21

Landon

When the sun went down, the temperature cooled and the light disappeared, and spring-break festivities heated up.

The redhead straddling my lap took the last drag off the joint we’d shared, the embers singeing the tips of her index finger and thumb. ‘Ouch!’ Her voice was a mousy squeak. She dropped the last bit into the sand, where it extinguished and disappeared.

‘Hey!’ I frowned, squinting down from my perch on a piece of ragged driftwood and toeing the immediate area like an idiot. The last thing I wanted was to find a possibly still-lit joint with my f**king foot.

‘What? It was all used up anyway.’ Her petulant voice was grating, though I knew damned well there hadn’t been enough left to pull a full hit from it.

I started to retort, but when I glanced up, she was sucking on her injured thumb. The nearly consumed joint dropped out of my mind and my thoughts veered towards other cravings. Pulling her closer, I drew her index finger into my mouth, sucking it gently while she sucked the thumb next to it, eyes lidded, just as high as I was. My jaw rested on the heel of her palm, and I sucked harder when she curled her sharp-nailed fingers into my cheek. I wanted to feel those nails scraping down my back, and I didn’t want to wait or move. A short, loud fight with my dad over another round of failed classes, the long, weirdly hot afternoon and the weed had left me sluggish and lazy, but horny. Opening my lips, I ran my tongue along the V between the finger in my mouth and the thumb in hers. She closed her eyes.

I tugged one thin cup of her bikini top down, liberating one tit. Her eyes flashed open, but she didn’t pull away. If she didn’t mind this, I’d see how willing she was to do me right there, twenty feet from the bonfire and the two dozen or so people drinking, smoking and/or paired off around it. With any luck, she was as lazy and horny as I was.

Releasing her finger with a faint pop, I ducked my head and tugged her nipple into my mouth. She arched into me, gasping, her burnt thumb forgotten. Reaching between us, I moved the crotch of her bikini bottoms aside. She gasped again, her arms sliding round my shoulders like bands, before saying the magic words. ‘Oh, God – yes. Now. Now.’

Hell, yeah. I hadn’t even kissed her yet. Maybe I wouldn’t. A no-kiss f**k – that would be a first, I thought – and I was always looking for firsts. They were getting fewer and further between.

That’s when I heard Amber Thompson scream.

Certain it was her customary attention-seeking shriek, I was determined to ignore her. There was a wobble of panic to it that I hadn’t heard before, but she was likely having a paranoid delusion brought on by her dumbass brother passing her a joint. Scrawny fourteen-year-olds shouldn’t smoke weed. They didn’t know how to ration. The same amount that made me ready to screw this girl on my lap, find something to eat, and then fall into a mercifully dreamless sleep could freak them the f**k out.

I’d just ripped open a condom – the only one I had on me – when I heard another scream.

Goddamn Amber’s useless brother. A tall can of beer in one hand and a joint in the other, he was visible in the firelight, stumbling side to side, laughing with two other guys.

The girl on my lap moaned and pressed herself against me. Clutching the condom in one fist and a thick ponytail of soft red hair in the other, I yelled, ‘Hey, Thompson!’

Rick glanced round once before going back to his conversation. ‘Shit, man,’ I said, and then tried again. ‘Thompson, you asswipe!’ This time he only lurched in the opposite direction, to the other side of the six-foot flames.

‘Why are you yelling?’ Redhead whined.

Then I heard Amber a third time – but this time, her voice sounded both scared shitless and further away. Not one goddamned person was paying any attention – except me.

Standing, I slid the warm, pliable girl off my lap and handed her the condom. I pressed her to sit down and her hands went straight for the drawstring of my shorts. In that second, I knew she thought I wanted her to blow me before I screwed her, and she was totally prepared to do it.

Fuck this night.

Gripping her shoulders firmly, I said, ‘Be right back.’ Her lip curled slightly and she blinked, confused. I couldn’t blame her. Even high, I was fully aware that I’d just said the stupidest f**king thing I’d ever uttered.

Amber screamed again, thankfully not sounding any further than she had seconds ago, and I turned and ran towards her voice – away from the bonfire, away from my sure thing for the night, cursing Rick Thompson and my conscience.

Out of the firelight, my compromised eyes adjusted slowly to discern two figures, kissing. Great, I thought. Fucking great. I’d abandoned the hottest girl I’d met in weeks to run down the beach and find out Thompson’s little sister was a screamer while making out. Then the smaller figure jerked away, the larger one lunged and pinned her, and they both went down in the sand. That wasn’t a do me scream – that was a get off me scream.

I took off towards them, cursing the weed buzz that made me zigzag across the goddamned sand. The last thing I was fully conscious of doing was ripping the guy up from the ground with my left hand and swinging my right fist straight into the side of his face. The initial impact of my fist to his cheekbone hurt and felt awesome. When he didn’t go down right away, I hit him again. And again. And again. Until the euphoria and rage came together and spiked, and I sort of blacked out.

I broke most of the blood vessels in the top of my hand and fractured a couple of knuckles. I didn’t even know you could do that. My right hand looked and felt like hell and was in a splint. Other than that, there wasn’t a bruise on me.

The other guy suffered a concussion that bordered on a coma for a few hours. I could have killed him. I could have killed him, and I couldn’t remember doing it.

What I did remember: handcuffs. The backseat of a police cruiser. Getting booked at the station. A jail cell that smelled of BO and piss, but thankfully housed only me. Because I wasn’t in juvie. Seventeen-year-olds are tried as adults, so they go to regular jail. As I crashed from the weed and the fight, I started shaking and couldn’t stop.

‘Maxfield!’ an officer barked sometime later, and my head shot up. ‘Bail. C’mon, move your ass outta there – unless you’re wantin’ to stay.’

I scrambled up from the bench.

I expected to see Dad. He was there, but Charles Heller was next to him. I’d forgotten they were visiting for spring break. I hadn’t seen much of them while they were here. Hadn’t made the time.