Ripped

  My mother and I saw the crash on the evening news before we even realized my father was on board. “Ohmigod,” my mother breathed as we both watched the images of shredded airplane among sirens and stretchers and debris.

  She checked her phone. “Your father’s flight should be landing soon,” she said. “And we are due for a nice family dinner.”

  I checked my phone because I’d promised Mackenna I’d meet him by the docks.

  My mother was pacing. She’d never paced before. A feeling of dread settled on me. Like when you see those dark clouds hover across the sun, blocking it from your view. When the phone rang, and my mother answered, I knew.

  She started crying. I started crying too.

  “He was on board. He was on board with his assistant. He wasn’t flying from Chicago, he was coming back from Hawaii.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because . . .” My mother wiped her tears, and all the emotion fled from her face. “Because he’s been lying to us.”

  The phone began ringing nonstop when people started to find out that my father had died. I knew that wasn’t the only thing they must’ve been talking about—they were talking about the fact that he was with his assistant too.

  I stole out of the house, an hour late, and I ran into the darkness, and then I saw the figure out in the street, watching my house as though making sure I was all right, knowing he couldn’t go in there.

  “Kenna!” I flung myself at him, trying to hold back my tears. “That flight. He was on it. He was on that flight.”

  “Shh.” He rocked me. My safe haven. I closed my eyes and held on to him. “He lied to us. He’s been lying to us all along.”

  “I’m sorry,” he rasped, kissing my eyelids. “I’ll always be here for you. I will never lie to you. . . .”

  I jerk upright when the flight attendant announces she’s going to shut the plane door. The orchestra flies in the back, the singers up front. There are plenty of seats available—hell, they chartered the whole plane. Jax takes one seat and sets his stuff on the empty one beside him, and Lex takes another. And Mackenna is talking with the two flight attendants now. He’s twisted his cap around and looks young and delicious while wearing it backward. He looks like he used to look . . . when he was seventeen.

  I’m trying to steady my nerves when he startles me by dropping down on the seat beside me, prying off his cap, and jamming it into the seat pocket in front of him, as if there weren’t a thousand and one bacteria in there. He leans on the armrest, his weight turned toward me. Is it his inborn fate to torture me?

  “You lost? There are a dozen empty seats here,” I say.

  He looks at me intently. “I want this one.”

  Shaking my head, I grab a little manual from the seat pocket in front of me and start flipping through it. I will not lose my senses in front of him. No. Way. And yet I’m acutely aware of the alien noises surrounding me. Shuffle of feet. The engines. The shut of the plane door, his breathing.

  His breathing.

  I focus on that and try to match my breaths to his, all the while hoping he won’t notice. I could use him to relax. Or distract myself.

  Soon we’re being offered drinks. I pull out my pillbox and keep it discreetly tucked into my palm as he stretches his long legs.

  “Whiskey, sugar. And bring her the same,” he says, gesturing at me as he pushes his seat back. The manual says that during takeoff, the seat must be in an upright position, but he clearly doesn’t give a shit.

  He never coddled me. Even when we were kids. He treated me as an equal. I rarely cried, but when I did, he just waited for me to stop. If I fell, he just pulled me up and acted like I wasn’t supposed to cry, so I didn’t. He knew I had trouble expressing emotions, and when my father died, I bottled them up completely. I stopped crying at all, and Mackenna was all right with it.

  I think.

  He never pressed me to talk about it. He’s staring at me now, and I can see him trying to assess the situation, without pity and clearly without any intention of coddling me, so I blurt out, “I still hate airplanes.”

  His eyes gain a concerned glimmer. “I have an idea for you. Tell Lionel to fuck off and get off the plane then. We can both forget about this.”

  He’s wearing probably the most serious expression he has, and for a moment I consider it. We kissed in the closet—then I pretended to be asleep so he could spoon me last night. Things are awkward today. I really don’t want to have the temptation of him all day, every day, for over three weeks. But the money could get me independence and Magnolia a secure future.

  “I won’t back out. I signed a paper. Like I told you, I’m poor and purchasable,” I grumble.

  “Then I’m disappointed. If anyone seems unconcerned with worldly goods and the mundane, it’s you.”

  “Spoken like a douche bag who swims in dollars.”

  He lifts his whiskey to his lips, and I realize he’s holding out another glass for me. I take it from his grip, making sure our fingers don’t touch. He lifts one finger, though, as if to purposely make sure we do.

  I scowl. He smiles. As if he knows that little touch sent a current racing through my bloodstream, vein to capillary.

  On the other side of the plane, Lionel stares at me like he’s seriously in love with me, and then, unfortunately, the plane starts moving. I have no idea how long it takes the pill to kick in, but I better down it. I’m so nervous, my body feels charged and buzzy.

  My dad. I imagine him in a seat like this one. He was flying back home under perfect conditions, and he never arrived. I was staring at my homework when we got the call.

  “Want to talk about it?” Mackenna asks.

  “Not with you,” I mumble, grabbing and skimming through a catalogue before jamming it back into the pocket of the seat in front of me. I wish Mackenna would go away right now, when I’m not at my best. “Please go away,” I breathe.

  “Please just let me be here for you,” he says. There’s no mockery in his voice. Nothing but sincerity in his eyes.

  The fortress guarding my emotions goes rubbery, and this frightens me so much, I nearly beg, “No, you. Please. Go away.”

  We engage in a staring contest.

  For a moment I think I’m going to lose.

  Then he murmurs, “You can count on me, Pandora.”

  Before I can remind him why I don’t anymore, he unlatches his seat belt, and I want to take it back when he stands up and crosses the aisle to another seat.

  This is why they say you have to be careful what you wish for.

  I mourn the loss of human life next to me the instant he’s gone. Not human life—him. The loss of his challenging, exciting, and infuriating presence.

  He knows how my father died. How he was on business and the plane just crashed. Like in a movie, and in your worst nightmare. He’d been with his assistant. Not on business. I lost my father the same day my mother realized he’d betrayed her. Betrayed us.

  With another woman.

  I couldn’t mourn, because my mother felt I was betraying her. Because he’d betrayed her. The only emotion she was okay with me feeling was anger. If I started to get a trembly chin, my mother would snap, “Don’t you dare cry over him! Look at how he left me! Look how he abandoned us!” And so I always made sure I snapped my mouth shut and never did cry. Anger was safe. I was allowed anger. Lots of it. And when Mackenna left me too, it became all I knew.

  The nerves have my senses hyperaware as the plane turns to takeoff position. I hear every sound of the engines roaring, the clink of ice in Mackenna’s glass several seats away. His smell lingers in the empty seat, strangely comforting me.

  I pop the pill into my mouth, grab the whiskey glass, and down it.

  One cameraman is up in front, watching me, moving his camera. I swallow and stare out the window, my nails digging into my seat as the plane positions itself on the edge of the runway. I feel the camera on me when I hear a voice murmur, “Give her a fucking break and aim that somew
here else,” and then I feel the lean, hard body of Mackenna plopping down next to me.

  “Suppose it does fall,” he says.

  “Excuse me?” I sputter.

  “Suppose the plane can’t lift and falls.” He cocks an eyebrow at me.

  I glare at him, and he remains sober, his eyes roaming my face. “I wouldn’t mind dying today.”

  “I would. My father died this way. It’s my worst death imaginable.”

  “Worst death would be alone, with no one to even listen to your last words. Or drowning, that could—”

  “SHUT UP!”

  He stretches out his hand. “Take my hand, Pink.”

  “Thanks, but no.”

  “Fine. Thumb wars?”

  “God, you’re such a baby.”

  “You’re a coward. Come on, fucking use me for something. Want to fight? Fine. Want to hold my hand? Even better. Not sure? I bet you can’t pin my thumb under yours no matter what you do.”

  Gritting my teeth, I clutch his hand, because I know—and he knows—I desperately need the contact. A frisson runs through my body, and I wish I had the strength to deny him, but I’m shaking. And he looks strong. Like nothing can touch him.

  My boyfriend.

  My ex.

  The only guy I’ve ever had sex with. Ever wanted. Ever loved.

  He holds my wrist and tugs. “Come closer,” he urges. The tenderness in his eyes makes the walls around my heart wobble.

  “What? We’re playing with our thumbs, not our tongues,” I say defensively.

  “Really now.” He smiles again, the smile tender. Even his hold on my arm, his whispered voice, sounds tender. “Come closer, Pink.”

  I narrow my eyes and move closer.

  He presses my thumb underneath his, and I realize he was tricking me. He chuckles wickedly, and I can’t even protest, because the plane is taking off. I suck in a breath and glance out the window at the ground speeding beneath us. For a couple of minutes I try to calm down, but it’s near impossible. Mackenna’s hand is still on mine, but instead of squishing my thumb, he’s rubbing it.

  And it feels so wrong and right and deep in me and soft over me that I could probably stand the plane falling right now, but I can’t stand his hand on mine.

  “Let go,” I say.

  He lets go, and an odd glimmer of pity or sadness passes his face. “Just relax,” he says.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. His voice does things to me. He groans and says, “Come here, baby.”

  “The wolf says to the lamb. Don’t call me baby,” I whisper and refuse to obey, tucking my hand under my thigh. I’m acutely aware of every inch that separates us.

  He leans over. “You’re anything but a lamb.”

  Our eyes meet and everything about him, from his voice to his scent to his eyes, unsettles me to the point where I want to cry or scream.

  The plane jolts again, and a couple of nasty clouds are coming toward us. My eyes blur, and everything in my body presses into the hollow in my tummy. I’m tense as I grip the seat, praying for the clonazepam to take effect. If it weren’t for Magnolia, I might not give a shit about dying. But aside from Mom, I’m all she has. And Mom is . . . Mom.

  Mackenna’s glass is refilled. I watch his hand every time he lifts it, sips, and drops it. His fingers are magical. He once played the piano like the keys were an extension of his fingers, but right now, he’s a rocker dude. He’s always been bad, but he is a real guy with a real love of music and sound.

  The pill starts taking effect and my eyes flutter shut. I make sure to slide my head to the opposite side of where he sits.

  He says nothing.

  As my head starts getting fuzzy, I cuddle to the window, trying to make sure my shoulder doesn’t touch his.

  I remember stealing out to see him every afternoon. It didn’t matter that my mother worked for the DA. It didn’t matter that his father was a criminal. We were both in the courtroom that day, and I was already half crazy in love with him—unbeknownst to me, to my mother, or to him.

  I insisted on going to court with my mother that day, telling her simply that I felt like going. She eyed me warily but could not deny me. I sat outside on a long bench, with him close. I had heard that his father was going to be given many, many years for dealing.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have slid up to sit closer to him the day they set bail. We could’ve been seen, but I couldn’t help it. He was sitting there, looking at his hands, when his father and my mother were at it inside.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Me too,” he said.

  He lifted his head, and I could feel him looking at me as intensely as if I was burning. I reached out to take his hand.

  And that was all that we needed.

  He’d defended me from bullies at school, and now I held his hand whenever we were alone. That day we were alone in an empty hall on a single bench, and the boy I couldn’t stop thinking about was ready to hear how much his father would have to pay to remain free until the trial date.

  “Meet me at the docks where we met last time,” he said to me, squeezing my hand just as the courtroom doors swung open.

  With a quick nod, I pried my hand free.

  My mother walked out and called me back to her with a clear, crisp, lawyerly command. I felt him watch me—lonely, motherless, and, soon, fatherless—from that bench as they took his father away from him until he made bail. My mother said once the trial took place and his dad was convicted, Mackenna would be taken in by some uncle who was just as bad a gangster as the father and that soon, he’d probably be an outcast in school and would have to move.

  It seemed like my mother was a witch. Everything she predicted came true.

  But before he left, and between bail and trial, he was mine.

  For days, weeks, months, he was all mine and I was his.

  Sometimes, when I walked home from school, he walked with me. All my bullies mysteriously got purple eyes. When my mother saw him one day, she pulled me aside. “He’s up to no good, that boy. Revenge, that’s what that boy is up for. You stay away from him, Pandora.”

  “He’s not,” I kept telling my mother.

  But how could she understand? She didn’t see Mackenna and his remote, sad eyes. So sad even the silver turned to gray sometimes.

  She didn’t know that nobody else had told him they were sorry for him. She didn’t know that when I kept going to “study” at other people’s houses, I really was going to meet Mackenna. She didn’t know how we talked, how we laughed. Sometimes we just sat by each other, doing nothing. Sometimes all I was aware of was the position of my hand and how it was in relation to the position of his hand. Sometimes all I knew was the sound of his voice—despite whatever words it said. Sometimes I caught him staring too. At my mouth. My boobs. Sometimes we went to the marina and stole a boat at night. We’d take a dip in the chilly water, and when we came up to the boat, we’d take off our clothes and warm each other.

  He’d saved me in school. Now it felt like I was saving him.

  He told me he loved me, and I wanted to say it back. But in all our time together, I never said it. He showed that he loved me in little things he did for me: carrying my stuff when no one noticed, quietly following me after school, sometimes waiting outside my house, in the rain, until I could sneak away for another moment with him. Maybe I was his source of compassion, and he couldn’t stand anyone hurting or touching me.

  My mother didn’t know that long before the trial, I’d begged Mackenna to have sex with me.

  He promised it would happen the following weekend. It did, and it was magical. He took me to the wharf, where we stole past the guards and into a hidden nook under the Ferris wheel. We climbed into one of the cabins, he spread out some blankets, and we made love.

  He said he loved me. He asked if I loved him. I did. I really did. He made me tear up. I felt so beautiful, treasured, so perfect.

  We kept meeting. Always in secret. Every time it was even better. Better tha
n perfect. He hummed songs to me in his deep voice. At school, we’d have foreplay with our eyes, and then we’d touch each other at night.

  Then the trial happened, and soon he didn’t come back to school.

  But our plan still stood. After the trial, we’d run away.

  Except he never showed up.

  I even went to look for him at his uncle’s house, but he wasn’t there. Two older women were in his bed. “You looking for Kenna?” they asked.

  I swallowed, wondering if they’d touched him, and if they hadn’t, where he was.

  “He’s gone. Took a flight to Boston. One way. He said he sent you a message.”

  “He lied. He didn’t send me shit.”

  I ran, and ran, and when I got home, I locked myself in my room and went to pull out my box and tear up every picture of me with that lying, mean, cruel fucking asshole.

  Nothing survived, except for that stupid pebble in that box from the time when he told me not to trip again.

  Aren’t I tripping with the same pebble now?

  I’ve told myself that it’s not like I remember. His hands. His lips. Our first kiss. He used to get so jealous about me.

  One day, before Mackenna asked me to be his official girlfriend, we were arguing about Wes Rosberg. “He’s taking you out?” Mackenna asked, his eyebrows furrowing over his nose. “Where’s he taking you out? Why’d you say yes? I thought you didn’t like him?”

  “He’s just a friend,” I said, shrugging.

  He shoved to his feet. “Oh, yeah? What if he wants to have a girlfriend?”

  I shrugged again. “Well, maybe I would like to have a boyfriend.”

  “I want to be your boyfriend.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I want to be your boyfriend.”

  “Kenna! Get over here!” a voice yells from somewhere in the background, bringing me to the present. Hearing the rumble of his voice under my ear, I’m momentarily confused.