Hard Facts by Penny Clarke

12

Grayson

Ilean back in my chair. Text runs together, blurring into dark, meaningless lines on a stark white screen. So I blink furiously. Take off my glasses. Rub my eyes. Put glasses back on. Still, the assignment remains unintelligible.

I push my laptop away, knocking the open textbook I’d tried reading before. Throw aside a legal pad of incoherent notes. One glance at the stack of research articles I’d printed the other day for my thesis, and I look away with a grimace. Like I can concentrate on pages of equations and formulas and theorems any more than I can basic coding. All morning, my focus has been shot.

That’s not right. I can focus all right. Just not on homework.

Not on anything but Summer.

Summer, last night, at Kellermann’s. On my lap. Tossing out facts. Oozing attitude and sex and intimidation. Summer with that hair and in that dress, setting my blood to a boil and my mind to a static fuzz. I think she made my brain short circuit.

No, I know she did. Because now I can’t immerse myself in anything but the memory of her, over and under me, all soft curves and softer lips and eager hands and scorching heat.

Shutting my laptop, I bury a moan. Grip my stirring length. More in a plead for it to settle down than to stimulate any sensation. How am I not completely wrung out yet? It’d be the third—no, fourth, as I recall what was supposed to be a cold shower, only an hour ago—time since I got back home from the bar late the night before. I haven’t beat off this much since the end of freshman year, when we first moved into Main Desire. When I realized this was my own room and myown bathroom, and I could do whatever I wanted in either—

“Close the computer and hands off your dick, I’m coming in,” Levi knocks, hand over his eyes as he opens the door.

My hand flies to my desk, tapping irritatedly.

Or, at least, I could do whatever I wanted, before intrusive housemates also moved in.

“Fuck off, I’m studying,” I snap, irritated that he’s not far off from the truth.

He peeks through his fingers. “Oh, good, you’re studying. Here, I worried you might be, like, having a life or something.”

I throw a pen at him. It misses. By three feet. There’s a reason I don’t play football.

“Why don’t you take a break from all that,” Levi makes a face at my cluttered desk. “And see what’s waiting for you at the door.”

He heads for the kitchen, leaving my door wide open. I follow, confused, until I remember last night. After Summer left. Heading to the bar. Playing pool. Getting drunk. Using my cue stick to hold me up. Natalie and Morris taking me home. Morris, on his phone, mentioning something about ordering the parts for my car because clearly, Summer and I had a fight and she broke up with me and he won the bet and fucking hell, he would pay for overnight shipping, wouldn’t he, that asshole.

Grouchy from his audacity—and from the headache I’ve been nursing since waking—I wrench open the front door.

But it’s Summer. Standing on the porch, purse over her shoulder, arms wrapped over the waist of a downy turtleneck sweater. In boots and tights and a floral skirt that flutters on the crisp wind. Bluebells, I absently note the pattern, more confused by her very presence on my doorstep. Looking the opposite of how she’d looked last night, all dangerous curves. Now, she’s disarming in an entirely different manner. With plush, soft coziness. Cuddly, even. Almost…

Vulnerable, I want to say. Except that’s impossible. Summer doesn’t show weakness. She’s more guarded and off-limits than Spencer’s bedroom.

“Hey—” But Levi cuts me off, throwing the door open wider with a smile.

He greets her with a salute of his water bottle. “Quick question. Are you sticking around, or leaving, or…? No reason, just wondering, do what you want. Only, Rylie’s coming over soon, so it’d be nice to coordinate—”

“You can’t have sex in common areas any more,” my tone is stern. “We talked about this. We all talked about it.”

“Yeah, but if you’re out, and Spence is out, and Mason and Morris are out running off their pent-up sexual frustrations,” he trails off again. “Look, I’m not saying it will happen, but the possibility is high, and I am extending the courtesy of telling you this time.”

“Leave,” I order.

“Right, right,” he says, heading around me for the stairs. At the last second, he pokes his head back out the door to tell Summer, “By the way, you looked hot last night. And I can say that with immunity. My girlfriend said it first. Technically, Natalie said it first, but Rylie agreed, so I’m in the clear.”

“Levi.”

“Natalie said that?” Summer asks, at the same time Levi holds up his hands. “Okay, okay, I’m going. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, Gray. Or do. Go wild, you crazy kids.”

Then he’s up the stairs, and it’s just Summer and me. I twist the doorknob, staring off at the bursts of yellow and orange leaves on tree-lined Main Street. “Um, hi, again—”

“Did you mean it?”

I bring my gaze back to her. Her face, as usual, is impeccable, and I remember her mentioning once, that for the yearly budget she spends, her makeup sure as hell better not show any dark circles or blemishes. But pewter eyes meet mine under furrowed brows. And there’s a tired set to her mouth, making me wonder if she’s just as miserable as I feel. If she spent a restless night, tossing and turning in bed. Like I did.

“What you said last night. Did you mean,” she halts, licking her lip. “That you want to know me?”

“Every word,” I say truthfully.

She nods. Points to her car, parked in the driveway. Raises an eyebrow in question.

And I nod back, just as another cool breeze sweeps over us. “Let me get my coat.”

“Actually,” she pulls something out of her purse. Something red and blue and… spandex? “I need you to wear this.”

* * *

“Did you know,” I call out, crouching low to the ground. “Spiders aren’t insects. They’re arachnids. Spiders actually eat insects. A lot of insects. More than even birds or bats.”

“Ew,” a small voice pipes up to my left, followed by a quick Shhh!

I turn towards the noise. Stalk along the floor to the next aisle, hands on the bookcase to steady myself.

“Spiders have no teeth. They have chelicerae—” Fuck, wait. “Er, pincers. Fangs. And they have up to eight eyes to see all over the place—Ow, fu-fudge.” I rub my shin. Squint through meshed fabric. Pick up the book that dropped on it and set it back on the shelf I’d bumped it from. Continue sneaking in the direction of a chorus of giggles.

“Also, they’re near-sighted,” I say. “You’re never more than ten feet from a spider. There are over thirtythousand kinds. Like black widows. Or common house spiders. Jumping spiders can lunge up to fifty times their own length, because their legs have hydraulic systems—”

“What’s hy-draw-ics?” that tiny voice asks. I veer around a corner as it’s met with two empathic shushes.

“But the coolest thing about spiders,” I lean against the shelves. Fix one fingertip on the notched tip of my weapons. Grin. Spring to my feet. Aim the canisters over the top of the low bookcase. “Is that they shoot webs!”

String rains down on my prey, and three little forms scramble to their feet, squealing and shrieking and blasting my eardrums with laughter. They run away, and I give chase. Up one aisle and down the next. Until I’m out of breath and out of string, all at once.

One terror glances back, sticking out a tongue at me and running smack-dab into Summer.

“All right,” she says. “Spiderman needs a break, guys.”

They whine, but do as she says, leaving me to catch a break. The last one, she stops, plucking a strand of silly string from the girl’s cloudy curls before pointing her to the snack table across the room.

I set the silly string cans down and lift the tight mask off my head. Summer glances at the sweaty strands sticking to my forehead. One hand rises, but then she redirects. Pulls my glasses from the pocket of her skirt. And as I brush back the hair myself, I remember what she said, last night, about me not letting her touch me.

Taking the glasses and fixing them back on my nose, I nod at the kids. “You do this every Saturday then?”

“Yep.”

“With costumes?” I hold up the red mask and am rewarded with the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“Only on special occasions,” she says quietly, then nothing else.

It’s been that way since we left Main Desire. Her, abnormally reticent. On the short drive across town, to the public library. Where she handed over two cans of silly string and told me to hide in the wings of two aisles. And I’d stood, waiting. Watching her hold up a picture book to the small group gathered in the childrens’ section, regaling them with one spidey-superhuman’s origin story. Feeling a growing tautness in my chest, until she excitedly announced that Spiderman was here, today. Right. Now. Announcing my grand entrance.

Movement at my side draws my attention again. Summer nibbles on one manicured thumbnail, still watching the kids. “They’re fosters.” Her eyes shift, briefly, to me and back again. “From this home in town. There are a couple of older kids, too. But they go to counseling Saturday mornings with their foster mom. Maribel. I met her at some other thing I was doing for ABB, two years ago, and we arranged this. So someone can supervise the younger kids while the teens…” She shrugs.

That taut feeling comes back. I rub my chest, right over the spider emblem on the front.

“I know,” I tell her.

“Of course you know,” she mumbles, rolling her eyes. But almost, I think, fondly. “How?”

I point to the curly-haired girl. “Sophie told me. She said Maribel lets her have two helpings of spaghetti for dinner.”

She told me like it was the biggest deal in the world. Because it is. Because I remember those days. Of being told what and where and how much to eat. Of being made to finish my plate, of having to force down meals I hated. That had too little salt or too much sauce. Or worse, the opposite. Not having enough. Having to sneak extra chicken strips from the school cafeteria, or crackers from some other kid’s lunch box. Because whatever else I had, it was never, ever enough.

I swallow past a blockage in my throat. “She said you let her have four cookies at snack time. And you don’t get mad when she only eats two.”

She shrugs again, biting the tip of her thumb until it’s white. “I get the other half. Fair deal.”

And it’s quiet again, as I try to think of something else to say. To poke into this aspect of her that she keeps hidden from others.

“My mom had a garden,” she suddenly speaks. “This… gorgeous flower garden. She taught me everything I know about bees, because there were so many in that garden. But she’d always warn me, you know, to be gentle with them, so they don’t sting. She never even knew—I never knew—Not until the day after her funeral, when I went out into that garden, and for the first time in my life, I got stung.”

Summer hugs herself tighter. “Protracted anaphylaxis. I spent a week in the hospital. Wearing an oxygen mask, because I couldn’t breathe on my own. My heart almost—” She gathers a breath, and it comes out, unsteady. “It almost stopped. From one tiny sting. And I was five.”

With a glance at her shuffling boots, she takes a moment to calm her breathing. In the pause, I ask, “Your dad—”

“Nolan,” her features sour. “Spent that week in his company office. A nanny stayed with me. He never wanted kids, Rowe. He never wanted me. Straight from the horse’s mouth. I heard him say it, at her funeral. While he knew I was within earshot. He’s not…”

There’s a hardness in her voice, as she shakes her head again, curls swaying. “You have your notebooks, your stats. And I have this.” She taps one temple. “I keep my own facts. On everyone. A catalog in my mind on who’s who. So I have a good sense of who they are, what they’re like. How they’re likely to treat me. How they’ll react when they hear my name. The Prescott name.”

Acute understanding falls over me. “That’s how you’re able to remember all your sorority sisters. I wondered—there’s so fucking many—”

A small smile graces Summer’s bowed mouth, before disappearing again. “Among others. But you… You want to know why I didn’t tell my whole name to you when we met? Because I didn’t know you. What you would want from me. And someone always wants something from me. They want a part of the fame, the prestige. The money.” She snorts. “Always the fucking money. And Nolan. Everyone thinks by associating with me, they can get to Nolan. No one ever… No one ever wants to know just me.”

I remember the expression on her face in Kellermann’s last night. How stunned she’d looked. At the time, I logged it as a reaction to our argument. To her being drunk. Now, though…

Was that the first time anyone had ever said those words to her?

Summer’s gaze stays down, as one boot shuffles closer to my spandex-clad foot. A curl falls in her face, and without thinking, I brush it back. Wishing my fingers weren’t covered so that I could feel those silky blond strands on my skin.

“I do.”

I drop my hand the instant Summer looks up at me, her stare intent. And fuck, the instant those pewter eyes hold mine, I feel spacey again. Forgetting everything else, while that deep-seated urge simmers low inside me. I’ve tried to put it off. For some time. Since the moment we met. But I can’t do it. I can’t hold it back. The longer she’s with me, the stronger this compulsive need to figure her out drives me to learn more, more, more. To dive deep beneath those blonde curls. Behind her pewter eyes. To see into her very mind. Read all her thoughts.

To know Summer. Because she’s just Summer.

And as I stare into her eyes, her curls, all the curves of her face, the geometric beauty that solely makes up her, I ask, “Why don’t you like having your picture taken?”

I wait for the deflection. For her to change topics. Or walk away. But she stays standing before me, that silver stare as hard as iron.

“Because when I was a kid, and there was a camera around, it was the only time Nolan ever paid attention to me,” she finally tells me, voice dripping with bitter anger. “If other people were watching, he was a father. Wherever there were reporters, investors, celebrities—places a camera was sure to be—he’d parade me around. Like a fucking prop. He would drag me to all these—these humanitarian efforts.” She spits out the word. “And I’d feel so guilty, so ashamed. That we’d be at these charity auctions and events for people—for people in need. All these other people who had nothing, who only wanted our help—Nolan never gave a shit about any of them. He just wanted the attention on him. His company. His latest advancements. And the reporters—”

One hand raises to cover those pewter eyes, squinting in painful memory. “There were always so many. Sticking their cameras in my face. Wherever I turned. I never—they never gave me a break. And Nolan would tell them to do it. Tell me to smile. Take the pictures. Until this one day, we were visiting a hospital. In the children’s ward. With these kids who have actual hardships. But Nolan, his being there—it was all just some publicity stunt. And this one reporter, he just kept getting in my face. Snapping picture after picture after picture after picture, until I—I snapped.”

“How?” I take her hand in mine. Uncover her eyes. And because that hand is warm and grips my fingers tightly, I take the other. Squeezing both her palms with mine.

Summer’s lips curve in a soft, almost impish smile. “I smashed his camera. Threw it right on the floor.”

“Well, that,” I match her smile. “Sounds like a perfectly reasonable reaction.”

She snorts, her head ducking forward. Resting against my shoulder as her shoulders quiver in silent laughter. And the weight of her head—it feels right, there. Slowly, I settle mine on top of her curls. Breathing in a rosy scent and lazily rubbing my thumbs over her fingers.

“I like animals, Grayson James,” comes her voice, muffled into my shoulder. “I like animals, and kids, and old people, because they want nothing from me but my time and my attention. And I like making a difference where I can, because I’ve been given everything I could ever want. I want to give it all back. Nolan’s threatening to take my sorority away. I love my philanthropy, and I—I can’t let Nolan take it from me.”

“So…” I grip her hands tighter. “We don’t let him.”

Summer lifts her head. And her smile. It’s the prettiest curve of all.

“Then, I guess,” she says softly. “I can help you win this bet against Morris, too.”

Shouts pull our attention back to the snack table. The kids, getting rowdy again, when a librarian brings out another book. Summer’s smile settles affectionately. She nods to them, letting go of my hands. “We should get back.”

No. Not yet. I stop her, gently cupping her elbow. She looks down, and I slip my hand to hold hers again. Because I need to tell her. Before she leaves, I need her to understand one thing. “I don’t give a shit about Nolan Prescott, Summer. His company, the internship—That’s all I care about. Something like that, it—” I send another glance at the kids across the room.

Fifty. Twenty-five. Three.

I look back at her. “It changes things for me, you know.”

Summer glances from me, to the kids, then back at me. Then, “I vandalized Prescott Hall last semester.”

“What?” I blink, not expecting that. “You mean, with the—”

“The penis? Yep.” Her smile turns mischievous. “I did it. Or, well, I paid a guy to do it. An art major. Because Nolan said he would show up at my spring fundraiser. My entire sorority was so pissed at me, because he was supposed to be the big draw to the event. But he blew me off. To schmooze with investors. Walsh found me out, but she never told.”

I laugh, completely caught off-guard, and just a little amazed, by this confession. And to lessen the pressure on her, to show her it’s not just her, putting her secrets out in the open, I tell her, “I steal food from campus dining halls.”

“Who doesn’t, Rowe?” she rolls her eyes. She deliberates, before, “I caught Walsh and Armstrong making out in the library once. Before they started seriously dating.”

“I hear them through my bedroom ceiling,” I cringe. “Kennedy’s loud.”

Summer mutters something like damn, Walsh.

“There are four other girls in my sorority cheating on their significant others.” She holds up a finger. “But I won’t say which ones. That’s their secret.”

“Sometimes, I’ll write off my library fines without actually paying them.”

“I know of three professors having affairs with students.”

“Freshman year, I sold research papers for extra cash.”

Silver eyes widen, taken aback. “You’re got kind of a devious streak, don’t you?”

I grin. Because, really, she’s not wrong.

Sending a surreptitious glance to the children, Summer leans in close. “I am so hungover right now.”

And I meet her in the middle. Rest my aching forehead against hers, shoulders shaking with mirth. “So am I. Do they really have to scream so much?”

We smother giggles, trying not to attract attention of influential youngsters. Summer tentatively rests her hands on my arms. Picking at the red spandex of my Spiderman costume, until pewter eyes glance at me under dark lashes. “Grayson?”

“Yeah?”

“The drive-in…” She pauses. Moistens her lips. “It was my first date. Ever. Fake or real.”

“But you—You’re…” My brow scrunches, glasses slipping down my nose. I push them up, confused. How the hell do I even phrase this without insulting her? Because I know her reputation by now. Fuck, most of the time, she’s the one bringing it up. “How?”

“When guys know you’re… on the easier side, they really see no point in doing something as hard as putting in a little effort.” She drifts her fingers up and down my arms. Testing the waters. “That night, though… I had a lot of fun.”

I don’t know what to call this… this thing rolling through me. Outrage, at those guys. For not giving her something as simple as a field and a big screen and a terrible movie about killer sharks. Gratification, for being the one that did. And—And damn nerves again, because—

“It was mine, too,” I whisper. She looks at me, but I check on the kids, the librarian, that no one pays any mind as I gently take Summer’s hands again and lead her down an aisle of books. Where it’s secluded and there are no children and no witnesses and no one but me and her.

“Rowe.”

I rest my hands on her shoulders. “I’ve been watching them, my friends. Seeing what they do. How they act. And they touch. All the fucking time. Spencer plays with Kennedy’s hair. Hugs her. Holds her close. Levi and Rylie can’t keep their hands to themselves, though fuck, everyone wishes they would.” I step closer. So that when she inhales, deep, the front of her sweater brushes against the spider logo. “And last night—That’s what we should be doing. What we should have been doing from the start. You’re right. It was a dumb rule.”

“Grayson,” Summer breathes.

But I shake my head. Command that she doesn’t speak, not yet. Not until, “Just… don’t move, okay?”

She doesn’t. Stays absolutely still. Aside from her chest, rising and falling against mine. Her eyes, traveling to my mouth. And her lips, opening the most infinitesimal bit.

I capture them with mine. Delicately. Slowly. She allows me to lead in this. To take my time and familiarize myself with the feel of her. Let my senses steady before growing too overwhelmed. By the floral scent of her, dizzyingly sweet. Her mouth, her taste. The swish of her bluebell skirt against spandex, and fuck, how I want to touch that skirt. Draw it up in my fingers and follow the shape of the hip underneath it. But a sigh distracts me, and it’s coming from Summer, and I press my lips firmer to the seam of her mouth, wanting to hear it again.

Only she parts her lips, and it’s with one touch of her tongue that I pull back. That I rest my forehead on hers again. Kiss her lips again, once, briefly, to show I’m not completely shutting her down. To reassure that I do want this. Fuck, I want this. Too much. And I kiss her again. Again and again. Over and over. Chaste kisses. Sweet kisses. Kisses I feel fucking everywhere, through every aching, straining atom of me, because I don’t want them to be chaste or sweet.

I don’t want to hold back anymore.

Don’t want to stop myself from touching her when I want. Don’t want to tell myself not to stare at her when I can’t do anything but. Don’t want to not kiss her when all I ever wanted was the exact opposite.

But for now, I must. So I stop kissing her, and I back away. Let my body cool down. Will my brain to stop malfunctioning.

“Shouldn’t it be,” Summer murmurs, eyes slowly fluttering open. “That you’re upside down for that?”

I chuckle, cradling a costumed hand against her cheek. “Who’s the nerd now?”

“Oh, you. Hands down. Don’t think I missed the shirt you’ve got on under that. What did it say, something about energy and speed of light—” She teases a finger under the costume’s neck, pulling on the spandex, trying to peek.

And, chuckling, I distract her with one last kiss.