“Renee said it was supposed to snow, but I was hoping the weather people would all be wrong. I mean, it’s not like they can predict the future,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“True. We should probably get you home.” He started to move, but I latched on to him to make him stop.
“It’s not really that bad.”
“Joscelyn,” Dusty said, giving me a look. “I’m not letting you drive in this. There’s just no way. So you can give up now and let me drive you, or we can fight about it a little bit and then you can give up and let me drive you. The choice is yours.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I can call Mase if you’re going to get that upset about it. He’s got a plow truck. He’d probably be willing to give you a ride, too.”
“No, it’s fine. You’d be surprised how good my car is in the snow.”
“So you’re allowed to stop me from driving in the snow, but I’m not allowed to stop you from driving in the snow? Double standard much?”
“Fine, fine. But if I get a ticket, I’m holding you personally responsible,” he said, kissing me. This was the first time he’d kissed me since I’d cried. And I let myself give in to it because it felt damn good, and if this was going to be our last kiss, I was going to make it fucking count.
“Your mouth is all salty and chocolaty,” he said, smiling as he kissed me.
“Is that bad?”
“No, it’s good.”
And we didn’t talk for a while after that. His hands and my hands moved up and under and between our clothing, searching for skin-on-skin contact. We were both a little hesitant, him because he probably didn’t want to push me after I’d been crying and me because I was afraid of letting myself go too far.
I was so, so close to saying fuck it and ripping his clothes off and mine off, even though this was Hannah’s room and she was outside and her neighbors would probably hear us. I’d finally found something to drown out the bad parts of my mind. People had been using sex for centuries as an escape. Why did it take me so long to realize it could work for me, too?
“Dusty,” I said, pulling away from his mouth.
“Oh, Red. We have to put the brakes on, even though I don’t want to. This isn’t right. Not right now, as much as you can probably tell I want it.” Yep, I could tell. Really, really tell.
“This is Hannah’s bed and this just isn’t the right time. I don’t want to go further like this. I want it to be because we both know it’s right.”
“Why are you such a gentleman?”
“You wouldn’t say that if you had met me a year ago.” And just like that, the mention of what he used to be like shut all the good feelings down. What was I doing? I pushed myself away from him.
“I’m going to call Mase.” I got up and climbed over him, getting my phone from Hannah’s desk. Dusty followed me, moving my shirt aside so he could kiss my neck. I tried to ignore it as I realized I had about a million missed calls from both him and Renee.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said, knowing very well that Renee was going to lay into me.
“Where the hell have you been? I’ve called and called you. The snow is getting pretty bad, so I think you should come home. If you didn’t contact me in another ten minutes, I was going to send Mase to get you anyway.”
“I’m sorry. My battery died, and I couldn’t find my charger so I had to use Hannah’s.”
She sighed and Dusty kept kissing me. Damn, that was distracting. I reached my hand back and smacked him a little, hitting his nose and also poking him in the eye.
“Ow,” he said, moving away from me.
“Sorry,” I mouthed.
“What was that?” Renee was instantly on alert.
“Nothing, just dropped something.” I hoped she bought it.
“Okay, well, Mase is leaving now.”
“Okay, ’bye.” I hung up and spun around.
“Not nice. Renee definitely heard you.” He looked up from my neck.
“So? I’ll just say that I came here to say hello. Taking my guarding duties seriously.” He was smiling, but I didn’t think it was very funny.
“Not the best thing to bring up right now, Dusty.” I moved away from him and got the rest of my stuff together.
“Buffy!” I yelled and Hannah came rushing in.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I was just wondering if it would work for me, too. Mase is coming to get me with the truck. Will you please convince Dusty to let Mase give him a ride?”
She went to the window and looked out. The wind whipped the frothy white snow around, and the usually bustling walkway was bare of people.
“Damn. It’s looking pretty gnarly out there. I wouldn’t want to drive anywhere.”
“I live in Old Town. I could practically walk if I had to,” he said.
“You can give in now, or we can fight about it and then you can give in,” I said, throwing his words back at him. Take that.
He threw his hands up. “Fine, fine. I really suck at saying no to you, Red.”
“That’s as it should be,” Hannah said, nodding and patting Dusty on the shoulder. “Your woman is always right. Even if she isn’t.”
Mase texted me when he was in front of the building. Hannah had volunteered to keep my candy bucket safe for me, because there was no way I could explain that and not have everyone get suspicious.
“I swear, I won’t touch it. Those Skittles are tainted.” She made a face and pushed it to the back of her closet.
“Good, because I would find a really creative and painful way to murder you if anything happened to them.”
“Point taken.”
The storm was in full rage mode when we got downstairs. I pulled my hood tight around my face and Dusty did the same.
“Don’t you own a winter coat?”
“I kind of rushed out of the house in a hurry, Red. Didn’t have time to consider the proper attire.”
Oh. Right.
We both ran for the truck, and Dusty boosted me in so I rode bitch in the middle.
“Hey, man, what are you doing here?”
Dusty grinned in a casual way. “Just came to check on Jos and got stranded by this crazy storm. You mind giving me a ride back to my place?”
“No problem.” Mase was giving me a look, and I wondered if maybe my face was still red from crying. Hannah and Dusty had both assured me it wasn’t, but you never knew.
Mase drove confidently through the snow-covered streets, and before I knew it, we were at Dusty’s.
“See you, man,” Mase said, turning his head as if he was watching something fascinating in the opposite direction. Smooth.
“Yeah, thanks for the ride.”
Dusty looked at me, and I saw in his eyes that he wanted to kiss me goodbye, but that wasn’t possible in our current situation.
“’Bye, Red. See you later.”
“See you,” I said. Once again, lame goodbye. I almost told him to say hello to Napoleon for me, but that would have been like admitting I’d been to his place and then there would be a lot of questions that I couldn’t answer.
Just before he slid down off the seat, he grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard, once. I squeezed back and he let go and I let out a breath as he shut the door and a little bit of snow swirled into the car. I watched him walk to the back of the building and go up the steps and the automatic light flash on when he got near the top. He waved once and then closed the door.
Mase coughed and turned the radio volume up louder.
“Be careful,” he said.
“Careful of what?” I was still watching Dusty’s apartment as we pulled away.
“I think you know,” Mase said, and I met his eyes in the dark cab of the truck.
“Ple
ase don’t say anything.” I didn’t need Renee finding out and flying off the handle like I knew she would. Besides, I was going to end things with Dusty before they even began, so there would be nothing to freak about anyway. We were done. Finished. Sure, I’d still hang out with him when he was at the house. That was pretty much unavoidable, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to be alone with him, and if he tried anything, I’d just keep telling him it couldn’t be. Eventually, he would find someone else. Someone that was not emotionally damaged.
Someone who wasn’t responsible for his brother being dead.
Chapter 20
I thought Renee was going to tackle me when I walked in the house.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” she said, nearly squeezing the life out of me. Christ, it was like I’d gone off to war or something. I’d done way more dangerous things than this, things she knew about, but that didn’t stop her from giving me a nice and thorough tongue-lashing about keeping my phone charged and not doing things in snowstorms. We did live in Maine, so that pretty much meant I wasn’t allowed to do anything for at least half the year. I just listened and hoped she didn’t pop a blood vessel and waited for it to be over.
“So, how did you do with your project?” she said, switching gears so fast I got whiplash. Shit. I’d taken my backpack, along with the socks, into Dusty’s apartment and forgotten to grab it when I ran out.
“Shoot, I forgot my backpack,” I said.
“Well, I can take you to Hannah’s tomorrow morning and you can grab it. Hey, maybe this will get so bad that they cancel classes.” She sounded kind of bummed that they would cancel classes. I remembered feeling that way.
“No, that’s okay. I’ll just...get it from her when I can.” I couldn’t let Renee drive me to Hannah’s because my backpack definitely wasn’t there. Oh, what a twisted web I’d gotten myself stuck in.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” I walked into the living room just so I wouldn’t have to look at her and lie to her face anymore.
Everyone else was watching the weather.
“It’s not looking good for tomorrow, kids,” Taylor said. The weather guy was gesturing wildly and using words like nor’easter and school closings and power outages and whiteout conditions. The crawler on the bottom of the screen was already flashing with school closings and bingo games being canceled and offices being closed.
“They’re not going to close. Remember that time last year when we had nearly a foot and they had all those accidents because they refused to cancel?” Hunter said.
“I vote we take bets,” Taylor said. “Who thinks they will close tomorrow?” She raised her hand, and Darah, Paul and I also raised our hands. “So the rest of you think they won’t?” They all nodded.
“Okay, loser has to take the winner out for dinner and drinks and foot the bill. Deal?”
“Deal,” we all said.
“We got this,” Taylor said, holding her hand up for a high five. I gave her one and sat down on the end of the couch to watch the weatherman ramble on and on and hope that class would get canceled. Then I would have more time to figure out what to do with the backpack situation.
It would also give me some time to hang out downstairs, away from everyone else, and think about what the hell I was going to do to Dusty to get him to stop pursuing me without actually telling him why he should stop pursuing me. This was beginning to feel more and more like the plot of a really bad teen movie, except mine wouldn’t end with an epic slow-motion kiss and a killer song playing in the background.
* * *
For only the second time that winter, classes were canceled as Maine was hammered with one of the worst storms it had seen in years. It was even worse than they predicted, and the state pretty much ground to a halt as everyone hunkered down and stayed close to home. Mase was the only one who went out, offering to plow some of the driveways of the neighbors who hadn’t had their plow guys show up yet.
The rest of the house slept in, except for me. I was up bright and early as a result of barely getting any sleep the night before. That nap with Dusty had also screwed with my sleep schedule.
He’d texted me a few times asking if I’d gotten home safe. I’d messaged back that I had, and he’d tried to start a conversation and even called me, but I’d ignored him. Why did he have to make this so hard on me? It would be a hell of a lot easier to let him go if he’d actually done something awful, like cheat on me.
If he wasn’t so...him, things would be so much easier. When I’d decided to break up with Matt, things had been so clear, so simple. We had a rational conversation, few tears and only a little regret. Dusty was something else altogether.
The other thing I did was search back in my memory to pull forward any mention Nathan had made of his brother. I knew he had a half brother who lived in Maine that he’d talked about more than once, but I’d never seen a picture of the guy, and Nathan had always called him Buzz. I felt almost stupid for not making the connection, but they didn’t have the same last names, even though they had the same Dad. Dusty must have been named for his mother.
Nathan had always talked fondly of his little brother, wishing they lived closer so he could see him all the time. He also said his brother was wild, and thinking back, I remembered some of the stories he’d told me about him.
At the time, I hadn’t known how important they were, so I didn’t file them away as that important. If I hadn’t been such an idiot, maybe I would have seen it sooner and stopped this whole thing in its tracks. But no. I had to wait until after I’d decided that I liked Dusty and wanted to see him naked and “bump our bits together” as Hannah so inelegantly put it. Life had to screw me, but I deserved it.
That was the thing that made the most sense in all of this. That I deserved to have this thing that I wanted, so much, dangled in front of my face. This thing I could never have. It was karma at her best. What I should do is accept my punishment in stoic silence and move on. To what, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t stay where I was. Something had to change, for me and for Dusty. He couldn’t stay attached to a girl who he could never have, either. That wasn’t fair to him.
I stuffed my face into my pillow and screamed a few times, but that did little to help, so I went upstairs to get another cup of tea. I was chugging the stuff like it was a drug and I was a junkie. I was on my way to the kitchen when someone called my name from the living room.
“Jos?” Of course he was here. Dusty Sharp was like the postal service. Neither rain nor snow nor me ignoring him would stop him from coming to this house.
Be cool, be cool, be cool.
“Oh, hey, Dusty. Crazy weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
That was the opposite of cool, Jos.
He gave me a weird look for a second and then got up from the couch and picked up my backpack where it had been sitting on the floor.
“I had a friend take me back to campus to get my car, and I stopped in to see Hannah and she gave me your bag. I thought you might need it, so I brought it over.” I was torn between thinking that was really nice to being livid that he’d been out driving in this weather just for my stupid backpack.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said, very aware that everyone was watching me and I had to keep it on the down low.
“I know, but I was already out, so I figured why not? The roads really aren’t that bad now.” The snow was still coming down, but not nearly as heavy as before, and the plow and sand trucks were probably out in force, so it was less dangerous than it was last night, but still. I was torn between wanting to pull him aside so I could yell at him, and not wanting him to know how much I cared. Because if he did, there would be no getting rid of him.
Why couldn’t I just punch him and run away like we were five and on the playground? Would make things so much easier.
I wal
ked over and took the backpack from him.
“Thank you, Dusty. You really, really didn’t have to do that.”
“I know,” he said softly, and his eyes were even softer. Damn those eyes. Hypnotic. “But I did it for you.” He said it so quiet that no one could hear.
“Don’t,” I said, even more quiet as I shook my head just a fraction.
“Well, I think afternoon calls for a snowball fight, snowman building and then hot cocoa. Who’s in?” Taylor said, springing to her feet.
“I’m in,” Hunter said, getting up, too. Two seconds later everyone else was on their feet and running to put on their boots and mittens and hats and everything else.
“You game?” Dusty said, his face lighting up, probably seeing an opportunity to flirt with me and so forth.
Well, I couldn’t really say no. Everyone else was all for it as if we’d all reverted to childhood status. Mase popped a hat on Darah’s head and pulled it down so she couldn’t see, and she fought with him to try to pull it back up before he kissed her and she gave up.
I sighed and joined everyone by the door to get my winter things.
Dusty leaned down and held my boots for me to put my feet in them. He already had his on. The rest of the house was too busy to notice, so I seized my chance to talk to him.
“I don’t need your help.”
“Don’t be mad at me. I knew that you’d need your backpack, and you obviously couldn’t come get it, so I brought it to you. I wish we could talk. Do you think, maybe, that I can come by late tonight?” He spoke low and fast, as if we were plotting how to rob a bank or something.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Let’s just have fun now and we can deal with it later, okay?” I put on a smile and chased everyone else out the door. Hunter and Taylor were already making snow angels, and everyone else was choosing sides for a snowball fight.
“Boys against girls,” Mase said.
“Uh, I don’t think so, buddy,” Renee said. “You have, like, twice the arm power as me and Taylor. Unfair advantage.”