Pretty Reckless by L.J. Shen

She’s a work of art

And as such

There’s nothing more devastating

Than watching her break

“We can grab Starbucks on the way back home.”

That’s his peace offering after eating me out against a filthy auto-shop sign with his girlfriend not even one hundred feet away.

Penn offers the olive branch in his taciturn tone the morning after Lenny’s while I’m sitting at the kitchen island with my family, sipping coffee and messing on my phone. Since I haven’t slept a wink, analyzing the entire timeline of our relationship, I decide to play along. This is what I’ve come up with so far:

1. Him having a girlfriend was speculation until yesterday, not a fact. When I asked, he dodged, and I never asked again. While it is true that my research should have been more thorough, he went home with Blythe so openly, I didn’t think about it too much.
2. Yesterday, I was disoriented and shocked, which is why I let what happened, happen. But it won’t happen anymore. I can’t have an affair with the guy who lives under my roof and hates me for screwing up his possibly dead sister’s life.
3. He may have taken all my important firsts so far, but he is not going to take the big V-card.

Penn grabs his varsity jacket and motions for Bailey to move it. They’re going to the library together. They’ve been spending a lot of time together. I’m jealous of Bails. I’m jealous of Penn. But most of all, I’m jealous of the fact they are capable of forming a real relationship.

All eyes dart from newspapers and iPads and shiny chrome magazines to us.

“No thanks, I’m going to Blythe’s.”

Her name makes both of us pause. Penn nods curtly, clearing his throat. Dad is looking back and forth between us, reading between the lines.

“Penn, don’t pork Daria’s friends,” he drawls.

Melody gasps. “Jaime!”

“What? I’m not the one doing it!”

“Yes, sir.” Penn plucks a donut from the open white box in the center of the table and takes a bite. “Happy not to touch anyone Daria is affiliated with. Her personality might be contagious.”

I roll my eyes, knowing I am being watched, and that Dad—the only person on my team in this house—will flip his shit if he finds out Penn touched me.

“Hate you, bro.” I smile sweetly.

“Indifferent to you, sis,” Penn says midbite, ruffling my hair as he ambles out the door with Bails. It makes my heart flutter in my chest like a butterfly, but at the same time, I’m also sick to my stomach. Penn really is like a brother to Bailey.

A brother who also had his fingers and tongue in her older sister’s privates.

I spend the day stalking Adriana on social media. She is gorgeous, and her baby daughter, Harper, is adorable. Harper is fair-skinned with green eyes, just like Penn. There are a ton of pictures of Addy and Harper together, and two of them with Penn. He always looks at them like they’re the apple of his eye.

Apples.He hasn’t given me apples in a while. Does that mean he thinks he’s already conquered me?

At night, another crisis ensues. Mel doesn’t come to check on me for the first time since I was born. She doesn’t tuck me in bed, kiss my forehead, and tell me she loves me. Probably because she doesn’t.

Maybe she’s given up on me after the ice-cream parlor stunt. Perhaps, she wants me to pack my stuff and move to college. I’m her glowing, shiny failure. Blackhearted and empty.

I tell myself that I don’t care, but inside, my guts rip to shreds and bleed all over my stomach.

I take my little black book to my mother’s in-house ballet studio. She turned a part of our basement into a well-lit workroom when we first moved here, and since then, she’s spent a considerable amount of time here, mostly with Bailey. I can still hear the echo of their laughter crawling up the basement stairs every summer evening while I was holed up in my room, climbing the walls.

Mel never invited me here, so now I come here on my own, inviting myself.

The night I found out Via ran away, I stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror in the studio wearing full ballet gear. I ran my gaze along my leotard-clad body, knowing I was too clumsy, too curvy, too Daria to be a ballerina. Melody found her joy in other girls. Girls more athletic, and disciplined, and regal. Girls like Via. I got jealous, and I started acting up. Instead of pulling me in and telling me that I was irreplaceable, Mel let me go.

So I drifted like a balloon in the sky, waiting for someone to anchor me back down, but no one ever did. It’s been years since she stuck her nose in my life and figured out what was going on. Me and Principal Prichard are doing things we shouldn’t be doing. I have a journal where I confess all the horrible things I do to people. My friends are backstabbers who hate me, and I haven’t laughed in my family’s presence in over four years.

Four years.

Four unnoticed years.

A tear escapes my eye, rolling down my cheek. The door opens, and Penn walks in. He is quiet, somber. He is always quiet and somber. And present. I can feel his presence like blood flowing in my body. Vital and warm and full of my DNA. The problem with Penn is that he has a girlfriend, but he feels like mine when he’s around, and that’s dangerous.

“How did you know I was here?” I wipe the tear before he can see it.

He rubs the back of his neck. “I thought it was a wine cellar and was counting on some booze.”

I roll my eyes, sniffing.

He plops down on the floor. Yanking me by the hem of my shirt, he motions for me to sit beside him, then he knocks his knee against mine. “Talk.”

“With the enemy? No thank you.”

I drink him in. The curl of his dark blond hair falling across his forehead. His sulking scowl. The love bites across his neck that I didn’t do. I imagine Adriana nibbling and kissing and biting him, then stand, unable to calm myself down. I jog toward the door.

He gallops behind me, tugging me back to him.

“Talk, Daria. Fucking talk.”

“Why!” I throw my hands in the air. “So you can hold it against me the first chance you get? So you can laugh at me with your friends? The prissy girl with the first-world problems? So you know how weak I am? Why should I talk to you? I’m nothing to you. I’ve always been your nothing. The bitch who drove your twin sister away. Don’t pretend otherwise just because we shared a few sloppy, illicit kisses. Don’t act like you give me a sliver of thought when I’m not in front of you. I’m not Adriana.”

His lips curl in revulsion. I think I really pissed him off this time around.

He takes my face in both his hands and brings my nose to brush his.

“No,” he hisses. “You’re not Adriana. I agree.”

He pulls back from me, digs in the back pocket of his low-hanging skinny jeans, and takes out a single house key with a blue plastic string tied around it. He throws it into my hands. I catch it.

My eyes widen. How did he…?

“Stole it from your pompoms.” He looks away, walking to the other side of the room, pacing like a tiger in a cage. This is big. Huge, maybe. He keeps me everywhere he goes.

I chase him across the dance room, planting a hand on his shoulder. He turns around. He looks ragged and heartbroken, and I think it’s because of me. I want it to be because of me. What kind of person does that make me?

“What’s eating you, Daria Followhill, queen bee, cheer captain, and the most popular girl in the county?”

My family.

My friends.

My secrets.

My insecurities.

My errors and mistakes and past.

And you. You bury me so deep in feelings I can’t even explain.

“Melody stopped coming to my room. It used to be our thing. Every night since I was born, she would give me a kiss good night. I think she stopped loving me,” I tell him, and when I do, I realize it’s not a lie. It’s a numbing notion inhabiting every cell in my body. My mother doesn’t love me anymore.

I made someone programmed to adore me unconditionally forget all about me.

“She loves you.” He slides the back of his hand against my throat, staring deep into my eyes. “But you hate yourself, so it doesn’t matter.”

I snort.

“I love myself. Look at me. I’m Daria Followhill.” I motion to my body with my hands. He shakes his head. He’s not buying it.

Wordlessly, he pushes me toward the mirror in front of us. Standing behind me, he jerks my chin up so I have to look at myself. At us. He’s over a head taller than me. Broad and muscular like a Greek god. His face is sharper, more symmetrical than mine. His charisma is blowing up this room, and I’m standing here, casing most of his body yet barely drawing any attention to mine.

“When I look in the mirror, I see an orphan. A football player. A student. A grieving brother. A guy whose dream is to attend Notre Dame so he can escape the shithole that’s his life and break the poverty cycle. I know who I am. But who are you? Tell me what you see, Daria.” His breath fans across my hair. “Help me get into this beautiful, awful head of yours.”

My hand travels to my stomach, and I grab a thin tire of fat.

“I’m too curvy.”

My hand flies to my face, a finger rolling over my nose.

“My nose is too small, and my eyes are too big. And my hair always looks hella dry.”

“What else?” he asks. His hand travels to my pajama shorts and snakes into them, his fingers tracing my slit through my panties. “Confide in me, my hideous little monster.”

I snort out a laugh, shaking my head. I want to tell him to stop. That he has a girlfriend and a child and I’m not like that. A Jerry Springer-style homewrecker. But for the first time since yesterday, I feel seen.

“I’m the most jealous and petty person I know,” I admit.

“That’s because you live inside yourself.” He kisses my neck, and I let him. I’m so weak and pathetic. “What else?”

“My soul is black, Penn. When I see competition, I smash it before it grows. I’m so vindictive.”

“No, Daria, you are so human. That’s what you are.”

My toes leave the floor as he tugs my panties aside, his hand shoved deep inside my shorts, and he starts fingering me with two fingers, his thumb playing with my clit. I moan and roll my head over his chest, closing my eyes and letting myself drift somewhere only we exist. My ass grinds against his erection, and I love feeling how hot he is for me.

“Your insecurities are the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” He bites my earlobe softly, and when I open my eyes, I see that he is still staring at us in the mirror.

Of course, he’d feast on my weaknesses. Why wouldn’t he? It makes him stronger in our screwed-up relationship.

My knees give out, and my hips buck forward as he fingers me faster and deeper, then a door whines open upstairs, and heavy footfalls descend the basement stairs.

“Marx.” I gasp, turning around and pushing Penn away. I look left and right helplessly, my eyes landing on the en suite bathroom of the studio. I shove him inside and slam the door behind him at the same time the studio door flies open and my dad steps in.

Shit, shit, shit.

I’m so busted. I pull my shirt down to cover a very prominent spot of lust on my shorts. My body shivers from the impending orgasm.

“Everything okay?” My dad frowns. “Went to get a glass of water and heard some talking.”

“I’m alone!” I exclaim.

Real smooth, idiot.

I push my hair back, clearing my throat. “All alone, as you can see.”

My smile is so tight it might tear through my skin. Dad jerks his chin toward the bathroom.

No. Please, no.

“Open the bathroom door, Daria.”

“Dad…”

“Now.”

I walk over to the bathroom and open it, stepping aside. He is still by the door all the way across the room, but he has a good view of the majority of the bathroom.

“Open the bath curtain.”

“Are you serious right now?”

“Don’t stall. It’s all fun and games until there’s a boy in the house who wants to get into my little girl’s pants.”

I know it’s foolish, but my heart is dancing in my chest at the reminder that he actually cares. Bracing myself and taking a deep breath, knowing he is about to see Penn, I open the curtain in one go. But Penn isn’t there. I bite down on my lower lip to hide my shock, then turn around back to Dad and shrug.

“Accept my apologies, princess.” He smirks. “And while you’re at it, stay away from boys.”

“Fine.”

“I mean, forever.”

“Go away, Dad.”

“Go to bed. Daddy loves you.”

As soon as he shuts the door, I re-enter the bathroom, looking around frantically. There’s no window, so where on earth is Penn?

“Down here, hideous little monster.” I hear a chuckle.

He is fully clothed, lying in the bathtub, smiling up at me with that grin that can crack up the sky and pull the sun closer.

“Move,” I growl, stepping in with him.

We lie there, him hugging me in the tub, until we drift asleep. There’s no more talking or fingering or kissing. Just the two of us, soaked in something wrong that feels so right.

At half past four, his alarm goes off. We both fumble back to our rooms, and when we reach our doors, his closes with a hiss, not a slam. I smile to myself.

Small victories.