Cream of the Crop (Hudson Valley, #2)(52)

The first time he let me put my mouth on him, he told me how perfect I looked on my knees, and that he was so very glad that I’d never done this before, because he wouldn’t have any bad habits to break. And for f*ck’s sake, he wasn’t an ear of corn, to control my teeth and the urge to not gobble like I hadn’t eaten in a month, which of course would never happen to someone like me.

The first time he was inside of me it didn’t matter if it hurt, because that’s what love was, it was supposed to hurt a little so that you knew it was true and real and worth having, and that don’t worry, it will get better, and if I could figure out how to finally have an orgasm like regular girls, it wouldn’t be something I’d have to think about anymore.

Looking back now, how f*cking stupid was I not to see what was going on? But when you were in it, you didn’t know it, and when your life had finally started to happen, it didn’t matter what else you were giving up for that life. It only mattered that you were special—to someone—and that you were very lucky indeed to have that someone. And everything else should just fade away and become background noise.

Background noise like prom, which I could have finally gone to because, hello, boyfriend! But, hello, college guy, and why the hell would he go to some stupid high school prom with other stupid uppity rich kids?

Background noise like college essays, because even though I’d been preaccepted, I still had to go through the formality of being actually accepted into the schools I’d been dreaming of attending since I was in junior high and beginning to plan out my life carefully and methodically.

Background noise like my high school paper, of which I’d been the editor, but now was lucky to get an article in every other month

. . . like my brother’s birthday

. . . like my parents’ anniversary

. . . like my graduation.

I missed my high school graduation, spending it naked on a mattress on my hands and knees, getting f*cked in the ass by someone who told me I would absolutely love it, and if I didn’t, then there must be more wrong with me than he originally thought, and that it was only because he loved me so much that he hadn’t dumped me weeks ago.

If someone had told me that I would have moved out of my parents’ home to go and live in a fourth-floor walk-up in the Bronx with my boyfriend, to say f*ck off to my mother when she told me this was a terrible mistake, and tell my father he was an * when he told me college was off the table if I did this, I’d have said they were nuts.

And yet that September, when everyone I’d known since elementary school was off at Brown and Wellesley, I was standing in front of a two-burner stove, trying like hell not to burn toast because I’d never hear the end of it, wearing nothing but a plaid skirt and bra because that’s how he liked me best, and wondering how much it would cost to get a new air-conditioning unit for this piece-of-crap apartment, because ours had died last night and it was stifling hot.

I’d never spent August in the city. We had a house in Bridgehampton, natch. I’m not trying to play poor little rich girl, but the city was murder in the heat. And the excitement of walking away from my life to play house with Thomas was beginning to wear a little thin.

What wasn’t thin was my body, something that was the center of almost every conversation I had with him. Where he used to tell me how much he loved my curves, he now told me how flabby I’d gotten, and how much everything jiggled when he was pounding into me. Which was almost every night, and every day, pounding and thrusting and thrashing and hair pulling and get up on top like this and arch your back like that and why the hell can’t you figure this out for God’s sake why do I have to do everything?

I’d been picked on, but I’d never been picked apart like this. Not by someone with love in their words, but not in their heart. I was beginning to see some cracks in his charm, in his words, in the promise of what it would be like, could be like, when it was just the two of us against the world.

Any hope he might have had of working for my father someday was gone the second my grades went in the toilet. And any hope he might have had of building great things, huge things, in the city where my father knew literally everyone at every architectural firm, every construction company, every everything that had to do with building in this incredible city of architectural beauty, was gone the second I missed my father’s fiftieth birthday party to bring my boyfriend chicken soup because he was feeling under the weather, and I thought that was more important than anything.

And with his world beginning to crumble when his thesis fell apart and his advisor told him he was way off base and in danger of not getting his master’s, my world was going to shit right along with it.

The veiled hints that I might stand to drop a few pounds here and there had become aggressively rude and crude, with handfuls of fat grabbed during angry sex. Red fingerprints on white skin that folded and crumpled when forced to sit naked, hunched over in order to see just how many rolls there were.

Do I really think that when he saw me across the street, those many months ago, that this was his plan? Maybe not. Regardless, he very likely already knew what he’d be able to get away with, considering who I was back then.

When I saw my mother for the first time since I’d moved out, she burst into tears. I couldn’t cry, and not just because I was emotionally shut down, but because I literally didn’t have enough water in my body to do so. I’d lost sixty pounds in four months, and was so exhausted I could barely meet her eyes.