The Summer of '98 Page 14

  “You seem to care about Cass a lot.”

  “She’s sweet,” I said. “I would hate to see her nature get ruined because she wasn’t loved in the way she should have been.”

  He pressed a soft kiss against my forehead. “I’m going to love you so much that you don’t know what it’s like to experience heartbreak. I promise.”

  His words were so sincere. I could hear it in his tone, I could feel it, as if the sentence had a physical form that wrapped right around me and instilled a faith and trust that I had never felt before.

  “I love you, Leroy.”

  “I love you too.”

  The sheets were too hot. It didn’t seem to matter that the window was cracked, allowing the nighttime breeze to filter through. There was no relief from the summer air. I couldn’t sleep. I felt restless as I tossed and turned in the bed.

  I had methods for nights when I couldn’t drift off to sleep. I had read that breathing slowly was effective. I closed my eyes and inhaled a deep breath for seven seconds, and then let it go, counting to five before I paused and started all over again. On the tenth attempt, it became a real concern that I was going to pass out from a lack of oxygen, and sleep was still nowhere in sight.

  The temptation to smother myself with the pillow was about to win when the door handle twisted and I sat up in alarm, watching in a statue-like state as it opened, and Leroy slipped inside.

  “You gave me a heart attack,” I whispered, clutching my chest. “What are you doing?”

  He shut the door and twisted the lock before he quietly walked toward the bed. The moonlight streamed in through the gap in the curtain and captured his mischievous smile as he slid into the bed. “Lie down,” he ordered. “I can’t sleep.”

  “Me either,” I whispered and snuggled down beside him. We had only slept beside each other once since I had arrived, and I was too drunk to remember it. The craving to sleep in his hold was real. But at the same time, the temperature was horrible already, and body heat was making it worse.

  “Ellie,” he mumbled and ran his hand across my waist, gliding over my stomach. I was just wearing an oversized T-shirt and underwear and I felt flustered as I thought about his hand dipping lower. “I need you.”

  I swallowed. “I need you too.”

  “Can I?” He questioned as his hand met the inside of my thigh and began sliding upwards.

  “But your mom?” I quietly gasped, already becoming breathless under his touch.

  He shifted so that he hovered above me and stared down with an unmistakable hunger. “I saw her pop a sleeping pill before bed. We’re safe.”

  He didn’t let me argue as he kissed me. It didn’t begin soft either. It was rough and I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him even closer.

  Our tongues moved with desperation as he raised his knee and pushed my legs apart. I was a whimpering mess and it just got worse when his hand slid over my arm. He laced our fingers together and pushed my hand into the pillow above my head as he began grinding his length against me.

  Though the fabric served as a barrier between us, I was on fire as he rubbed against me. I moaned into his mouth and he shuddered in response, his hand slipping under the shirt so that he could take my breast in his hand. He kissed my neck, chest, and jaw.

  He went south but his lips managed to stay on my skin as he went. He pushed the shirt up and let his tongue swirl circles around my hardened nipples. I had to control the urge to moan as loud as I wanted to. The pleasure was driving me wild, but I needed to keep quiet. His kisses continued down my stomach, going lower and lower until he gripped the band of my underwear and started sliding them down.

  My chest rose and fell with my erratic breathing as he threw the underwear to the floor and wrapped his arms around my thighs, pulling them apart with an aggressive tug. I had to slap a hand across my mouth as he was suddenly devouring me with so much skill I was seeing stars within seconds.

  Ellie

  Leroy must have snuck back to his bedroom after I fell asleep last night. I woke up with a smile in place and I didn’t suffer from insomnia again after his late-night snack. I did, however, feel a bit sticky between my legs so I got prepared for a shower and crept down the corridor.

  A delectable scent was coming from downstairs and I could hear the radio, which meant that Leroy must have been preparing breakfast. My stomach rumbled as I pushed the bathroom door open.

  “Shit,” Noah hissed when I walked in on him in a towel. A squeal escaped me, and I tried to pull the door shut but he grabbed it before I could. “I’m done. It’s all yours.”

  He brushed past me while I stood at the threshold clutching my clothes to my chest. The bathroom was still misted, and it smelled of fresh vanilla wash and cologne. Noah paused in the corridor, his back was to me and he twisted, glancing at me over his shoulder.

  The atmosphere was tense and I realized that I was holding my breath, waiting for him to verbally lash out. But after a long pause, his mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile, barely there, aside from the faintest lift at the corner of his lips, and then he walked down the hall and shut his bedroom door. It was such a strange moment. Leroy might have been more clued in on the wordless exchanges. But I wasn’t sure what had just happened.

  Leroy smiled from where he stood at the countertop when I came downstairs in a cropped T-shirt and some floral shorts. He was dishing bacon onto three plates that had eggs and toast on them. Heat flooded to more than one region when I remembered our night together. The vivid images were on repeat and I moved toward him, remembering his mouth between my legs, remembering his fingertips digging into my thighs, remembering the taste of him. My hand went into my hair, the lingering sensation of the strands in his fist, tugging and moaning my name.

  He set the pan down, the noise startling me out of tantalizing thoughts, and he leaned against the lip of the bench with his hands. The muscles in his arms flexed against the action and I pictured how they’d been wrapped around my thighs last night. “Hungry?” I met his knowing gaze. He gestured at the food as if he needed to clarify what he meant and I nodded, attempting to chill out.

  “How did you sleep?” he asked as we took our plates to the table. Noah sauntered into the room and thanked Leroy for the food before he sat at the other end, far away from both of us.

  “I slept well.”

  “I was thinking about heading out for the morning.” Noah spoke up with his head cast down as he cut up his food. “Give you guys the house for a bit.”

  Leroy narrowed his eyes in a puzzled glance, his elbows leaning on the table. “Thanks,” he said with a little hesitation. I guess he wasn’t the only one surprised by the odd behavior.

  It looked as though he was about to say more when the doorbell started ringing, continuously, repeatedly. In perfect sync, the brothers sighed and murmured, “Cass.”

  And as if she was summoned from that word alone, she came barreling into the kitchen, her exquisite ringlets bouncing, her simple pink sundress flowing around her legs.

  “Who’s up for a road trip?” She clapped her hands together and slipped her shades onto the top of her head. “Don’t all look so shocked! I was listening to the after-dark radio station last night while I contemplated the meaning of life, and it happened to be an optimal time. There was a contest for Aerosmith tickets. All I had to do was call in and fill in the blanks to their new song. I just bought their CD like two days ago and all the lyrics are on the sleeve,” she took a deep breath and threw her arms in the air with a wide smile. “Easy as.”

  “Aerosmith?!” I stood up, adrenaline coursing through me. I was on the edge of passing out at the mere thought of going to an Aerosmith concert. “You have Aerosmith tickets?! Shut up! Is that true?”

  Cass laughed, watching me from where she sat. “The show’s tonight in Colorado Springs.”

  “Tonight?” I hummed with excitement. “
This is the greatest day of my life.”

  “It was all just total luck,” she said.

  “And cheating,” Leroy added.

  “Bite me, Lee,” she said. “Who’s up for it? I have four tickets. So, even you can come,” she gave Noah a brief glance. “I guess.”

  “I would love to go to a concert with you, Cass,” Noah leaned back in his seat and gave her a sweet smile. She recoiled and I didn’t miss how her expression flittered with a hopeful excitement as I sat down again. “I’ll pay for the hotel if Leroy wants to drive?”

  It was clear that I wasn’t the only person that was dumbfounded at Noah’s new and improved attitude. But we all kept tight lipped just in case we spooked the pleasantness right out of him. Leroy nodded. “I can drive. No worries. I’ll let Eric know that I won’t be at practice tomorrow morning. We’ll also need to let Mom know what we’re doing. And she’ll want you to clear it with your mom first.”

  It took me a second to realize that he was speaking to me and I looked at him, plummeting with disappointment. “She’ll never go for it.”

  “Don’t call her,” Noah suggested. “We can just tell Mom that she was—” he gave us a thumbs-up. “I doubt she’ll call to confirm it.”

  “She might,” Leroy argued as he grazed his bottom lip with his thumb and adopted a thoughtful expression.

  “Just risk it,” Noah said. “Better to ask for forgiveness instead of permission.”

  “I mean, she probably won’t call your mom,” Cass said, but her tone wasn’t confident. “But if she does, we’ll already be in Colorado Springs.”

  Leroy looked conflicted but I couldn’t imagine not going. It was worth the risk. Aside from the fact I would get to see Aerosmith live, we’d be in a hotel, two hours out of town, with no parental supervision. I hated to go against parental authority in most situations, not to mention how much trouble I would be in if I got caught, but it was something I wouldn’t get to do again anytime soon.

  Noah leaned forward and fixed me with question. “Aren’t you eighteen? You’re grown. What’s your mom’s deal?”

  “Noah—” Leroy shook his head.

  “All right,” I said, not wanting to linger on the fact that I don’t have the same freedoms as most eighteen-year-olds. “We’ll just tell Eleanor that my mom was fine with it.”

  “Perfect!” Cass slapped her hands on the tabletop with excitement. “We’ll leave at lunch. I’m packed and good to go. My stuff is by the door.”

  “You knew that we would go?” Leroy arched a brow at her.

  “No. But I was hopeful. And if you’d said no, I would have just gone to Eric’s and asked him. Now hurry up and finish eating,” Cass gave me a tap on the back of the hand. “I’ll help you pack once you’re done.”

  “Cass,” Noah pushed his seat back and stood. “Can we talk for a second?”

  She stared up at the boy she adored. I didn’t think what they had was love, but I believed she felt it in one of the many forms it came in. Leroy and I watched them leave the room together and when I looked at him, his stare was narrow and calculating. “This is going to go really well or so badly.”

  Cass hadn’t had the chance to tell me what happened after we’d dropped her off at Tony’s yesterday. But I was desperate to find out. Which is why, a few hours later, when I heard her come out of his bedroom, I peered out of mine.

  “Cass,” she looked up from the floor, the biggest smile that I’d ever seen on her cheerful face. “Come,” I waved her over, and she skipped into the room, collapsing onto the bed.

  Leroy was downstairs on the phone with his mom. He’d asked his dad for permission first, but he’d told us to clear it with Eleanor. He was doing that while Cass caught me up with the details.

  “You have such good taste in clothes.” She admired a pair of overalls. I was packing up my bag with a couple of outfits so that I’d have options.

  “Thanks, but don’t keep me waiting. What happened at Tony’s? What happened just now?”

  She bit on her lip and her chest expanded. “Okay, okay, so after you dropped me off, I stormed straight inside. I’d been hyping myself up for the moment, so I was one hundred percent ready to throw down. Anyway, he was gaming with his friend, and I started shouting ‘you slept with Nadia, you are such a hoochie and I hate you.’ That sort of thing.”

  I nodded along.

  “He told me that it was none of my business and I had no right to talk to him like that, yadda yadda yadda. So, I said, ‘Noah,’” Cass stood up and directed her words at the empty space in the room, reenacting with passion, “‘You will not touch me, fuck me, or speak to me ever again unless you commit. Just us. I don’t want to share you anymore, and if you can’t get on board, we are done.’”

  I clapped, fast and loud, but her expression fell, and so did the raise in her shoulders.

  “Then he told me he wasn’t interested in exclusivity and I was just depriving myself of a good thing because I wanted to have childish labels. That I was the one with hang-ups apparently.”

  I could have gone into his room and smacked him right across the face. “What did he want to talk about just now?”

  That was when she regained her excitement, sitting down on the bed so fast that the mattress bounced, and my bag shook. “He apologized for it all. He said he was scared but he doesn’t want to lose me, and he agreed to be exclusive. Noah Lahey is my boyfriend.”

  As far as I was concerned, I still believed that Cass could do so much better. But her happiness was radiant, washing over her in waves that glittered under the sun that was Cass. There was no hiding how much this meant to her. “That’s a turnaround! I’m so happy for you.”

  “I know.” She shook her head when I held up a pair of black leather pants. “Those are tight, but it’s too hot. We can go on double dates now.”

  “We sort of are tonight,” I said. “A concert could be a date.”

  “Yes,” she gasped. “Double-date night!”

  Leroy appeared at the doorway. He folded his arms across his chest with a small smile and leaned on the doorframe. “We’ve booked a room. It’s a double—two queen beds between the four of us.”

  “Perfect, me and Ellie can share. You and Noah take the other,” Cass grinned as she jumped up from the bed. She gave his chest a condescending pat as she walked past him and out of the room.

  “I’m not sharing a bed with Noah,” Leroy shouted over his shoulder. “I don’t even want to share a room with the two of you!”

  “Why don’t we get our own?” I asked and walked toward him. “I could help with the cost?”

  He wrapped an arm around my waist so that he could pull me into him. “It’s not about cost, Ellie. I do appreciate the offer, though,” he pressed a kiss on my forehead. “The hotels in the area were booked up. The one we did manage to find is almost a half hour from the concert and had a cancellation when we called.”

  “Oh well, never mind.”

  “I’m not opposed to locking those two out, though,” he leaned his forehead against mine. “Trust me, it’ll be the favorable option. Those two will hit it whether we’re in the room or not.”

  I winced and hoped he was joking around. I knew that Cass was a bit looser once she was drunk. But we were going out of town and I didn’t think we would have access to alcohol.

  “Stop overthinking things.” He tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, his knuckle tracing down the edge of my face. “Tonight will be great.”

  I smiled. “I know.”

  The road trip was peaceful for the most part. We stopped for gas and three bathroom breaks for Cass, who had eaten an ice cream sandwich before we left. Besides that, we had fun, listening to music with the windows rolled down. It wasn’t until we arrived in Colorado Springs that things took a turn for the tense.

  “I’m telling you; it was the street that we passed two
minutes ago,” Noah shouted from the backseat. Leroy gripped the steering wheel and glowered in the rearview mirror.

  “No, it’s farther up and around the bend. Like it said on the fucking map!”

  Noah lunged forward and appeared between the driver and passenger seats as he waved at the windshield. “The map clearly said that the hotel was off Roderick and you just passed Glensmith and Roderick came before Glensmith!”

  “It came after Glensmith!” Leroy shouted back.

  “No! Before Glensmith and it comes after Bradley.”

  Cass snickered in the backseat. “Typical Bradley. Always coming first.”

  Noah banged his head on the driver’s seat. “Cass, not now.”

  “You come first, too, you selfish prick.”

  “Damn woman, how much have you had to drink?” Noah shouted.

  “She’s been drinking?” Leroy twisted in his seat before he peered in the rearview mirror. “What the hell?”

  “Focus on the road!” Noah snapped.

  “I’m trying but you two won’t shut the hell up!”

  “She’s the one talking shit.”

  “Whatever you say,” she mumbled, and I heard the clink of a bottle from the backseat.

  “Did she steal the booze from her mom?”

  “Does it matter?” Noah said as he waved his hands about. “She brought enough to share. Except she was supposed to be saving it for the hotel.”

  “I’m right here,” Cass clipped with a sarcastic tone.

  “How could we forget?” Noah muttered.

  “Excuse me, asshole. That’s not how you’re meant to talk to your girlfriend.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking about you!”

  “You are about to get—”

  Noah bit down on his fist and clenched his eyes closed. “I’m sorry, baby. Just . . . just shut up for a second, okay? Thanks, babe.”