like that. Third, you don’t fall in love with me.”

She looked at me without speaking, her chest rising and falling in the skimpy T-shirt that showed off her slender figure. I could see the outline of her breasts and the nipples pebbling through the material. Defining moments of our friendship ran through my mind in the eternity her eyes locked with mine. I knew without a doubt that this was going to define it in ways that might scar her heart the way my body had been scarred by foster dad #2. Deep. Ugly. Everlasting. “Well?” I asked when she didn’t say anything and I felt like an idiot.

“Agreed,” she said softly, her face flushing, and then I could breathe again. She bit her lip. “Will you kiss me? I wanna see if it would be too weird. Because if it is, we’ll forget it.”

Kiss Tana. My head spun at the thought. “Okay. Yeah.”

She stepped out onto the porch beside me, pulling the door shut behind her. “Umm...” She raised her arms and then lowered them, giving a nervous laugh. “I’m not sure what to do...I mean...I’ve kissed guys before...but this is you...and...”

“Shh...” I put my hands on her hips and guided her closer until her body was flush with mine. The effect when we connected was an adrenaline high. The cold bastard in my soul drank in the innocent sweetness of hers. I clenched my jaw, fighting myself. If I could, I’d kick my own ass. Every fiber of control in me was screaming at me to let go, to walk away, to never look back. Then she pressed into me and that wasn’t an option I had any more.

She had great curves, ones that lured me closer to the edge. Her perfume surrounded me and the sweetness of her breath blew across my face when she exhaled. I deliberately dropped my hand to her sweetly curved ass and pressed her body against me, letting her feel how she affected me. Where she was soft and giving, I was hard and unyielding. Her eyes widened and she trembled.

Part of me wanted her to push me away and say she’d changed her mind. The other part of me, the part the system taught to look out for number one, wanted her against me for the thrill it gave my body.

She breathed out faster, her breath coming in small hitches. I lowered my head slowly, searching her beautiful face, giving her time to change her mind, hoping she would because the road we were on was slippery, coated with the ice of future regret. But she didn’t move and then it was too late because I was going to take what she was offering. I was a man who’d fallen off the cliff. My lips touched hers for the first time and it tilted my world upside down. Her lips were soft and eager, her hands wandering across my back, her breasts pushed hard into me. The taste of her was like sunshine and summer and I couldn’t get enough. My body heated up like a wildfire had me in its grip. I dove deeper into the kiss, pulling at her lower lip gently with my teeth. I wanted to pick her up, wrap her legs around my waist and dive into her.

When she whimpered and moaned my name, I knew I was thinking with my dick and was only minutes from taking her right here on the damn porch. No girl had ever made me feel so out of control. Forcing myself to stop, I put my hands on either side of her face. “Slow down,” I whispered against her lips, shocked at how right kissing her was, at how badly I wanted to bury myself in her and not stop until neither of us could walk. The kiss drove home what a friendship– wrecking idea us together was and nagged at me to tell her I’d changed my mind. But I couldn’t form the words that would push her away. This girl owned pieces of me that no one else ever had. Pieces I didn’t want to examine too closely and that was dangerous for both of us. I couldn’t let her fall for me. The people in my life always ended up damaged because of me and I’d rather break into a thousand pieces than to break her.

My body screamed at me, calling me an idiot for not taking the next step, but I ignored it and dragged my mouth away from hers.

“Wow,” she whispered with a glow in her eyes.

Her expression was full of shooting stars and what-if fantasies. I had to crush the fairy tale, make her see that reality with me was cut and dried. Sex and nothing else. I injected as much arrogance in my voice as I could muster. “After you get on the pill, show me the proof.”

She yanked her head back like I’d slapped her. A disgusted expression flashed across her face and she shoved against my chest. “You think I’m looking to get pregnant?”

“No, I don’t think that.” I glanced away from the accusation in her eyes. I’d meant to create distance to clear my own head and make sure she didn’t think I could give her more, but I hadn’t meant to insult her. Tana didn’t know the drama that went on with some of my friends and I’d be damned if I was ever going to let myself end up as a father. With my fucked up history, I didn’t have anything to offer a kid. There was no way I wanted to pass that legacy on.

“Fine.” Her eyes flashed her anger. “I’ll show you the proof. Anything else?”

A heavy awkwardness settled between us, coolness where there had been heat. I wanted to reach for her, but it was better that I didn’t. “I’ll let you know when I set up a place we can go.”

Nudging a piece of cracked wood on the porch with the tip of a pink painted toenail, she sighed, the anger draining from her. She looked more unsure of herself than I’d ever seen her when she turned her beautiful eyes back up at me. “I know it’s only sex and you said that we won’t talk about it afterward but...could you like...not make me feel bad about it later?”

That stung. I wasn’t anything like her damn father. He’d done some emotional damage to Tana as well as her mom and brother but I didn’t play mind games and I didn’t hurt women. I ran my hand through my hair in frustration. It had always been easy to talk to Tana before sex became the topic. “You really think I’d do that?”

“No.” She gave me a smile. “I’m just nervous, I guess. I shouldn’t be.” She rubbed her hand across the tattoos covering my left arm. “Despite your fierce appearance, you’ve always been so gentle around me. Tough on the outside, sweet on the inside. It’s one of the reasons why I love you.”

Her words sucker punched me in the heart and the blood drained from my face.

Laughing, she patted my chest, her hand lingering for a sweet torture of a second. “Easy. You can breathe, Ryan. I would have been so crazy without you when we first moved here. You were my anchor. I didn’t mean that I’m in love with you. I meant I love you as in you’re my best friend.”

“Oh.” I took a deep breath and let it out as everything righted itself again. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll call you later.” I walked to my car, waiting until she was safe inside the house before I backed from the driveway. I didn’t like the funny sensation coursing through my body. Like I was in a race car doing two hundred miles an hour headed straight for a wall and even knowing a crash was inevitable, I kept my foot on the gas pedal.