I let her go, and she turns and walks away. She doesn’t offer me a place to stay, doesn’t invite me to come home. We both know she can’t, that it’s not her home. It’s Lee’s home, and I’m not welcome there. I’m eighteen now, so I’m on my own.
And I don’t ask her about Lee, don’t ask how he’s doing—not because I want to know, but because how he’s doing tells me how she’s doing. Maybe it’s time for both of us to stop worrying about the other, to accept that we never helped each other before, and we’re not going to help now. I take a few deep breaths and turn back toward Reggie’s house. I don’t want to hang out with friends anymore, but fucking Lennox locked us out, so I don’t have the option of curling up in my bed and disappearing into a book so nothing else exists.
Maddox stands and comes down the walkway, stopping when he reaches the street. We just stare at each other across the gap, and then a car turns onto the street, the headlights all we can see in the dark. I don’t look, anyway. I keep my eyes focused on Maddox. He tenses, his hand going behind him, but he doesn’t drop my gaze. The car speeds by, and his shoulders relax.
“Quíubo,little mama?”
I shake my head.
“Reggie’s going to work,” he says. “But there’s a good spot we can hang out. Come on.”
He jerks his chin toward the side of the house and turns to walk away. I don’t want to follow, but I don’t have anywhere else to go. I drag my heavy feet across the street, along the side of Reggie’s house, and through a gate in the chain link fence with a sign that says, “Beware of Dog.” We cross the squelchy yard, and Maddox starts up a creaky wooden ladder. I stand back, eyeing it warily, since it shakes and groans like it might collapse under his impressive weight at any moment. He makes it to the top and turns to me.
“What you waiting for?” he asks. “Scared, little girl?”
“Shut up,” I mutter, taking a breath and gripping the ladder. The wood is swollen and extra flexible from all the recent rain, which makes it even more shaky. But I make it to the top without falling and breaking my neck. Maddox crouches and holds out a hand, and I let him pull me onto the slightly slanted, asphalt shingled roof. We both stand, and he tips his chin toward the street.
“We can see when the asshole gets home,” he says. “Or Mom. But we’re in shadow if we sit down. No one will see us up here.”
“Well, aren’t you quite the peeping Tom?” I tease. “You ever look through my window from here?”
“If I want to see tits, I hit one of the numbers on our speed dial,” he says, sitting down on the roof and pulling a beer from the pocket of his baggy shorts. He pulls another one from the other pocket and sets it next to his, between us. I hesitate only a second before taking a seat on the other side of the beers. I have nothing else to do, nowhere else to be. I can’t even do homework, read, or write.
“Doesn’t that ever get old?” I ask, propping my elbows on my knees and staring up at the silvery white disc of the moon overhead.
He snorts. “You think pussy gets old? Damn, you really are a virgin.”
I shrug. “Yeah, I am. But it seems like after a while, you’d get tired of sleeping with every girl in school.”
He laughs. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, little girl. No dude gets tired of fucking hot, willing chicks. There’s no such thing as too much pussy.”
“I’m not saying you’d get tired of sex,” I say. “Just with different girls. Don’t you ever want it to mean something?”
“Yeah,” he says, popping the top on his beer and lifting it like a toast. “It means I get to bust a nut in a tight little hole. If you knew how good it felt, you’d understand.”
“I know,” I mutter. Maybe not sex, but I’ll remember the orgasms they gave me for the rest of my life.
Maddox chuckles. “Is that what you’re really after? You’re asking me to eat you out up here?”
“No,” I protest, my face going hot. I reach for the beer so I’ll have something to do with my hands. “I just think that maybe some day you’ll meet one girl who’s worth giving up all the others for.”
Maddox throws back his head and laughs. It’s a sound I’ve never heard before, a real, big, whole body laugh. It makes me feel small and large at the same time, like I’m important enough for him to share a secret with, the secret of what a real Maddox North laugh sounds like. At the same time, I feel like his kid sister suddenly. “You’re funny as shit, you know that?” he asks, taking a swig of his beer and shaking his head when he’s done laughing at me.
“You will,” I say with a shrug, sounding like I know what I’m talking about.
“Let me guess,” he says. “You think you’re going to be the girl who ties me down? That’s what you all think, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think any girl’s going to tie you down in the way you think,” I say. “Like you’re some wild thing she’s going to trap or tame by convincing you to stop playing the field. But I bet one day you’ll meet someone who you like enough that you’ll want to hang up your uniform and stop playing the game.”
Maddox shakes his head and takes another drink. “Don’t count on it, babe.”
“I’m not,” I say. “You’re obviously not ready now. But I’d bet money that it’ll happen. Everyone grows up eventually. One day, you’llwantto be tied down. She won’t tie you down. You’ll tie yourself down for her, tie yourself to her.”
“There’s not a pussy in the world that’s better than all the others combined,” he says.
“You’re probably right,” I say. “I’m sure all the happily married men in the world are wrong.”
“Show me one, and I’ll hear him out,” he says, leaning back on one hand and giving me that infuriating smirk. I want to slap it off his face. A more smug man cannot exist.