Boone
I don't remember ever being this happy. Hell, if happiness were a person, I'd put up a strong argument that I've never even met him/her. With Carter, a fledgling business, and some security in my future, I feel as though I were on top of the world. For once, I've actually got something good going for me.
Still, I can't help but wait for it all to just turn to shit. I've learned everything tends to take a turn for the worse when you're at your happiest.
"You promise you seriously like this color?" Carter asks me.
We're currently standing in front of a wall in her office. The room is filled with painter's tape and plastic. She painted a streak of rust-orange (which sounds like a horrible color to me—bad naming on the paint company's part) on the wall. After I took her home yesterday, Jason and I signed the papers for the place. When I told Carter, she started talking about oranges and all her plans. She sounded so damn excited I told her we'd get ankle-deep in her office renovation today.
“Yeah, sure, it’s your office.”
She rolls her eyes exaggeratedly and holds up her paint-covered roller. “I’m not asking if it’s my office. I’m asking if you like the color."
"You're asking me if I seriously like the color," I say back, smirking. "I like it if you do. I'm not good at deciding on colors or whatever. I haven't picked a color for anything in my life."
"So you don't make a conscious decision about your clothes?" she asks.
"Not really," I mumble, looking down at myself. I only wear solid colors, and all my clothes are from Goodwill.
She huffs and crosses her arms, careful not to get any paint on her, even though she's wearing a shirt she doesn't mind getting paint on. "Any other time it's like you enjoy speaking your opinion. Why is it when I want you to, you won't?"
"I like to keep you on your toes?"
"No, you like being difficult." She turns to face me. Even though she should be pissed at me for being "difficult," she's got a grin stretching from ear to ear. The grin has me about three seconds away from losing my cool and kissing her silly. "One last time, you don't hate it?"
"I don't." I tilt my head and squint, trying hard not to glance down at her. Looking at her, touching her, doing anything that involves her—it’s all a horrible idea when we're alone and in close quarters. "In fact, you can paint my office this color."
"Stop joking with me."
"I'm not. I'm sure Jason will want the same."
"Really?"
"Not even kidding a little bit, here, Carter. Straight face, see." I somehow manage to keep my expression blank when all I want to do is smile back at her. "I'm not about to fib about a damn color. I mean, let's be clear right here and now. I don't do red."
"What do you have against red?"
I shrug. "Just don't like it."
She laughs. "You're weird, you know that?"
"Hell yeah, I am. Wouldn't be me if I wasn't."
"No, you probably wouldn't." I watch her side profile as she bites her lip and squints at the color. "Thank you for this, Boone."
"Hey, you deserve it. You deserve more, but this is what I can give you."
This time, she turns and walks straight toward me, dropping the roller on the plastic-covered floor. She doesn't stop until her hands are fisted at my chest and her lips are on mine. I growl. Self-control is a waste of time.
I lift her by the ass, guiding her legs to link at my back. She follows my lead, as if she'd done this before a thousand times. Now's not the time to wonder if she has—if there's been other guys. If there were, I need to accept it, because I can't change the past. The only person to blame for it would be myself; I pushed her away and set all this in motion.
I kiss her—probably too roughly—trying to connect with her as much as I can. She fights right back, just as needy and as savagely, because we both want to be so close that we're merged. I walk her back toward the wall, not giving a shit about the wet paint. The wall can get another coat painted on it, and we can get washed. As long as she doesn't care, I can't bring myself to either.
She starts to pull at my shirt, lifting it so she can get her hands on my chest. I want her to initiate the steps we take, so if my shirt's going to be the first thing she wants gone, then so be it. I take it off, trying not to get it tangled around my head or drop her in the process. I wish I was one of those guys who could just whip it off, but I’m not exactly practiced. Luckily, she doesn’t seem to care. The second my shirt is off, we’re back to kissing, and she’s running her hands over my chest.
Whenever I’ve kissed girls before, I thought it was boring. Too much thinking involved, you know? Tongue, no tongue? Do I start trying to run the bases? Do I even want to run the bases? I never really got mindless sex—how it just happens and how you can’t stop it, sort of like an avalanche.
Now I do because I can't think, let alone focus. There's nothing boring about kissing Carter—there's nothing boring about her to begin with.
My hands roam up the length of her body to her breasts. My tongue darts against hers as I palm her breasts, tweaking her nipple. She writhes against me, and this time I let her moan as loud as she wants. Her pleasure sends me into a frenzy. My mouth travels from her lips to her neck and down her chest until it finds the peaks of her breasts through her shirt. Her chest rises, giving more access. What I wouldn't do to have complete and total access. The naked variety.
Somehow, the gods above hear me, because Carter blindly paws at her shirt, working it up. I help her the rest of the way, pulling it up and off. I'm immediately met with a plain white bra with little orange dots spread across it.
I can't help myself; I grin down at her, probably wolfishly. "I'm sensing a theme."
Her head falls back against the wall as she laughs. I love the look of her lips, swollen from kissing, and how her eyes close. I could stare at her for hours.
I love you. I've known those words to be true my entire life. But even though I’ve said and written them to Carter a million times already, I want to try to be more deliberate. This time I’ll be slow and steady and make sure things are right with her. Still, I yell it from mountain tops and rooftops of my imagination. I mentally King Kong those words.
My attention goes back to Carter's breasts before I say anything out loud and screw this all up. I unclasp her at the back, and her laughter stops as her bra catches between us. I throw it away, hopefully in whatever direction our shirts are in. I kiss the tops of both her breasts, watching for anything in expression that tells me I should stop. There's nothing but want. Desire. I swirl my tongue over her nipple, relishing in the taste of it as it rises into a bead. She jolts when I use my teeth and grinds against me.
She moans something unintelligible, groping at my hair. I want to make her scream. I need to give her everything I have because she trusts me when we're intimate. Physically, she knows I can be what she needs.
"More," she demands.
With one hand now at her ass, I drop my other between us. I don't know what I'm doing until I'm unsnapping the button of her shorts, then tugging at the zipper. Maybe my lips are distracting her, or maybe she just doesn’t care, but she doesn’t stop me from slipping my hand inside her shorts, then slipping my finger inside her.
She does exactly what I want. She cries so loud my ears ring, but in the best fucking way. Never getting my hearing back would be considered a medal of honor.
I suck her breast and fuck her with my finger, slowly unraveling her until she’s chanting my name and shuddering. The sight of her coming—feeling it—has my cock threatening to explode right along with her.
I love you.
#
Carter, 17
Boone, 20
“You’re really bad at this, Boone,” Declan says, watching as Carter tallies up our scores from the last deal of rummy. Carter’s beating the both of us with a score already in the three hundreds, but Declan’s close behind. I’m sucking at the bottom, close to dropping down into the negatives. I'm not a strategy guy. I miss possible matches and constantly set cards down I could've gotten points out of.
Declan's sitting upright in his bed, while Carter and I are sitting in chairs. We have a table between the three of us to play on.
Carter snorts as she writes down the final half of Declan's score. She's been talking to me more since we're both hell-bent on staying around as long as Declan's in recovery. Right now, he's a version of what he would've been if he hadn't gotten into the hard stuff. It's important not to miss one of the few times when he's high as a kite.
"Maybe I'm just the king of a good bluff," I mutter.
"Or maybe you're just really, really bad," Carter adds. The fact she's smiling gives me some sort of a glimmer of hope. There might be a chance to repair our relationship.
"That's more like it," Declan says. "Remind me not to go to Vegas with you."
"Bright side, you wouldn't get beaten up for card counting."
"You're right, probably just get roughed up for being a lousy player."
I roll my eyes and wait for him to shuffle the cards, but instead he scratches his jaw. "Hey, Carter, can you do me a favor and go give the nurse my dinner order?"
She blinks rapidly. "Uh, sure, okay." She glances over his shoulder at the clock; it's only three in the afternoon, too early for dinner. "I'll be right back."
When she's gone, Declan lies down and stares at the ceiling. "Think I was too blatant about wanting her gone?"
"Probably," I say. "What's up with that?"
Declan rubs his hand down his face, then lets it drop to the mattress. "I needed to talk to you about something."
"Without Carter?"
"Yeah."
I hold my hands up. "Man, if it has got to do with your dick or something …"
"Shut up," Declan says, cracking a smile. "It's just something I don't want her to know. Ever. But, I, uh, need to tell somebody, you know?"
He gets all nervous, and that makes me uneasy. We've never been serious with one another. If we were, he'd probably have stopped hanging around me after I broke Carter's heart and I'd have been honest about him screwing up his life.
"My liver—it's shot," he says.
My whole body tightens up. "What do you mean shot?"
"Let's just say there's no hope for it," he continues. "I'd probably have more time in me, but I contracted hepatitis a few years back."
I stare at my best friend who's actually a complete stranger. Here the drugs did more to him than just screw up his head, and I've never known. Haven't even guessed. He's a junkie, but I never thought he'd contract something. I never thought beyond the overdoses.
Guess I didn't want to see beyond them.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
He shrugs. His answer's already clear—he's not ready to quit doing the drugs. "I'm not going to be around for much longer. I feel like shit, and I know … I'm not planning on staying around if I haven't got much longer."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I wish you hadn't found me."
"What the hell? What are you saying?"
He grimaces, and I notice he does look more sickly than usual. I thought it was just the overdose, but it's more than that. He has the look of a dying man. "You know what it means, so don't waste your time with it. I didn't tell you so you could bother me about it. I told you so you can make sure Carter's taken care of. I know that I haven't exactly done that myself, but it doesn't mean I didn't want to. You were always there and now you're not … man, you've got to make things right."
"So, you're telling me your final business is for me to make up with your sister?"
"Pretty much." He closes his eyes and throws a scabbed arm over his face. "You love her, right?"
"Yeah."
"More than a sister or a friend."
I don't hesitate. "Yes."
"Then do somethin' about it."
"That's easier said than done."
"I know. We're cut from the same cloth. You're probably gonna screw up a lot more, but don't give up on her."
I scoot forward on my chair and hang my head. "I can't believe we're even having this conversation. Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I am."
"You shouldn't have to go out this way," I say. "It's not fair. You could've gotten clean—made it all right. Started a life."
He takes his arm away from his face and looks me dead in the eyes. "Don't. The end or not, I have no intention to quit."
"Even if you're clean right now?"
He doesn't have to answer. I can see his answer in his eyes. What sort of mindset is he in that he doesn't want to get clean? How can he prefer to live a life with a needle in his arm or toes than have something like what Gabe and Kara have? Doesn't he want that sort of normal?
"You can't tell Carter," he says, "or Gabe or Kara. No one knows but you, me, and my doctor."
"That's not fair, and you know it. How am I supposed to keep something like this from Carter? I can't exactly make up with her if I'm keeping shit this huge from her."
"It doesn't matter. You'll figure it out. It's what's best for Carter, and you know it. I know you'll do anything for her. Given her and the rest of the fucking world, you choose her. You always will. So fucking choose her."
#
Five hours, two coats of paint and two orgasms (for Carter) later, her office is finished. I definitely want mine painted the same color, and I honestly would like her to come a few times in there, too. Although I'm not good at this whole decorating thing, I can recognize Carter's got an eye for it. After lunch we walked down to the antique store and Carter was able to scrounge up some gems, like an eclectically-detailed vase she wants to put fake sunflowers in ("Because," her words, "she'd kill the real ones by just looking at them"). She also bought a god-awful lamp with cream feathers on it I can only hope will look better in its place. That might be the one thing I veto for my office. Jason and I are planning on just building those old kinds of desks that are both heavy and good quality. We'll be able to cross that necessity off the list.
"This looks great," I tell Carter. I put my arm over her shoulders and pull her into me. She automatically wraps her arms around my waist. We've got a coat of paint on us, too. It's impossible to hide my grin as I kiss the side of her head. "You're beautiful, you know that?"
"The wall is beautiful, Boone," she emphasizes.
I shake my head. "You're gonna have to learn to take a compliment, pretty girl. You're beautiful on the outside, for sure, but also on the inside. This room shows it."
Lord knows how much energy it takes for her not to argue with me, but she somehow manages. She buries her face in my side and squeezes me tighter. Kissing her and fooling around is all great, but this is what I've missed—holding her close.
"You can go back to calling me Junebug," she says.
"Huh? But you said you didn't like that." I pull back from her so I can see her face. "Carter, just because I did somethin' right doesn't mean you need to reward me. I'm not a puppy who's peed outside and gets a treat."
She snorts. "I know that. I actually sort of like it when you call me Junebug—I didn't think I did, but I do. I miss it."
"I'm not sure I believe you."
Her eyebrows furrow as she thinks. Great, I've unknowingly thrown down a challenge for her. She's gonna want to make me believe her.
"Do you remember when Tish was dating that one kind-of-okay guy with the Tom Selleck mustache?"
"Yeah, I think he was even named Tom, except he had blond hair," I say. He was one of the only ones who didn't give me the creeps when he looked Carter's way. He was also the only one whose main interest wasn't having sex and taking drugs with Tish. Now that I think about it, I don't know what the man was sticking around for.
"That's him," Carter says with a smile. "I don't think he liked it when I was there while he messed around with Tish, so he always brought me things to go off and do. Hoola-hoops, games, puzzles. And then he stopped coming around."
"You obviously had an expensive taste."
"My point is, I acted like I hated the stuff he brought, but when it stopped, I was really sad. I actually liked it when he brought me things because we never had anything like that before, but I didn't want to give him the power for it to hurt me if he left. So I pretended. That's how I feel about the nickname."
"I thought that Junebugs were ugly and horrible and everything else you listed."
She blushes and looks away. I like it when she blushes, especially now because it hides what that man did to her. The bruises are lost in her red cheeks. I've been in a push-pull of emotions when it comes to looking at her. In one light, I think she's a fighter and the strongest person I've ever known, while in the other I'm blinded by what he did to her.
"You made them sound … interesting."
"Interesting?"
"I'm giving you whiplash, aren't I?"
"Maybe, but I like it. You're keeping me on my toes." I stand up on my toes for emphasis and lose my balance, falling toward her. So much for trying to be cool. At least it makes her laugh. "I get the whole Tom thing. I liked the stuff he brought, too. So, if you're all right with it, then, I'll go back to calling you Junebug."
"The other thing is, I was trying really hard not to like you before, but now I'm not trying as hard."
I grin at her. "Not trying as hard? You're still trying not to like me?"
She only shrugs.
I get it. I don't want to, but I do. "That's fine. You do what you need to do."
#
Carter, 17
Boone, 20
Carter and I leave Declan at the same time. Neither of us talks on the walk down the hall or on the elevator. There’s no elevator music playing—only deafening silence, which makes things more awkward. Outside, the darkness gives me an excuse to walk her to her car.
“Can we talk?” I ask when we’re close to where she’s parked.
Her shoulders shrug forward, defeated-like, but she doesn’t say anything as she puts her purse in the car. She walks around the back and leans against the bumper. I do the same, trying to get as close to her as I can without touching her. All I’ve wanted to do since Declan arrived at the hospital is comfort her. She’s already reeling from Declan’s overdose, but I know Declan’s secret is going to tear her apart. I just want to pre-emptively help her.
That right there has been weighing on me. I don’t know how he can keep such a huge secret to himself. It’s his to tell, yeah, but she deserves to know. At least then she can get out what she needs to say, rather than having to hold it in. He’s being unfair to her. Cruel.
“What do you want to talk about?” she asks.
“I—"
For a split second, I almost tell her everything about Declan; I consider breaking his trust. I’d do anything for her, and that includes screwing Declan over on a promise I made him. It’s the right thing as far as Carter’s concerned. She shouldn’t be in the dark about this. If he wasn’t dying, then she shouldn’t be spending time with him. He’s poison the way he is. Maybe she might look past the drug usage and spend time with him.
I can tell he’s jonesing for drugs whenever we’re not looking. When we came in today, he hung up the phone fast, meaning he was probably talking to his dealer.
Not telling Carter is really only good for him. He’s the only one who benefits, since he wouldn’t have to deal with her fussing and worrying over him. When he’s gone, there’s gonna be a whole lot of blame and guilt, and he's not going to experience a minute of it. He's gonna be at peace, while poor Carter is forced to suffer.
Still, I know she deserves to hear it from Declan. It'll cause a rift if she hears it from anyone else, especially me. But as a friend, I'll give him time to change his mind and his attitude. By time, I mean a few days, tops.
"I just want to know how you're holding up," I finally say.
"I'm okay—I guess." She hugs herself. At least she's talking to me. I half expected her to go back to not talking to me once we left Declan. "I'm used to the way this all works, but I'll never be used to the way it feels. I hate that he does this to himself. But I know it's not just him—it's the drugs and his upbringing and our genes …"
She trails off, shaking her head. Her cheeks are pale, and it obviously bothers her to blame Declan for his addiction. Even though all of the other things are factors, it's hard to see beyond the fact he said, point-blank, he wasn't about to quit using anytime soon. He's making a choice about not even trying, sick or not.
"I get what you're saying, Junebug," I say. I tilt my head back and look up at the night sky. Not a star out tonight. "You don't need to feel guilty about it."
"I just hate that we're here—it's like we're in this pattern and it keeps getting worse. He looks worse, right? Or am I just imagining things?" Before I can answer, she brings her hands up to rub her temples then up and over her eyebrows. "Maybe I just keep thinking he's going to die, so I'm imagining it's happening."
She's closer to the truth than she knows. I want to tell her. Hell, I'd like to force her back up to the room, past the staff who shooed us out when visitor hours were over, and force Declan to tell Carter everything.
"He's not … Carter. He's going to get out of here. He's going to go …"
"Home? Do you mean the trailer or wherever it was you found him? How is that him surviving?" She drops her hands to her sides. "I'm sorry. I'm just tired."
"This is a lot to handle."
"Yeah."
She looks up at me, her expression sad. "I'm glad you're here, Boone. I'm glad you love him, too."
The thing of it is I love Carter more.