Page 46 of Catcher's Lock

16

Chicken

Josha

Age 20 (Then)

“Hey.”

I peer up into the dark to find him standing over me, haloed in the light spilling out of the tent. The party is still going strong, even though Byrd and the birthday boy are long gone.

Gem and I have been skirting around each other all night, and I’m not sure why. Actually, that’s a lie. He’s been flirting with the hand balancer since he flew in yesterday, and I’ve been sulking.

What else is new?

Now that I’m drunk enough to let my guard down, I drink him in. His hair is longer, curling around his jaw, and the last adolescent softness has melted from his face. In his leather jacket and low-slung jeans, he’s more dangerously desirable than ever.

When he finally called me from Montreal after leaving mealone in the hotel room, he acted like nothing had happened. I asked him why he didn’t wake me up to say goodbye, and he said: “You looked so pretty and peaceful. I didn’t want to mess that up.” By the time I was done reeling from the wordpretty, he was going on about his dorm room and his new roommate, so I buried my questions and let them lie.

Since then, we text all the time and FaceTime about once a month, but it’s not the same as having him here, in front of me. Being around him again is like the moment before the storm breaks—heavy and electric on my skin, the air saturated with expectation against all rational experience, and I’m woefully out of practice at surviving his lure.

“What are you doing out here? You don’t smoke.” He plucks the half-smoked cigarette from my fingers and takes a drag. Since it’s making me nauseous anyway, I don’t resist.

“Neither do you.” At least, he wasn’t smoking last summer while he was home, but it’s been a year since I’ve seen him, so who the hell knows?

“Nope.” He drops the butt on the ground and stubs it out with his boot. “Jessie smoked like a fucking 1950s housewife, and it was gross as fuck.”

“Was?” I grasp at the past tense. “You broke up?” I guess Bea is kind of a clue, although monogamy has never really been Gem’s thing.

“We were never together. C’mon. Let’s get out of here.” It’s not a question, or even an invitation. It’s an assumption, and he’s already walking away, knowing I’ll chase him like I always do.

For a second, I balk, wanting to throw up some paltry resistance to prove I’m not still at his beck and call. But then he flashes a grin over his shoulder, and who am I kidding? Besides, wasn’t this the whole point of letting Echo kiss me in the tent?

“Where are we going?” I ask, like I don’t already know. I drag myself off the steps of the ticket booth and follow him toward the trees. Before we make it to the clearing with the hammock, however, he stops dead, tilting his head back and closing his eyes.

“Shit. This stuff is strong.”

“What did you take?”

“A little molly.” He sways and slumps against a convenient redwood trunk. His hand drifts toward the front pocket of his jeans. “You want some?”

For a moment, I’m tempted. I rarely do hard drugs, but the whiskey currently coursing through my bloodstream is doing its job of lowering my inhibitions, and I’ve never been good at resisting the chance to get closer to him, even when I’m sober. It would be easy to say yes now—to let my guard down and gorge myself on a little sliver of his life.

“C’mere,” he says, before I can decide, and reaches out to snag my waistband. His limbs are already going soft and clumsy as he tugs me toward him, and I beg the alcohol in my system to keep my cock in line as his knuckles brush the sensitive skin at my hip. With monumental willpower, I stop myself from crashing against him, bracing an arm on the tree above his head.

“Why’d you let him kiss you?” he slurs, gaze drifting lazily over my features.

“Echo?” That was hours ago, and Gem had barely reacted at the time.Did it actually work?

“You should stop kissing unavailable guys.”

Blame it on the whiskey or the drugs. Blame it on the moonlight and the midnight hour. His mouth isright there. I dip my head a fraction, hovering over the chasm of possibility.

“Who should I be kissing, Quill?”

A shiver runs through his body, and his fingers twitch against my skin.

“Someone who deserves you.”