Page 159 of American Hellhound
“Alright?”
“You may go. Be sure to use protection if you feel the need to engage in sexual activity.”
“I – I…” Maggie stuttered. “What?”
Denise gave the interior of the cabinet another careful look, head tilted, eyes narrowed. Then she turned to look at Maggie, and the concentration melted from her face, replaced by a bored, distracted gaze that seemed to look not at Maggie, but somewhere over the top of her head. Searching for smudges on the door molding, maybe.
She said, “You’ve made it perfectly clear that you plan to rebel and make a complete mockery of everything your father and I have tried to teach you. I’d just be wasting my breath to tell you to keep your legs closed. If you’re going to act like a vapid slut, you might as well take precautions.”
It had finally happened, she realized: she’d stopped expecting even the most basic kindness from her mom. She couldn’t be bothered to care that she’d been called a “vapid slut,” because the insult failed to surprise her.
“You’re actually letting me to go a party?”
“You should spend more time with children your own age. Maybe then you’ll stop moping around here pining after that biker piece of shit.”
Maggie took a step backward, prepared to leave; Denise returned to her crystal: the ice tea glasses, the sherbet goblets, the tiny sherry glasses. But Maggie paused, a lump in her throat, an incomprehensible hurt trying to break through her composure.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
Do you hate me?She wanted to ask.Do you wish you’d never had me? We can never be family, can we?But those questions wouldn’t yield true answers. Denise would only suggest that she was being dramatic. She said, “Nothing,” and slipped away.
Upstairs, she took the phone off the hall table and unwound the cord, taking it into her room to call Ghost. She called him at home; without her there to relieve Rita, he should be at the apartment.
And he was, picking up with a disinterested “Yeah?” on the third ring.
“Hey, it’s me,” she said, flooded with relief to hear his voice…A relief that stretched and grew brittle when he didn’t answer. “Ghost?”
“Yeah.” Voice flat and bored.
“How are you?”
“Fine. Look, I’m about to leave–”
“There’s a party,” she said, stomach twisting. Dread moved through her, left her cold and clammy. “At Hamilton House. Mom said I could go.” She was rushing, trying to get the words out, afraid he’d hang up on her. She’d spent the past two weeks trying to convince herself that he didn’t resent her for leaving, but she’d been wrong, very wrong. She could feel his resentment coming down the phone line, dark and jagged. Right now, he sounded as warm as her mother – which was not at all.
“It would give us a chance to see each other,” she continued, child-like hope in her voice. “For a few hours at least. We wouldn’t even have to stay there – we could go somewhere else.”
A beat of silence. Two.
“I can’t.”
“Ghost–”
“I gotta be at the clubhouse. Bye.”
The line went dead.
~*~
He wasn’t proud. He was ashamed, actually. But he couldn’t seem to help it. It would be easier to cut Maggie out of his life cleanly, pretend she hadn’t left a divot in his spare pillow, that she hadn’t packed labeled dinners away in his freezer, that he didn’t love her to distraction.“I’m not leaving,”she’d said, but she’dleft. He hadn’t seen her face in two weeks, hadn’t smelled her hair, hadn’t rolled over at two a.m. and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulled her warm, willing shape against his chest. Now she was nothing but a hesitant voice on the phone, and a faint whiff of body lotion on his sheets. Aidan wouldn’t talk to him. He couldn’t seem to stay sober. Jackie had told him it was for the best.
And itwasfor the best. For Maggie.
She could go to school, and all her club meetings, and her fancy etiquette lessons. She could mend fences with her parents, field scholarship offers from all the good colleges, and eventually, when the novelty of a broke biker wore off, marry the kind of guy who deserved her.
But the idea of that made him physically ill. When he thought about anyone touching her – the way her skin warmed, the scatter of goosebumps across her chest, the quiet breathless sounds she made – he wanted to put his fist through a wall. He almost put his fist through Collier’s teeth when he said, “I know it’s tough.” Collier didn’t knowshit. No one did.
