Cruel Boy Read online

  “Mom, stop,” I groan, but she laughs.

  “What? I’ve always wanted to say that.” She continues hugging me, but I still feel a little uneasy about the whole pill thing.

  “Mom, why do you have those pills?” I ask.

  “Just in case.” She shrugs. “You know … ever since Dad left, I needed to feel secure. You know I have a man in my life.”

  “Right,” I mutter. “And you don’t want another kid in your life.”

  “Oh, Sam.” She hugs me even harder, almost choking the life out of me. “I love you so much, but I can’t, not at this age.”

  “Okay, Mom, I get it.” I push her away before she suffocates me.

  “Do you wanna talk about any of it?” she asks.

  “What?” I raise a brow.

  “Sex.”

  My face feels like it’s bloating right now, but that must be the embarrassment. “No, please, God no.”

  “Just asking,” she says, giggling. “I mean, I know a thing or two.”

  “Mom, stop,” I groan. “I don’t wanna know.”

  “All right, all right.” She leans in. “But tell me … is he cute?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I answer. “But you’re not going to embarrass me.”

  “Aww, Sam, c’mon. Let’s invite him over for dinner.”

  “No, absolutely not,” I say.

  “Why not?” she says, looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

  As if. We’ve only just kissed and had sex. It’s not like I know him that well; never mind the fact that we’re not even defined as boyfriend and girlfriend. And now she already wants to meet him? No way.

  “It’s too … soon,” I explain, rubbing my face, and I get up from the bed. “Besides, I gotta take a shower. I smell like a dead fish.”

  “That’s what sex does,” Mom muses.

  “Mom!” I shout. “Oh my God.”

  She keeps laughing as though it’s the funniest thing in the world, and I get it. But to me, it’s all brand new and too exciting to talk about. I need some time alone, especially after last night, so I go into the bathroom and lock myself in.

  That’s when the doorbell rings.

  My eyes widen, and I immediately unlock the door again and rush downstairs. Too late. My mom’s already right there, opening the door … for Nate.

  Well, fuck.

  This is going to be awkward.

  “Nate,” I mutter. “What are you doing here?”

  “Nate, oh! Interesting.” A definite smirk appears on mom’s face. “So you’re the guy, huh?”

  “Mom!” I push past her so I can talk with Nate directly.

  “Can I … come in?” he asks. “Sorry to ask.”

  “Of course!” my mom says, shoving open the door wide. “Come in, come in.”

  “Mom,” I hiss over my shoulder.

  “What?” she replies, but I ignore her.

  I lean in, and whisper to him, “Is everything okay?”

  “Dad argued with me and stole my car keys,” he whispers back.

  “Fuck,” I mutter.

  “Something wrong?” Mom asks.

  “No,” I say. “Nothing.”

  I don’t wanna embarrass Nate.

  “I won’t stay long, Miss,” Nate says.

  “Oh, it’s fine. Stay as long as you like,” she says, beckoning him to come in. “C’mon, c’mon. Welcome to the Cook mansion. It might not be much, but it’s our home.”

  Mom acting like our home isn’t still giant makes me snort. It’s only a tad smaller than Nate’s home, but still. We’re rich, and I won’t complain. Or at least, Mom is … and she knows it. That’s what you get for marrying a rich asshole lawyer who runs off with his mistress. He leaves you with a big house and a hefty monthly pay.

  “Hi.” Mom holds out her hand. “Debbie.”

  “Nate Wilson.” He shakes her hand and scratches behind his neck. “Sorry for the intrusion.”

  “Oh stop, Sam’s boyfriend is more than welcome here.”

  My eyes widen, and my lips slam shut. Nate stares at both of us and hides his laughter in his sleeve.

  “I think we’ll go upstairs,” I say, trying to mitigate the damage. “C’mon.” I grasp Nate’s hand and drag him with me.

  “Sure, honey! I’ll prepare some sandwiches for breakfast. If you need them, there are condoms in the bathroom closet.”

  My face practically turns into a strawberry, that’s how mortified I am.

  “What the—?” Nate mutters.

  “Thanks, Mom!” I shout back from all the way upstairs.

  In my room, I lock the door and pant against the wood. “I hope it takes her a long, long time to make them. Geez.”

  Nate laughs. “Your mom’s a charmer. She knows about us?”

  I make a face. “Unfortunately … yeah. Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be,” he says, and he steps toward me, grabs my face, and kisses all the worries away. “So, boyfriend, huh?” The cheeky, boyish look on his face has my heart pounding and my body melting into a puddle all over again. What is it with him and his ability to turn me into a meek little lamb? Every kiss he gives me makes me feel a tiny bit weaker until I’m ready to fall into his arms and beg him to do me all over again.

  He’s the first to pause, the first to breathe, and I follow reluctantly.

  “I couldn’t hide this from my mom,” I murmur against his lips.

  He leans back and raises a brow. “Was she mad?”

  I shake my head.

  “Weird.”

  “I thought so too, but it’s actually the opposite. Wanted me to tell her about the whole shebang. Embarrassing,” I say.

  He scratches his neck. “Better than my dad, I guess.”

  “Yeah …” I make a face. “I’m sorry. I should’ve left when I had the chance.”

  “No, it’s not your fault.” He grabs my hands and squeezes them. “It was my idea for you to stay in the first place.”

  “But I liked it,” I say, smiling at him like a dumb teen. “A lot.”

  “Me too,” he says.

  “So … is this a thing then?” I ask.

  He gives me another smug smile. “If you want it to be.”

  I cock my head and sigh. “Really, Nate? That’s your response?”

  “What?” He shrugs, and I push him off me and walk past him. He sits down on the bed while I clean up my room a bit. It’s a goddamn mess, and I didn’t have any time to get my shit together before he came.

  “Sorry for the mess,” I say.

  “I don’t think it’s messy at all,” he says. “But you’ve seen my room, so you know.”

  I grin at him. “Yeah. I know all about your room. And the rap lyrics you hide in your drawer.”

  He puts his hands behind his head, and says, “You saw them?”

  “Yep,” I reply. “They’re good.”

  He perks up. “You think so?”

  “Yeah.” I sit down beside him on my bed. “Why don’t you write more? You’ve never mentioned them to our classmates either, have you?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Why not? And there’s a writing group at school too, you know. You could join.”

  He looks away and bites his lip. “I don’t know. I guess it just didn’t cross my mind.”

  “Sure, it did,” I say. “You’re just making up excuses.”

  “Whoa, calm down there, Sammie-Sam,” he says.

  “What? I know you’re trying to hide them from everyone. Why else would you stuff them in your drawer and pretend they don’t exist?” I say, and I bump him against the shoulder. “You like writing. You should be proud of it.”

  “I am, it’s just that …” He clears his throat. “I’m expected to focus on football.”

  “Football … because of your family?”

  He nods, but the look on his face is grim. “They expect me to excel so I can get a scholarship.”

  “But why? Your family’s rich. They could get you into any school they like,�
�� I say.

  “It’s not about the money; it’s about the prestige. Reputation,” he explains. “My dad values reputation above all else.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “So I can’t ever do something else,” he adds.

  “Even if you love it?”

  “I don’t …” He sighs.

  The conversation goes quiet, and I don’t know what to say. Part of me wants to encourage him to change, to do what he wants and to be free, to feel happy with himself, because I know deep down that’s what he wants to do. I could see it in his writings; that’s what he loves. And this whole football thing is family tradition, pride, and it’s getting in the way of who he really wants to be. But he refuses to give in because of family. Family rules … are everything, and it shows.

  “Which of my lyrics did you see?” Nate asks.

  “Ah …” I hesitate for a moment. “The one about you being a sinner …” He nods and rubs his lips together, so I continue. “Is that rap about Nina?”

  He looks away for a second and then looks me straight in the eyes. “Yeah.”

  A sigh escapes my mouth. I didn’t know it would be that easy.

  Didn’t know he would finally let go.

  “Did you really do it?” I ask.

  I don’t know why I ask. The question slipped off my tongue straight from the little whispers in my head.

  “Do you think I did?” he asks, looking straight at me. “You’ve taken the photos. You know a part of the truth.”

  “I don’t,” I say. “Not everything is on there.”

  “But you saw us. You were there,” he says, his face darkening. “You know what I did.”

  I lick my lips, unable to breathe.

  “Show me the pictures.”

  I gaze down at my feet and pause for a moment.

  I guess it was only a matter of time.

  So I get up from my bed and walk to my desk where my laptop is, and I open it and turn it on.

  “I thought they weren’t on—?” he says.

  “They aren’t,” I say, and I open a folder and go straight to my secured private server. “They’re on a server that I keep in my car.”

  I smile at him, but it’s wrought with guilt and fear.

  Guilt for keeping these from him even though I knew he wanted them all this time.

  Fear for what I may find when I look at them once again.

  Chapter 28

  Nate

  The pictures are arranged by date and time. She opens them and looks at the pictures one by one, starting at the beginning. Each one of them is new to me. I wonder how often she’s looked at them, and if every time she looks, she sees something new. The real truth beyond the still images. Mere flashes of a memory no one holds as vividly as I do.

  I take a few steps toward her and sit down behind her on the bed, watching carefully as she sifts through the pictures of the party at Robby’s dad’s beach house. Photos of her and Monica drinking, having a good time. That one photo of her showing her boobs and sticking her middle finger up. Then … the ocean and the beach itself and all the beautiful underwater pics.

  Until the moment that Nina appears. She sits down on the beach. A few more pictures of the underwater world. I join Nina on the beach. Our hands touch. There are a lot of photos of me and her looking … talking …

  Does she know?

  Does she know the words I heard that night?

  Every image passes at the same interval, and she doesn’t stay on one image any longer than the other. It’s as though she’s afraid one might tell her more. As if the story could unfold differently if she’d only stop and look.

  The boy on the beach is no longer sitting next to the girl, whose lying in the sand as though she’s gazing at the stars. As if she knew where she’d be going that night.

  More pictures of the ocean floor and the fish swimming around.

  There is the boy again, waltzing into the ocean.

  A girl in his arms.

  The waves crashing into him like an unending scream of terror telling him to stop.

  But he won’t stop. He can’t stop.

  It’s too late to go back. Too late to turn back time.

  And he lets himself be swallowed into the ocean with the girl’s lifeless body in his arms.

  The final one before he disappears shows him gazing right at the camera.

  Sam.

  I saw her that night in the middle of the ocean when I brought Nina home.

  My lungs constrict, and I stare at the screen as Sam flicks through the images, showing me walking back out again with no girl in my arms. My clothes drenched; my shoulders slumped. And I walk and walk … I don’t stop walking until I reach my car and drive off. I go back home, I lie down in bed, and I stare at the ceiling until I fall into a sleep filled with nightmares come true.

  But those last moments aren’t captured on camera. Those moments reside only in my memory … just like so many others. There’s a hidden world behind the one we live in, behind what we can perceive. The real truth.

  When the pictures stop, she closes down the app and stares at the screen for a while.

  “Were those all of them?” I ask.

  She nods. “It’s all I have from that night.”

  I nod a couple of times. I should’ve known. “Then it was all for nothing.”

  “What?” She turns around and glares at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Your laptop, the phone, all the stealing … it was all for nothing.” I shake my head. “I thought these pictures could exonerate me.”

  “What?” Her eyes widen.

  “That’s why I wanted them,” I say. “They should’ve shown the truth, but they didn’t.”

  She clasps my hands, and says, “Tell me what happened that night.”

  The stern look in her eyes is impossible to look away from. It’s like justice is staring straight back at me from deep down in the abyss. I’ve kept this memory to myself for so long. It’s time I tell someone.

  So I lean back and gaze out the window at the winds blowing outside, and I bring myself back to that night when both our lives changed forever.

  * * *

  Summer – Beach House Party

  The music is loud, and the alcohol is flowing. Even though we’re not old enough to drink yet, no one cares. Robby always throws the best parties at his dad’s beach house. It’s the perfect place to host the final party of the summer before school begins.

  I’m dancing to the rhythm, drinking from one cup to the next and getting drunk and high on the beat. I’m living the life while I still can because I know when the football season starts, I’ll be working hard toward getting that scholarship. This is the only time I have to relax, so I’m going to enjoy it the best way I can.

  I sit down on the couch, and one of Robby’s friends, Kevin, offers me a smoke. Weed. I cough as I inhale, and it makes them laugh, but I love the taste. He always brings the good shit to the parties. The dude even has grade A cocaine on him, and he shows me a package.

  “Sweet …” I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m high with delirium, so I take a package off him and give him some cash.

  I continue drinking and watch Robby smooch up with a girl in the corner. Nina. A girl from my class who I’ve talked to a couple of times. She was always so nice to me, and she always managed to make me smile. I once thought about kissing her myself … but I guess that opportunity has now passed.

  They go up the stairs, probably to his room, and I turn my head away so I can focus on the conversations around me.

  Layla hangs around me, constantly touching my leg, and I love how it feels, but maybe that’s because I’m drugged out of my mind. She grabs my face, and in a bout of drunken rage, we kiss like a mad couple. Everyone around us cheers. I grin when she dry humps me even though I know there will be pics of this the next morning.

  But I don’t care about tonight even though I should. I definitely should.

  When Layla pulls away to
get more alcohol, my mind lingers on her sweet body, and my eyes follow her ass into the kitchen. Right then, Nina appears again. I don’t know how long she was upstairs, but when she came down again, her mascara is all messed up and runny. For some reason, out of everything, that’s what I notice.

  Her skirt is also on backward.

  I swallow away the bile that rises in my throat.

  She waddles off, clutching her shoes, out through the kitchen door.

  I get up from the couch and follow her.

  I don’t know what drives me to do it, but my feet won’t stop.

  I follow her out into the darkness of the night … into the wild unknown of the sea beyond. On her bare feet, she traipses down the steps, her body shaking. Every move she makes is shaky, but so are mine, so that shouldn’t surprise me. Yet for some reason, it does.

  My drunken head can barely walk down the stairs. Nina’s steady footsteps are ahead of me, and I follow the path down to the beachfront. Coarse sand bristles against my skin as I walk toward her. She sits facing the ocean, her hands wrapped around her knees, her shoes right beside her. She seems cumbersome … like something’s bothering her, but I can’t quite tell what. The fresh air cleared my mind a bit, as much as that’s possible, and I sit down beside her.

  We enjoy the silence of the outside world for a while. It’s far better than the noise inside the house. If I’d known the waves were so peaceful to listen to as they crashed onto the beach, I would’ve come out here a long time ago.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she murmurs.

  “Perfect,” I reply.

  “Mmmhmm …”

  I glance at her and the mark on her skin that’s turning more purple as time passes, but I don’t ask why.

  “Man, I’m so tired,” she mutters after a while.

  “Oh, yeah, me too,” I say, but I don’t really understand what she means. Only that I’m so fucking high and drunk, I could lie down and stay there the rest of the night.

  “How many drinks have you had?” she asks.

  “Too many to count,” I say. “You?”

  It takes her a while to answer. “I don’t know …”

  I lean back on my hands and gaze at her hair, which is all messed up, just like her makeup. “Are you okay?”