Mabel Darling
Three Years Ago
A hush falls over the café, and whispers rise around me. I don’t look up from my book. I never pay attention to whatever drama the other kids are feeding on this week. When my family ran things, I kept my head down. Now one cousin is dead and one is recovering from an attack over New Year’s, and more often than not my brother Colt is either suspended for fighting or in the hospital after getting jumped, but I haven’t changed. I’m here to eat lunch, not participate in the social scene. I have no need for status, for titles, for anything this school can give me except an education, a diploma, and a letter of recommendation that will get me into a good school.
So I don’t pay any more mind than usual—until someone different slides in across from me. Willow Hs likes to pretend they only accept the academic type, but the students all know the truth. Half the kids here don’t give a shit about learning. They’re here because they’re legacies, because their families have the name or the money that gets them through the doors. The highly competitive, cut-throat ones care about class rank and GPA more than the actual knowledge or skill they’ve acquired.
No one likes to admit it, but the kids who care most about their education are the scholarship kids who have to keep an impeccable conduct record as well as perfect grades to stay. Naturally, I sit with them at lunch.
Even they are not immune to the drama, though. Apparently I’m the only one who’s not going to fall out of my chair when a Dolce boy joins us like this is his table instead of the one he took over from my cousins.
“I thought you were leaving me alone,” I say, glancing up and then turning back to my book.
“Why’d you think that?” he asks, cocking his head.
I shrug and set down my sandwich to turn the page. “I haven’t seen you since I said I wouldn’t go out with you.”
For a few months after that first encounter, when Baron did his obligatory introduction, the Dolces did not speak to me. Then suddenly, they started showing up at my locker each morning, all four brothers moving in a pack, each more dangerous and foreboding than the last. Baron brought me a single flower picked from outside each morning, and one day, a request.
Obviously, I refused.
“Aww, did you miss me?” he asks, reaching across the table. He tugs playfully at the top of my book, pulling it down flat on the table.
“No.”
“What you readin’?”
“Emily Bronte.”
“Too bad. I was hoping it was one of those porny romances. I could have read you a passage and made you squirm,” he says, walking his fingers up the back of my hand, sending a warm buzzing through my body that unsettles me. I want to tell him to stop touching me, that I don’t like it, but for some reason I don’t. Maybe I don’t want him to know something about me that might invite questions.
Or maybe I don’t want him to stop.
The thought is startling, dizzying. Terrifying.
“It is a romance,” I say, finally looking up as I draw my hand away and close the book.
He grins at me, a lopsided, boyish smile that does something funny to me every time. Except this time, I realize my mistake.
“You’re not wearing your glasses,” I say carefully, my heart lurching in my chest.
“I almost never wear my glasses,” he says, lounging back in his chair and smiling bigger, so big his eyes squint a little at the corners. It’s an easy smile, one I’ve never seen on Baron’s face.
Because this is not Baron.
I’ve been watching them for months, even when they weren’t watching me. I thought I had them memorized, but I was thrown off by nothing more than the way he combed his hair and the fact that I was more focused on my book. Baron and Duke may be identical twins, but the mistake is embarrassingly basic. My pulse has become erratic, and I glance around at the rest of my table, at the girls like Vanessa and Natalie, ones I thought were above such gossip and nonsense, to see if they noticed.
They’re all silent, either staring or pretending not to listen while clearly eavesdropping on our every word. No one is so much as whispering at our table, and only a few quiet hisses sound at the next few tables as well. It’s ridiculous and the very reason I don’t do this kind of thing.
“What are you doing?” I hiss, cutting my eyes at the others meaningfully, hoping Duke will take the hint.
“I’m vetting you,” he says, still sprawled out in his chair.
I gape at him. “Vetting me.”
“Yeah, see, I’m extra protective, being Baron’s twin and all. So, if you’re going to be dating, I figured I’d come right out and ask what exactly your intentions are with my brother.”
He doesn’t bother lowering his voice, and since the whole area is quiet, his deep baritone booms out like an announcement. I can see the other girls exchanging glances, eyebrows raised with the promise of gossip they’ll be sharing later. Even Vanessa, the traitor I once called a friend, won’t meet my eye.
“I have no intention of dating anyone,” I say with as much dignity as I can muster. “I already told Baron that.”
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to work,” Duke says. “See, we might act all big and tough, but I’ll let you in on a little secret.” He leans forward suddenly, his eyes alive with a conspiratorial gleam, his lips twisted into a playful, inviting smile. Now he lowers his voice, and I find my breath catching, my body drawn forward before I can stop it, as if his magnetism is irresistible even for a girl made of nothing but blank cardboard.
“We’re actually very sensitive,” he whisper-shouts. He shoots a wink at a girl beside me who clearly overheard this pronouncement, and she giggles and turns bright red.
“I don’t date,” I say, gripping my book so tightly I can feel it warping. “You can ask anyone.”
I don’t know why I’m suddenly so nervous, babbling like an idiot, since no logical person would ask someone else if I dated. It must be my brain’s attempt to recover intellectual equilibrium after my infantile blunder with his identity.
“Then it’s a perfect time to start,” he says. “Your date’s at tonight, which means you’ll need at least two hours to get ready. Should I be there at six?”
“What?”
“For the pre-date prep,” he says. “Like a pre-game warmup. You can do your makeup and shit, and I can get to know you, make sure you’re suitable for him, and that you’re not going to break his heart.”
“No dates,” I say firmly. “I told him no.”
The room is too warm, my cutout paper heart is doing funny skips and hops like a living thing, and my skin is buzzing.
“Call it what you want to,” Duke says, clearly enjoying himself even though I think I might combust. “If ‘date’ is too much pressure, just say you’re hanging out. Wear something cute, but not too sexy. Can’t have me falling in love with my brother’s girlfriend before he gets there, can we?” He drops a wink at me this time, and my chest gets all tight and prickly, like my lungs are filled with hot fiberglass.
“I’m not wearing anything because I’m not going on any dates, or pre-dates, or post-dates,” I say, gritting out the words in frustration.
“That works too,” he says, cracking a naughty grin. “Not going to turn down a naked chick even if she is my brother’s girlfriend. I’ll see you at six… In whatever you’re wearing.”
He stands, leaving his chair pushed back from the table, and strolls off before I can pick my jaw up off the floor. Everyone is staring at me, whispering, snickering. I’m not sure if I’m blushing or flushed with anger, as I’ve never done either before. Whatever it is, it feels terrible.
If I wasn’t already being stared at, I’d throw my apple at the back of his head. If I was a normal girl, I’d march after him and shove him in the back and make him turn around so I could give him a piece of my mind. But I’ve never given anyone a piece of my mind, because if I did, they’d probably take it to a lab and examine it, study it to determine what kind of monster I was, if I was born or made, bitten by a bat like Dracula or sewn together piece by piece, like Frankenstein’s.
So I keep my mind and my hands and my fruit to myself. I bend over my book like no one is looking, and I bite into my apple with monstrous ferocity. It crunches like bones, the juice filling my mouth like the sweetest poison.
They’re just messing with me, the way cruel kids do. I’ve seen it, even if I haven’t experienced it. Popular kids messing with scholarship kids, girls pretending they’re interested in a boy just so they can shoot him down in front of a crowd; pretending to take an interest in what another girl is doing, their words seemingly innocuous or underhanded at worst, but their tones and looks and snickers devastating. Popular boys going along with them, letting a cheerleader tell some poor hapless loser that the boy likes her, even though he’s clearly into the cheerleader herself.
I guess now that they’ve destroyed my cousins, it’s my turn. I don’t know why they bother. I’m not popular. They already took the thrones from my cousins and proclaimed themselves the new kings. Everyone more or less went along, albeit uneasily. It would be hard to argue with a group of guys who just lost their sister, even if they weren’t all over six feet tall, built like Roman gods, and so gorgeous it’s hard to think when more than one of them is in the same room. And they’re always together.
When I open my locker at the end of the day, I pause with my books halfway to their spot inside.
A blood red sucker lies alone in the center of the dark wooden cavity, gleaming as if under a spotlight.
I stare at it, everything else disappearing. Most of our work is online, so I bring my laptop and my few books to my classes and return them after school. My locker sits empty until then. Even so, I never give out my combination like the other girls who share their lockers with friends until they can’t remember which one is assigned to each of them. I’ve never even shared my combination with my brother. I am literally the only person who knows it—except the office.
I can’t look away from the impossible, lone object in the otherwise hollow recess. A tingling chill creeps along my spine, the hair standing up on the back of my neck like it did when I lay in the dark staring at the canopy over my bed in Grandpa’s attic.
Waiting.
It’s just a sucker, I remind myself. Lots of people eat Dolce Sucks.
But for one terrible moment, it looks like a single blood drop left as a warning in the snow—or as the first marker for a predator to track its injured prey to its den, where it’s curled in tight, waiting for the end. What triumph does the predator feel in that moment, knowing that where a single drop of blood falls, more will follow? What terror does the prey feel when it’s dealt the first blow? Does it know that even if it escapes, the injury surely spells death?
I pick up the candy, my fingers hesitant but steady. In the finest, tiniest print, someone has written a message on the paper stem.
C U @ 8, little monster
I wrap my fist around the stem, holding it to my chest and closing my eyes, the chill that’s been tingling through me turning warm, nestling into the fine threads of my web like a secret.
He has a nickname for me.
*
I’m in my room that evening when a message pops up on my laptop, the familiar little black box with old-school green letters. I drop my book and get up, my heart hammering. Baron’s the only person who messages me on OnlyWords , and I’m embarrassed to admit how giddy it makes me every time. I stare at the message, which is not from Baron’s handle.
DukeOfBeavertown: omw. be there in 5.
MaybeItsMabel: Duke?
DukeOfBeavertown: knock or honk?
MaybeItsMabel: you cant come here
DukeOfBeavertown: too late bbg
DukeOfBeavertown: pulling up
MaybeItsMabel: my dad will shoot u
DukeOfBeavertown: then u better come rescue me ;)
I don’t know what to think, let alone say. I make my way downstairs slowly, warily. When I hear the doorbell ring, though, I curse him. I can’t believe he came to the door. Actually, I can’t believe he was serious about this pre-date ritual, and even if he was, I said no. I said no to both him and Baron. And maybe somewhere inside I was hoping Baron would show, that it wasn’t a joke. But I’ve never even spoken to Duke until today. He’s just always there, hovering, vaguely obnoxious, while the two older brothers loom over us like sentries.
I arrive at the front door to find my brother standing in front of it, arms crossed, blocking the entrance. “Absolutely fucking not,” he’s saying, though I doubt he could stop Duke from whatever he said he wanted.
If Colt’s arm weren’t in a sling from the last time they jumped him, dislocating his shoulder and spraining his wrist, he probably could. He’s an athlete, as tall as Duke, just as muscular, if not quite as beefy as the two older Dolce boys. The main difference is that there’s only one Colt, and there are four Dolce brothers. Four who fight dirty against one who would rather walk away. And now Colt is injured.
Colt is not like my stepbrother Devlin, who would throw a punch to defend the Darling name, or our cousin Preston, who just liked to fight, before the Dolces broke him of that. My brother is slow to anger and smarter than people give him credit for. Like me, he can assess a situation in seconds, determine if getting involved is worth it. Throwing fists is something people do out of anger and passion, or fear and panic, not something reasoned out ahead of time. The benefits rarely outweigh the costs. And so, Colt rarely fights.
“It’s okay,” I say behind him. “He told me he was coming.”
“You’re not taking my sister anywhere,” Colt says flatly, not even acknowledging me.
“I wasn’t going to,” Duke says, grinning at me over Colt’s shoulder. “I’m here to help her get ready and approve her outfit.”
Colt snorts out a breath. “I’m not letting you in.”
Duke’s gaze flicks to Colt, and his eyes go hooded as he wets his lips. “I bet she’ll let me in.”
The three of us stand there, letting the innuendo settle into the spaces between us.
“Go away, Duke,” Colt says at last, starting to close the door.
My breath catches as I see it all falling away, the little sliver of excitement I carved into my life like the name I carved into the wall of my childhood closet, like the marks I’ve carved into my skin, a sliver I never considered wanting before. In one breath, one swing of a closing door, it will disappear like a little girl swallowed by the dark, and things will go back to the way they’ve been for so long: Colorless.
Once, I might have thought I wanted that. Maybe I still do. I’m not scared to get to know Baron, or even his brothers, if they’re part of the package. But I’m scared of letting them know me, risking what they could find out about me, that under my marred skin, I’m so much more than beige. I’m scared that I’m too peculiar, not nearly enough of the things boys want and too much of the things they don’t. That they’ll see the monster I am, put me back in my cardboard cage, the padded room of my life, and walk away.
But what if they don’t?
I throw myself forward, stopping the door and wedging myself into the doorway with Colt.
“He’s my friend,” I tell my brother sourly, my heart hammering at the near miss.
He snorts. “You really think a Dolce wants to be your friend?”
“Yes,” I say, holding my head high and squaring my shoulders. “You’re allowed to have whatever friends you want. So am I.”
“Devlin got mixed up with them, and look what happened to him,” he points out.
What happened to him is that he drowned, too lost in their sister to notice the rising waters until they washed away.
“I’ll stay away from the river,” I tell my brother.
“That’s not what I mean,” Colt says. “But you know that.”
“It’s not his fault that Devlin and Crystal didn’t pay attention to a flash flood,” I point out.
Duke flinches, like hearing his sister’s name physically pains him.
I spin that information into my web, a spider adding another fly to her collection.
“You don’t know what guys are like,” Colt says. “Especially these guys.”
“I can take care of myself,” I grit out, glancing at Duke in embarrassment. “I’ve been doing it my whole life, and you never cared until now.”
I don’t want Duke to know that I’ve never had a boyfriend, that no boy has ever knocked at my door before. That I don’t know what guys are like because none have ever liked me.
Colt frowns down at me, and I can see the concern in his eyes. I appreciate it in some way, but that kind of thing has never swayed me. “You never made a mistake like this until now,” he says quietly.
“It’s my mistake to make,” I plead, dropping my voice to match his volume. “It’s not your job to protect me. You’re not my father, and this isn’t the fourteenth century.”
“You can’t stop her,” Duke says, finally chiming in. “She’s going to do what she wants, even if she has to sneak around to do it. Trust me, we had this same conversation with our sister. See how much good it did? If we’d let her date your brother, maybe she’d still be here.”
Colt frowns harder, his lips tightening as he glances from Duke, to me, back to Duke.
Finally, he shakes his head and turns to walk away. “It’s your funeral.”
Triumph swells inside me, and I bite back a smile. Duke watches my brother go for a few seconds, then turns his attention to me. When he sees my hidden smile, a big, easy grin spreads over his face, and I halfway expect him to whoop and pump a fist. Instead, he bounds past me like an overeager puppy, finding the stairs without instruction and thundering up them in his excitement.
I follow, uncomfortable with his exuberance. The boys in my family have a simmering sort of energy, the kind they unleash in fights and football games and girls’ beds, but it’s always contained until then. I’m not used to the reckless sort that spills out so chaotically, so messy and public that I’m second-hand embarrassed by it. Duke doesn’t seem to share my reservations. He stops and waits for me at the top of the stairs, gesturing to the hall.
“Which one’s yours?”
I point it out, and he takes the lead with complete confidence. I take a moment to gather myself. As humiliating as it is for him to have witnessed Colt acting like that to me, at least he’ll think that’s why I’ve never dated. Even in this day and age, an overprotective father is a valid reason, especially in the south. It’s better for them to think my parents wouldn’t let me date than to know the truth. Then they’d wonder why, what’s wrong with me, and what other guys see that they haven’t yet.
Inside my room, I close the door and turn back to face Duke, only to find him already lounging in the chair by my desk. Boots crouches under the edge of the bed, his wide eyes watchful, but my guest doesn’t seem to have noticed him.
“I thought I told you not to wear something too sexy,” he says, lacing his fingers behind his head.
I let out a snort as I look down at myself—bare feet, baggy sweatpants, loose t-shirt. My face is bare, and my hair is thrown up in a messy bun. He’s not dressed up either, but in his Celine jeans and Balenciaga sneaks, he doesn’t look like he was planning on lounging in his room all evening.
“Come here,” he says, wetting his lips as he looks me up and down.
“Why?” I ask, suddenly realizing what a stupid move I made. I was so determined to prove to Colt I could handle myself, that I can make my own decisions, that I didn’t really listen to him, and now it’s too late. I hadn’t realized what it would feel like to be in my bedroom with a boy. I’ve never been completely alone with a boy before, certainly not in my private domain.
“I want to look at you,” Duke says.
“You can look from there,” I point out.
“Come on, I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, his voice going quiet, his smiling eyes serious as he reaches out a hand. “I just want to see what kind of clothes would look best on you.”
I hesitate before stepping closer. He grabs my hand, and I hiss in a breath through my teeth. Slowly, he turns me, his other hand guiding my hip. When I’m facing away, he has to drop my hand, and I fight the urge to scrub it on my pants to get the feel of him off my palm. It’s tingling, and I’m lightheaded when he finishes steering me in a circle.
Suddenly his big hands clamp onto my hips, his fingers so long they feel like the bars of a cage snapping shut, enclosing me. He yanks me forwards onto his knees, catching me off balance and using the momentum to bring me down on his lap.
Panic shoots up through my core like a geyser, and I shove back from him, but the next second I’m inside my shirt, fighting the fabric. Another wave of panic hits, and I flail, trying to get out. He rips it over my head and tosses it aside, leaving me straddling his lap in just my sweatpants and a sports bra. I throw my arms around myself, hiding my scars, hugging my body tightly, as if they can shield me from his heated, hungry eyes.
“What the hell?” I cry, trying to rise.
His hands move to my upper thighs, pinning me in place. Blood rushes and recedes in my head, rushes and recedes. It’s so loud his voice sounds far away when he speaks.
“Damn. So that’s what you’ve been hiding under there all that time. No wonder Baron’s been so selfish about you. He wants you all to himself.”
“Let me go,” I growl.
“I’m just looking,” he says, flashing me a grin. “Trust, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Here, if it makes you feel better, I’ll do the same.”
He grabs the hem of his t-shirt and peels it off over his head. The moment his hands are off me, I shoot to my feet, scrambling backwards off his knees. I don’t make it two steps before his shirt joins mine on the floor, and he stands too. His long fingers close around my waist this time. The contact of his hot hands on my cool skin takes my breath, and I freeze into a statue. The next thing I know, I’m airborne as he lifts me effortlessly, so high my head is above his for a second before he brings my hips down on his. The breath shoots out of me in a gasp of shock.
One of his hands drags my thigh up around his, and my other leg circles his hips to match before my brain has reengaged. He covers the few steps to the bed in a single second, and then he’s on top of me, his bare torso searing over mine, millions and millions of skin cells combusting before he plants his hands above my shoulders and pushes up, grinding his hips between mine.
I can’t breathe, and yet I’m breathing so hard I can’t speak. The world is tilting, tilting, and I grasp for the escape hatch, the parachute that will yank me up out of my body, where I can just watch and not feel.
Duke gives me the sweetest smile, his mouth sinking in at the corners, the exact same one I’ve seen on Baron’s face.
“What’s up?” he asks. “You doing okay down there, baby girl?”
“Get off me,” I gasp out, my palms connecting with his chest, then recoiling. “Please.”
“Hey, chill. I told you. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to make you feel good.”
I get my heels on the bed and try to push up, to escape him, but it’s a horrible miscalculation. My hips lift, dragging over his abs, and my shoulders only move an inch before they’re barricaded by his hands planted on the bed above them. He sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. I drop back onto the bed, panting, my lip trembling.
“Please,” I beg, my whole body starting to shake as stinging tears wet my lashes, hot as lava bubbling up through my frozen soul, my glacial heart, my ice-glazed eyes. “I don’t like to be touched.”
“Anywhere?” he asks, a frown tugging between his brows as his hand slides between our hips. “Or here?”
His fingers press into my center, and something buried deep, deep inside me quivers, a dewdrop on the gossamer of a spiderweb. Before it’s over, a blind flash obliterates everything, a flash-freeze that suspends the world in time. And then I’m a snowflake drifting, suspended above.
Papa’s got a surprise for his special snowflake…
The relief is instant and bone-deep, the cold embracing me in its familiar icy threads spinning around and around, preserving me like prey.
“Anywhere.”
My lips barely move. It doesn’t matter if he hears me, though. He can’t touch me now. I am a delicate snowflake balanced on an invisible thread. If he touches me, so much as breathes on me, I will melt to nothing and disappear. The whole world is less than a whisper, barely more than a breath.
“Oh,” Duke says, drawing his hand from between us. “Oh, shit.” He rolls off and sits up, adjusts himself self-consciously.
I sit up and wipe absently at the tears that spilled. There’s only a couple. They usually don’t make it out before I’ve escaped to safety, the intricate web I built for myself a long, long time ago.
“Shit,” Duke says again, casting me a guilty glance. “Sorry. Does Baron know?”
I shake my head. “Why would he?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Because you’re dating and shit.”
“We’re not dating,” I say. “I told you, I don’t date.”
“And now that makes a lot more sense,” he says, nodding. “Not many guys would be cool with looking and not touching. Especially when a girl looks like you.”
I scoff and go to pick up my shirt, quickly pulling it back over my head, praying he won’t ask about the marks.
“What?” Duke asks, laying back on one elbow on my bed. He cocks his head and gives me this smile that’s so cute, a mixture of bashful and shame-faced and defensive, that it’s hard to stay mad about the way he rocketed past my every boundary in five seconds flat.
“You make it sound like I look like Dolly,” I say, pulling the tie from my hair, which is all askew from his tossing me around.
He groans and flops back on the bed, clutching his heart with one hand and his crotch with the other. “Somehow you’re even hotter.”
“You’re crazy,” I say, but I can’t quite face him.
It’s not that I think he believes that, or that I do. It’s that for the first time in my life I want someone to think it’s true, even if it’s not about me, if it’s only something for someone else to appreciate. I want to believe him, and I can’t stomach the thought of seeing the lie in his eyes.
It’s bad enough seeing the consternation in Boots’s eyes as he watches me from under the edge of my bed, where he’s still hiding.
I hurry to my closet to busy myself with my clothes. As soon as I see the orderly line of hangers, each draped with a button shirt in white or pastel, slacks in shades of shell to pewter, khaki to chocolate, navy and midnight, I drift fully back into myself. I try to arrange my thoughts as neatly, to put them back into the places they belong, so he won’t see that I’m the one who’s mad.
“The good news is, you passed that test,” Duke says from my bed. “The bad news is, I kinda hate my brother now.”
“What?” I demand, spinning to face him.
“It doesn’t seem fair that he gets you all to himself,” Duke says. “We usually share girls.”
I narrow my eyes. “What do you mean, I passed the test?”
“Oh, that,” he says with a smug grin. “Obviously I was testing you to see if you were as easy as the girls we usually smash. If you’re going to be dating, and he’s not sharing, I had to make sure you’re faithful.”
“That was a test?” I ask incredulously, all thought of forgiveness forgotten. “What if I’d failed?”
“Then we’d know you’re a ho, and I’d have gotten my nut. Everybody wins.”
“Except me.”
“Trust, you’re gonna nut at least four times before we even start on me,” he says, his gaze stroking over me like fingers. “And then maybe a few more times, if you’re into a little pain. You wouldn’t have lost anything—except maybe the ability to walk for a few days.”
A funny, almost painful tugging sensation happens inside my sports bra, like he’s pulling on both my nipples at once. I look down and see that they’re visible even through my shirt. Confused, I quickly turn back to the closet, trying to get my thoughts back in order. It’s harder this time. I’m distracted by his presence, knowing he’s looking at me from behind, his gaze now a breath on my neck.
He chuckles from across the room. “So, you’re like… A mega-virgin, huh?”
“I dunno,” I mumble to my closet.
Virginity was always something other girls worried about. It never mattered to me because boys never mattered to me, and virginity was for them, like beauty.
“But you are, right?” he presses. “It’s not a bad thing. Baron will like that. A lot.”
“I don’t really understand what it is,” I admit.
He laughs, the sounds rolling through the room, low and deep and palpable, like something I could put in a box and release later, when I wanted to hear it again.
“You don’t understand what virginity is?” he asks. “It means you’ve never been fucked.”
“I know that,” I say, turning back around. Boots has hopped up onto the bed and is staring at Duke as if he’s trying to unnerve him.
“But is it a hymen? Penetration?” I press.
“Exactly,” Duke says. “You do know.”
This conversation should be awkward, but I find it’s easy to talk to him. He’s so casual about everything, like nothing really matters more than anything else, that it makes me relax too. I’ve always wondered about this, since my family makes a big deal about it, but it’s not something I wanted to talk to them about. And since I don’t have friends, all I could do is read the arguments of strangers on Reddit when I wanted someone else’s opinion. This is the first time I’ve been able to ask the questions that have rattled around in my mind for so long.
“What about fingers?” I ask. “That’s penetration. Do some girls lose their virginity to tampons?”
“Doesn’t count,” he says, making a lazy, dismissive gesture. He reaches over to pet Boots absently, clearly unbothered by my cat’s laser focus.
“What about boys?” I ask. “They don’t have hymens.”
“It’s penetration for us.”
“So it has to be a penis.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Just like you can’t lose your virginity to a vibrator, even if you use one before you fuck a guy.”
“What about blowjobs?” I ask. “That’s a penis inside you.”
“No, it has to be in your pussy. Or your ass. I’d count that. Though we went to a Catholic school in New York, and let me tell you, a lot of girls did not agree.”
I wrinkle my nose, and he laughs again, a quiet sound. Our eyes catch, and there’s a moment, just a heartbeat, that’s wed with something strange and electric. As if he can sense it, Boots ducks back under the bed.
“And for girls?” I ask, turning back to the closet so Duke won’t see how hard I’m fighting to swallow, that my fingers are shaking.
What just happened?
“Oral on a girl?” he asks. “Also doesn’t count.”
“What if you’re a lesbian?” I ask. “You could be with every girl in school, and you’re still a virgin?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, it just is,” he says. “Why, are you a lesbian?”
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“You do make some good points,” he admits. “Since I said eating out doesn’t count, and if a vibrator doesn’t count then a strap-on wouldn’t, which means lesbians would all be virgins, even if they’re sluts.”
“See?” I say, throwing up my hands. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe you just know when you’re not,” he says. “Whatever counts for you, counts. When a Dolce fucks you, trust, you’ll know you’re not a virgin anymore.”
I rub the goosebumps from my arms. “I’m not planning on doing that.”
“I meant ‘you’ as a general term,” he says, hopping up from the bed. “Not you in particular.”
I stiffen when he comes up behind me, edging to one side so he won’t be so close. “What should I wear?” I ask, turning the topic to something safer to discuss when a boy is within reach.
“What are you doing for your date?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “He just said he’d pick me up at .”
My heart does a little thud against my sternum, the reality of this night hitting me now that it’s so close.
“Baron’s probably not the dinner-and-a-movie type,” Duke says. “So not your usual date attire.”
“What type is he?” I ask, because it’s better to get information than to give it. I keep secrets, and that includes the ones about myself. They already know too much about me, and I know next to nothing about them.
“That’s a good question,” Duke says, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “You know, I don’t think Baron’s ever been on a date, so I’m not sure what he’d choose.”
“Never?” I ask incredulously, since I’ve already heard rumors about the twins and their many conquests. And though I didn’t want to share my inexperience with Duke, it makes me feel a little better, a little closer to Baron, to know we have this in common.
“We’ve hung out with plenty of girls,” he says with a shrug. “But a date like this? I don’t think so. If we’re alone with a girl, we’re usually just fucking her.”
“ Just fucking her?” I ask skeptically. “You make it sound like that’s less serious than sitting in a restaurant.”
“I don’t know about serious,” he says, picking out a plain black t-shirt dress that reaches my knees. “But less intimate.”
“How’s that less intimate?”
“You have to talk at a restaurant. Look into someone’s eyes. Get to know them.”
“You don’t get to know girls by sleeping with them?”
He hands me the dress. “A little, I guess. You know what they feel like. You don’t even have to know who a girl is when you bang her from the back, though. She could be anyone.”
“You’ve done that?” I ask, my eyes widening. “You didn’t even know who you were with?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes I want to forget. That’s what doggy style is for.”
For some reason, his answer irritates me. Some part of me wanted a different answer, and I’m bothered that he didn’t give it, even though I’m not sure what I wanted him to say or why I even care.
“If only it were that easy for everyone,” I mutter. “There’s plenty of things I’d like to forget.”
“Like what?” he asks, cocking his head.
“Nothing,” I say, taking the dress. “I’ll go put this on.”
“Just do it here,” he says when I start for the ensuite. “It’ll be quicker.”
“I’m not changing in front of you.”
“I already saw you,” he points out.
“Because you did that,” I say. “I’m not going to get undressed in front of you when I’m about to go out with your brother.”
“Baron won’t care.”
I give him a look. “Until I hear that from him, I’m going to change in the bathroom.”
I can hear his laughter through the door while I change. I can’t decide if I’m irritated by it or if it makes me feel good.
When I step out wearing the simple dress, he’s lounging on my bed again, Boots in his lap now. I wonder if my comforter will smell like him when I climb in later, and whether I’ll like that or have to change my duvet so I can sleep. I wonder how many other girls have gone to sleep with his scent clinging to their sheets. With more than his scent on more than their sheets.
“I think I’ve got it,” I say. “You can go.”
“Hey,” he says, sitting up, his face suddenly earnest. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say. “It’s just, Baron’s my date. Not you.”
“And you think he doesn’t know I’m here?” he asks. “You don’t want him to catch us together? Because he knows. It was his idea.”
“Why?” I demand. “So he could see if I’d sleep with you before my date with him?”
“Don’t be like that,” he says, cracking a smile. “We’re twins. He wouldn’t date someone who didn’t have my approval.”
“What about my approval?”
“Oh,” he says slowly, nodding. “You’re pissed. What did I say?”
“Nothing,” I say. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Come on, tell me,” he says, lifting my cat to his cheek and looking up at me with a pair of puppy dog eyes that can melt even a paper heart like mine. “Kitty says it’s only fair. If I said it, I should get a chance to make it right. Your approval might not mean much to Baron, but it means something to me.”
“Why would you care?”
“I want you to like me,” he says, like being that honest is normal for him. “Otherwise what happens when you and my brother get serious? He’ll ditch me to hang out with you all the time. Wouldn’t it be more fun if we could all hang out together?”
“I’ve heard all about your idea of hanging out together,” I say. “I told you, I don’t even like to be touched. This is a pointless conversation and a pointless idea. That’s why I told him no in the first place. I don’t know why you’re even here.”
“Ah, so that’s what you’re pissed about.”
“I’m not pissed.”
“You don’t like that I said sometimes I like to forget who I’m fucking.”
I search for a reason, something a normal girl would say, that doesn’t make me sound crazy, but I can’t think of one. I remember what Carmen said about them one day in class, so I go with that.
“Those girls are trying to help you cope with your sister’s death,” I say. “And you’re trying to forget them while you’re still inside them.”
“Wow,” he says. “You really don’t sugar coat shit, do you?”
“I don’t see the point.”
“Maybe that’s how I cope.”
We stare at each other for a minute, and I see something stubborn in the set of his jaw, his dark eyes with the tiny gold flecks that I’ve never noticed before. Something immoveable and permanent. I don’t like it. It’s unsettling, to think of him putting down roots here in my refuge, refusing to leave, not swayed by my words. I want this pushy boy out of my bed, out of my house. I didn’t agree to this. I didn’t agree to any of this.
I wanted his brother.
“It’s not fair to take advantage of someone’s feelings,” I say quietly.
“Maybe they’re taking advantage of mine,” Duke says. “You don’t think it’s fucked up that girls throw themselves at us ten times more now that we lost our sister? That they shoot their shot because they see that we’re grieving and our defenses are down? Just because I don’t have feelings for every girl I fuck doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings. I’m not a monster.”
Suddenly I think he might cry, and a bubble of shame rises inside me, one I never knew lurked there, preserved in strands of silk and long forgotten. I don’t feel for other people. That’s an expenditure. I absorb things, preserve whatever is input like flies into my web. I don’t expel things, don’t reach out, don’t output parts of myself.
But my brain is telling me to offer something, to rebalance the equation now that he put so much on his side.
“I might be a monster,” I admit, sinking onto the bed beside him and stroking my cat’s soft fur as he curls in Duke’s lap.
“I’m a bit of an expert on monsters, and I can say with a good amount of certainty that you’re not one.” His sober mood slips away, and a smile replaces it.
The relief is instant and freeing, a w lifted from my conscience. “How are you the expert?”
“I come from a long line of monsters,” he says. “Both my parents are monsters, and my grandparents before them. I myself am a chaos demon, but everyone is their own type of monster.”
“What kind am I?”
“The best kind,” he says, leaning closer, a smile still teasing the corners of his lips as his gaze dips to mine. “Not a monster at all.”
“It’s almost ,” I say. “You should go. All I have left to do is my hair.”
“You’re not wearing makeup?”
I scowl at him. “I never wear makeup.”
“You don’t need it,” he says, rolling up from the bed. “You’d just be covering up your natural beauty.”
“Flattery usually means the person doing it wants something in return.”
He just grins and shakes his head. “You’re a trip, Mabel Darling.”
“Did I pass?”
He sets Boots down and moves to the door without answering, then stops with his hand on the knob. “Guess you’ll find out.”
I nod. “That’s fair.”
“Just give him a chance,” he says. “What’s the worst that could happen?”