Broken Pretty Things by Amber Faye

Chapter 49

Barkley hasyellow cat-eye contacts on his dark eyes, which look amazing. He’s got a little fake blood around his mouth, and he’s wearing an old, slightly too small quarterback jersey of his that he’s ripped and bloodied.

“I’m the only good jock,” he says when Ulla and I ask what he is. He raises his arms a little and does a zombie slump. “A dead one.”

“I have never met a self-hating football player before,” Ulla says, tapping her lip.

“And what the hell are you?” Barkley asks, taking her in. “Sexy Beetlejuice?”

“Why ask when you got it in one?” she says, and ducks into his car. Barkley gives me a raised eyebrow look.

“You just look like a Torrent Bay socialite,” he says. “You look really, really good, actually. Is that what’s scary?”

I beam up at him, thankful for the heartfelt compliment. “Is what what’s scary?”

He makes his fingers into claws. “This is high school. Nothing scarier than a hot as fuck girl with a posse and an axe to grind.”

I laugh with him. “I don’t have an axe to grind,” I say, and when I search myself I think it might really be the truth. If Aurelia really did lie to Gunnar about seeing me in a compromising situation, I don’t know why, but I don’t feel particularly angry.

I think I’ve spent too long feeling angry and sad. I just want to enjoy being with my friends. I want to enjoy whatever Gunnar managed to throw together in the last eight hours at his house. I want to enjoy dancing and laughing without feeling my best friend’s hateful gaze boring into the side of my head.

And I want to enjoy feeling something very different now in the way he looks at me. I can admit that to myself. I’m just not sure if I can forgive myself for that, just yet.

We hop in the car and drive a few blocks down. Hero’s family is richer than Pietro but poorer than Preston Rayne. As we speed through the suburbs of Torrent Bay, the houses get progressively more impressive, the gardens and parks more beautiful, and then they start to get ostentatious and, in my opinion, suddenly a whole lot uglier again.

We’re right in that sweet spot between pretty middle-class houses and pretty upper-class houses when we come to a stop, and Hero, I think, shuffles up the driveway, waving to a tall, slender man in the doorway.

The three of us start to laugh, and she puts her hands on her hips. “What?” she demands to know.

“What are you?” I have to ask.

“Chewbacca, obviously,” Barkley says, but he doesn’t sound sure.

“Perhaps a clump of hairs in a shower drain?” Ulla asks.

Hero puts her hairy hands on her hips in a frustrated movement that makes us all shriek with laughter. “I’m the Wolf Man!” she says.

“The what?” Barkley asks.

“The Wolf Man, from all those old monster movies. There’s Frankenstein, the mummy, the Wolf Man.” Her hands are still on her hips, which still looks hilarious in the ridiculously hairy costume. “You guys never watched them? Curt Siodmak? Bela Lugosi?”

“Gesundheit,” Barkley says.

I roll my eyes. “Don’t listen to them. You look goddamn terrifying, girl, get in the car before your fur gets all dirty.” I point at the ground, her ankle hair dragging.

“Don’t shed in my car,” Barkley calls to her as she pops the door.

“Seriously? Not even the remake with Anthony Hopkins?” she asks when we’re on the road again. “Roger Ebert called it”—she draws both hands through the air—“‘satisfactory’.”

“That doesn’t sound like a rave review,” Barkley says from the front seat.

“Sounds like someone doesn’t know Roger Ebert,” Hero mumbles. For some reason that absolutely destroys me, and I laugh so hard I smudge my eye makeup.

“I kind of love you,” I finally explain when I can see the crinkle of confusion behind the hair clumps glued to her cheeks and forehead.

We roll up to the Rayne mansion front gate, and Barkley sticks out his head and shouts his name into the intercom. Before he even gets it out, the gates slide open, and he gets back in and pulls up in the driveway. Along with maybe ten other cars, parked haphazardly on the gravel around the fountain.

For the first time, I feel uncertainty in my stomach as we get out of the car. It’s not the first time I’ve been to a party with Chris Barkley, and I hope it won’t be the last, but my resolve is starting to drain. I already had to use a lot of it on coming here in the first place, and sneaking out of the house to do it.

But I want to have fun tonight. And if I can’t, I’ll leave. No ulterior motive. No big deal.

The thought of seeing Gunnar soon makes my stomach flip.

“Ready?” I ask, curling my arm around Hero’s furry elbow. “Aww, you’re so soft and cuddly,” I tell her. “Like a teddy bear. I’m gonna hold onto you all night.” That makes her laugh as the four of us head up to the front door.

“No, I’m meant to strike fear into the hearts of man,” she protests.

“Funnily, you would have done a better job of that if you had worn something a little sexier,” I hear Ulla say from behind us, rearranging her boobs.

The front door swings open. Cady and Cassidy Meyer stand in the doorway. One is dressed as a snow white bunny, the other as a black cat. They both look so incredible that all four of us do a simultaneous double take. Cassidy mimes licking the back of her hand, her eyes bored.

“Why are you here?” she asks, gaze on Barkley’s broad physique in a tight, if bloody, Letterman jacket. “I don’t think any of you are invited.”

Cady looks over her shoulder. “Aura!” she yells. “There are some rejects here wanting to know if they made it onto the guestlist?”

Aurelia saunters up behind them, her red hair bouncing in shiny curls, and props a delicate hand on her hip. She’s wearing a tight nun outfit that shows her midriff, cleavage, and thighs, knee-high black heels, and a chunky gold cross choker around her neck. She looks movie star hot. It’s almost hard to look away from her.

But the look of disgust on her face twists even her into something ugly.

“What do we have here?” she asks, slinging one arm around Cady’s waist and tilting her head at me. “There’s a blotchy-faced harlot in an ‘office Christmas party’ dress. A pile of hairy cat puke. The Joker’s ugly, desperate aunt. And … this is interesting. Looks like Chris Barkley turned up dressed as his own murder victim.”

“W-what?” Barkley chokes out, looking down at himself.

“A dead fucking quarterback?” Aurelia asks dryly, tilting her head the other way. “Really?”

“Holy shit,” he whispers. My chest clenches and I break away from the others to put my hands on his shoulders.

“Hey. Hey,” I say, trying to get him to look up at me. He’s shaking.

“Holy shit, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t see it. It’s my jacket. I was being—”

“That was too much,” I say to Aurelia, my voice stern. “Can you just tell Gunnar we’re here, please?”

“Fuck, you’re stupid,” she sighs. “Fine. If you really want to do this to yourself, you can come in. I was supposed to let you in anyway. I just thought this was too mean … even for him.” Her eyes rake over me again, and then she turns and glides back into the party.

I can’t believe she had the audacity to dress as a nun when she’s the fucking devil herself.

“I’m going home. I have to go home.” Barkley is ripping off his Letterman jacket, scrubbing hard at the blood around his mouth. “I was just being a zombie. I can’t believe I didn’t see it. Everyone’s gonna—”

“Chill,” I say. “Leave the jacket in the car. Then we’ll go look through Gunnar’s costume closet.”

Barkley calms down enough to frown at me. “His what?”

“His costume closet,” I repeat, deadpan.

“Damn, me and the President might actually have something in common,” he whispers, and I laugh. He throws the jacket into his car and then, hands shaking, comes back to the doorway. “Are we doing this?”

“Apparently,” I say, after Hero and Ulla both nod.

The four of us, thoroughly shaken and determined not to show it, step into the house together.

* * *

The party isin full swing. The Raynes have a couple of rooms specifically for functions like this. A ballroom, a reception room adjacent with some nice couches and a pool table, and the backyard with the pool and a hot tub. It’s such a ridiculous place for anyone to actually live. I find myself wondering, every time I’m inside it, what they could possibly need it all for. But the answer is fairly clear tonight: Parties.

A couple hundred kids, easy, are dancing around in costumes. Even the foyer is almost full. They seem to have free rein, because they’re traipsing up and down the marble stairs too. The place is so decorated that it’s unrecognizable, almost, even though I’ve been staying here for days.

“Look out for each other down here,” I say. “I’m going to see if I can borrow something for Barkley, and for me too.” The three of them exchange a look, but they seem fine with it. Especially when I point out the tables filled with Halloween-themed food and drink. When Ulla reaches for the blood-red punch, a witch figure pops up from behind the table, motion sensing, and cackles maniacally. The two girls scream and clutch at each other. “See,” I say. “Be careful here, it’s dangerous.”

I’m upstairs and in his room without issue, though a couple of people from school give me a weird look, as if seeing me here is crazy. I get that; it kind of is.

I’m rummaging through his masks and wondering if Barkley would rather be Ghostface or No Face when I hear the bedroom door click shut, and I crane my neck to see who it is. Nobody. I turn back to the masks and settle on Ghostface, throwing No Face back in the box and picking it up to push back onto the top shelf of Gunnar’s closet, when powerful arms wrap around my waist.

I should scream, but instead I lean my head back on the broad chest behind me and smile up at Gunnar’s handsome face.

“The devil is in my room. Have I been bad?” he says in my ear, and then roughly spins me around and bumps my back into the closet wall. My devil horns fall off my head and clatter on the floor, and I smile up at him. “You used to scare easier”

“You desensitized me,” I say.

“Oh yeah?” he asks, and digs his hips into mine.

“Mm,” I hum. “You jumped out at me every single time we had a horror movie marathon.” He closes his lips over mine, softly flicking his tongue over mine. “You’re not wearing a costume.”

He steps back, wincing as he rearranges himself in his pants, and then gestures at himself. He’s wearing jeans, a band tee, and a flannel shirt unbuttoned over it. A nametag on the chest reads ‘GOD’. I snort. “OK,” I say. “You’re God?”

“No,” he says, moving back to me and running his hand up my bare arm. “I’m Oz from Buffy, in the Halloween episode where he dressed as God.”

“Wow. How dumb of me.” I laugh. He swallows, threading his fingers through mine.

“You look really beautiful, Andie. You wanna blow off the rest of the party?” He leans in and kisses my neck, and something possesses me to put my hands on his chest and push him away a little.

“You’ve never wanted to blow off a Halloween party. Is there actually some trick going on here?” He looks puzzled. “Aurelia answered the door and implied you had something really awful planned for me here tonight.” Horror blooms in my chest. “Oh my god. You don’t, do you? I thought she was just being an asshole. But this whole thing—”

He cups my face with both hands and I stop talking. “She was just being an asshole,” he says. “She’s a fucking liar.” He moves to kiss me again, and I squirm away.

“It was just a couple of days ago you were saying the same thing about me,” I say, rubbing the goosebumps on my arm. “Why did you even invite her if you’re … over her?” I look away. “Are you still sleeping with her?”

“What the fuck?” he laughs. “No. Why do you think—”

“Ransom told me.”

“Ransom doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” He rocks back on his heels and then rubs his face with both hands. “OK. I don’t want to lie to you. We had sex. It was a couple months after you left. She was having some problems at home. I helped her out with them. She was grateful and I was … numb. It didn’t mean anything.”

“Was it good?” I ask, and I have no idea why. I already knew about it, but for some reason hearing it from him, in his low, apologetic voice, makes it so much more real. “I always thought she’d be really good at it,” I add dumbly.

“It was sex,” he says with a shrug. Revulsion curls from my stomach and I start to walk to the door.

“I shouldn’t have come here if I can’t even tell if you’re going to go all karma police on me,” I say. “I don’t know how I rationalized this, but …” I take a breath. “I mean, before you do, if you do, I want to give you something anyway. Because even if you are an asshole,” I say, pulling out my phone and navigating to my emails, “you’re not a politician.”

He’s laughing a little, confused, as he takes my phone from me. I watch his eyes track the length of the email. And then they ping back up to the top and make their way down again. His face crumples into a frown. “What is this, exactly?”

I let out a huff. Really, I’m embarrassed. He doesn’t deserve this, but I still want him to have it. “OK. Last year, around your birthday, I started the process to apply you to a summer internship you said you wanted to do. It was a throwaway comment, but you said your dad wouldn’t let you. I figured you’d be eighteen, and you might regret not signing up. It’s two months in Borneo working with endangered wildlife. Some really important people are going to be there. The signup process was a bitch.”

He looks up at me. “You signed me up?”

“Yep.” I dig into the carpet with the toe of my strappy heel. “You needed a resume, two character references and a personal essay.”

His smile is so stunned, but so genuine it makes him look even more gorgeous. “You wrote me a personal essay? You got me character references? How?”

“Well, no, you wrote your own personal essay. I pulled your first draft out of the trash on your computer and just made it a little smoother. And the references were easy. Everybody wanted to talk about how great you are, about how you influenced your family into raising a ton of money for conservation efforts, and—” He crosses the room and throws his arms around me, rocking me from side to side. “It’s stupid,” I mumble, squeezing him back. “I shouldn’t have applied for something without your permission. I just knew you’d get it and I couldn’t stand the thought of you not doing it because you thought you should do something more … I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” he says, resting his chin on the top of my head. “It was stupid.” He holds me tighter. “Thank you.”

“Well, should we get back to the party?” I ask him, reluctant to move away from the cologne scent of his neck. “Aurelia seems to think I’m going to be the main entertainment.”

“Aurelia can go fuck herself,” he growls. “What did she say to you?”

“Why is she here?” I retort. “You want her here?”

“She’s here because she’s been invited all year, and because I want to figure out a way to force the truth out of her.”

“I can’t figure out what happened, though,” I say. “She showed you that conversation, told you she saw me and Barkley?”

“Yes.”

“I get why she would do that if you were dating me,” I say. “She always liked you.” He groans at that. “But why would she do that if …” I stop and try to remember that night. “She did walk in on us.”

“Wait, what?” His face tightens.

“I remember I was telling Barkley that I was going to break up with Cole. She must have heard me say I was going to tell you how I felt about you. That I was nervous. I didn’t know how it would go.” My mouth twists in a half-smile. “And that you were going to a great college, probably, and I was just going to be stuck here, so was there really any point?” The memory hurts, in a weird way. It was so recent, but so far away it feels alien.

“Fuck,” he says gruffly. “If you’d said any of that to me I would have pulled all my applications and stayed.”

That sends me reeling. “Stayed in Torrent Bay?”

“Yeah, I would have gone to college here. Some of them aren’t so bad. West Torrent has a—”

“West Torrent has a great dance department,” I say, holding up my hands. “And that’s it. You can’t derail your whole ridiculously promising future for a girl.”

“Not a girl,” he says, and leans in and sweeps kisses over my cheeks, my jaw. “You.”

I straighten myself to try to meet him halfway and we hold each other tight as we kiss. It’s different from the desperate, confused, hateful times before this. It feels like us, which makes no sense, because it’s nothing we would ever have done back when we were us.

But the firm tenderness of his touch, the way we’re perfectly in sync. Somehow, in some way, we’ve never been more us than this. I know exactly how to touch him, where, and when, and he does the same with me. We grew up together. He was the other half of me before I even knew I loved him. I loved him long before I even knew what love was.

He pushes up the hem of my dress. It’s tight to my hips but he hitches it up until it’s bunched around my waist. “Why are you ever wearing underwear?” he asks me. I give him an apologetic pout, and he smiles and catches my bottom lip between his teeth before sinking to his knees and sliding off my panties. His hot breath tickles me as he parts my thighs with his palm, lapping at me before I really know what he’s doing.

I balance myself by threading my fingers through his soft hair, and when he’s finished his soft, hot, exploratory kisses up and down my exposed flesh, he starts licking and sucking me until I’m soaked, my knees are weak, and the rest of the world completely fades away. There’s nothing but his soft lips, his flicking tongue. Firm suction and then gentle lapping circles, until I come so hard he has to grab my hips, burying his face between my legs and licking me up and down until I stop shaking.

“Come here.” His voice is hard but his touch is soft. He straightens up and pulls me onto his lap when he sits on the end of his bed. He unzips his jeans and pulls out his cock, stroking it up and down against my abdomen. It leaves sticky droplets at my belly button and I feel the heat radiate from him. The need.

He doesn’t have to say anything else. I walk forward on my knees, straddling him on the bed, and let him guide the head of his cock inside me. He’s so fucking big that, even though I’m still wet and ready from seconds ago, he has to thrust hard a couple of times with a grunt to push himself fully between my lips.

When he’s inside me, sliding deeper, I let out a strangled cry and then cover my mouth with my hands. Eyes dark and dangerous with lust, he takes my wrists and puts my hands on his shoulders instead. “Fucking scream,” he says, moving his hands around to squeeze my ass. “Scream for me.”

When he’s all the way inside me, skin on skin and my clit grinding against his lower stomach. I rock against him, feeling him at all angles. The friction in this position makes me see stars. I don’t think I’ve ever come close to orgasm just by fucking, but it’s barelling towards me so hard that I bite down on his shoulder and roll my hips, soaking his lap and feeling him throb inside me. He’s panting, looking down with something like wonder at the sight of himself, thick and wet, disappearing into me again and again.

“I can’t, I can’t,” he finally forms, and then he enfolds me in his arms and falls back on the bed, holding me tight and thrusting up into me. I’m still gyrating, wailing his name into his shirt as he fucks me from underneath. He fills me up, groaning my name, and our hips keep twitching, meeting again and again as we fall back to Earth.

“I swear,” he finally croaks, still buried to the hilt inside me as we breathe. “I swear I usually last so much longer.”

“That’s OK,” I say thickly. His chest shakes with a laugh. “I usually don’t, you know, at all.”

“Oh, god, really?” I can’t even answer because he’s holding my face, kissing me deep and humming into my mouth. “Not even with C—” He stops himself, but it’s already there. I lift myself off of him and curl up beside him on the bed. “You didn’t sleep with Cole.”

“Never.”

He traces the contours of my face with his thumb. “You made out, though?”

“Once.” I want to tell him everything, but I don’t know how. And, honestly, does it really matter? We can’t have anything if he won’t believe me. “Just that one time.” He just frowns and nods. I know he doesn’t understand.

“So … this is really awkward.” He diffuses whatever it is by flashing me a confident smile. “Birth control?”

I laugh and nod. “Yeah, idiot. What would you have said if …” He just shrugs, and then he’s kissing me again. “I need to fix myself up before we go back out there.” He rests his fingertips on my arm, as if to stop me from moving.

“Andie,” he says softly. “I want you to know how much I—”

Screams from the staircase break us apart. And they don’t stop. We hear crashing. Stomping footsteps.

My ears start to ring. “No, no, no,” I start to say, getting up and throwing open the door. Gunnar is half a step behind me.

This can’t be happening again.