Page 15 of Back for More
Lily
*Keep Telling Yourself That*
I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that the first thing I do when returning to my family home, after hugging Vicky and eating an apple, is pleasure myself in the tub while thinking about Wes Carver and how hot he looked in that fucking suit. Damn. He grew up good. That doesn’t surprise me. I’d just expected my body to be a little less responsive to him while the beta blockers were still in my system. Damn him for being able to tell that I was drugged. At least he couldn’t tell that it was really him I was under the influence of.
Last time I saw Wes in a suit, he was eighteen and I was sixteen. I had been invited to prom by a senior named Jean-Pierre. He was a French exchange student, and all the girls at my private school had had a crush on him. All the girls except me, that is. But he’d asked me, so I’d said yes. I was even a little excited to be going to my first prom and proud of the fact that I was the only junior I knew of who would be attending—until I’d looked out and seen Wes in the garden, wearing a charcoal gray suit that was a little too tight for him, snipping a long pink rose stem. By then, I had already been trying to distance myself from him. By then, we had already kissed each other several times in secret. By “kissed each other,” I mean I had suddenly grabbed him or jumped up on him and plastered my mouth to his while whimpering and then ran away from him while declaring that it would never happen again.
I remember feeling my stomach drop because, if he was wearing a suit and cutting a rose, that meant he was going on a date with someone who wasn’t me. I would never go on a date with him, of course, but I couldn’t stop myself from running out there to confront him. And by confront him, I mean I strolled over to him like I was just hanging out in the backyard in my blush-colored, V-neck, floor-length, sleeveless dress with beaded bodice and open back. I hadn’t put my heels on yet, so I was holding up the skirt and staring down at the ground to make sure I didn’t step on anything that would hurt my bare feet. When I looked up at Wes and saw the expression on his face as he stared at me, I should have known it would be more important to protect my heart.
“You going to prom?” he asked. His eyes slowly roamed down my exposed neck to my exposed and enhanced cleavage. I saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed. I saw his jaw clench.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” I replied. “Is it prom night for your school too?”
“I didn’t go to our prom,” he said. “But someone from your school invited me, so…”
“Wait…what?Who?Wait—you’re going tomyschool’s prom?”
“Yes. With Scarlett Weeks.”
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Scarlett Weeks was a year ahead of me. She was a total nerd but in a sexy librarian sort of way. She was nice enough and I’d never really thought about her much before, but now I hated her. “You’re going tomyschool’s prom with Scarlett Weeks?” As always, my snotty tone didn’t seem to affect him much.
“It’s not reallyyourprom, though, is it? Why areyougoing? You’re too young.”
“Because Jean-Pierre Alphonse invited me. He’s a senior. He’s from France.”
He remained completely stone-faced. “You’re going to prom with a senior from France.” It wasn’t a question. “Well, I guess I’ll see you there, then.” He turned to head back to his house.
But I couldn’t bear to let him go just yet. “So, what is that you’re wearing—your dad’s suit?”
“Yes. I’m not gonna buy a new suit just to take a girl I barely know to a prom that I don’t really want to go to.”
This pleased me, and he knew it, and I hated that. “Oh. And do you feel good about the fact that you’re cutting a rose frommygarden to give to another girl?”
“I don’t feel great about it, no. But she invited me, and she’s nice, and I’m going, so I wanted to bring her a rose. If you’d like me to give you this one, then I will do so—happily—and pick one up at the store on my way to picking her up. For our date. That she invited me to go on. Because she isn’t embarrassed to be seen with me.”
I stomped over to him. “I’m not embarrassed to be seen with you, and you know it! I can’t believe you’ve been seeing a girl from my school behind my back.”
He took one step toward me, an inch away but towering over me. “I haven’t been seeing her, and it’s not behind your back just because you have no idea what’s going on outside your own high school drama.”
He was so handsome and clean-shaven, and he smelled so fucking good I just wanted to lick his stubborn angry face. “Ugh. Whatever. I can’t believe you kept this a secret from me.”
“I didn’t keep it a secret from you. You never asked if I was dating anyone. You never talk to me anymore, remember?”
“I am literally talking to you right now, and I’m asking you—have you been dating her?”
“No. This is our first date.”
“So you haven’t kissed her yet?”
“Not yet.”
“So you’re planning to kiss her?”
“What business is it of yours? Are you planning on kissing that idiot?”
“He’s not that big of an idiot.”
We both took a breath and then laughed. The only thing in the world that I wanted right then was to kiss him. But my dad was somewhere inside the house, possibly looking out a window at us, and besides… Kissing him would just make it harder for me to leave when I turn eighteen.
