Until Tomorrow: A Flirting With Trouble Novel (13 page)

“You want more?” he asks, looking up at me. I’m shuddering and nodding at the same time and he grins as he reaches down with one hand to unbuckle his belt. He yanks down his pants and boxers, revealing a long, hard cock. I lick my lips and he groans.

“Let’s wait on that, gorgeous. I can’t wait to feel your mouth on my cock—but I want your pussy first.”

And with that, he slides into me. His entry is slow, but methodical. He pulls back slightly, then slams forward. I let out a sound I’ve never heard from my own mouth.

“You like that?”

“Fuck yes,” I murmur.

With that, he slides into me again, hooking both arms around my knees and spreading my legs wide.

“Fucking you is a goddamn miracle,” Wyatt growls. He levers himself up over me, grips the back of the couch in one hand and slows his pace, dragging his cock through my wetness then deep into my pussy.

“Oh my fucking god,” I moan.

“That good, huh?” Wyatt shoots me a grin as he speeds his pace. “Let’s see if we can turn that shit into spectacular.”

When Wyatt would play the drums, you could see the determination and commitment on his face. That same expression is evident as he begins pounding into me. I practically shriek his name as the orgasm takes me over and I’m nearly incoherent as I give in to the rise and fall of the euphoria. He releases into me with a loud grunting groan that sounds like the very definition of pleasure.

Moments later, I blink up at Wyatt with wide eyes, but his look is a hazy post-orgasm expression. He gives me a lazy smile.

“That was . . .” He grins down at me, then shakes his head from side to side. “That was fucking stellar.”

I’m breathing hard and, at first, find speaking difficult. Wyatt raises a brow.

“That bad, huh? You seemed to be enjoying yourself,”

“I mean, it was okay I guess,” I say with an exaggerated yawn of boredom, which causes both of his brows to rise high on his forehead. I snort a little laugh, then grin—a genuine one this time.

“It was great,” I admit, almost shyly. I lean up and press my mouth against his in a chaste, sweet kiss. “You were great.”

“Great is better than okay,” Wyatt says softly, moving his lips along my skin to my earlobe, which he playfully tugs on with his teeth. Then he levers himself up and off me.

“I really do think that, at this point, I should at least cook you dinner. Help you keep up your strength and all that.”

I snort a laugh. “Yeah, it really is the least you could do.”

Wyatt dresses while he’s still seated, but he’s careful as he moves up to standing. Maybe he’s less motivated or maybe it’s exhaustion, but he seems far less steady this time as he moves back to his wheelchair. Once he’s seated though, he moves around the kitchen with ease. I’d call it a spring in his step if that weren’t totally fucked in terms of logic.

A few hours later, as I’m driving home after dinner, I’m still in a daze and I’m not sure I can really blame it on a sex hangover. Sharing a meal with Wyatt was both profoundly intimate and completely strange. Even after dinner, when we’d finished up his music theory project and finished off some discussion questions for his composition class, our time together felt romantic. I suppose that it would, considering the majority of the experiences I’ve had in my romantic life have consisted of a diet of booze and late nights and loud music and very, very little conversation.

But Wyatt and I? We do this thing—I’m not sure how to describe it except maybe to call it “friendship.” Because without touching or fucking or drinking a drop of alcohol, we managed to have a fantastic time. We talked about music and teaching, about growing up in Baltimore and how much it defines you. We related to each other on a level I can’t remember achieving with a guy in the past—with anyone in the past, save Cyn and Rainey.

Even working on his schoolwork is an entirely different level of relationship. There are only a few more projects and a handful of assignments left on his list. If at the end of all of this Wyatt ends up at Johns Hopkins, I think he’ll be my greatest tutoring success in far more ways than one.

I’m halfway back to the apartment when my phone beeps. I glance down to see a text from Mom.

Can you run by the house? Lennon isn’t answering my calls and I’m stuck at work.

I roll my eyes. My mother should never been in the position where she has to call my brother to make sure he’s awake or alive or anything else—that’s something I washed my hands of a long time ago.

But for my mom?

Sighing, I make a U-turn and drive in the direction of my mom’s house. I’m such a sucker.

When I make it to the house, the front door is locked, so I let myself in with my key. Inside the house is silent and dark—no lights, no noise, no crazy music from a hypothetical rager happening in the basement. At least I know that my brother isn’t tearing the house apart.

“Lennon?” I yell out his name from the top of the stairs. The tinge of stale cigarette smoke taints the air and I grimace. I can’t believe my mother is letting him smoke inside. Then again, there’s a lot of shit my mom lets him get away with that I can’t believe.

“Hey, Lennon—I’m coming down there if you don’t answer!”

I pause, wait a few beats, then start down the steps, grumbling with every stair and wishing I didn’t have such a guilty conscience. I swear to god, if I walk in on him taking bong hits or banging some bleach blond skank, I’m so out of here and I’m never checking on his ass again.

But the basement is eerily quiet. Usually there’s a low bass beat pumping—my brother keeps his horrible death metal on pretty much 24/7. But there’s nothing coming from his room at all. Tentatively, I knock.

“Lennon?”

Nothing. I try again, this time using the side of my fist so that my knock is more of an intrusive boom.

“Yo, Lennon—wake the fuck up. I’m coming in if you don’t answer me.”

I pause again and expect at least a groan, if not a long list of expletives as he drags his ass to the door to answer it. But after another ten seconds of silence, I’m beginning to panic.

Maybe he’s just not here, I think. But I turn the doorknob and it gives way immediately—a sure sign that he’s home. When he’s gone, he locks the door with a key to keep my mother from going through his shit.

The door creaks open and I have to push it hard to get the trash and junk behind it to move enough so that I can slide past. Once inside, I squint into the dim room. The windows are covered with bedsheets and old beach towels, which give a dim red glow throughout the room. I squint at the bed, which looks suspiciously lumpy and narrow my eyes.

“Way to be a productive member of society, dick.”

He doesn’t even budge, so I walk closer and pull the blanket away from his body.

“Dude, wake the fuck up.”

But Lennon has yet to even twitch. As I get closer, the stench of vomit overtakes me and I have to choke back my own gagging.

“Lennon?” I almost whisper the word this time as I pull the sheet back, too, and find my older brother lying in a pool of puke.

“Jesus Christ!”

I start shaking my brother, then smacking his arm with both hands. Still, he doesn’t move. I grab his wrist and feel for a pulse. After a moment or two, I can feel it, although it isn’t particularly strong. Either he has alcohol poisoning, which is possible, or he mixed booze with pills, which is even more likely. Regardless, nonresponsive isn’t good, and I already know that time could be of the utmost importance. I snatch my brother’s cell phone off the nearby windowsill, then dial 911.

“Emergency response, what is your emergency?”

I press a hand to Lennon’s chest. His breathing is very shallow.

“Yes, I think my brother is having an—episode . . . or something? He might have drunk too much or too something. I just showed up at my mom’s house and he’s not waking up and there’s vomit everywhere.”

The operator asks me a few more questions before I give her the address. She makes me stay on the line with her while the ambulance is en route and I continue to try and wake my brother, who I now notice is both pale and clammy in a fairly alarming way.

I run upstairs to unlock the front door, then hurry back down to sit with Lennon.

“Is he still breathing?” the operator asks.

“Yes.” I swallow hard. “But it’s really shallow—he’s not . . . it’s not good.”

“Just hang in there, sweetie.” Her voice is soothing and I’m so profoundly grateful for it—right now, her kindness feels like an impossible gift.

For several long moments, I try to remember techniques that have helped in the past—filling the “balloon” of my diaphragm with air, sipping on breath rather than gulping it in. The terror pulls and tugs at my resolve like an unsatisfied child and I’m dying to give in, to let the panic overtake me. Somehow, I manage to keep it together. But just barely.

Once the paramedics arrive and I’ve hung up the phone, it takes them less than five minutes to get Lennon on a stretcher and up the stairs to the ambulance. One of the EMTs, a tall, muscular guy with a nicely groomed beard and dark eyes, asks me a handful of questions—what do I think he could have taken, how much of it, would he have mixed different substances, etc. I sink down in a chair near the kitchen door, shaking my head.

“I don’t know. He could have been on painkillers. Or coke. He could have taken some benzos if he’d had them. And drinking—he was definitely drinking.”

The EMT hands me a card and gives me a kind smile. There’s something about him that just resonates with me. I can’t quite put my finger on it.

“We’ll take good care of him, miss. He’ll be at Bon Secours Hospital. You should probably come to the hospital separately, if possible.”

I blink at him. I hadn’t even considered going to the hospital. Fuck, I hadn’t even called Mom yet.

“I need to call our mother first, but she and I will be along very shortly.”

He nods, then explains that we should come in through the emergency room waiting area. Once he’s climbed into the ambulance and they begin to back away, I realize that I’d found his presence so calming, so soothing, because of how much he reminded me of someone—he reminded me of Wyatt.

Slowly, I stand up and go back downstairs to get my phone, which I’d left in Lennon’s room. Glancing around the squalor he calls a living space, I feel my hackles rise, despite the fact that he’s on his way to the hospital. How could he possibly live like this? And how could my mother let him?

I scroll to her number and press send.

“Carson?” My mom sounds almost breathless. “Carson, I just got a call from Mrs. Ruby across the street—she said there was an ambulance at the house. What happened? Is Lennon okay?”

I take a deep breath. “Lennon is going to be fine,” I say, although I honestly don’t know if that’s the truth or not. “When I got here, he was unconscious and there were signs of alcohol poisoning or . . .” I pause, then force myself to continue. “Or an overdose.”

I can hear her gasp at that, but then it’s like I can hear her going into work mode. “We need to pray, Carson,” my mom says, and I can hear the determination, the conviction in her words.

“Of course,” I agree, glancing down at the floor. “Do you want me to come with you to the hospital? Or meet you there?”

“If you could meet me there . . .” her voice sounds small and tentative, like she’s asking an enormously intrusive question.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I assure her.

After a few more minutes and a few more promises, she finally lets me hang up. I glance around, wondering if I should pack him anything for the hospital—will he be there long? Will he need clothes or magazines?

I walk over to the dresser and pull open the top drawer, only to stop dead.

Syringes.

I stare down at them. There are three of them—orange-capped and seemingly unused, but still. I’m overflowing with a mixture of horror, disgust, and complete despair. I can’t believe that things have gotten this bad for my brother.

I can’t believe that he has sunk this low. Even when I was at my lowest, snorting coke was the farthest I went. Injecting could be so much worse.

Before I can think of anything else, I snatch them up and throw them on the floor, then crush them under my boot heel. Then, I burst into wracking, heaving sobs and I let my anxiety overtake me like a wave that will never carry me through. Like a wave that will only ever drown me.

I take a few deep breaths as I text Cyn, then Rainey, and tell them I’m headed to Bon Secours Hospital. Once the tears have subsided enough to for me to speak, I tap Wyatt’s number on my screen and bring the phone to my ear.

“Carson,” Wyatt says, his deep voice filled with warmth.

“Yeah—it’s . . . me,” I say stupidly, almost stuttering the words. “I—um—there’s been an accident. My brother . . .”

“Where are you?” he asks immediately.

“I’m at my mom’s but I’m going to the hospital to wait with her—it’s Bon Secours. Will you . . . do you mind . . . ?”

He doesn’t even wait a beat.

“I’ll meet you there, Carson.”

I feel a wave of relief wash over me.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime.” He pauses. “And, Cars?”

I sniff. “Yes?”

“It’s gonna be okay, baby.”

I know he can’t really say that, he can’t really know that. But I desperately want to believe him. So, for now, I do.

***

Hospitals are, hands down, the fucking worst. I mean, seriously. I feel like the people who are in there because they have to be don’t want to be in there, and the people visiting the people who have to be there are made to feel as uncomfortable as possible the entire time they’re there. Uncomfortable chairs, horrible pre-programed music, noxious chemical smells—it’s like the definition of inhospitable. So, you know, the opposite of what it should be by its very name.

Mom hasn’t stopped moving since the moment we got here. Even when she’s sitting down, she has one foot tapping against the floor or shaking manically when she crosses her legs. After a few minutes of sitting, though, she inevitably feels the need to get up and walk around, to stare up at the TV and then out the window. Mostly, she stares at the door to the ER and waits for someone to come out and tell her that her baby boy is okay.

I know this because it’s what she keeps saying.

“Please make my baby boy okay. Please make my baby boy okay.”

It’s like a sick mantra, but nothing I do can make her stop. Instead, I attempt to flip through an old
US Weekly
and repeat my own mantra in my head:

Please let my mom be okay, no matter the outcome. Please let my mom be okay, no matter the outcome.

“Carson?”

I turn in my chair to see a very worried Cyn rushing down the hall toward me. As I stand, she practically tackles me with a hug.

“We got here as soon as we could—Rainey’s parking the car. God, I’m so sorry. Is he going to be okay? Do you know anything yet?”

I shake my head.

“We’ve been waiting for about an hour, but no news yet.”

Cyn goes to my mom and bends down to hug her tightly. When she rises, she turns back to me.

“Do they know what he took?” Cyn’s face is creased with worry and I feel a surge of gratitude. Mom stands up and walks to the ladies’ room. I wonder if she can’t hold it together any longer.