Coercion (26 page)

“Are you serious? Why?”

“Apparently he was on some kind of academic probation and just blew all his chances.”

Valerie gave a tight, humorless smile. “Sounds like his protocol.”

Shannon winced. “Ugh, this was stupid. We don’t have to talk about him.”

“It’s not your fault, it’s mine. It’s just I’ve talked about him enough.”

“I realize this and I said we don’t have to talk about him.” Shannon hesitated. “I was just thinking about how the jerk doesn’t have a friend in the world.”

Valerie snorted. “I wonder why.”

“I’m not saying I think what he did was right.” Shannon sat up and curled her legs beneath her. “But look at it this way. What does Michael Vartanian have? Look at everything you learned from this, all you’ve lost and all you got out of this experience, and tell me what Michael Vartanian has going for him. From my perspective, he’s got a girl who loves him only when she feels like it, a pack of fair-weather friends and no future. He has nothing.”

“It didn’t have to be like that.” Valerie’s voice broke. “I could’ve been the best thing that ever happened to him.”

“I don’t doubt that, but it’s not your job to ‘save’ Michael Vartanian, or anyone. And you shouldn’t want it to be anyway.” Shannon hugged Valerie’s pillow to her chest. “You just have to worry about you. The rest will fall into place.”

Valerie smiled in spite of herself. “Sounds a little too easy to believe.”

“Maybe.” Shannon grinned. “But I think something like that
should
be easy to believe, right?”

“I suppose.”

Shannon shook her head. “I mean this with all sincerity when I say I feel bad for him that he didn’t get to really know you.”

Valerie sighed. “You know, so do I.”

* * * *

Michael ignored the knock on his bedroom door as he lay on his stomach on his unmade bed and stared at his headboard, a pair of heavy headphones blasting Eric Clapton into his ears. A thick fog of stale smoke hung in the air and a cigarette dangled from his limp fingers.

The door cracked open, and a hand reached inside to flick the light switch off and on. “Michael?”

Michael ripped the headphones off his ears as he tossed a halfhearted look over his shoulder. “What?”

His father stepped in the room. “I wish you wouldn’t smoke in the house.”

“Just leave me alone, okay?” Michael flicked the long line of ash that had been accumulating on the end of his cigarette across the carpet and took another drag.

“How can you act this way? I’m your father.”

Michael ignored him, but reluctantly stubbed the cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray emblazoned with the word
Hawaii
. A wobbly brass surfer balanced on the top of it. It’d been his mother’s when she’d been around. He wondered if she was in Oahu or on some island now.

His father stepped inside the room and coughed. “How about we crack a window in here?”

“How about we don’t?”

“Why are you behaving like a child?”

“I’m certainly not an adult, am I?”

His father sighed. “Whose fault is that? Whose fault is it you were expelled?”

Michael grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and pressed his palms against his hot forehead. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“What
does
matter, Michael? It really is high time I knew.”

“Nothing!” Michael’s exasperated voice took on a near desperate quality. “Nothing. I don’t care about anything.”

“Surely there must be something.” His father took a seat on the edge of Michael’s bed.

“No.” Michael shook his head slowly as the horror of the reality filled him like an already overflowing bathtub. “There really isn’t.”

The silence suspended in the room was thick like the cigarette smoke, opaque in the afternoon sunlight creeping around the album covers taped over the windows.

“I know the feeling,” his father said finally. “I felt the same way when your mother left.” He paused. “Is a woman making you feel this way?”

“No, it isn’t a woman. It should be, but it’s not. It’s nothing. I don’t care about anything, or anyone, or what I do, or what becomes of me or anyone I hurt. And you know what? I don’t even care that I don’t care. It’s exhausting and disappointing anyway.” He rubbed his stinging eyes before shrugging and saying, “I just don’t have a heart.”

“You do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be feeling the way you do.”

Michael pinched the bridge of his nose. “I guess.”

The sound of the faint tinkling chime of the doorbell wafted upstairs and his father sighed. “We’ll talk later. Think hard about what you’re going to do next.”

“Can’t wait,” Michael muttered as his father left the room, shutting the door. Alone again, he turned on his side, bringing his knees to his chest as he thought about all the undefined, unjustifiable grudges clouding up his heart.

A few moments later, there was another knock at his bedroom door. He groaned and uncurled himself. “Jesus, what?”

The door opened and Valerie stepped in the room. Michael’s eyes widened, and he bolted up in bed. “Hey.” He couldn’t mask the shock in his voice.

She gave him a nervous, awkward wave. “I’m really sorry if I’m bugging you. Your dad sent me up here, but don’t worry, I won’t stay long.”

“No, that’s okay.” He gestured her into the room.

She shut the door behind her and stuffed her hands in the pockets of her brown corduroy pants as she glanced around the room. “I’ve never been in your room before. It’s very Michael.”

“I guess.” He looked Valerie up and down, but not in the hungry, suggestive way he used to. Instead, he studied her, half hoping the way she looked—pretty as always—would supply him with some answers for why things had turned out the way they had.

“Is something wrong? You look troubled.”

He shook his head, a rueful smile developing on his face. “Don’t ask.” The smile drifted away. “You look nice.”

“Thanks.” She gestured to his desk chair, piled high with a mixture of clean and dirty laundry. “Can I sit?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” He rolled off the bed and pushed the pile of beer-scented band t-shirts and rolled-up socks onto the floor. He watched as she sat, gracefully crossing one leg over the other and folding her hands in her lap. He ran a hand through his unwashed hair. “So...what’re you doing here?”

“I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Fantastic.” He rolled his eyes. “Yourself?”

“Pretty good.” Valerie gave him an enthusiastic nod. “I’m just getting ready for my big move to St. Louis.” She paused. “I heard you’re no longer a Kenton student.”

“The rumor mills are working overtime, I see.”

She smiled. “Always.”

He sat back on his mattress and reached for his menthol cigarettes. “See what happens when you skip class?” He pulled a cigarette from the pack and wagged it at Valerie. “Let this be a lesson to you.”

Valerie rose to her feet and crossed the room toward the bed. She stood in front of Michael and pried the unlit cigarette out of his hands. “Michael, I wish you cared about yourself the way I cared about you.” She dropped the cigarette on the floor and cupped his face in her hands, forcing him to look her in the eye.

Michael’s tongue darted out to wet his dry lips and he swallowed hard, unable to speak.

She moved one knee up the side of him, and then the other, until she straddled his waist. “As you may or may not have noticed, you broke my heart.” She fingered the hair at the nape of his neck. “Every time I thought you couldn’t possibly break it again, you always did.” His gaze dropped, but her hands moved his chin upward. “And I’m here today because I want to thank you for that.”

Confusion muddled his thoughts, and she leaned down and placed a soft kiss on his mouth. “You’re everything I never want in a man. You belittled me, humiliated me, devastated me and pushed all my limits, even ones I didn’t know I had.” She drew in a deep breath. “I mean, did you ever stop to think the person you’re having sex with is also a person?”

He looked at his lap as she held up her hand. “Don’t answer that. I don’t need to know. Besides, this is partly my fault. I let you treat me how you wanted to because I made the mistake of liking you more than myself. And all I want is for you to be aware that because of you, I’ll never again let someone treat me the way you did. I’ll never make the same mistakes.”

Michael squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re right.”

“About what?” She traced the outline of his lips with the tip of her index finger.

“You should never have cared about me.”

“But I did.” She placed a kiss on both his eyelids. “And there’s nothing you can do to change that, because you’ve done just about everything that might have.” She rested her forehead against his. “You’ve changed my whole life, and for the better.” She gave him a small smile. “Just not in the way I ever thought or hoped you would.”

Valerie kissed him, and his shock was pushed aside by the sensation of her soft lips slowly nipping at the corners of his mouth. His mouth parted slightly, and her tongue traced along the inside of his lips. All his questions melted away as their tongues mingled together, and a shiver rolled down his spine.

Her hands left his shoulders and went to the top button on her shirt. She undid the fastenings down to the little pink rose embroidered on the middle of her bra before he grabbed her hands and stopped her. “Don’t. Don’t do this.”

“Why not?” She waved his hands off her and kissed him again.

“Because.” He turned his head to the side to avoid her lips. “I don’t deserve it.”

She studied him for a moment. “No, you really don’t.” Then she pushed gently on his shoulders so he lay backward on the bed. She leaned over him and brushed her lips over his mouth. “But I do.”

Michael attempted to grab her wrists, but she shook him off her.

“You’re not in control anymore, remember? Besides, I’m not out to hurt you today or get back at you.” Her hands drifted to the front of his black AC/DC shirt, and she lifted the hem. “I just want one time to help fade all the others.” Her finger traced a path from his belly button to the waistband of his jeans. “Okay?”

He nodded, and she gave him a brilliant, forgiving smile that lit her whole face. Their mouths met again, this time in a fervent kiss. The bed springs twanged under their weight as she covered his body with hers, and the only noises that could be heard were the soft moans coming from the back of their throats and the faint strains of a guitar solo leaking from Michael’s headphones, abandoned on the floor.

His eyes closed when she slowly dragged down the zipper on his jeans and reached inside. Her hand wrapped around his shaft, and he shivered at the coolness of her touch.

“Sorry if my hands are cold,” she whispered.

“No, it feels good,” he murmured, and she kissed him again as her grip on his cock tightened. He stifled a groan as she tugged his jeans off his hips with her free hand while she continued to move up and down the length of him.

She gave him a shy, sexy smile. “For all the times we’ve been together, I’ve never seen you completely naked. Today, all your clothes are history.”

He obliged, kicking his jeans and boxers the rest of the way off his legs as she sat up to pull his t-shirt off. He eyed her clothes, an eyebrow arched. “The situation looks a little unbalanced to me.”

She didn’t say anything, but he could tell that she wanted to, perhaps about how the situation had always been unbalanced. His stomach took another plunge. He knew then it’d be impossible to say anything to her ever again without it being a double entendre or painful reminder of everything that had transpired. He didn’t know what else to do, so he pulled her head toward him and kissed her again.

They rolled over, clumsy and fumbling and tangling in the sheets, and Michael settled between Valerie’s thighs, his cock pressing with insistence against the seam of her pants as he licked a wet trail down her neck to her collarbone.

“You’re driving me crazy,” she half-moaned as she steepled her knees at his sides, her corduroy pants rubbing against his skin.

“That’s the point.” He pushed her shirt up just under her chin and lowered his head, dipping his tongue inside her bra, sweeping her hardening nipple.

She let out another moan as he deftly undid her bra and pulled both it and her shirt over her head, exposing all her creamy skin from the waist up. His lips returned to her breasts and she bit her lip as she clutched fistfuls of his hair. “Oh my God. Do you think I’m gonna go to hell if I have sex in my preacher’s house?”

He raked his teeth gently over her nipple. “You might.”

“Is it wrong that I don’t care?”

“If by ‘wrong’ you mean ‘completely sexy,’ then no.” His hands snaked their way down her stomach to the buttons on her pants.

She raised her hips before he had even undone the first button. “Hurry. You’re moving too slow.”

“I’m sorry.” He yanked off her shoes and dragged her pants off her legs, inwardly groaning at the sight of her long legs and her white panties. She was like candy just waiting to be unwrapped.

“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t insult me with patience.” She looked wild and wanton, gazing at him with her smoky green eyes. He immediately responded to her request by slanting his mouth over hers, and she moaned in response, her body arching against him.

“Whatever you want.” His mouth made its way down her body to the edge of her panties. He placed several kisses on the inside of her thighs before she started writhing with impatience.

“Get them off,” she demanded, tilting her head back.

Michael hesitated for a moment, unsure how he was going to resist slamming into her the second she was naked, but he did as she requested. Her panties joined the rest of their clothes on the floor, and he crawled into the space left by her open thighs. She let out a nervous giggle as her cheeks grew pink. His head dropped between her legs and his tongue flickered over her clit. Valerie’s back immediately curved upward, and her thighs hugged his ears. He lapped at her pooling wetness, yielding more whimpers and moans from her.

She whispered his name in a throaty voice over and over, and the tip of his hard-on brushed against the sheets as his mouth continued to move against her. He dipped a finger inside her, eliciting a shudder from her that involved her entire body.