But two days came and went, and Mitchell never came back to get it.

Chapter Seven Bray

Elias took the falling-out with Mitchell really hard the first few days. It was only to be expected, since they had known each other even longer than we had known each other. Despite everything, Elias knew that it wasn’t his fault, and he wasn’t going to sit around and blame himself. Mitchell had brought this all on himself. Eventually, Elias went from feeling bad about what happened to indifferent.

He still had me, after all.

By Friday night, we were debating whether to go to the river or not, because Mitchell would almost definitely be there.

“I say we go, Elias. Don’t let him ruin our good time.”

Elias kissed me on the forehead and squeezed me around the waist as I sat straddled on his lap.

“OK. We’ll go. Just stay away from him, all right?”

I draped my arms around his neck and then kissed his lips. “I’ll be too busy with you to worry about him,” I said suggestively.

Elias smiled and squeezed my butt in his hands. “How did we get like this?” he asked, studying my face and my lips.

“It was inevitable,” I said in a quiet voice. My fingers touched the contours of his cheekbones and probed him as if he were a beautiful¸ delicate statue. He hadn’t shaved in a while, but I found the growing stubble sexy on him.

“Do you remember our first kiss?” he asked, smiling at me.

“Of course I do,” I said. “The first night we met.”

He shook his head and his hands slid up my back.

“No, I mean the first real kiss.”

I swallowed hard. On the inside I was screaming as another memory infected my thoughts in that moment, but on the outside, I looked as blissful as he did.

“Yes. I remember,” I said distantly.

Elias’ blue eyes softened, not sensing the turmoil going on inside of me. I was thankful for that.

“I’ve always wondered about that day,” he said. “When you asked me to kiss you, did you really just want to practice? Be honest.”

I swallowed again and my hands began to shake. I steadied them, interlacing my fingers around the back of his neck. The memory of our first kiss was one of my most cherished. I would never forget it. But the other, more solemn memory that always came with it nowadays was what I couldn’t bear.

“I did want to practice,” I answered, hiding the pain in my heart. “But it was just an excuse. I really just wanted you to kiss me.”

Elias’s smile widened. And then he touched his lips to mine, slowly brushing the tip of his tongue between them. I wilted in his arms.

He made love to me that morning before we packed the car and headed to the river. And I noticed—very hard not to—something about Elias that I never expected, but that drove me absolutely mad for him. Every time we would have sex, he was different, he would feel different. Sometimes aggressive, sometimes explorative, though it seemed like he was holding something back. I had been with several guys, but none of them had anything on Elias. Sex with him was never the same. He was focused, determined, meticulous, and experienced. And each time I went in, I found myself wondering what he was going to do to me this time. Just anticipating it was thrilling. And sometimes scary. In a good way.

For the first time in my life I didn’t feel wrong about the way I was inside. I didn’t feel ashamed. But instead, I felt like I could almost be myself completely with Elias. But only almost. I wasn’t ready yet to lay something like that on him. I was afraid of making him look at me differently, or lose respect for me.

Because the truth was, I was addicted to sex.

I wanted it all the time. In every way. On the outside I was a seemingly innocent girl by today’s standards. Before Elias, whenever I would have sex with guys, I always felt ashamed afterward. I didn’t want any of them, sexually or otherwise. I wanted Elias in every way imaginable.

Now that I had him and was picking up these familiar sexual vibes from him, my mind began to spin with the possibilities.

Were Elias and I more alike than we ever knew? Was that even possible? Was Elias just as addicted to sex as I was?

By this time, even without knowing the answers to those questions yet, I thought that life really couldn’t get any better. We were in complete and absolute love, finally living the dream with one another that we had always dreamed about. There was so much to do, so many things about ourselves and about life to explore together, and we had our whole lives ahead of us in which to do it.

But on the night of April 20, everything we knew would change, and that life together we had waited so long to have would come crashing down around us like some cruel fucking joke.

*     *     *

We made it to the secluded party spot on the river just after dark. It was getting slightly cooler as the night approached, but that never stopped anyone we knew from swimming. Summer in Georgia wasn’t officially here, but it might as well have been.

There were a lot of people at the river, some I knew, most I didn’t. Tents had been pitched throughout the woods, spaced far enough apart for privacy. Two separate campfires burned, and people sat around each of them talking and drinking. The smell of pot filled the air. Not even two minutes in, as Elias and I carried in our camping gear, a group of people offered us a joint. We stopped and took a hit before heading into the woods to stake our claim on a spot for the weekend.

“I haven’t seen him yet,” I said about Mitchell as I set our ice chest down beside a tree.

Elias unzipped the tent bag and started setting up. “Well, maybe we’ll get lucky and he won’t show.”

“Hopefully,” I said.

After we were satisfied with our setup, we walked through the trees the short distance back to the main camp, where everyone was sitting. Music was playing from a portable radio, but the river was so close that it nearly drowned out the music coming from the tiny speakers.

We sat down next to a couple and immediately the guy passed a joint to Elias. Elias took a long hit and shotgunned it to me, exhaling it into my mouth. My eyes watered and burned a little, but at that point I didn’t care.

“I’m tellin’ ya, man,” another guy to our left said in a half-joking manner, “once you get married, it all goes to shit. Should jus’ keep things like they are.” The guy took a hit and let the smoke trickle out of his lips and funnel back through his nostrils.

“He would know,” the blonde-haired girl sitting next to him said. She took the joint from him and put it to her lips, pressed between the tips of her thumb and index finger. “My dear idiot brother here has been married twice.” Her voice strained and cracked as she held the smoke deep in her lungs. “Was with his ex for six years. Perfect together. Got married and—” she snapped her fingers “—poof! Instant destruction of a perfectly good relationship.”

Laughter ripped through the air.

Elias pulled me from beside him and over between his legs, wrapping his arms around me from behind. I could tell he wasn’t paying any attention to the conversations going on around us. Not the one about that guy’s bad luck with marriages, or the one on the other side of us about some girl’s recent endometriosis diagnosis. He was enjoying his high, and I was enjoying mine with him.

We zoned out for a while, me sitting between his legs, leaning against his chest. We listened mostly to the mix of the radio and the nearby river, which somehow blended harmoniously. Being high has many strange and unexpected perks. After a couple of hours, most of our company either went swimming, or drank too much then hit their tents to pass out.