Blood Type (12 page)

August 3

M
om
barged
in
to my room pushing a pair of pearl earrings through her lobes
. She
took one look at me and said, “You’re wearing
that
to the party?”

“The Hoffstetters’ barbeque,” I said, slapping the palm of my hand against my forehead. “I completely forgot.”
Which was entirely the truth.

Mom put her hands on her hips and shook her head
,
her dark hair grazing the neckline of her white, eyelet blouse. “What is with you and dinner parties lately, Blake? You’re not usually so forgetful.”

I fell back against my bed and gave an exasperated sigh.
I dug the heels of my hands into my eye sockets.
“You’re not going to make me go are you?
It’s just going to be Daddy’s stuffy accounting friends and their pretentious wives
—
” I glanced at my mom
, “
present company excluded, of course
—
standing around cracking a bunch of lame jokes. I’m always the oldest kid there, and I won’t have anyone to talk to. I’ll be bored out of my mind.”

I injected a fair amount of sarcasm into the word “kid,” given that I hardly considered myself a kid at all when compared to the usual crew of
ten
-and-
unders
that
showed up at
those horrible
shindigs. At the last party, I’d had to put up with a very persistent tween who was intent on making me his girlfriend by the end of the evening. Everyone thought it was cute. I seemed to be the only one who found it
even remotely
creepy.

“Oh they’re not that bad,” Mom said.
“The wives or the kids.
There’s no accounting for the lame jokes, though.” She laughed, belatedly realizing she’d cracked a lame joke of her very own. She
smoothed her hands down her slacks
. “You’ll have fun. You can hang out with the grown-ups if you want to.”

“I’ll get stuck babysitting. I always do.”

“No you won’t, Blake. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Yes I will. I’m not going.”

Mom crossed her arms in front of her and fixed me with her version of the evil eye, though she was hardly intimidating at a petite five-two. “You’re going. End of discussion.”

I scooted to the edge of my bed, ready to take her on. “What if I promise to talk to Zach if you let me stay home tonight?”

Mom’s slender shoulders slumped
.
I knew I had found her weak spot. She couldn’t resist the temptation of me getting back together with the boy she considered her future son-in-law. And yet she narrowed her eyes, obviously not allowing herself to get her hopes up until we’d brokered a deal.

“You’re telling me that you would rather voluntarily talk to the boy you just broke up with than go to your father’s company barbeque for a few hours?”

My
heart
pound
ed
in my chest, and I could hardly breathe. I had her in the palm of my hand. I just had to close my fingers very slowly around her
so as not to scare her away
. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

She
pursed
her lips as she considered the proposition, the line of her jaw clenching and unclenching as she mulled it over. “Why does this not seem right?” she muttered to herself. To me she said, “And will you promise to work things out with Zach and tell him that you made a very bad mistake, that it was all just some big misunderstanding?”

I swallowed hard and stuck my hand behind my back. I crossed my fingers, hoping that small gesture might protect me from whatever bad karma I surely had coming my way.
I was a very wicked person.

“I promise.”

Thirty minutes after my parents left, John
and Ian
showed up.
I didn’t know what I was expecting Ian to look like—I suppose I hadn’t really given it much thought, if any—but the guy holding open the car door for me wasn’t it.

Ian
was
in his early twenties and GQ beautiful. He wore his dark hair shaggy, yet carefully
arranged,
and subtle stubble ran along the hard line of his jaw and upper lip. His thin, neat eyebrows sat over hooded brown eyes, giving him a look of bored arrogance.
Until he smiled.
And then his face morphed
into
this I’m-the-most-
gorgeous
-guy-on-the-planet-and-I-know-it expression.

I knew at once he was bad news. 

“Blake, I’d like you to meet Ian,” said John, “my best friend and closest relation, for all intents and purposes.”

Much to my surprise, Ian took my hand and raised it to his mouth, lightly brushing the back of it with his lips. My stomach flipped
as a slow burn crept up my neck
. 

“
I’m v
er
ra
pleased to meet you,” he said in a deceivingly soft voice, tinged with an accent from somewhere abroad.

“Scotland?”
I asked.

One side of his mouth curved up, but it stopped short of a full-blown smile.
“Isle of Skye.
But I haven’t called Scotland home for
many years
. Shall we?”
He gestured
for me to take
the
seat up front.

I hesitated. “I’m fine in the back if you’d rather sit next to John.”

This time Ian did smile. “Tempting, and I thank you. But I’m trying
my best
to be gentlemen.
I
n ye go.”

John and I glanced at each other, and I laughed under my breath when he rolled his eyes. He smacked the hood of the car with the flat of his hand. “I guess the front seat’s yours, Blake. Get in.”

I sat down at once, crossing my right leg over my left and tucking the hem of my dress discreetly under my thigh so it
wouldn’t ride up. “I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to wear,” I said to John. “If it’s not right . . .”  

His eyes traveled the length of my body. “Are you kidding? You look
wonderful
.”

“Oh. Thanks
.
I mean, it’s just that—”

“I think what the wee thing is tryin
g
to say,” said Ian from the back seat, “is that your
obvious
disregard for fashion
is
perhaps
sending her mixed signals.”

“Thank you, Ian,” said John in a flat voice.

I’d noticed Ian’s creased trousers, rolled up at the hems, paired with a white linen button-down and pin-stripe vest. I turned around in my seat as much as I could as John backed out of the driveway.

“And what about you?”
I said, waving my finger at him. “What do you call that get-up?”

“He fancies himself an actor,” John said, imitating the lilt of Ian’s accent. “Apparently that’s how all creative types dress.”

“
A creative type, huh?
Actor, writer, or artist?
”

“
More like a sampler.
New York is
such a
flavorful
city
,
it’s so hard to decide
.” He smiled, showing all his teeth
.

The night was clear and warm
. A lot of people had turned out
for the concert
, but it wasn’t yet too crowded to find a seat.
We picked a free spot
on the lawn in front of the pavilion and Ian spread a plaid flannel for us to sit on. He’d brought a wicker
picnic basket, too, and from the inside pulled out three glasses and a bottle of red wine.

“Um, I’m underage,” I whispered to him as I cast a nervous
look
around to see if anyone else had noticed. I’d had the occasional sip of wine before, but that was at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Quite frankly, I thought the stuff tasted nasty. Olivia said I was weird.

Ian handed John the glass he’d just filled and glanced at me through a pair of thickly lashed eyes, half-closed with amusement. “
Which is why I brought
you
a bottle of sparkling cider.
”

“Well what about him?” I
nodded
my head at John, suddenly indignant. “He’s underage, too.
What if we get caught?
If I can’t drink, neither should he.”

“I’m underage?” John said with mock surprise in his voice. He and Ian looked at each other
and
shared a laugh
. I joined
in
, though s
omewhat uncertainly.

John downed his wine in two large gulps before handing the glass back to Ian. “Oh fine,” he said with a smirk, his teeth stained a faint red. He licked his lips and winked.

“Had enough,
aye
?” Ian said to him with a seriousness that undermined the humor in John’s voice.

John looked at me, his eyes focusing intently on mine. But when he spoke, it was to Ian. “Just worry about yourself, will you?”

As the concert stretched into the second hour, the light began to fade into that dusky, in-between time of day and night
. A
tinge of purple and rose
lit
the clouds
from behind, making
everything seem just a bit surreal and full of magic and expectation.

Fireflies
glittered to life
in nearby trees and bushes, flashing their tails against the dark in a
n
earnest effort to attract a mate. I had grown acutely aware of John’s presence next to me, so close that our arms rubbed against each other every so often.

And as my awareness of him
intensified
, I realized I had been deluding myself all along. In the strange way that only darkness coax
es
one to lower her guard, I acknowledge
d
the attraction I had
always
felt for John
was more than a crush
.

Turning my gaze surreptitiously in his direction, I traced the long lines of his left arm with my eyes, starting at the round hump of shoulder and running over the small rise of his biceps, into the crease of his freckled elbow and down to the underlying bones of wrist and hand. I remembered the warm touch of his fingers interlaced with mine, and how his thumb had made lazy circles against the meaty flesh of my palm.

I could just make out the shape of his torso through his shirt an
d recalled that day at the lake—
the broad expanse of muscle of back and chest as he held me against him in the water. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, a small fire burning in my secret space. I was a virgin, but I had a very good imagination.

I
n my mind it was just John and me, and I could do whatever I wanted without consequence. I imagined the solid weight of his body pressing me down into the ground, the cool grass against my back. I felt the tickle of his lips on my neck and the graze of teeth against my earlobe. I closed my eyes tighter, building the image in my head as the music swelled in the background, sailing me away on waves of bodily pleasure that I could only dream about and imagine. The desire was so acute it was almost painful, and I realized with an intense
conviction
that I wanted John with a hunger I’d never known before.

I felt his lips on mine then, and my eyes flew open.

“You looked like you were enjoying yourself,” John whispered against my mouth.

“
That’s because I am
,” I said, my voice breathless even to my ears. 

He kissed me again, just a butterfly’s touch, and pulled back to look at me. “Tell me what y
ou were thinking about just now, right before I kissed you.
”

“You
.
I was thinking of you.”

“Really?”
John’s eyes lit up and his mouth curved into a slow, sensual smile
. I nodded my head. He opened up his arms to me then, and I crawled into the space between his propped knees. “I’m glad,” he said against my hair.

As I leaned further into his chest, I caught Ian watching us,
the space between his brows creased with a frown
. But then the
look cleared and he tipped an imaginary hat to me and said, “
And m
ay you
always
have eternity together.” 

John and Ian insisted on feeding me before taking me home, and so we stopped off at this little Indian restaurant where the lighting was dark and the booths small and cramped. There was barely enough space for John and me to sit next to each other without me practically sitting in his lap, but I doubted he minded much.