The latest excerpt, still from Chapter 3, in which Suzanne encounters a bully and talks about sex.
Previous excerpts are here:
Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2
Excerpt 3
Excerpt 4
*****
The
football team had a bye week in anticipation of Homecoming (and the fact that I
even knew what a “bye week” was was a testament to how much I liked Gabriel),
so Gabriel showed up at my locker after school to join me and Spencer on the
walk home.
“We’re
so happy for you,” Spencer told him, ducking under his arm to hug him.
“Are
we?” I asked, sliding in under Gabriel’s other arm.
“You
are a terrible liar,” Gabriel told Spencer, hugging him close.
“Fag,”
someone muttered behind us.
I
snapped my head around and saw a couple of kids around Spencer’s age snickering
into their hands.
I
took a step toward them. “What’d you say?”
They
scowled at me. “Nothing,” one of them answered.
“No,
really, what’d you say?” Gabriel asked, his voice mild and friendly, his arm
still around Spencer’s shoulders.
The
bullies shrank back when they realized who they just messed with. “Nothing,
man. It was a joke.”
“Oh,
okay.” Gabriel nodded. “Did you think it was funny, Suzanne? That joke?”
I
knew what he was doing with his calm demeanor, and I appreciated it, but I
wanted to pound these little jerks into jam. “No,” I managed between gritted
teeth.
“Yeah,
me either. Maybe stop telling jokes about my little brother,” Gabriel suggested
to them. “Okay?”
They
glanced at each other, unsure of how to respond.
Gabriel
took a step toward them. “I said ‘okay?’”
Instinctively,
they took a step back. It was like
watching hyenas shy away from a lion.“Okay,” one of them mumbled.
“Okay,
see ya, guys.” Gabriel’s smile was sunny and warm, but his hand was clenched at
his side.
The
kids scurried away like the dogs they were.
“What
the hell was that?” I asked Spencer, who shook his head.
“Nothing.”
“That’s
the second time nothing happened today,” I said.
Another
shake of his head. “It’s fine.”
“It’s
not,” I said.
“I
can take care of myself,” Spencer said.
Gabriel
gave his shoulders a little shake. “We know,” he said. “But you don’t have to.”
Spencer’s
“okay” was just as mumbled and miserable as the bully’s had been. He didn’t
look convinced, but if he didn’t want us to be involved, we couldn’t help. His
verbal agreement was as much as we could hope for.
*****
It
was a perfect autumn afternoon for a walk—blue sky, bright leaves, cool enough
for a jacket, but not actually cold—one of those days you see on television in
an advertisement for pumpkin spice lattes. We kicked leaves at each other, and
Gabriel debriefed us on the duties required of a member of the Homecoming Court
(none, really, except he had to be on-time for rehearsals and wear a suit to
the dance), and we pretended we’d forgotten what happened in the hallway, even
though neither Gabriel nor I had forgotten and Spencer knew we hadn’t
forgotten, which is probably why he told Anastase the instant we got inside the
house.
Anastase
was in his chair in the den, scrolling through his phone when we came in.
“I
was called a name at school and they’re making a big deal out of it.” Spencer
plopped down on the rug at his brother’s feet.
Anastase
set his phone aside. “Really?”
“Some
kids called him a fag,” I said.
“We
didn’t make it a ‘big deal’,” Gabriel said. “I just explained that wasn’t a
good idea.”
Anastase’s
attention shifted to Spencer. “Well?”
“I
can handle it,” he said. “I don’t need people riding to my rescue.”
“They
did it right in front of us!” I said. “We’re not going to stand there like
idiots.”
“I
don’t understand the problem,” Anastase said. “Isn’t this the point of Gabriel?
For situations like this?”
“Gee,
thanks,” Gabriel said, but Anastase was sort of right. Gabriel wasn’t the most
powerful Elemental in our Circle, but he was the most socially powerful by far.
His popularity smoothed over some of the rough spots I had to navigate, for
sure. If he couldn’t use his power to shelter Spencer from the slings and
arrows of high school, what use was it?
“Fine.”
Spencer ducked his head to Anastase’s knee and closed his eyes when Ana’s
fingers slid into his hair.
“Thank
you, Gabriel,” Anastase said, knocking his knuckles on Spencer’s skull.
“Thank
you, Gabriel,” Spencer parroted.
“You’re
welcome,” Gabriel said. “Both of you. I’m going to get a drink, you want
something?” he asked me.
“Water,
thanks.” I waited until he was in the kitchen. Anastase was back at his phone
with one hand, his other stroking Spencer’s hair back like he was a pet. “You
guys should be nicer to him,” I murmured, so Gabriel couldn’t hear me. “He did
you a favor.”
Spencer
had the grace to open his eyes and give me a guilty look. “I know, I’m sorry. I
am grateful.”
“Act
like it a little.” I pointed a finger at him.
“I
will.” Spencer nodded.
I
waited for Anastase to say something, apologize for being dismissive, anything,
but he didn’t look up from his phone.
“Okay,
good talk,” I said, and went to join Gabriel in the kitchen.
*****
We
took our drinks up to Gabriel’s room, and I flopped down on the bed while
Gabriel emptied out his backpack on his desk. It wasn’t a big deal, Spencer
getting called a name, but I wondered how often it had happened, and if
anything worse was going on. Spencer wasn’t much younger than me, and he was a
more powerful Elemental, but he had been raised by Anastase, sheltered and
babied, and didn’t have much experience with people, and I wanted to murder
anyone who was the slightest bit mean to him. This, I thought, must be what
being a big sister felt like.
“Hey.”
Gabriel glanced over his shoulder. “You said you had something to tell me about
your mom. What happened?”
Oh,
God. This was not a conversation I had planned on having today, but it sort of
made sense to talk about now, before the Homecoming dance.
“No,
it’s . . . I’m not in trouble. It’s sort of a way to stop me from getting into
trouble, actually.” I laughed an awkward laugh like a lunatic. Why was I so
nervous? It wasn’t like we weren’t going to have sex eventually, so I didn’t
know why discussing it felt so risky. But Viva kept dancing around in my head,
all conversations she’d had to have, all the things she had to do now.
Gabriel
left his book bag and sat down on the bed next to me. “Alright, tell.”
“Okay
. . . not sure how to say this, so . . . my mother has offered to put me on
birth control. The pill. And I think I’m going to take her up on it.”
Gabriel
rocked back like I had slapped him. His mouth closed, then opened again.
“Yeah,
exactly,” I said.
“I’m
not sure what to say,” he said. “You, um . . . want to?”
“I
want to be on birth control,” I said. “As for the other part, I do, but . . .”
I wasn’t sure how to explain the rest without hurting his feelings. I wanted to
have sex with Gabriel. Sometimes, I really wanted to, but I always wanted to, to
some degree, all the time. The main thing holding me back was what I had
explained to Jason: sex with Gabriel was more than boyfriend-girlfriend stuff,
which was already important enough. Because of the Circle, it would become part
of my life forever, not something I could move on and forget about later.
“Yeah,
it’s a lot,” Gabriel said, then clapped his hand over his mouth as I burst out
laughing. “Wait, it’s not — I didn’t mean—“
I
snorted. “I know what you meant,” I said. “I think that’s why I haven’t, you
know, pushed for more.”
“Me
too,” Gabriel said. “Not that I didn’t want to, but with the Circle and all . .
.”
“Yeah,”
I said. “It’s significant, somehow. More significant.”
“You’re
not a virgin, though, right? I mean, you and Jason . . .”
“I’m
not,” I said. “Jason and a couple boyfriends after.” Four after Jason, but the
actual number wasn’t important.
He
nodded. “I’m not, either,” he said.
“Angela.”
I nodded. Of course, Angela would be one of them. They’d been together for
months and, from what I’d heard, had been the type of power couple people
basically thought of as married, so it was a safe assumption they had been
having sex. Gabriel didn’t say anything else, though, and his attention was
suddenly focused across the room. “Wait . . .” I stared at him. “Just Angela?”
“Um
. . .”
“Oh
my god, Gabriel, just Angela? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It
wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “I’m not even sure she knows. It seemed like the
right time and she was expecting it and—“ He shrugged. “It worked out.”
“Got
a lot of practice in, did ya?” I nudged him.
“Enough,”
he said. “I mean, we didn’t go out super long.”
“Gabriel
Beryl, you slut!” I hugged him. “Bagging a cheerleader on your first attempt.”
“What
about you?” he asked, leaning into me. “You seduced a gay guy!”
I
laughed. “It’s more like I turned a guy gay, but let’s use your version.”
Gabriel
curled his arms around me and shifted me until we were lying on the bed, me on
my back, him propped on one arm above me. “So.” He kissed me once, sweetly.
“You think about it?”
I
ran a hand over his firm arm. “Sometimes.”
“I
think about it,” he said. “And I think when we’re ready, we’ll know.”
 |
| There's no dog in the scene, but you would be surprised how hard it was to find a non-dirty version of this type of snuggling. |
I
nodded. “I’m gonna tell my mother yes, then.”
“Stop
talking about your mother,” he said, and kissed me again, this time less sweet.
I’d dated a lot when I lived in Milwaukee, enough to know that even hot guys,
guys I thought I liked, could be sexually incompatible. One of the four guys
after Jason had been an incredibly sexy drummer from another high school who I
lusted after for a month before I finally hooked him, and who I stopped seeing
immediately after our first time. He’d been nice—not rough or selfish or pushy
or anything—but it had been . . . mediocre. Like neither one of us were really
having a good time, but both of us kept going because we were so into each
other we thought it had to get better, and it hadn’t. He’d sounded relieved
when I told him we had to break up so I could “focus on my school work.”
With
Gabriel, though, it kept getting better. He kissed me and all of the
awkwardness that came along with making out with someone—the arm on my hair, or
knocking teeth together, or someone elbowing someone else—still happened, but
it didn’t matter compared to the rest of it, the feeling of kissing him, of
touching him.
This
time didn’t go very far—we usually didn’t when his family was home because it
felt weird—and ended up lying on the bed, arms around each other, Gabriel’s
head on my chest. It was one of his favorite positions, and mine too, honestly.
It was one of the few ways I felt like I was taking care of him.
I
stroked his hair back from his face. “You know what this means,” I said.
“Mmm,”
Gabriel answered. His eyes were closed; if I left him alone he would probably
fall asleep against me. I sort of wanted him to.
“My
mother likes you,” I murmured.
“Of
course,” he mumbled. “I’m very likable.”
I kissed the top of his head. “Understatement
of the year.”
*****
end excerpt 5
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