EDGES Page 8

  She made sure to keep her face turned away from George. He kept pulling her closer more and more aggressively, but she maintained her poise and kept ignoring him, hoping he would flake off. Josh was all the way across the dance floor near the far wall with Ariel, bobbing his head to the beat with a drink in his hand, watching the dancing people.

  Tiffany got distracted with some of her other girlfriends they ran into and wandered into a different part of the bar. Simone was left with Patrick and George at the bar, George still with his arm around her.

  Patrick started drilling George with jokes and banter, but the music was so loud that Simone didn’t catch any of it. Suddenly, shots of Jameson appeared. Staying true to the devil that he was, Patrick placed one into Simone’s hands. The last thing she needed was another shot to add to her wooziness.

  Patrick leaned into her, shouted right into her ear. “Why are you letting this happen? Josh is gonna get pissed.”

  She shook her head and took the shot. Patrick took his. He didn’t get one for George, didn’t even acknowledge him while the two of them were talking. Patrick held his brown eyes steady on her while she weakly gazed into the crowd, the empty shot glass quivering in her hand. A minute went by and her stomach gurgled. She felt like a wheelbarrow of bricks had suddenly been dumped on her. The room became a twisting and contorting swirl of colors. Oh no.

  George went up to the bar so he could get a drink for himself, and Simone wobbled and bumped into Patrick. He pulled her in and held her upright, asking if she was okay, which she nodded to. He said some harmless jokes into her ear, and with her eyelids drooped, she started laughing hysterically and kept laughing until Patrick was laughing right along with her. Soon, their foreheads were leaned together and she was hugging him. The warmth of his touch on her felt so comforting. It kept the room from twisting and spinning.

  Patrick stepped away when Tiffany returned. She pulled him out onto the dance floor and gave Simone a foul glare while dragging him away.

  Simone moseyed over to the bar, and held herself up on it as her body swayed and seesawed. The bartender was cute, but too busy to talk with. She didn’t even realize in her drunkenness that she’d forgotten all about Josh.

  People bumped into her, and twice she fell over onto the slick floor. Then out of the crowd were hard, long fingers grabbing onto her wrist. George was pulling her back toward him. She didn’t want to be held by him. But she was floating, silly putty, and once he had her pulled in, she could only languish in his arms. He began to twirl her around, one way and then back the other as she laughed.

  As she was halfway spun around, with her back to George, there was a deafening crunch. His hand fell away from hers. She completed the spin, coming around to the sight of Josh mounted over a crumpled George on the filthy, sticky black floor. His fist kept banging George’s face, each time booming off his cheek and eye socket in sickening smacks.

  Simone screamed. Bouncers converged from all directions. People crowded around to see, and in the process, someone’s drink got swept into the air. Simone watched it float, suspended in the colorful lights of the dance floor, and then, as if sucked into a black hole, it vanished into the pile of struggling bodies.

  A heavy-set bouncer reared up from the pile with Josh in a full nelson. Josh’s face was pink and flustered, but he managed to lock eyes with her. “You bitch!” he kept yelling as he was forced out by the bigger man.

  Simone’s stomach gave a violent lurch, as did the room, and a moment of complete terror came upon her. She scuttled around the edge of the crowd to the bathroom and pushed her way into the first stall with seconds to spare.

  Several minutes passed where she couldn’t move, could hardly breathe. She flushed the toilet, then went to the sink and washed her mouth out. Several girls came and went, laughing at her. She didn’t care. Her thoughts were on what had happened. Josh, what had he done? What had she done? It was all so blurry and scary.

  She emerged from the bathroom. The music hadn’t stopped, but George was gone, along with the bouncer and the crowd around the fight. A young girl was sweeping up the glass from the airborne drink.

  A semblance of focus came back to her. She looked around the dance floor and through the river of moving people. At last her eyes landed on Patrick at the bar. He was alone, watching the dance floor with that steady calmness he always had.

  “What the hell happened?” he asked on her approach.

  There were no words. She threw herself into his arms, sobbing.

  “Hey, hey,” he said, rubbing her hair. “It’s okay.”

  “Where’s George? What happened to him?”

  “They dragged him out. Tiffany went with him.” Patrick stroked his right cheek. “This whole side of his face was pulp. Fuckin’ gross.”

  “Oh Jesus,” she whispered.

  “I waited for you, though.”

  She looked up at him. She knew he would tell her the truth. “Am I a horrible person? I am, aren’t I?”

  “You didn’t make Josh hit him.” He gave a good-spirited laugh. “I’m just glad I wasn’t the one Josh pummeled. Tiffany wasn’t too happy with me either. You’re not a bad person, Simone.”

  For some reason, his empathizing was enough to comfort her. “Really?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Tiffany’s mad at me too?”

  “She’ll be fine,” he said directly into her ear, still holding her. “She knows we’re friends. I don’t know why she thinks we should never even touch each other. Same thing with Josh, he knows you and George are friends and that you would never do anything stupid.”

  The words cut into her. She had agreed to kiss George only hours before, just to see what would happen. How Josh would react. Now she knew, and they hadn’t even kissed. She wondered to herself if she was some sort of sick, deranged slut.

  “We’re a lot alike, you and me,” Patrick said, breaking her train of thought.

  “Please don’t say that.”

  “You wish you weren’t, but you are.” He hugged her harder and rested his chin on top of her head for a moment. “Except I’m cooler and better looking.”

  It made her laugh.

  He pulled back. “Kidding about the latter.”

  She forgot about Josh and George for a moment and let herself be sucked back into the feelings that Patrick gave her. Gradually, her tears dried up. She loved how honest she could be with him. Finally, nothing to hide. With Josh, she felt she was always somehow lying to herself, even in the subtlest ways, but with Patrick, even if it wasn’t always perfect or sweet, it was real.

  “We’re going to get a cab and meet Tiffany back at the apartment. She texted me. She took George to Mercy. She might be there pretty late. She wanted me to make sure you got home safe.”

  Simone felt exhaustion press in on her all at once. She nodded feebly and let him lead her out of the bar. They didn’t even bother looking for Ariel. It took only a few minutes to get a cab. Only a few more minutes to get back to her and Tiffany’s apartment. Patrick had his own set of keys to let them in. Simone fell onto the couch and lay there, paralyzed. Patrick approached the couch and scooped her off of it.

  “No, Patrick,” she whispered.

  He carried her upstairs into her bedroom and laid her on the covers.

  “Let’s get you out of those clothes.”

  “No, no,” she pleaded, but didn’t actually resist very hard.

  He lifted her to peel her tight shirt off, folded it, and set it on her desk chair. She fell backward so that her back was on the cool comforter. He pulled her boots off and then slowly unbuttoned her pants.

  “Patrick, please no.”

  She knew she would let him have her if he really wanted. And she knew that was what he was doing.

  He unzipped and then inched her jeans down until they were around her ankles. The jeans were folded just like her shirt and neatly set on the chair.

  He smiled down at her. “You’re even hot after you’ve puked. How abo
ut that?”

  She smiled back, feeling exposed, yet aroused. He lifted her off the bed with ease, and she giggled as she wrapped her legs around his waist to keep from falling. He held her up with his hands hooked under legs and she secretly hoped he would fall on top of her on the bed. But he didn’t. He set her down on her feet and made her stand for a moment. The covers whooshed as he threw them back and eased her down on the sheets, only to cover her up again.

  Abruptly as he’d undressed her, he left the room. She sat there bewildered and disoriented. Didn’t he want her? He returned not a minute later with a large cup of ice water. It began to sweat a ring when he set it on the nightstand.

  She found herself wishing he would crawl into the bed so that she could let him take her. She needed him to. Whatever it took to make the pain of everything go away. But she didn’t verbalize it, nor indicate it with anything except the way she looked at him. He leaned over her and she thought he was going to kiss her. He pressed both lips to her forehead and then pulled away.

  “I’ll be in the other room if you need more water.” He switched off the light and left her in the dark. “Goodnight, Simone. It’ll all be okay. I promise.”

  A deep, long silence followed. She was in the dark, alone. She started to cry again, and this time it was without the guilt of what had happened with Josh and George. She cried because she knew the boy sleeping in the room across the hall was someone she could never be with.

  Patrick

  PATRICK’S MOTHER, THERESA FINCH, CAME into town mid-morning on Saturday, the day after they’d all gone out on the town, and insisted on taking Patrick to lunch. They ate burgers at an upscale spot on Main where Patrick had to have two Bloody Mary’s before his headache from the night before finally eased up.

  Afterward they went walking a few blocks, just talking, and looking in windows of stores. She told him that they were going to meet one of her friends at a clothing boutique nearby.

  His mom was only forty-two and still attractive for an older woman, but because she was coming out of a long, drawn out divorce with his father, he tended to worry that she got dangerously lonely at home. She was only in town for the short two days and there was only a little time for her to visit with her friends that lived in town.

  They greeted Gwendolyn, a longtime friend of his mother, on the curb outside the boutique. Patrick hadn’t seen her in almost two years but she gave him a big hug regardless. The two middle-aged women were laughing almost immediately, falling right back into stride, enthralled at seeing each other.

  “Patrick,” Gwendolyn said, pointing into the shop. “My daughter Reagan is inside. You remember her, don’t you?”

  Patrick shook his head. Honestly, he couldn’t recall the girl and wasn’t sure they’d even met before. He couldn’t remember her face at least. “Sorry.”

  “Gwenda, how is Reagan?” his mother asked.

  Gwenda’s head dodged from side to side. “We’re reaching a clearing, I think. The alcohol thing, well you know how bad it got there for awhile. But I think we’re past it.”

  “Good,” Theresa exhaled with relief. “Reagan is such a strong person. I’m proud she’s beating it.”

  Gwenda held up a hand with crossed fingers and gritted her teeth.

  Alcohol thing? Patrick wondered what that was all about.

  It was colder today. The chilly breeze of last night had obviously been a precursor to what was headed for town. Patrick took a moment to glance up at the sky. High leaden clouds had started encroaching over the mountains, the peaks of which he could see over the red brick buildings.

  The three of them moved inside off of the sidewalk. Gwenda grabbed Reagan from a clothing rack where she was picking through dresses and brought her over to greet Patrick and Theresa.

  Patrick had to do a double-take. From toes up, Reagan’s whole image was bursting with youth. She wore sassy brown boots that came to mid-calf with loose leather tassels swinging from them, a denim skirt that began nearly at the top of her thighs, a strappy little black shirt with a white sweater over, and a glittering silver necklace with a lightning bolt dangling on the end. Her chatoyant black hair framed what was an exquisite face with pouty lips and wide hazel eyes.

  He shook her hand, knowing instantly that she would be trouble.

  “She’s just finishing up at DHS,” Gwenda said, looking to Patrick while she said it. He didn’t know if it was a warning or invitation.

  “Are you excited?” Patrick asked, not all that surprised at her age. Her body had the impeccable features that only came with raging youth. There was a vibrancy emanating off her, a raw energy that attracted him in an instant.

  “Yeah, I’m thrilled,” Reagan responded as if she’d been asked about knitting. She went back to the rack, not having anything more to say.

  “That’s right,” Gwenda added. “Graduating in three weeks.”

  “Ooo,” Theresa purred with eagerness, “I should come for that, I could stay with Patrick.”

  Patrick flashed a half-amused grin. “Nothing I want more than my mother coming to stay with me. I’ll have to get the couch cleaned though.”

  “Hey now,” Gwenda replied, lightly slapping him on the arm. “We moms roughed it in our day. We partied harder than you’d think back then.” She called across to Reagan. “Isn’t that right, Reagan?”

  Reagan nodded and spoke in the same flat, disinterested tone. “I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t.” Then she went back to picking through the rack.

  Gwenda let her fingertips linger on Theresa’s forearm. “You can stay with us. Sean will be in China on business. He’s working on a new diet pill. It’s still in R & D. You take one and you feel full for three days. They’ve run into a few test subjects coming down with stomach bleeding and shingles, but he says there’s a group of doctors in Guangzhou who know what to do. So we’ll have the whole house, we could make it a weekend!”

  Patrick watched Gwenda closely and thought it quite a kink how she would caress a good friend’s forearm so sensually.

  Gwenda whispered to his mother, loud enough for Patrick to overhear. “You know, we really should get them together. It would be good for Reagan.”

  It wouldn’t be good for Reagan, Patrick already knew, but he wasn’t opposed to the idea. She was too pretty to let the opportunity pass. And he doubted she’d be going to Fort Lewis, the college. Local kids rarely did.

  “He has a girlfriend,” his mom answered. She grabbed Patrick’s hand. “How is Tiffany, hun?”

  From his peripheral, Patrick sensed that Reagan was eavesdropping just a bit, even though she hid it well. He swallowed hard, and lowered his voice to painful murmur. “You didn’t hear about the accident?”

  “The accident?” his mother cried. “What accident? What happened?”

  He faced the women. “She’s fine. I’m kidding.” He heard Reagan snigger. “But I’m not sure if it’s going to last, to be honest.”

  “What? I thought you guys were doing so well.” His mom’s mouth hung open for a moment, then she turned to Gwenda. “The girl’s parents live in a palace in Denver. An absolute. Fucking. Palace.”

  Patrick scowled.

  “I mean, she’s just so sweet.” His mother folded her hands at her waist. “And so beautiful.”

  “She is sweet… and beautiful,” he said. “But one minute it’s on, the next it’s off. Love, hate, love, hate. Gwenda, you know how that goes, don’t you?”

  “It happens,” Gwenda admitted. “Kids these days don’t settle down quickly like they used to. They hardly even ‘date’ anymore.”

  Patrick observed Reagan. She was picking even more frantically through the clothes, obviously hoping not to be drawn into their conversation.

  “Reagan,” Gwenda went on, speaking up for the whole boutique to hear, “she’s got this cute boy. Baby, what’s his name? Dan?”

  Reagan looked at the three of them. “You didn’t hear about the accident?”

  Gwenda shook her head. “So mac
abre, these teens.” She looked to Theresa. “We’ve done our best in raising them right, haven’t we?”

  “Of course,” Theresa assured. “You know I read something about GMO’s having a lot to do with it, and too much soy…” The women walked away into the depths of the store talking, leaving him there.

  Patrick was taken with the sharp edge the girl had to her. He liked a little dark humor. Most high school girls Patrick had chatted with couldn’t form complete sentences, let alone have a meaningful, lively conversation. Their lingual wit only applied to texting. His eyes again went to the glittering lightning bolt resting in Reagan’s cleavage. Perhaps, there’s something to this one, he thought.

  He wasted no time in approaching the rack. There were more dresses hanging on the side opposite where she stood. He went there, not looking at her, but instead picking through clothes in the same, aggressive fashion that she did. He hoped that she would notice him mocking her, but she held strong and acted totally aloof toward him, barely noticing, or at least pretending not to.

  He picked one off the rack and held it up. “I like this one, what do you think?” He shook it on the hanger, and stared at her with a look that demanded a response.

  She finally dragged her eyes up to him. “It’s ugly.”

  “You’re ugly.” He said it in the most obnoxious, childish voice he could muster and slung the dress back on the rack.

  “No, I’m not.”

  There was a flicker in her eye that hinted at the potential of chemistry. He picked another out and held it up again. “What about his one?” he asked.

  “It’s too big. And what do you care what I think?”

  “Because you’ll be wearing it.”

  “Will I now?”

  “On our date. Didn’t you hear our moms? They’re arranging our marriage as we speak.”

  She laughed for a second, but it was a laugh of disbelief and slight uncertainty.

  He put the dress back and leaned forward on the rack. “What, you don’t want to date me?” He didn’t know why he was being so direct, it just felt satisfying.