Crash

  “No, those were awful, awful things to say to another human being,” I said. “My parents, they’re complicated people,” I understated, not sure when or if I could ever explain the mess that was the Larson family.

  “Luce,” Jude said, stopping me, “I get what a piece of shit I am, and it’s not awful or unfair or incorrect for people to call me out on what I am. But I’d like to think a person can change, and I swear to you I’m going to try to leave my piece of shitedness behind.” His eyes were so earnest, you would have thought he was about to get down on one knee.

  “Shitedness?” I repeated, nudging him. “That must be one I missed in Webster’s.”

  “Nope,” he said, “that’s one plucked right out of Jude Ryder’s urban dictionary.”

  “Nice,” I laughed, tip toeing across the gravel so that the stones wouldn’t trip up my three inch heels.. “And in Lucy Larson’s book of shitedness, you’re nowhere on that list.”

  “That may be the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me,” he said, tickling at my sides. “Something about a hot woman in a damn fine dress lying through her teeth about me not being a piece of shit is a real turn on.”

  “Glad I’m so . . .” And then I noticed the car parked in the driveway, and I stopped in my tracks. “What is that?”

  I didn’t speak boy, but I knew that gleaming silver coupe was fast, expensive, and would attract all cops within a mile radius.

  “It’s a car,” Jude said, opening the door for me.

  “Don’t treat me like one of your one night stand girls,” I said, looking up at him.

  “My god, woman,” he said, leaning over the car door, “what does a man have to do to get a free pass from you?”

  “I don’t believe in free passes,” I threw back. “I believe in honesty. I’m all old fashioned that way.”

  “It’s a ’66 Chevelle,” he said, shutting the door before I could ask any more questions.

  “Is it yours?” I asked as he crawled into the driver’s seat.

  “Nope.” He turned the key over and the engine fired to life. “It belongs to a buddy of mine.”

  “A buddy at the boys’ home?” I knew this line of questioning was making him tense, as his jaw could attest to, but I couldn’t understand why.

  “Does it seem like any of us have any family who gives a damn, jobs that pay a damn, or an inheritance worth a damn that would allow guys like us to afford a ride like this?” Stretching his arm across my seat, he looked over his shoulder and backed out of the driveway.

  Mom was staring at us through the living room window, for the first time ever looking as lost as my dad was. Something heavy dropped in my stomach, something that felt a lot like guilt.

  “Defensive,” I mumbled, staring out the side window.

  “Your parents pretty much called me gum on the bottom of their shoe. You failed to mention, or more likely chose not to mention, to them that I was your date tonight.” Once we were on Sunrise Drive, he gunned the Chevelle. “I am the bad boy preying on the good girl. So yeah, I’m a tad defensive right now.”

  Not even a half hour into our first real date and we were already arguing. We were setting a wonderful precedent for whatever road our relationship was headed down.

  Fighting back that knee jerk reaction to volley right back, I took in a slow breath, then turned in my seat. “Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t tell my parents about you. Really,” I added when he made a face. “I didn’t tell them because of who you are, but because of who they are.”

  “Who they are?” he repeated. He didn’t sound like he was buying it, but that was the truth.

  “Yes.”

  “And just who exactly are they, Luce?” he asked, rolling to a stop at a red light.

  “Sad, scared people who have lost a lot in life and are scared of losing more,” I said, fiddling with the handles of my purse.

  Hanging his hand over the steering wheel, he looked over at me. “And what happened in their white picket fence life to make them so sad and scared?” He was mocking us, mocking them, but he just didn’t understand, and I was never in the mood to make someone understand what I didn’t understand myself.

  “Life,” was the only explanation I had for him.

  He huffed. “What a forthcoming, all-encompassing answer.”

  I was really having to work hard to keep my temper meter cool. “I learned it from watching you,” I said, cursing the tears that were forming. I’d turned into a blubbering mess after meeting this guy.

  The light turned green, but Jude kept staring at me. Lifting his thumb to the corner of my eye, he let the tear run down his hand. “Shit. I’m such a jerk,” he said as a car blasted its horn behind us. Raising his hand in the back window, Jude flipped off the car. “I’m sorry, Luce. I wanted tonight to be so great and I can’t seem to do or say anything right. I’m not mad at you, not even close. I’m mad at myself. I get why your parents don’t like me and I get why you didn’t tell them about me. I get all of that,” he said, hitting the dashboard. “I get that’s the reality, I just wish reality would take a vacation, you know?”

  Another horn blast, this one not nearly as polite. Punching the dashboard again, Jude shoved the door open. “Excuse me for one second,” he said, looking back at me as he crawled out of his seat.

  I turned in my seat, not quite sure that what I was seeing was happening. Jude lunged to the jacked-up truck behind us and began pounding on the tinted glass driver’s window.

  “Hey, douchebag. Open the door and let’s settle this like men!” Reaching for the handle, Jude tried opening the door, but the driver was smart enough to have locked it. “What? You think you’re the shit because you can blast your horn at a guy trying to have a serious conversation with his girl?” He was hollering, and oncoming traffic was stopping to see what the hell was going on. I scrunched down in my seat, wondering for the umpteenth time what exactly had happened in Jude’s life to make him this way. So angry, so closed off.

  “Next time you think about palming your horn, you better be ready to put your money where your mouth is and throw down like a man,” Jude yelled, throwing his arms in the air. “You got that, chicken shit?”

  Spinning around, he loped back to the car. A handful of passengers were sticking their heads out of windows, watching the two of us like we were menaces to society. I slid down farther in my seat.

  Slamming down in his seat, Jude pounded the door closed and, looking both ways first, ran the once again red light.

  Taking a breath, he looked over at me, his face smooth. As if he hadn’t just gone all Hulk at an intersection. “You can ask me anything you want, Luce. I can’t promise I’ll answer every question to your liking, but you can always ask.”

  My first thought was that he must be on some serious meds and forgot to take his daily dose, but then I recognized this little pretending-nothing-had-happened routine. I was so familiar with this coping mechanism I could have written the psych book.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Turning into the high school parking lot, he took the very last spot in the back corner. Staring through the window, he sighed. “That was me losing my shit. It happens a lot, Luce. I don’t mean it to, and I don’t even want it to, but ninety percent of the time, I can’t control it.”

  There it was, that window of vulnerability, that so honest it was painful answer that reminded me why I was here, now, with Jude Ryder.

  “I want to be a better man, but I don’t know if I can be,” he continued, tilting his head back on the seat. “You need to know this if we’re going to give this thing a go because—”

  And then I did something, depending upon your views of the world, that was either very reckless and wrong or very situationally appropriate.

  In one seamless move, thanks to my decade and a half of dancer’s grace, I found myself straddling him and, before I could think twice about my actions, I pressed my mouth against his.

  “Luce,” Jude managed to murmur around
my unyielding mouth.

  “Shut up, Ryder,” I answered, biting his bottom lip.

  Giving up to the overbearing force that was me, his hands slid down my waist, settling on my backside. “Shutting up,” he breathed, returning the whole unyielding, overbearing favor.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “My god, woman.” His breath was so labored it didn’t really sound like him anymore. “Mercy.”

  “I don’t believe in mercy,” I replied, trailing my lips down his neck.

  “Okay, I’m not going to screw you in the front seat of a car, and if you keep doing that,” he said, trying to arch away from my lips. It was a failed attempt. “I’m going to be fresh out of willpower, so time for a change of scenery.”

  The door flew open, bringing a gust of cool air and din of cliche high school dance music with it. I groaned.

  He chuckled as he maneuvered me off his lap and outside the steamy car. “And I thought we men were horny bastards.”

  Adjusting my sweater, I ran my fingers through my hair. “So did I,” I implied.

  “Your corsage,” he said, the whole half hour make out session filed to the back of his mind just like that. I was still breathing like a dog in heat.

  Retrieving the plastic box from the back seat, he stepped out of the car. “Since your dress is black, I had the lady put some black and silver ribbon between the roses,” he said, sliding the corsage on my wrist like it was one of the proudest moments of his life. “Do you like it?”

  “Now that,” I said, smiling down at it. He must have spent a fortune. Red roses streamed halfway up my forearm. “Is a corsage. Very nice, Mr. Ryder.”

  He beamed. “Why thank you, Miss Larson.” Holding his elbow out, he looked at the gymnasium. “Shall we?”

  I sighed. “Since you leave me no choice.”

  Covering my hand with his, he kissed the top of my head. “Not that I care or am complaining, but what was that back there?” I could hear the silly grin in his voice.

  “Since when do guys need an explanation for getting to second base with a girl?”

  “Since that girl was you,” he said, his gaze holding me like I was something he’d lose if he looked away. I’d never been looked at that way. My whole life I’d waited for it, and here it was now, at age seventeen, in the high school parking lot of my new school, with a boy named Jude Ryder.

  This, right here, was some powerful stuff.

  Shoving the gym door open, he ushered me in. Some hip hop song that was created and played only to give guys an excuse to hump a girl like a damn dog was blasting and the entire gym looked like it had been hosed down in Pepto-Bismal. The entire rainbow of pink was present: fuchsia in the balloons, tulip in the crepe paper, pastel in the cardboard heart cutouts, magenta in the spiral streamers twirling down from the ceiling.

  This pink drenched terrain was a clip stolen from my worst nightmare.

  “Oh. My.—”

  “Pink,” Jude inserted, grimacing as he took in the gym.

  Across the room, draped over some guy like a piece of Velcro, Taylor waved her arms at me. I almost shuddered again as I took in her florescent pink, heavily sequined, cocktail length dress. Someone call the Groupies from the 80’s Club because this bitch just ripped off one of their dresses. My floor-length gown with a corseted bodice was tame in comparison to every other dress out there.

  “Okay, hurry and dance with me before I make a run for it,” I said, pulling on his jacket.

  “Gladly,” he replied, handing our tickets off.

  Walking me onto the dance floor, he looked down at his feet and then up at me. “Okay, here’s another little tidbit about me since you say I’m not the forthcoming sort.”

  I raised my brows and waited.

  “I’m not much of a dancer,” he said, scratching the back of his neck.

  “Like you can’t dance or you won’t dance?” I was familiar with both types.

  “More like I’ve never danced.”

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  “Seriously.”

  It was the first time I’d seen him unsure. “Lucky for you you brought a girl who danced before she walked then.”

  He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. “Lucky me.”

  “Okay, I’m going to make this simple,” I said, sliding my hands over his shoulders. “Just follow my lead and you’ll be just fine.” Then, like the dance pro I was, I popped up on my tip toes until I was at lip level.

  “Maybe I’ve got this dancing thing down after all,” he said, cinching me tighter against him.

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” I whispered, pressing my lips into his and, just like that, we were the only people on the dance floor. The only people in the universe. Jude was the sickness I didn’t want to be cured of. He was the intoxicant I never wanted to be clear of.

  His hands cradled my face and he kissed me harder. I wanted to bottle that kiss and take a hit of it every hour of every day.

  “Luce?” he said, running his thumb down my cheek.

  “Yeah?” I said, burying my head under his chin.

  “Your stilettos are piercing the hell out of my feet.”

  Looking down, I saw that my feet were, in fact, covering his. Stepping back, I put my stilettos back on solid ground. “Whoops.”

  He just laughed. “Some dancer you are.”

  “Sorry I don’t have much experience trying to teach someone how to dance at the same time he’s kissing the wits out of me.”

  “Kissing the wits out of you, huh?” he said, tucking my hair behind my ear.

  “Like you’re not absolutely gloating in that feat.”

  The bump and grind song ended and another started. Jude and I shuddered at the same time. “This music blows,” he said, grabbing my hand. “And you look like you need some punch.”

  “I don’t know about punch, but I need something,” I said, bouncing my eyebrows.

  “You,” he pulled me closer, speaking into my ear, “are making it exceedingly difficult to be on my best behavior.”

  Looking forward, I tried to pretend his every touch wasn’t unraveling me. “Not my problem.”

  Winding his arm around me, he pulled me close. “It’s about to be.”

  “Jude Ryder,” words that were more slurred than spoken said from behind us. “If it wasn’t so freakin’ hot right here, I would have thought hell had frozen over. Jude I-don’t-do-commitments-phone-calls-or-breakfast Ryder at a high school dance.”

  Turning around, Jude kept me close to him. “Allie,” he said, sounding like he’d just issued the anti-greeting.

  “Oh, and by the way, it wasn’t that great for me. And since I know you’ve been worrying nonstop about it,” she said, propping a hand on her hip, “I found a ride home.”

  She so classically fit the mold for what guys seek out for a one night stand, I almost felt bad for her. Almost ended when she curled her fingers around the lapel of Jude’s jacket. My proverbial claws came out.

  “What do you want, Allie?” He was losing patience and I was all too familiar with how quickly the tracks ran out once he started down that road.

  “Now there’s a loaded question if I’ve ever heard one,” she said, flipping her red and blond streaked hair over her shoulder.

  “Okay, I’ve been on this roller coaster of crazy before and I’m getting off right now,” he said, steering me away.

  “Come on, I’m teasing,” she laughed, grabbing his arm. “I just wanted to meet your new friend.” She smiled at me all innocent like, but I knew her game and I wasn’t going to be her pawn to play.

  “This is Luce,” he said, tipping my chin up with his finger and pressing the sweetest kiss I’d even been given onto my lips.

  “She’d have to be if you’re with her.”

  That sweet kiss was all but eviscerated by one nasty comment.

  Jude’s eyes flamed as he turned on her. “If you weren’t a woman, sorry excuse of one as you are, I would teach you some respect, Allie.” Hi
s voice was wavering with anger, he was so close to spilling over.

  “Jude, stop,” I ordered, stepping in front of him and pushing him back. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying, she’s drunk.”

  “Watch who you’re calling drunk, bitch,” Allie sneered.

  I wanted to turn around and slap her makeup-y little face so bad my hand was tingling, but for once in my lifetime, I wasn’t the hotheaded one. I was trying to hold him back as he lunged forward again.

  “No, she’s not drunk,” Jude said, pacing in place. “For once. How’s that whole sobriety thing working for you, Al?”

  She huffed. “Like you care. It didn’t matter to you if I was drunk or high or sober. Just so long as I was horizontal and accommodating.”

  Now this girl was getting to me. It had been bad enough for her to insinuate I was a loose girl, but now knowing she’d been intimate with Jude in a way I hadn’t yet made me want to hit something hard. The closest thing, save for Jude, was her boney, sneering little face.

  Taking a breath, I looked away from her and up at Jude. “Come on, let’s just get out of here. She isn’t worth it.”

  “And you won’t be either come morning, sugar.”

  I shook my head at him, but he didn’t take my not so subtle warning. Twisting around, he gave Allie a cockeyed grin. “There are two types of girls in the world, Al,” he said, speaking so loudly this half of the gym could hear him. “The kind you screw and the kind you marry. That’s just the way the world was made, so don’t take it out on Luce that you’re one kind and she’s the other.” Allie’s face was flushing the color of her short, street walker dress, and not the embarrassed kind of red, the livid, I-would-kill-you-right-now-if-it-wasn’t-illegal kind of red. “Run along now and find yourself some other guy to screw so you can haunt him at every turn instead of me.”

  “Jude,” I whispered, looking up at him. That slanted grin was still on his face, but his eyes were black. I hadn’t known he was capable of delivering such cruel words, and if Allie hadn’t spewed the mouthful of crap she had, I might have felt bad for her. “Come on,” I said, pulling him away from one pissed off ex-lover and a few dozen onlookers. “Let’s go somewhere quiet.”