Pretty Reckless by L.J. Shen

I want to be your everything

Other than one thing

Your past

Ithrust the vodka bottle into my glove compartment and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

Great. I’m turning into fucking Rhett. I’ve been avoiding the Followhill mansion since breaking shit off with Daria except for the times I needed to sleep, shit, and shower, and even though I’m jumping through hoops trying not to bump into Daria and Via, every time I do, it feels like they cut me down the middle, dragging my two halves in opposite directions.

Throwing the driver’s door open, I zigzag my way toward the snake pit. It’s too early for the fights, but people are already milling on the bleachers, passing beers, vapes, and cigarettes. I find Gus underneath said bleachers, reading through statistics of fighters, which he writes down with a Sharpie on a clipboard. He licks his finger and flips a page when I approach him, not even looking up.

“Scully.”

“Are we gonna make up and out, or are you going to tell me why the fuck you invited me here?” I hiccup, bracing myself on the side of the blue bleacher we are standing underneath.

Yesterday, Adriana called me and asked if we could meet at the park. Stressed that it was urgent. I said yes because I thought it had something to do with my stepdad. He’s a notorious shit-stirrer in my old neighborhood. In the background, I heard Gus talking, almost whispering, but I chalked it up to maybe her serving him at Lenny’s. Only when I parted ways with Addy and Harper at the park, in which she told me Harper might be running a fever (she wasn’t) did I remember that Addy had taken off to focus on school last week.

Now I’m interested to know just how deep Gus thrust himself into my life without my knowledge. Because if he’s playing Addy and messed around with my sister, who knows what else he touched without permission?

Not Daria, for his fucking sake.

“Aw.” Gus tosses his clipboard to the ground, adjusting his ball cap backward because apparently, he just doesn’t look douchey enough. “Someone’s being a bad sport.”

“Spit it out,” I snarl.

“I just wanted to talk.” He lifts his hands in surrender.

“I have nothing to say to you, other than your team sucks, but actions speak louder than words, so I’ll just remind you of that on the field next week.”

“About that.” Gus taps his mouth with his finger, making a show of it. “I see your little girlfriend didn’t bring you up to speed on our latest convo.”

I rub my jaw.

“Adriana tries to forget you exist. She hates you like the rest of us.”

“Nah. The one you actually give a shit about.”

Daria.

My jaw clenches, and I’m ready to fuck his face up if he so much as breathes in her direction. She’s going through enough—partly because of my miserable ass—and doesn’t need him on her case.

“Leave her out of our beef, or you’ll have a much bigger problem than getting your ass kicked next Friday.” My voice turns to steel, and any traces of the booze leave my system. I’m wide-awake and sober now.

“Too late, lover boy. I got my hands on her journal. Fascinating shit.” He whistles, fanning his face. “This thing’ll blow up the school when it comes out. Spanked and humiliated by her principal in his office like in a bad porn flick, dicked by you in a forest, and basically shitting all over your sister’s and her mom’s dreams. Daria’s been good at being a bad girl these past four years.”

Principal Prichard spanked her? The words burn on my skin, and all I see is red. He touched her. No, worse—he hurt her. Under my fucking watch.

Anger clogs up my veins and settles in my stomach. I am on the verge of detonating under the bleachers all over Gus.

Taking a step toward him, I wrap my fingers around his throat. I can choke him to death in cold blood right now and not even regret it tomorrow morning. The thought scares me because it is real. I was livid when I found out he was messing around with my sister, but apparently, the two parts Via and Daria split me in aren’t that even after all. Daria’s chunk is bigger. I care about her more.

“If this shit comes out…”

Gus tries to swallow without success, producing a sound that’s between a cackle and a gag. My hold on his meaty neck is so firm, I can see his blue veins popping out from between my fingers. His eyes turn red as his blood vessels begin to burst.

“What do you think is going to happen if you fuck me up, Scully? That’s right. Whoever keeps the journal for me is going to print it out and give it to anyone who’s willing to read it. And trust me—people’ll line up for your girlfriend’s shit.”

“What do you want?” Spit flies out of my mouth. I’m losing it. I’m losing her. The air begins to pulse, and the world is a living thing, swaying and swinging, trying to trip me.

“Lose the game, bro. I told her the only way she is getting this bitch back without any repercussions is if your ass lets us win. Everyone knows you’ve been approached by all the big ones. Just take a step aside and let others have a piece of the pie.”

“I still have my teammates. They’re the ones who deserve the pie,” I grit out.

Not everyone has been contacted yet with potential scholarship offers. Kannon hasn’t. Camilo has scouts eyeing him but has yet to receive a concrete offer. Neither has Nelson. By throwing the game, I’m throwing their futures, too.

Not to mention Coach Higgins.

Not to mention my goddamn morals.

“They don’t have your back, so I don’t see why you should have theirs.” Gus pushes my chest, and I realize I’ve released my hold on him without even meaning to. The red marks on his neck are going to be purple tomorrow morning.

“Don’t talk to me in riddles. If you have something to say—say it.”

He picks up the clipboard and slaps the plastic above him three times. I hear people standing up and circling the bleachers, and less than a minute later, I am standing in front of his entire football squad, sans Knight Cole. His posse is here, arms folded, chests puffed, ready to bring Gus’s point home.

“Throw the game.” Gus jerks his chin up. “Save your princess. She’d do the same for you.”

I stare at him through a mist of rage that’s blinding me.

I get in his face, sneering, too.

“Mark my words, Bauer. I’m going to fuck you over so hard and raw, no college will want to touch you with a ten-foot pole.”

Via stole Daria’s diary.

Via is still banging Gus.

Via also most likely told him where I live.

On my way back home, as I was struggling to pull my shit together so as not to get into a fatal car accident while the adrenaline coursed through my bloodstream, I figured out why Gus hasn’t thrown my sister into his mix of blackmail even though she handed him the ammo against me on a silver platter.

Gus protects Via.

Via protects Gus.

Nobodyprotects Daria.

I storm into the Followhills’ living room without so much as registering their faces. The only thing I see is my sister’s head peeking up from her homework on the kitchen island. I bunch the fabric of the back of her dress and hurl her outside to the backyard. Bailey lifts her head up from her homework and starts protesting before seeing the look on my face.

“Penn, what are you…?”

“Shut up.”

Surprisingly, it does shut her up. Maybe the look on my face is warning enough that I’m not above locking her in the utility room if she doesn’t cooperate.

“Oh my God! You’ve lost your mind! What are you doing? Let me go!” Via alternates between yelling and begging. “Penn! Wait! I can explain!”

“You can, but I’m done listening to your shit,” I say tonelessly.

My twin is still cawing like a raven when I use the back of her collar to toss her into the deep end of the pool. I watch as she stumbles on the edge, sinks like a brick, then rises to the surface. She shakes off the water and hair plastered to her face. I stand on the edge, watching her. Waiting to feel something more than disdain and discovering I feel nothing at all.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” She punches the water, shrieking.

I throw my head back and laugh. “Dropping the F-bomb now, are we? Took you long enough to take off that cheap-ass mask of yours, Sylvia, but now that you have, I’ll give you one thing. I can see your real face now, and it’s pretty ugly.”

She wipes her face and starts swimming toward the stairs. “So I’m Sylvia now, huh?”

“Feel lucky that you are anything at all. I told you not to touch her. We had a deal. A blood oath.”

The day I told Daria to go look for dick elsewhere, I walked into Vaughn’s pool house thinking I was doing her a favor by temporarily breaking her heart. Smug fucker that I was, it never occurred to me that I’d be breaking mine, too.

I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I don’t even think about getting my dick wet, let alone allow the harem of cheerleaders and groupies to do the honor. I can’t breathe without thinking about the girl across the hall. I function solely for the purpose of proving to myself that I still can, and I can’t even look my sister in the eye without wanting to make it black around the edges.

Via climbs out of the pool looking like Samara Morgan from The Ring at the same time Jaime slides the glass door open, popping his head out.

“What the hell is going on?” His voice is an impatient growl.

“Nothing.” I wave a flippant hand. “We need to sort some shit out is all.”

Jaime glances at my sister with frost that wasn’t there before. Mel might have the patience of a thousand nuns, but Jaime knows what’s up, and he is Team Daria all the way.

Via nods at the same time she shivers her way to a lounger. “Thank you, Mr. Followhill. I’m okay.”

Jaime closes the door behind him. I walk toward her, casting a shadow over her figure, and kick her shin lightly.

“Answer me.”

“She ruined everything,” she huffs, her lips twisting in abhorrence. If she thinks she is getting off the hook by crying, she is gravely fucking mistaken, and officially doesn’t know the tin man she created the minute she left. “I hate her so much. And I swear I didn’t know about Gus asking you to lose the game. You have to believe me, Penn. I just wanted to get back at her for throwing my letter out.”

“I threw the letter out,” I yell in her face, stubbing a finger on my chest where the hole is. A hole that had been shrinking for weeks, but has now become bigger than ever since Via came back. I ripped my shirts the day I broke things off with Daria, cutting the holes so big, you can now see half my chest. “I’m to blame just as much as she is.”

“I hated you, too.” She darts up, pushing me and taking a step forward. “Is that what you want to hear? Because it’s the truth. Even before I knew you ruined my letter, I hated you. I hated you for looking at her with starry eyes every time you waited on the corner to pick me up after ballet class. I saw you falling in love with her before you even realized what your stupid ass was doing. And she was the enemy. You fell for my downfall.”

Clamping my mouth shut, I rub the back of my neck. All this time, I thought Daria was a bitch for doing what she did to Via. I never stopped to consider that my sister gave her a run for her money even back then. Via always covered for her shortcomings by being mean. These two were awful to each other, and Daria just happened to stumble upon something big she could ruin for Via.

If Via had found an identical letter, she would have destroyed it, too.

“I’m done with you.” I turn around, walking away. I hear her wild footsteps gaining on me. She’s tugging at my sleeve, falling to her knees in front of me, and I’m forced to stop.

“Penn, please.”

“You’re with him,” I say, not ask. She doesn’t deny it. Just keeps on saying please, please, please. I’m not even sure what she is asking for, but if it’s my forgiveness, she is officially high.

“I’m with him because I need someone. I need an ally,” she admits.

I laugh because it doesn’t matter anymore. I kick off her arms, which are hugging my shins. “Who do you think was my ally, Sylvia?”

“Daria is my enemy,” she moans.

“Gus is mine,” I retort.

I won this battle and lost the entire fucking war. It’s like crawling back home defeated and finding your home burned to ashes once you enter the gates of your fallen kingdom.

I take a few more steps, then stop at the threshold and pivot to her. “My only regret is trying to pacify your sorry ass and breaking things off with Daria. I loved you when no one else did. I grieved for you. I thought you were dead and tortured myself, blamed myself. But my actions never intended to hurt you. I made a mistake. You did all this on purpose. So now I’m leaving you, just as you left me. Only I’m four years too late.”

When my mother was still into poetry (and life in general, I guess), she used to read us passages every night. There was one that really stuck with me for years afterward. Not the entire thing—that shit sucked as a whole. Just the one sentence.

Love is humbling.

Those three words boggled my mind. What could be humbling about love? Love is celebratory. It is victorious. It is the exact opposite of humbling. Even back then, I understood the definition of the word love but not the meaning of it. Now, as I stand in front of Daria’s closed door for the first time in weeks, after not exchanging a word, or a kiss, or a fucking glance with her all this time, I am truly, devastatingly, shoot-me-in-the-fucking-face humbled.

I knock on the door before deciding it’s a stupid-ass move. A real man would barge in and hoist her up over his shoulder. The man I was at Lenny’s when I still had the confidence I could have her.

But that was before I caved into my sister’s wishes.

Back when I really was a real man.

Fuck. This is hard.

“Come in.” Her voice is throaty and callous and distant.

I push her door open and step in. Closing it, I keep my back to her so I don’t have to see her face and what’s on it.

“Talk?” I ask, still staring at the door. Since when do I use question marks? Since I fucking lost the right to tell her what’s up.

Say yes.

Say yes.

Say yes.

She says nothing instead.

I wait. And wait. And wait. I deserve this. All of it. My phone pings, and I take it out of my pocket.

Talk.

A tired smile finds its way to my lips. We’re still us, and there’s some comfort in that. When you don’t talk to someone you see every day, you start to wonder if they blocked out your existence. But Daria remembers. The Ferris wheel and ballet studio and the woods. The pool house with Vaughn and the locker room in All Saints High.

I text her back, my back still to her.

I’m sorry.

She replies.

So am I.

I text back.

Gus has your journal. He asked me to throw the game unless I want it printed out.

She types back.

Gus is a coward. And good luck to that idiot trying to work a copier.

Chuckling, I shake my head. Daria and Sylvia as I’ve never seen them before. One sacrifices herself for me, the other sacrificing me for herself.

Can I turn around?

She answers. I don’t know if it’s a good idea.

Breathe, motherfucker. Breathe.

I need to see your face when I type this next thing.

Two minutes pass before she relents. Okay.

Turning around, I drink her in. She is sitting on her bed, wearing oversized pajamas. Her hair is braided the way I like it and flung over her right shoulder. My heart is staggering like the drunken town fool right out of the brothel and into the arms of the Disney princess that are no longer stretched open. And I’m stupid because I let her go, but maybe I’m smart, too, because I realized my mistake.

I just hope it’s not too late.

I look down, my thumbs flying over my phone screen. Look at me.

I watch her reading the text. Her face screws up and tenses in agony. She doesn’t look up.

I try again. I’m throwing the game and retrieving your diary. I’m sorry it took me so long to get my head out of my ass. It was dark back there. Hard to see right from wrong. I was my sister’s keeper for so long, I never once wondered if she was worth keeping.

She still won’t look at me. Tears roll down her cheeks. I suck at this. I don’t know much about girls. I know even less about girls I like. And apparently, I know next to nothing about girls I love.

Love. Four letters can’t cover what I feel for Daria Followhill. They seem too trivial, too small, too overused.

Via made me choose between you two. Said she’d run away back to Mississippi if I made the wrong choice.

Her fingers are placid, hovering over her screen. She is not saying, or typing, or doing anything. And love IS humbling, I know now because I want to punch myself in the face for being the smug bastard who assumed he’d just walk out of this shit unscathed. The tin man didn’t ask for a heart—but got one anyway.

I love you, Daria Followhill, and I think you love me, too. In fact, I think we fell at the same time. You, like rain, in drizzles, over the weeks. Me, like the fucking sky above my head, all at once, crashing without the faintest chance of stopping.

Her fingers are moving. I’m mesmerized. She types, looks up, and meets my gaze through the screen of her tears, then puts her phone down.

“It’s too late.”

Rushing toward her, I fall to my knees, wrapping her waist in my arms and burying my head in her thighs. She doesn’t move.

“Skull Eyes?”

“Don’t lose the game. The journal will eventually get out. It’s already out of our control. You shouldn’t deprive yourself and your teammates of this win.”

“Fuck the game. What about you? What about us?”

What about the fact I just ripped my fucking heart out and dumped it at your feet, waiting for you to pick it up, and you kicked it across your room? Huh?

I look up. She bites her inner cheek. Her nose is pink, and her eyes are glittering, and I realize I no longer enjoy her suffering. It’s ripping me apart.

“I told you I love you,” I remind her quietly as though she wasn’t here two seconds ago.

“If this is how you love…” She shakes her head. “Then I don’t want your love, Penn Scully.” I open my mouth to say something, but she beats me to it. “Besides, you have Adriana and Harper to take care of.”

“Adriana and Harper are complicated.” I rear my head back about to spit out some real shit.

“I’ve known Adriana ever since I was a kid. Adriana developed a crush on me, but I never reciprocated. I was stuck in the girls-are-disgusting stage when she started noticing boys. That didn’t stop her from frequenting my house almost every day. I warned her so many times not to, especially as the years passed and things got worse at home. Mom was out of it, and Rhett became more violent. One day, just before sophomore year, she came over while I was at practice. Rhett opened the door and told her I should be in any minute, so she waited. He raped her.”

I watch Daria’s eyes widen, then she swallows hard, so I continue.

“She got out of there, shocked and ashamed. She didn’t want anyone to know. Three months later, she found out she was pregnant. It was too late to do anything about it.” I clear my throat.

I remember all the times Adriana agonized over not wanting Harper before she was born. How bad I felt for her. How guilty.

“Mostly, she was scared that Rhett would tell someone. Boast or brag about it. Most people would try to hide it, but Rhett is a fucking tool and not the sharpest in the shed. Not to mention he flirts with sanity sparsely. So Addy and I made up a story to protect both her and Harper, and gave Harper a semi-legitimate background. We told everyone I was the dad because I didn’t have a good reputation to lose—I already came from an impressive lineage of fuckups. I didn’t mind telling people that Addy was my girlfriend. It kept the teenyboppers at arm’s length. Plus, I never really wanted to date anyone.”

Until you.

“That’s how things have gone for the past three years. And for the most part, everything ran smoothly. When I hooked up with girls like Blythe, Adriana turned a blind eye. And I hooked up with girls all the time since I wouldn’t touch Adriana. But the minute you stepped into the picture, things got messy and real.”

“I’m so sorry for Adriana.” Daria squeezes my shoulder.

“She is crazy about Harper now, so don’t worry about it.”

“I saw you at the park. Castle Hill.” Daria drops her hand from my shoulder. My mind pivots back to two days ago. Addy calling me. Urgent meeting. Gus in the background.

Ding, ding, ding.

My jaw locks. Everyone’s a fucking traitor. The only person who hasn’t betrayed me so far is, ironically, Daria herself.

“I…” I start, and she presses her finger on my lips. I kiss her finger.

“Trade secrets?” She grins, but it’s a sad, tired grin.

“Sure.” I press my forehead to her thighs, breathing her in. “Make it count.”

She tells me what happened with Principal Prichard. How they went on like this for four years. Then about her last visit to his office that ended with her being so sore she still can’t sit properly.

“He was the one who brought me to the park to watch you and Adriana. I think he wanted me to give up on you.”

“Did you?”

She stands up, lifts the hem of her dress, and turns around.

Purple, black, and faded yellow welts cover her ass cheeks and the back of her thighs. I clamp my mouth shut so I don’t fucking wince. The rage of an entire army is lodged inside my body, and for the first time in my life, I worry about my lack of control over what I might do to Gabe Prichard. I’ve always been a hothead but never as deranged as I am now. The hatred I have toward Bauer and Prichard is too all-consuming for me to leave this house for the next decade.

“Oh,” she says, wincing. “And I told Dad about the entire thing and so, by default, spilled the secret that we were sort of together for a second.”

Sort of.

Were.

For a second.

“That’s fine,” I murmur, not sure where we go from here. So much has been said, and I’m still on my knees, and she is still not showing any signs of the warm, responsive Daria who I pushed away one time too many, reminding her that she was not enough. That she will never be enough.

I stand. She does the same. Our bodies sway in the same direction, never touching.

“If you care about me at all, win the game.”

“Why?”

Kudos to her for doing the right thing, but fuck, this is extreme, even for Mother Teresa.

She inhales, bracing herself for what she’s about to say next. “Because I’m boarding a plane next Saturday and finishing my senior year somewhere else.”

My mouth goes dry, and I shake my head slowly. She takes a step closer and folds my shirt under her palm so that the hole in my chest looks like it’s closing in when, in reality, it opens up like a shark’s jaw.

“Everything I touch is tainted, Penn. Everything I want turns to ash. I spent the entire semester trying to be yours, but you’ve never once claimed my heart. I’m sending you to Adriana’s arms, not because I don’t care, but because I do. So much. Maybe too much. Because I screwed up so many relationships, the only way for us to heal is if I take myself out of the equation.”

You are the fucking equation, I want to yell in her face. The riddle and the answer and the numbers within it. You’re math. You make sense.

“Don’t go,” I croak. I sound like a wuss. I don’t even recognize this voice. I want a refund on my vocal cords. They suck.

She takes a step back. I try another tactic.

“Where are you going?”

She shrugs, flinging herself onto her bed, disappearing into the soft mattress like it’s a cloud.

“Come the fuck on, Daria. Give me something to work with.”

She smiles at the ceiling, drifting away from reality.

“You don’t know how the weekend is going to pan out,” I make another point.

“But I do,” she says softly. “That’s the thing about sins. They stack up and blow in your face. You can’t be my shield.”

I can be your anything. Fucking try me.

I turn around. Tug at my hair until my scalp burns. Curse under my breath. The thing about nightmares is that you never know which one your worst is until you live through it. Via and I pushed Daria out of this place. Out of her own home.

Maybe it’s because I can’t move toward the door, can’t end this shit, or generally suck at being human, but after a while, Daria stands up again and escorts me out.

So this is what it feels like to die. Cool. Good to know.

She rises on her toes. I don’t bend down to meet her halfway, knowing a kiss could very much end me at this point. She settles for pressing her lips against my throat.

“Me too,” she whispers as she shoves me out the door.

I look back, my face a huge question mark.

“You were never a drizzle, Penn Scully. When I fell for you, you came beating down, and I felt you everywhere. You were hail.”