It's Not What They Say, It's What They Whisper

A week later I'm minding my own goddamn business at the library. I'm in the far stacks, in the animal husbandry section. No one should notice me and my stack of books on the history of war in the United States. Which, of course, is why the Brooks girl is there, dropping to her knees in front of me. She folds her legs under herself, and this time I catch a flash of yellow. Didn't anyone ever teach her how to sit in a skirt? Jesus.

"It's not revenge," she says. "I don't know why you think that."

I raise my eyebrow at her. "You always kiss strange men in parking lots?" I ask.

"You're not so strange," she answers. Her eyes are big and brown and her candymouth is…pink. Like panties. Shit.

"Listen cop's kid-"

"Shut it," she answers. "If I'm a fuck for writing you off as a junkie, then aren't you one too, for writing me off as a cop's kid?"

Well motherfuck me. She has a point.

We stare at each other for a minute. Condymouth's all furious and indignant, her eyes blazing on mine, and I realize that I need to have a conversation with her somewhere other than this library.

"Let's get out of here," I say, and rise. I grab her hand and help her up, and I pretend not to be happy that she's still holding onto it as we head out the door. She laces her fingers through mine, like she's fucking not ashamed of being out with me. Like she's afraid I'll let her go. As if.

I take her back to my house, take her into my room and close and lock the door behind us. I push her over to the bed and she sits, then looks up at me. All of her fake courage is gone. My candymouth's become a fragile little thing again, with scraped knees and elbows and she's scared but she's still here, and what I really want in this moment is to kiss her and tell her that everything is going to be okay.

Instead, we stare at each other until she finally holds her hand up to me and pushes up the sleeve of her sweatshirt. There's a set of long pink scars across her wrist.

When she speaks, her voice is low. "Two days ago in the locker room I heard Angeline Granger tell Daisy Brown that I tried to kill myself when I was in Phoenix. The next day in the bathroom I heard that I'd given my mother a breakdown over it, and that's why my dad had to take me."

Her eyes water and I fall to my knees, taking her hand in mine. I'd do anything to keep my sweet Ccandymouth from crying, this small girl on my bed.

I bring her wrist to my mouth and kiss the scar, brushing my mouth over it, feeling the warmth along the raised pink welts.
My lips burn. They yearn to touch hers again.

I look up and her eyes are closed. She exhales and when she opens her eyes, her lashes are wet but she's not going to cry.

"Do you…shoot up?" she asks.

My mouth quirks up and I nod and her eyes widen. She's fucking adorable in her honesty, and I'm wondering when the fuck I started using words like adorable. I also feel like a dick, but I'm not quite ready to be more than honest with her. I'm selfish and I need more from her first.

She swallows, then eases back from me a little, further on to the bed and looks around. There are model airplanes hanging from the ceiling, a teetering stack of CDs piled next to the stereo and a mess of clothes, well, everywhere. My computer is on the desk, and the screen saver is pushing Kush prints across the screen. She leaves the bed and sits in my desk chair to watch them.

"These are beautiful," she says, looking over at me. I can see her trying to work it out: History books and model planes, beautiful, surreal art and a junkie.

I smile and stand behind her. I know that I'm drawing this out, but…after everything else, I need to know what this is about for her before I can tell her what it's about for me.

Candymouth watches the images as they float across the screen and I watch her face reacting to the art. Pure innocence, fascination. Like a kid in Disneyland for the first time.

"Did you try to kill yourself?" I ask. I want to know her truths, and I want her to know mine, but she has to keep talking in order for us to get there.

She shakes her head, her back to me, still watching the prints. "I got caught on a chain link fence one night when I was out with my friends. We were breaking into the elementary school so we could use the swings." She shrugs. "It got infected and now there's a scar."

She doesn't look at me so I swing her around to face me. I put my hands on the arms of the chair and lean in to her. Spicy and sweet. Sugar and spice, and everything nice. Candymouth. I really want to touch her. I want to taste her mouth again.
Her eyes flutter closed as she waits for my kiss. I rub my nose against hers, breathing her in. She arches forward a little in the chair and I know it's going to be really hard not to find out what color her panties are today, if only because she'll make it so easy.

I stroke my finger along her jaw, then up the curve of her ear. I nose along her cheekbone and press a soft kiss into the corner of her mouth before I rest my forehead against hers and say "Violet Brooks." More than anything I want to pull her on top of me, onto the bed and kiss that pink mouth until it's red, tasting the sugar, tasting the spice. How long has it been since I've let myself want anything, let alone anyone?

"Vee," she says, pulling me out of my fantasy. "It's just Vee." I shake my head. I have no business with this girl.

I sit back on the bed, across from her. "Why are you here?" I ask.

"I…You seem like a fucking decent guy," she says. "Not like the rest of them." The fake courage is back. Brave little girl.
I cock my head at her. "A decent guy who shoots up?"

She shakes her head. "I don't fucking know. When I got here, everyone was telling me to stay away from you, telling me all these fucked up stories about you. But then I saw you in the library, not today, before, and you were just…engrossed in this book, and earlier when you first came in, you fucking helped this little girl reach a book on high shelf and…. It was incongruous."

Incongruous. Well fuck me.

"You swear a lot," I say. "How come?"

"I get nervous," she answers. "So I swear."

"Why so nervous, Vio-Vee? Scared of the big bad junkie?"

"No! I just-" She cut herself off and huffed out a sigh. "I just wanted to know who you really are. Even if that's some fucking addict."

I roll my eyes. "I'm not a fucking junkie, Violet."

Candymouth watches me, waits for me to say something else. I walk over to my backpack and pull out a small black case, dumping the contents on the bed. I hold up a gray device that fits in the palm of my hand. "Glucose meter." I raise a syringe, showing her the clear liquid, like water, inside. "Insulin. I'm diabetic." I laugh. It's amazing how good it feels to tell her this, to tell someone the truth, finally.

"I don't do drugs, Violet. I don't even smoke pot."

She takes it all in, tilts her head. "Then why…?"

I sigh. Same thing Lucas asks me every time the rumor mill winds up again. I give the best answer I have. "I moved here from Texas in tenth grade when my parents were getting divorced. Things with my mom were…fucked up, and I went into insulin shock one day in class. Angeline Granger must have seen the syringes because she started the rumors about me being a junkie." I close my eyes, remembering that first week back, hearing all the rumors about who I was. Like none of these people ever knew me – like we were never friends.

I guess we weren't.

"You're friends with Lucas though, right? Why doesn't he tell people?" she asks.

"Because I asked him not to. Lucas Black was the only person who even tried to get in touch with me when I left school. And he's the only one who doesn't try to make some kind of statement by being my friend. He's just…cool."

I open my eyes to look at Candymouth, and she's calm, quiet across from me, so I keep talking.

"My mom sent me to live with my brother, Peter, and his wife, until she got her shit straight. I came back at the beginning of this year, but by then, the rumors were…. It seemed kind of pointless to try to fight it. People believe what they want. They look at me, long hair, Pink Floyd t-shirts, and they buy in."

I close my eyes and tip my head back. I don't want to see her reaction.

I hear the chair creak and when I look down, Violet is between my knees, staring up at me. The corners of her mouth hint at a smile.

"You know what would be awesome?" she says. "If the junkie started dating the head case. Can you imagine what they'd say?" Her eyes dance as she watches my mouth slide into a smile.

"Dating, huh?" I ask.

She rises on her knees and pushes her candymouth up against mine. Like a perfect dance, our mouths open, our tongues combine, and then she's in my lap, pushing me down onto the bed, and she's soft and warm and light against me. I slide my hand up and down her back, stroking, before I twist my fingers up in her hair.

I say "I'm sorry I've been such a dick, Vee. I'm not good at letting people get close."

"Funny," she says. "I'm not good at trying."

I try to smile because in two weeks she's gotten past every barrier I've ever erected, but her tongue is on mine and her hips are grinding against me and it's truly taking all of my willpower not to wrap my hands around her breasts, or her hips, and grind her harder against my cock.

I don't do any of that though. I kiss her for three hours solid until her mouth and chin are blotchy and red, but I don't try to steal second. I'm pretty sure we're both sore from the dry humping, but I don't think either of us cares, since neither one of us can stop grinning. Finally she pulls away and says that she needs to get home to get dinner started. I look at the clock and realize that I need to eat, and soon, or I'm going to have problems and the last fucking thing I want is to crash in front of my candymouth. Mine. It feels to fucking good to say that and have to actually be true.

I offer to walk her home but she declines, saying that she has to stop by the store on the way home, plus pick up her truck at the library. It's still daylight so I say okay because really, I need to eat. She kisses me goodbye, leaves me her phone number and I promise to call that night, which I do, and we talk for two hours before making arrangements to meet the next day at her house. If I'm dating a cop's kid, I guess I'd better make sure he hears the truth from me before he hears too many rumors.