Separate Schools Read online

  Colt mimicked him, his chin down on his chest again and looking at her through narrowed eyes. “Yeah, why would you say that?”

  “I don’t know. You probably like showing it off, so it’s not really much of a wager, you know?”

  Harrison said, “Jesus. Not that. Why would you even say anything about that?”

  She shook her head, eyes looking up and to the right then at him again, as if she didn’t comprehend what the problem was.

  Colt said, “He means how the hell would you know?”

  “Oh,” she said with a sort of laugh, and rolled her eyes. She popped her butt back down to sit on her heels and took another small bite of the hamburger. She slumped to one side, drew her knees up and rested the hand that held a hamburger on her thigh. She said, “Girls talk.”

  “I bet they do,” Colt said.

  Harrison said, “I hope you don’t,” sounding too much like an adult right now. Like her dad. And look where he ended up.

  “Oh please,” she said with another massive eye roll. “Like you guys don’t talk about stuff. Like what girls are easy.”

  Colt laughed again, his head going back and the muscles of his shoulder flexing as he did. His big hands grabbed fistfuls of sand at his waist and let the fine grains sift between his tanned fingers. “How about you? You easy?”

  Her features fell in horror, but she still held a smile. “How dare you. You know I’m not on that list.”

  Now Colt smiled, and he agreed: “No, you’re not. Your brother says you’re a good girl. You’re not on that list.”

  “Thank you,” she said, bringing the hamburger up to her mouth to take another bite.

  “You want to be?”

  It stopped her from taking the bite, and she laughed, covered her laughing mouth with her bent wrist, her pinky held up in the air. She laughed like she tried not to choke on what she had in her mouth.

  “Easy, dude,” Harrison said to him.

  “Relax, I’m joking,” Colt said without looking over, his eyes watching Taylor’s breasts jiggle in her bra top as she laughed now, snorting to breathe through her nose.

  With regained composure, she sat upright again and flicked her hair away, and, eyes turned down almost as if she were afraid to meet Colt’s gaze, she looked at the hamburger and said, “You wish,” before she took another bite.

  Colt surmised her, stifling a sort of smile as he watched her—watched her as she was obviously being flirtatious right in front of her boyfriend. He gave no answer though it hung heavily in the air: I do wish, Taylor.

  24

  After they finished lunch—which was done quietly and Harrison was sure Colt was getting off on the discomfort he provided—he bundled up the plates noisily and said he would return them. Taylor nodded, looking a little sullen because she knew she was in trouble.

  Up the hill on the deck, he set down the collected plates, stacked them with some others and began to tidy, the whole while watching down the slope at what Taylor would do. Colt didn’t leave, which figured, but worse, Taylor didn’t shoo him off or pardon herself and come up to join her clearly bothered boyfriend. There were a lot of dishes to be taken care of, but she was crazy if she thought he would do it by himself while she talked to old-ass Colt with his big dick.

  He’d heard that rumor, too, that Colt was big, somewhere along the way but didn’t remember where. That was years ago. How would his girlfriend have heard that, and why the fuck would she bring it up? Was she thinking about that the whole time she was talking to the guy, doing her flirty things, tossing her hair, showing her half-naked body off and blabbering about surfing?

  The whole thing swelled up that jealous rage again and he could feel his grip tightening on a stack of three plates—tight enough that had it been only one plate he would have snapped it in two. He set them down, rested his open palms on the long table with bowls of cold salads and hung his head; turned still to watch her.

  Down there in the sun, on the beach with another boy, fuck, hold it, not a boy, a man—a grown man. His thighs tensed to steel and his fingers dragged the tablecloth surface as his hands turned to fists. Now his teeth squeaked in his head as he gritted them. And, oh shit, here came that vision again, just like when he’d thought she’d been alone with Care Bear: the sight of her naked, in bed with Colt, the things he might do to her that neither Taylor nor her sweet, young boyfriend could ever dream of despite the amount of porn her sweet, young boyfriend might watch.

  He bit his lower lip on the inside, doing it carefully though his mind raced savagely. It was a thought he hated but couldn’t shake. What was worse?—the fact that Colt and his big dick might be able to do things to Taylor he could never do, or the fact that Taylor might be curious about it?

  His hand gathered up the front of his shirt and he ran a clenched bunch of scratchy cotton over his chest in hard circles listening to the rasp against the meagre broadcast of soft chest hair he’d sprouted last summer.

  Taylor laughed at something Colt said again, tossed her hair, too. Colt cocked his head at her and they watched each other a moment. Taylor put a hand out and planted it in the sand between them, leaning forward a little. Her hair slipped forward and now she turned her head, peeked past her locks, looked up the sloping distance between her and Harrison, expression despondent. Their eyes met, and she gave him a slight wave. He didn’t give her one in return. When she turned her head to regard Colt again, her hair hid her face. She resumed talking with her new friend.

  As Harrison began his tromping march back down the steps to the beach, Colt rose from where he sat and dusted off his shorts, sending off fine plumes of sand. Taylor and Colt said parting words and Colt began to head across the beach making his way toward the boathouse where KC and Rick-Joe were still talking.

  As Harrison set foot on the beaten earth at the foot of the stairs, he could see Shelby and Roxie rushing to join Taylor, oblivious of his own approach. It was like they’d been watching from afar and wanted to know what exciting things had transpired between her and this handsome college guy. That dread returned, whirring cold and steely just below his heart. He watched his two friends come and fold themselves around his girlfriend, all long brown legs and arms in bikinis now, like hers but less revealing, getting close and conspiratorial, making their sounds of excited cooing, proving him right in his thoughts on their intention.

  What he had to say couldn’t wait, and he didn’t care right now about being embarrassed so he continued on along the beaten path and onto the hot sand. Shelby and Roxie stopped talking when they saw him coming, eyes turned up over the tops of their sunglasses to see what he wanted.

  With a hand held out for Taylor, he asked her, “Would you come with me, please, for a minute?”

  “Yeah,” she said, looking up at him. She put her hand out, and he helped her to stand. She motioned for the other two to give her a minute and they nodded.

  Her hand held in his, he led her across the soft sand of the beach and up onto the cedar deck that ran around the boathouse and became a dock that struck out maybe thirty feet into the lake.

  The Brooks’ boathouse was a dark green-painted double bay, sitting on the shoreline and extending out into the water. It had a half second floor, the front portion was a balcony with railings painted in white that looked out over the water below. There were two doors, and Harrison led Taylor into the rear most door, the one closest to the shore. It opened to an oblong room that was separate from the dim double bays. Through a window that separated the room from the bays they could see KC in there with Pontoon and they were standing inside the boat and talking. Stevie sat on a nearby jet ski and joined the conversation with his arms folded over the handlebars of the wave runner as it jostled on the undulating water inside the boathouse. Both bay doors were open and the guys’ silhouettes were dark against the bright of the sky and the lake beyond. The front boathouse door opened, the one nearer the lake that opened into the bays, and a dark shape came into the boathouse to the regaling of Pontoo
n and Rick-Joe. Harrison recognized the muscular, backward-hat shape as Colt.

  He reached over and tugged at the dusty curtain printed with arcing bass and fishing lures, covering up the view. Colt might get some satisfaction seeing Harrison giving his flirtatious girlfriend a talking to and he didn’t want that.

  Shelving units lined all the perimeters of the narrow room, stacked with boxes bulging with cottage-related equipment. It smelled strongly of gasoline and diesel, and the wooden floor was ringed with ancient stains. Taylor had put her back to the window, leaned the small of her back against the waist-high shelf. Her shoulders rested on her father’s multi-tiered tackle box. She’d crossed her arms and stared at the stained floor with a sullen expression. He looked down, too, saw her pretty bare feet in her Birkenstocks, a bright sunlight flare on her toe ring.

  She muttered, “Harrison, I know ...”

  “That’s good,” he muttered, too, mimicking her volume and tone. After a long moment of silence, he said, “What was that, Taylor? Why would you say that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, still watching the floor. “I was trying to be funny.”

  “That wasn’t funny.”

  She bounced her eyebrows a little and there was a defiance in it; she wanted to debate whether it was funny or not. She didn’t say anything.

  He was mad at her. He could feel it now. There was the poignant jealousy still, and an anger, and now he could sense the anger directed at her. Taylor was more than complicit in that escapade, she was provocative. It was her instigating Colt’s interest, and it was her who wasn’t dissuading it. She’d encouraged it and nourished it. Sure, he couldn’t tell her what to wear, and sure, what a woman wore wasn’t ‘asking’ for anything, but with a guy like Colt around (and, hell, all his football buddies, too) their reaction was to be expected. Even looking at her right now, her long, thin, and tanned body stretched out in the dim of this room reeking of nauseating gas his thoughts of her were sexual. The tone of her muscle, the sweep of her thighs, the flat of her stomach. She’d bared it all, and he was a victim to that presented sexuality; she provoked uncontrollable feelings emanating from the core of his masculinity, drawing up thoughts and impulses from the two powerful objects that hung under his wang. And now that thought prompted another unwanted notion: how big were Colt’s balls and did Taylor ever wonder that as well? It made him wince, and he shifted uncomfortably. A swelling began down below and he couldn’t parse it. But it seemed to send off his next line of query—he asked her: “Did your sister sleep with him or something?”

  “Colt?—yeah,” she said.

  “And she told you he had a big one?”

  She shook her head no.

  “She didn’t?”

  “No. Another girl did.”

  “You guys really talk about that stuff?”

  Now she looked to him and while he saw a softness in her eyes, her words came out and punched him in the mouth. “I can tell you, like, four guys at school who are supposed to have a big dick.”

  His jaw dropped, and that rage roared up in him and he pictured himself charging to her, looming and intimidating, taking things off the shelves and smashing them on the floor at her feet. His lips parted, and he struggled to speak. She’d bewildered him.

  She said, “It’s not a big deal, Harrison. I mean, I know it is, or might be, but it’s not.”

  His gaze drifted over her pretty face as he struggled to comprehend her words, or her apparent carelessness with them. Revenge occurred to him and he considered telling her how he understood because, you know, he liked to jerk off to Roxie’s much nicer tits. Her tits are much better than yours, Taylor, practically perfect; bigger, fuller, I think all men would choose hers over your little pathetic nubbins. You bitch.

  Light streaming in from the open bays behind her and ambient light from the backside of the boathouse came in and painted white traces on the contours of her face and put daubs of shimmering light in the gray of her dazzling eyes. It made him powerless. He would never say a thing like that to her, it was just ego coming in and lashing out because it had been zapped. A ruler had told him he was fine, gaging against results on the internet, and that he fell almost directly on the line of what was most expected when a young woman like Taylor might look into a guy’s underwear. That didn’t chase away what he saw almost daily in porn, and he knew of at least one guy in his gym class (maybe one of the four his girlfriend knew about, too—wouldn’t that be great?) who dangled something almost unreal. He wanted to ask her if size was the kind of thing she liked to think about but wasn’t sure he was prepared for the answer so instead he pushed that query back down to the darkness from where it came.

  Back on track, he said, “It was like you were flirting with him.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “I bet he thinks you were.”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  “I think you were.”

  She rolled her eyes a little and tucked her chin to her chest, her sad mouth turning down in the corners.

  In a quiet voice, she said, “I love you, you know.”

  He wished he didn’t say it, but he did: “Are we over?”

  Shock took her expression, and it lightened him instantly. She looked up at him and said, “What?—are you crazy? No. Harrison, do you want us to be over?”

  Now he had her and he felt his heart beating sweet life again.

  “We’re going to different schools. We’re going to different schools and this is how you act on the last weekend we have together.”

  “We said we would make it work.”

  He was trying to lure her to him, wanted her to come and soothe him since she’d bruised him so badly but she stayed leaning on the shelf with her arms crossed. He said, “Can we?”

  Her brow furrowed, and she said, “You’re breaking up with me?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you talking like this?”

  “I don’t even feel like we’re together today.”

  It made her close her eyes and shake her head softly, disagreeing with him. When her eyes opened again, she said, “We are, Harrison, I swear. There’s so many people here, I have to be social. I saw you last night. We spent all night together. This morning you took my virginity all over again. I’ll see you tomorrow. All day. You’re acting like I’m ignoring you.”

  “You are, kind of,” he said, enjoying seeing her on the defensive.

  Now she got mad, getting off the shelf and facing him, her posture tilted toward him, and gesturing with angry stabs of her hands. “Jesus, Harrison. No, I’m not. For fuck’s sake, if I spend all my time with you then I’m rude to the guests, if I spend just a little time with the guests then we’re breaking up? Put some more pressure on me, please.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “You can’t share me just a little bit?”

  “I can share you.”

  “You sure? You’re acting like a possessive asshole right now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  It stung, and a tide of trouble began to rise up from his ankles as they stood there quietly and he watched her and she looked at the floor.

  “It’s going to kill me when we go to separate schools,” he whispered.

  Taylor hid her face in her hands. “Could I just please have a good time tonight without feeling like I’m letting you down? Is that okay with you?”

  He stepped closer and rubbed his hand in a circle over her fine bronze shoulder. “Yes,” he told her.

  25

  For over an hour, he left Taylor alone to be with her friends and he didn’t bug her. A few times he checked on her to see what she and the others were up to. It was nothing. Hanging out and sitting in the sand with Kelsey Kay, Roxie, and Shelby. They went in the water and splashed around together. She went with her sister and Cookie to swim out to the floating dock and the three of them laid out there and sunned themselves. He played volleyball with Cisco, Mikey, and Jamie, too, which was a good way to kill an hour and s
till be nearby to watch Taylor and also for her to see him around. He made sure whenever she was nearby he was exuberant and vocal, and he would disregard her even though he knew he was being watched. See, Taylor—I’m cool as a cucumber, you can’t rattle me and I know my value. Wasn’t true on the inside, but if she ever got a good look on the inside, she would run screaming in the opposite direction.

  After two in the afternoon and his football buddies were done fucking around, KC was looking to take anyone for a tow. Taylor had dragged out her waterski and the other girls brought out the guest sets and an inflatable inner tube that Cisco had helped them inflate with a battery-operated compressor.

  The initial shock of seeing her in the thong wore away, and he got used to it. It seemed that the others did, too, but he’d occasionally catch one of KC’s group checking out Roxie, Shelby, and Taylor. Kelsey Kay sometimes as well, but less so because her bikini wasn’t as revealing and she had an obvious boyfriend that they liked and was hanging around with them. Kelsey Kay also put out a Don’t fucking look at me vibe, and he wished Taylor could muster a little of that herself. Taylor seemed to be giving out the opposite vibe. Stevie, Rick-Joe, Pontoon, and Colt picked it up and they could get flirty with her sometimes. He caught a few interactions where he found them all laughing together and Taylor tossing her hair around. Care Bear, at least, seemed to keep his distance, was sort of aloof with them except for Roxie who looked like she had a bit of a crush on the guy even though he was maybe three times her size, four years older, and had a beard as thick as an animal’s pelt. Those overheard words would haunt him sometimes when he saw them together. “Is the Bear going to fuck her?” It was an almost sickening thought, but for some reason it kind of charged him up, too. Roxie was a long-leg stick like Taylor—what would she look like underneath that beast? And what did he have between his legs? A slender girl like Roxie couldn’t handle that, could she? Of course she could, he figured, he’d seen it many times online, tiny girls taking very large men. The thought would sometimes pump him up and he’d have to tug at his shorts to straighten out his affairs—which was terrible because Roxie was his friend and he’d known her since they were nine.