CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella)(3)

Maybe every girl on earth is allowed to own one single season. I had mine two years ago. It seemed like my body changed overnight and I’d been too busy to really notice. Apparently the Gentry boys hadn’t noticed either, not until opening day at the Emblem town pool when I kicked my shorts away and slipped my t-shirt over my head.

“Damn, honey,” whistled Stone as he sauntered by in all his bronzed glory and did a double take at my bikini. When his eyes slowly lifted and reached my face I saw a fire in their blue depths that shot straight through me in a delicious shiver.

Stone Gentry idly ran a hand over his muscled chest and considered me as he jerked his head. “Why don’t you come hang out in the deep end, Erin?” He was barely sixteen and he already spoke with a low, sexy rumble in his voice that seemed like it was invented to test female willpower.

“Thank you, Stone,” I said primly and not a little smugly. “I think I’ll wade in slowly.”

He shrugged and retreated to go find an easier conquest.

I slipped into the cool water and hung out by the wall in the four foot deep section, trying not to get splashed by the dozens of other swimmers. I didn’t even notice Conway was around until he was right next to me. He’d already been underwater. His hair was slicked back and even though I’d seen him running around the neighborhood a thousand times without his shirt I still stared.

“Hey there, butterfly.” He reached out and playfully tugged a lock of the long brown hair I’d forgotten to tie up.

Conway’s fingers lingered on my shoulder and his eyes met mine with the same lusty fire I’d seen in his brother a few minutes earlier. But something about Stone’s intensity had frightened me a little. He was the type who wouldn’t be shy about going right after what he wanted. I wasn’t ready for that. There was something different about Con though, something gentler. I wanted him to keep on looking at me forever.

“Hi,” I whispered back.

He kissed me that night. And the next night. And most nights since then. People say it’s impossible to find love before you understand what it is, but I say that’s bullshit because we learned together, Conway and me. God, I loved that boy. I loved him so much.

Katie let out a mighty snore in the next room and then whimpered a little. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and waited to see if she would cry out. I would go to her if she did, even though she would just get annoyed. Old habits died hard. I’d been coaxing my little sister out of her bad dreams ever since our mother’s death five years ago.

A few seconds of silence passed and I relaxed, listening to the peculiar ring of silence that was strangely devoid of the ever-present hum of electricity. People have forgotten what true silence is, all of us. Years ago, when we were still a whole family, we spent a week camping up north, in a pine forest outside Prescott. When the dark descended and the light vanished it was the same kind of silence I heard now. Peaceful, and yet odd.

The memory of the camping trip was fleeting but stirred up something. The echo of my mother’s voice was so loud for an instant I expected her to walk into the room.

It was a stupid thought. She had made sure she wouldn’t be walking into this room or any other room. I didn’t want to think about that right now. Or ever.

Instead I stared at my bare legs and had a sudden flashback to the sight of them in the moonlight, in the bed of a pickup truck, right before Conway carefully settled on top of me. We’d almost done it last night. Not like all the other ‘almost’ times that never even really came close.

Last night I wanted to and when I let him slide my jeans off it wasn’t just for him. I’d felt him pressing against the flimsy barrier of my panties as my body opened and strained and begged while he moved himself against me.

“Love you so much,” he’d whispered and covered his mouth with mine as his hands explored and our bodies intertwined. He wanted so badly to get under my shirt but backed off when I stopped him. It wasn’t a good time for him to go there, not after the things I’d done lately. If he wondered why I was sometimes shy about certain things, he never pushed me to tell him why.

“I love you too,” I told him and meant it completely.

Somewhere in the background his brother Stone was f*cking Courtney Galicki against the trunk of a nearby mesquite tree. They were being loud as hell about it too, a frantic kind of thump thump thump that sounded fierce and frenzied.

In the end we didn’t get there.

Courtney moaned and Stone roared as they pounded out a tribal rhythm. But Con put his head on my chest and sighed, replacing the condom in his pocket before he even unwrapped it. I threaded my fingers through his hair and kissed his forehead, grateful that the boy I loved knew me better than I knew myself sometimes. Our first time shouldn’t be in the back of a rusty scrap heap while his brother screwed with abandon not twenty feet away. But when I put my hands on him he guided me lower so I could get him off like we’d done dozens of times before.

Conway had already done everything with other girls before we got together. I never asked him how many there were. It didn’t matter. Yet sometimes I got jealous of the idea that anyone else had ever touched him.

The power was still off and the house was still silent. My breathing quickened as I thought about the way Con had panted and shuddered as he finished in my hand. Then I thought about the way he’d touched me to return the favor and I had to press my legs tightly together to stifle the sudden ache between them.