Slow Twitch - Реинхардт Лиз. Страница 69

“Here? At George Washington High?” She leaned towards me.

“Here. At Immaculate Conception,” I corrected. I was down on all fours, Sullie on my back and kicking his little heels into my sides hard. I plodded around the room and fully realized how ridiculous I must look.

“You’re going to my school?” Cadence’s mouth twitched into a smile.

“Yep,” I said, then picked up the pace in response to Sullie’s incessant kicks. When I stopped, I was right in front of her. “You cool with that?”

She pulled Sullie off my back and swung him onto her hip, mercifully allowing me to stand upright. “I’m so happy.” She threw her free arm around me tight. “I’m so glad, Saxon. I…” I felt her give a little sob. Sullie patted her head.

“What’s up, babe?” I asked, dipping my head to see her face.

There were runny mascara-tinged tears all over her cheeks. “You…I was so nervous…I thought this might be…a summer thing…” She laughed and sobbed a little, and I pulled her close, her face making my shirt wet and gray with smudgy tears.

“Shh. What are you, insane? I’m not going anywhere. Not unless you agree to come with me.” That made her cry a little harder. I laughed, and my whole chest felt loose and free when I did it. “Stop. Don’t cry. You look like a zombie.”

“Oh, shit.” She wiped under her eyes with shaky fingers.

“Don’t swear in front of the baby.” I rubbed a thumb over a sooty tear on her chin.

“Shut up!” She looked up at me, so gorgeous it squeezed the breath right out of my lungs. “Do I still look like a zombie?”

“Yeah.” I leaned towards her ear. “I’m feeling a strange surge of necrophilia.”

“I bet you say that to all the pretty zombies.” She bounced on her toes and kissed Sullie’s head. Just then Rosalie called us down to dinner.

I’d been getting fairly regular invites to Cadence’s house for dinner. At least when they had it, which wasn’t always often with everyone working so much. I always invited Aunt Helene, but she had a pretty rocking social life for an older lady, and it was fairly rare that she didn’t have something else on her busy-ass Bingo-and-reading-club-filled agenda.

I liked the big, noisy dinners with the Erikson’s. Pammy and Jimmy accepted me like I was a real sibling; which meant that they switched between loving me and giving me merciless hell.

Tony had already come over and spent some time in the driveway with me, showing me how to do basic shit like rotate tires and change oil, which I really appreciated. Google can take you so far, but after that you’re just shit out of luck if you screw up your car.

And Rosalie was as mean and unforgiving to me as she was to her own brood, which I knew was her form of love, and I ate it up.

So I was pretty glad that I was so crazy about Cadence, because she could have been a hag and I might have kept hanging around anyway just to leech off of her family.

But, much as they all liked me, I still felt weird telling them the news about my move. I had talked to Lylee about it; she was pretty fucking thrilled with the idea of having her house to herself and the ability to do whatever the hell she wanted whenever the hell she wanted. She took my word for it when I told her I wasn’t hooked on drugs anymore.

And Aunt Helene had cried and hugged me and tried to stuff more food down my throat. Damn, I loved that woman.

But those two were predictable variables in my world. The Eriksons were a whole different story. I wasn’t sure if they would be happy to see me. Every day. All year.

We sat down at dinner, and while Cadence snapped Sullie into his high chair, she announced, “Saxon’s enrolling at Immaculate.”

There was that terrible choked moment when I thought all shit would hit the fan, and Tony would tell me summer was enough and Rosalie would say that I was invading her family, and I would walk back to a cold house like a stooge.

“Catholic school, huh?” Tony scooped a huge blob of sour cream onto his plate to combat Rosalie’s fiercely spiced tortillas. “You Catholic, Saxon?”

“No, sir.” Rosalie handed me a glass of iced tea.

“It’s a pretty strict school,” Rosalie warned me, pursing her lips. “They aren’t going to put up with any crap.”

“I don’t plan on giving any, Mrs. Erikson.”

She frowned. “I don’t know if you can help yourself.” She flicked a look at Cadence. Or maybe I imagined she flicked a look at Cadence. “You’re a wild one, Saxon.”

“I think I’m done with all of that.”

Cadence’s parents looked at each other and laughed loud and long.

“You’ll probably be fine,” Tony said, choking so hard, Rosalie had to smack him on the back a few times.

And that was it. It registered with them, and they let it go. I mean, it cracked them up, but they didn’t have a shit-fit or kick me out or anything. And as I ate Rosalie’s cheesy delicious tortillas and thought about why I was so worried about it all, I couldn’t come up with anything that really made sense. I guess it was just my fucked up perception of myself and all the people who had the bad luck of having to deal with me. It made me worried that anyone in my life was just biding time until they could get rid of me.

I left after dinner, but not before Cadence whispered that she would sneak by later. Aunt Helene slept like the dead, and Cadence and I had planned to get together for a while. I felt a little nervous about the whole thing. I had never really orchestrated any kind of actual dating life.

Brenna had been the closest and it wasn’t like I was eating dinner with her family and spending hours flipping through her old yearbooks and photo albums. Which I did with Cadence, and it was, astoundingly, a pretty cool thing. I felt like I got to see her grow up a little. She was a damn cute kid, even when most people are going through their ugly, gawky stages.

I’d never been asked into those intimate places with other girls. Or maybe I had never cared to be asked. It didn’t matter. The bottom line was that Cadence and I were in uncharted territory.

So I cleaned up my room for her and took a shower and made sure the mood was acceptable to get her out of most or all of her clothes. Which meant candles and a good, lyrically deep, emotionally nuanced indie mix playing.

I was waiting in the kitchen when she scratched at the door. I opened up and she smiled at me. A smile like I was the only person in the world she wanted to see. A lot of girls had probably smiled at me like that before, but I had never bothered to give a damn.

With Cadence it was all I was waiting for. I pulled her into the house and let her come at me. She wrapped her legs around my waist, and I navigated to my room, Cadence kissing my face and neck and ripping at my shoulders and bucking against me.

It was fucking hard to keep quiet.

We fell on my bed and she pulled my shirt over my head. I gave her the same treatment. She snuggled down on top of me, all soft, warm girl boobs and hot everywhere kissing. All it took was a flick of my fingers and her bra was gone, one push to get her pants off, and then…nothing. She wasn’t wearing anything else.

“Saxon!” she said against my ear, her hands fumbling at my pants. She yanked them down, and my boxers with them and I kicked them the last of the way off.

I rolled her under me and kissed her harder, my hands on her and my lungs pulling deep breaths of her into my body. She was fantastically good smelling and tasting. Her arms and hair were tangled around me, trapping me. I was happy to be trapped for once.

I ran my hand up and down the long length of her back. She kissed me softly.

“You look like Juliet.” I rubbed my forehead against her shoulder.

“Like Romeo and Juliet?” Her fingers combed through my hair, pushing it back off of my face.

My lips traced all along her arms. “Yeah.”

“How do you know what Juliet looked like?” she asked, kissing my bottom lip.