Chapter 13: Genevieve
GENEVIEVE
I forget to be afraid of myself, of what I become inside Evan’s orbit. It’s so much work, worrying, constantly guarding my own worst instincts, thinking and then unthinking every decision. I forget to hate myself and instead let my dress fall to the sand. I walk naked out into the waves while Evan pulls his shirt off, watching me from the shore. I remember how it feels to have his eyes on me. Knowing me, searing me into his mind. I remember the power in it, the excitement in what I do to him by just standing here.
Up to my waist in the water, I turn around to watch him wade in after me—and remember he has the same power. I’m trans-fixed by the lines of his muscles and broad shoulders. The way he grabs a handful of water and runs it through his hair. A shudder runs through me at the magnificent sight.
“Yeah, so, it’s been fun,” he says glibly. “But I gotta run.”
“Oh yeah? Somewhere to be?”
“Yeah, I got a date, actually. In fact, I’m already running late. Gonna have to stop at the store for more condoms.”
“Right, sure,” I say, dragging my hands through the water to keep myself steady against the tide. “Anyone I know?”
“Doubt
it. She’s a meter maid.”
“Hot.” I bite back a laugh. “Just your type. I know how wild you go for civic authority.”
“You know, it’s the polyester, if I’m honest. Tacky uniforms get my dick hard.”
“So if I told you I became a UPS girl in Charleston—”
“I’d destroy that.”
“Promises, promises.”
Grabbing my waist, he lifts me and I wrap my legs around his hips. I hang on to him with my hands clasped behind his neck as he keeps us firm against the push and pull of the waves.
Evan squeezes my ass in both hands. “Please, Gen, dare me to bend you over. I’m begging you.”
To that I smack a handful of salt water at him. “Animal.”
He shakes the water from his face, flipping his hair out of his eyes. “Woof.”
We’re good like this. That’s the thing. It’d be easy to walk away if he were a bastard who treated me badly and was only nice when he wanted to get laid. But it’s not like that at all. He’s my best friend. Or was.
“So, go on,” Evan says gruffly. “Tell me about Charleston. What kind of trouble were you getting into?”
“You’re going to be disappointed.” This past year was decidedly drab, but that’s what it was meant to be. A complete social detox. “There’s not much to tell, really. I got a job working for a real estate office. Secretary slash assistant slash miscellaneous. If you can believe that.”
“That must have been a hell of a job interview.” A wave comes at us sideways and tosses us toward shore. Evan sets me on my feet but keeps those strong hands on my hips.
“Why’s that?”
His eyes sparkle in the moonlight. “Well, I assume under relevant experience, you listed the Goldenrod
Estates.”
The mention of that place brings to mind all sorts of mischief. A few years ago, Goldenrod Estates was a housing development still under construction just south of Avalon Bay. Another gated community for people with more money than taste, all those gaudy McMansions sitting on top of each other. But when the hurricane came through and tore down half the town, construction halted as every company rushed to snap up all the restoration and repair work they could get. The places were abandoned for months, leaving kids like us to roam free through the empty, open homes.
“That was a good summer,” I admit. One of our fonder memories.
“The empty pool party.”
“Oh, shit. Yes. Like fifty people crammed in a huge concrete hole.”
“Then Billy comes running up and says the cops are coming.”
The night in question flashes through my mind. I remember my brother’s frantic entrance, how we’d shut off the music and turned out the flashlights. All of us holding our breath, crouched down in the dark.
“And your dumb ass decides to be the hero,” I say, more in amusement than accusation. “Climbs out of the pool and runs across the street.”
“You didn’t have to follow me.”
“Well, yeah.” I sway with the current, letting my toes drag in the sand as the force of the tide pushes and pulls. “But I wasn’t letting you go to jail alone.”
The memories keep surfacing. Evan and I got up on the roof of a house across the street, watching the red and blue lights grow brighter against the walls of the unfinished houses as cars drew closer. Half a dozen cruisers, at least. Then,
hoping to distract the cops from our friends, we began waving our flashlights, shouting at the officers to get their attention. We leapt off the roof, pounding pavement and darting through houses as we ran from the cops, eventually losing them in the woods.
God, we were invincible together. Untouchable. With Evan, I was never bored a minute in my life. Both of us were constantly feeding the high, looking for the next shot of adrenaline as we pressed the limits of our own capacity for trouble.
“There a guy?” he asks suddenly. “Back in Charleston?”
“What if there was?” But there wasn’t, not really. Just a series of unimpressive dates and short-lived relationships that mostly passed the time. It’s tough when you’re comparing every guy you meet to the one you ran away from.
“No reason,” he says, shrugging.
“Just want to talk to him, right? Just a chat.”
Evan smirks. “Something like that.”
I can’t help that his jealousy excites me. It’s stupid and petty, I know, but in our bizarre way, it’s how we show we care.
“What about you? Any girls?”
“A few.”
I frown at his vague tone. Feeling the claws trying to come out, I force myself to retract them. Force myself not to picture Evan with another woman. His mouth on someone who isn’t me. His hands exploring curves that aren’t mine.
But I fail. The images swarm my brain and a low growl escapes my throat.
Evan laughs mockingly. “Just want to talk to them, right?” he mimics. “Just a chat?”
“No. I want to burn their houses down for touching you.”
“Damn, Fred, why do you always go right to arson?”
I snicker. “What can
I say? I run hot.”
“Damn right.” His hands glide up my stomach to cup my bare breasts. He squeezes, winking at me.
I shiver when his fingertips dance over my nipples, which pucker tightly. Evan notices the response, and a faint smile tugs at his lips. He’s so good-looking it’s almost unfair. My gaze sweeps from his chiseled features to the defined muscles of his bare chest. His sculpted arms. Flat abdomen. Those big, callused hands that had just pinned me down while his hungry mouth feasted between my legs.
“You’re killing me, Gen.” Evan growls the words at whatever he sees playing out on my face. His fingers bite into my flesh. “Don’t do that unless you mean it.”
“Do what?”
“You know what.” Holding onto my waist, he walks us backward toward shore. “You’re having fuck-me daydreams. I’m pretty much there, if you want to go again.”
“I didn’t say that.”
He presses himself against me, letting me feel him hard against my leg. “You’re a tease, you know that?”
“I do.” We reach dry sand. Standing there, we stare at each other, until a tiny smile tickles my lips. “You like it.”
Then I kiss his neck. His shoulder. Down his chest until I’m on my knees with his erection in my grip, stroking him. Evan runs both hands into his hair and drops his head back, breathing heavy.
When I don’t do anything, he peers down at me, his dark eyes burning with need. “Are you just going to sit there, or are you going to suck it?”
“Haven’t decided yet.” I lick my lips, and he lets out a tortured groan.
“Tease,” he says again, trying
to thrust forward.
I tighten my grip in warning, but that just makes his eyes gleam brighter.
“More,” he begs.
“More what?” I use my index finger to draw teeny circles around the tip of his cock, prolonging his torture.
“More everything,” Evan chokes out.
His hips snap forward again, seeking contact, relief. Laughing at his desperation, I slide my tongue up his shaft and then take him in my mouth.
He moans loud enough to wake the dead.
There are things about Evan I’ve missed more than others. Getting wasted, blacking out, waking up in a random closet of some random warehouse wearing clothes that weren’t my own—I could live without some of those memories. But how he makes me feel when we’re alone? How he gives himself over to me, trusts me completely—I love this version of us. The good us.
I relish in the soft groans that vibrate in his chest and the tension tightening his muscles. The way his hands drop to his hips, then to my hair, as he resists the urge to thrust hard and fast, because one time I gently bit him in warning and now he lives in fear of me—just a little. It’s our game. I’m on my knees but he’s the one at my mercy. I make him feel only what I give him. The pleasure and anticipation. Slowing to prolong the experience, rushing to pull him to the edge of frustration. Until finally, he breaks.
“Gen,
please
.”
So I let him come, pumping him until he reaches his release. Then, totally spent, he slinks to the ground and tugs me to lie with him on the blanket.
We’re quiet for a while. Surrounded by the comforting darkness, surrounded by only the sound of the breeze rustling the palm trees and the waves rushing
up the sand.
“Did I tell you my mom texted me?” Evan says suddenly.
It’s not at all where I expect his mind to go, and I hesitate to entertain the subject. Not because it bothers me in any particular way, but I know it tends to upset him.
“She wants me to meet her in Charleston. Make amends or whatever.”
“Does Cooper know?”
“Nope.” Evan stretches to clasp his hands behind his head, prone under the stars. His beautiful profile is strained when I turn to peek at him. “Last time she was in town, she stole his life savings.”
“Oh jeez. That’s rough.”
“He got most of it back, but … yup. Needless to say, he’s not rolling out the welcome mat for her anytime soon.”
“Do you want to see her?” I ask carefully.
Shelley is a sore spot for Evan and his brother, and always has been. Whereas I was relieved to finally be freed from the standoff of my failed relationship with my mom, I’ve spent years watching Evan get his hopes up that one day his mother will come to her senses and love him, then have them utterly devastated. I don’t share his faith.
“I don’t want to be made a fool of again,” he confesses. He sounds bleak, exhausted. “I know how I look. Cooper thinks I’m an idiot, that I don’t get it. I do, though. I understand what he does, but I can’t help that I don’t want to miss the one time she might mean it. Maybe that sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t,” I assure him. Naïve, maybe. Wishful, yes. Both qualities I’ve never put much stock in. But not stupid.
“It’d be different if it weren’t just Coop and me, I think. If our dad was still around.” He glances at me with a sad smile. “I mean if he wasn’t an asshole. And if we had a bunch of
brothers and sisters.”
“My mom had too many damn kids,” I interject. “Trust me, that didn’t make her a better person. I guess having my brothers around helped me to not feel so lonely in that house, but nothing fixes it when you know your mom doesn’t give a damn about you.”
It’s strange how saying those words out loud—saying my mother didn’t give a damn about me—brings comfort rather than heartache. I told myself a long time ago I didn’t need her love or approval or attention. That I wouldn’t waste my breath on someone who couldn’t be bothered. And I kept telling myself that until I believed it, entirely and without hesitation. Now that she’s dead, I don’t miss the wasted years or regret all the times I saved myself the grief of trying. The best gift we give ourselves is respecting our needs first. Because no one else will.
“You wouldn’t want a big family?” Evan asks. “Your own, someday?”
I pause in thought, considering all the times one of my brothers walked into the bathroom to take a dump while I was in the shower. The times I came home to one of them in my bed with a girl because another one locked them out of their own room. And then on the flipside: my older brothers all piling in the car to teach me to drive because my dad by then couldn’t take the stress of it. Teaching me to play pool and shoot darts. How to drink and throw a punch. They’re a bunch of stinking, disgusting brutes. But they’re my brutes.
“Yeah, I guess I do.” Although I don’t particularly want to think about
making
that big family—when I imagine what the six of us must have done to my mother’s vag, I blame her a little less for her casual animosity toward us. “Not anytime soon, though.”
“I do,” he says. “Want a big family, I mean. I’d even be the stay-at-home dad. Do the diapers and make lunches
and all that.”
“Right.” I snort out a laugh at the image of Evan standing in the front yard with two arms full of tiny naked children while the house burns behind him. “Find yourself a sugar momma whose uterus isn’t entirely shriveled to sawdust yet.”
He shrugs. “What the hell else am I doing, you know? Let’s be honest, I tripped and fell into the business with Levi. I didn’t really do much to earn that, except mostly show up on time to work. Cooper’s got the plans and ambition. Getting his furniture business going and whatnot. So why not be the guy who stays home with the kids?”
“I really wouldn’t have figured you for the type.” Evan’s never been interested in what’s expected of him—in all the ways society tells us to get a job, get married, have kids, and die with a mortgage we can’t afford and generational credit card debt. “Guess I thought you always had a plan to hop on your bike one day and set out on the open road or whatever cliché shit.”
“That’s a vacation, not a life. I love the small-town beach life. Where everyone knows everyone. It’s a good place to raise a family.”
Yet there’s uncertainty lingering in his voice. “But?”
“But what the hell do I know about being a father, right? Given my role models, I’d probably permanently scar my kids too.”
I sit up to meet Evan’s eyes. In his flippant dismissals I hear his pain, the years of trauma buried under bravado. Beating himself up for what’s been done to him because there’s no one else around to take the blame.
“You’d be a good dad,” I say softly.
Another shrug. “Eh. Maybe I wouldn’t entirely ruin them.”
“You’d have to be more than just the fun dad, though,” I remind him as he tugs me back down. I rest my head on his chest and drape my leg over his hip. “Learn discipline. Can’t have your
kids ending up like us.”
“The horror.” He kisses the top of my head.
Even after we’ve closed our eyes, we still mutter about this or that late into the night, until our words become further apart and eventually we drift to sleep. Naked under the stars.