Page 32 of This Might Hurt

JUDE

I hear the kitchen sink stop running just as I finally manage to get a white fitted sheet around the couch cushions.

Buckley keeps jumping up to sit in the middle of it so I can’t do the rest of the blankets, no matter how many times I take him off.

“Goodnight, honey,” Ramona calls behind me, and I turn around to see her on the bottom step.

“I’m going to read and go to bed early.”

“‘Night. Thank you for dinner.”

Her smile looks wistful, like she probably doesn’t enjoy getting left behind and lied to.

“Please don’t go tomorrow without saying goodbye.

” That’s going to annoy Andrew, but I nod.

When she climbs the stairs, Buck chatters happily and sprints after her with his wobbly old man run so I can finally finish the stupid bedding.

Andrew doesn’t come out for so long I start to wonder if he made a break for it.

Finally, as I’m violently stuffing the last pillow into its cover, I hear the floorboards creak under his weight.

Hugging the lumpy pillow, I study the dishwater splashed all over the front of his t-shirt while he fidgets restlessly and ignores me in favor of the pictures on the wall showing little Ramona and her mom in bright ‘60s Sunday dresses. “Where’s my phone?”

“I turned the service off and threw it in my room. I’ll be up in a sec. Don’t go and answer it,” I add when he moves toward the stairs. He just grabs the swirly knob thing at the bottom of the banister and takes a step up.

“Hey, look at me.” At the tone in my voice, he freezes and those eyes, very dark in the lamplight, search out mine. “I mean it,” I say. “Tell me you won’t answer it.”

He swallows, his tired face sullen. “I won’t.”

“What do you want?” I throw the pillow down. It’s a messy job all around, but I’ll give him the bed and sleep here. “Ramona has a whole liquor cabinet she barely uses.”

“Bourbon on the rocks, if she has some.”

It’s fucking weird to watch him skulk up Ramona’s staircase, this human being who hit me like a cataclysm wandering around the house where I go to pretend everything in my life is normal.

The crystal and glass bottles rattle noisily as I dig around, leaving a coating of fine dust on my fingertips.

I don’t remember or care what a bourbon on the rocks looks like, so I fill a regular short drinking glass with ice from the fridge and dump in four or five fingers of Knob Creek.

For myself, I tuck an entire bottle of Bacardi under my arm and pad upstairs, glancing at the light under Ramona’s door before heading into my room and pushing the door shut with my ass.

Andrew sits on my half-made bed, all my stuff shoved onto the floor to make room. He stares at the phone cradled loosely in one hand.

“How many calls?” I press the wet glass against his bicep until he takes it. His eyebrows furrow as he watches the generous amber liquid sloshing around in the ice. Clearly, I did it wrong.

He turns the service back on and sips his drink ungratefully while we listen to it buzz several dozen times. “Looks like we came in at seventy-four, and my voicemail is full.” He turns the whole thing off and stuffs it in his pocket.

“I can already tell your family is messed up.” Crossing to the rusty old window, I shove it open. I got rid of the screen a long time ago so I could smoke on the roof. The trickle of cool air taunts me as I peel off my shirt and lean out into the velvety dark.

Andrew takes another gulp, like he’s trying to finish the bourbon before all the ice ruins it, then rests the cool glass against his temple and watches me with a touch of impatience. “If I ask you a question, will you answer it honestly?”

In the long pause, I can hear crickets outside.

Sometimes, when I sit on the roof, I can even see lightning bugs in the grass.

I turn around and perch my ass on the window frame.

The room feels so sweltering even Andrew’s perfect skin is sheened with sweat, damp patches under the arms of his shirt.

He pushes a hand up under the hem, exposing a strip of his tight stomach, like he’s resistant to taking it off.

I tip my head back and down a mouthful of lukewarm rum. “Sure. Why not.”

My heart sinks when he slides his hand under my pillow and pulls out the photo of Lena, already unfolded like he was looking at it before I came into the room. “Who is this?”

“You have no manners at all.”

He shrugs one shoulder, waiting with that entitled set to his jaw.

Groaning, I push myself upright and pad across the room to drop my ass on the bed next to his. I don’t actually want to be drunk tonight or hung over tomorrow, so I discard the Bacardi on my nightstand as I pass.

The photo balanced on his leg is starting to fold up. I pin it down with two fingers and try to see my girl, my wild little turd bucket, through the eyes of a stranger. But I can’t. “She’s my sister, Elena. My best friend.”

“She’s the one you steal for.” It’s not a question.

I tap the wheelchair in the picture. “Because this is my fault. My parents told me I can’t come home until I give her a better life than the one I took away from her.”

Instead of answering, he picks up the photo in both hands and brings it close to his face, squinting like there’s some answer there, in the smile of the girl who looks like me. “Why?”

Groaning, I slide down onto my back and hang my arm over my eyes. I feel like shit—shoulder pain from the concrete mixing, a headache from too much sun, and a bad mood from his annoying-ass snooping. He has no right to ask me two questions when I only said I’d answer one.

“I don’t believe it was your fault.”

I move my arm and squint up at him. “You don’t know anything. Wanna bet? My three hundred bucks against your two hundred billion, winner takes all.”

“Sure.”

Feeling like he somehow tricked me into getting what he wanted, I start working through the story I’ve only told twice since I left home—once to Ramona and once to that doctor with the clipboard in the dark room.

“The September before last, when she was sixteen, Lena got invited to this friend’s sleepover out in the country.

I promised I’d take her, because she wasn’t a good driver yet and no one else was gonna be available.

She made me promise like a hundred times that I wouldn’t forget. ”

I roll over onto my side and study his arm, resting along his thigh. When I reach over and trace my finger in a slow infinity sign around the bones of his wrist, over and over, he doesn’t move.

“Something was…happening to me, back then. The Jude that I was started to disappear. Some days I couldn’t get out of bed, and others I was walking around town in fifteen degree weather with no shoes on reciting poetry to myself.

I didn’t ask anyone for help because I didn’t even know I needed help. ”

He moves his arm away, like he’s over me.

I would be, if I were the person listening to this story.

But he slides down until he’s lying on his back next to me, both of us sideways on the bed with our legs dangling out into the room.

He studies the ceiling, like it’s very interesting.

I can tell him from a lot of sleepless nights that it’s not.

“I went to my friends’ house that day, and they had some coke.

I’d never even seen that shit before. But I hadn’t slept in two nights and I was so wired I couldn’t see straight, so it felt like the best idea I’d ever had.

Coke’s only meant to make you high for like thirty minutes, right?

It took me out for a couple of hours. When I didn’t come home or answer my phone, Lena tried to ride her bike to the sleepover even though it was dark.

” I stretch my arms up in the air and spread them, like ta-da.

“Some drunk in a truck nailed her at thirty miles an hour and broke her neck, then just drove off.”

He’s silent for so long I almost start falling asleep. “I win,” he says finally.

I prop my head on my arm so I can look at him. “No. Did you listen to a word I said?”

He smiles a little, with no humor. “I don’t think it was your fault. You can’t have my two hundred billion until you give me better evidence to the contrary.” I flop back on the bed, relieved to be done, until he hits me with his third question. “Are you doing better now?”

My loud laugh is probably rude, but I can’t help it. “Of course not. How do you get away from the inside of your own head?”

“You said yourself there’s help out there.”

“Don’t fucking start. You sound like Ramona.

” I wave my arm, trying blindly to swat him, but my elbow bounces off his shoulder.

“I called my parents once, and asked whether they’d let me come home if I started seeing a doctor, got on meds, whatever.

They said it wouldn’t fix anything I’d done.

” I shrug, keeping my eyes closed. “There’s no point.

And I probably need to stay insane to keep living this life, so that settles it.

” Okay, that was a little much to give a stranger.

Not even Ramona knows the last part. Now I feel stupid.

The bed frame creaks as his weight shifts. “Jude—” I can’t identify the tone of his voice.

“Don’t. If you force me to say all this shit, it’s not my fault if you don’t like it.”

I can hear him sigh, so close his breath stirs in my hair.

Neither of us says anything else. The disgustingly hot room, the creaking of insects through the window, it all ebbs and flows through the silence like a heavy, slow heartbeat.

“I need to pee,” I croak eventually, without moving.

“And take some painkillers. You want painkillers?” He grunts like he’s mostly asleep.

I’m gonna do it. I’ll count to twenty, then get up and drink some water and go downstairs to the couch.

When I open my eyes, it’s dark. My body knows where I am, but my brain can’t catch up because my nose is full of a scent that doesn’t belong here.

Swallowing down the taste of stale alcohol, I turn my head and find my face buried in worn cotton and a firm body heat.

When I was a teenager, my friends and I went into a fancy candle store and entertained ourselves finding the label with the most words we didn’t know.

My buddy Cameron won with something called Oud and Vetiver.

That’s what this smells like, expensive and intangible.

I pull in another lungful and hold his smell as I come up on my elbow and squint in the faint light from the outdoor lamp from the backyard.

Neither of us got up, in those hazy minutes where I thought about going to bed, but I must have kicked the light switch off with my foot.

We’re both oriented the correct way now, me scrunched further down the bed so my nose is level with his side.

The limp shape of Andrew has his arms over his head, his t-shirt shoved halfway up his sweaty body. I’ve never seen him so relaxed.

I sit and watch him for so long I lose track of time. He makes me absolutely crazy, and I don’t even know why. Like he’s got his fist curled much too tight around my heart, and neither of us will let the other go.

Carefully, I reach up and brush a thumb along his soft hip, in the gap below his t-shirt.

I rest my nose in the crook of my arm and watch, fascinated, as I let my other fingers spread delicately across his skin.

I smooth them along the bottom of his ribs, rest my palm over his belly where I can feel him breathe.

He stirs with a quiet sound in his throat, and his slow breathing shifts into wakefulness. But he doesn’t move. When I slide my hand up under the t-shirt, he lets out the faintest barely awake, pleading sound and shifts his hips.

I lean down and swipe my tongue across the skin just above his waistband.

It’s full of life, all sun and salt. Groaning, I press my nose against his hip.

The zipper of his shorts sounds very loud in the thick, breathing dark as I fumble with the cold metal.

When I glance up, he has both bare arms wrapped around his head, his chest rising and falling fast.

I hook my fingers into his shorts and boxer briefs both at once.

He rocks his hips to help me yank them down off his ass, tangling around his knees.

I can’t see his cock in the dark. When I cup it carefully, his balls heavy against my palm and his shaft starting to wake up, I realize he’s waxed clean.

He whines into his elbow and his knee jerks against my chest as my thumb traces his head, presses against his slit. He hasn’t started leaking yet.

“Ah—” His voice breaks and I feel him struggle when I pull his cock most of the way onto my tongue.

He was going to get married tonight. Some cunt was going to suffocate my boy face down in a Shanghai hotel mattress with a blunt cock shoving his ass open like he’s not the most precious thing on this earth.

Now all I can picture is finding this Daxton and putting my gun to his head until he cries.

Andrew makes a pained sound and I realize I’m gripping his thigh so tight it’s going to bruise.

Instead of easing up my hold, I release his wet dick and bite his hip hard, let my teeth dig deep into the soft skin until he gives a soft yelp of distress.

His tight muscles ease underneath me when I go back to his cock and play with it, slipping my tongue under his head, lapping precum from his slit before it even has a chance to leak out.

I need to devour him until there’s nothing left, no part of him that can leave me again.

I grab his hips and swallow his cock for real with slow rolls of my head.

But after a minute I realize I can’t get him any harder, no matter what I do, and I can feel him starting to panic.