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roosterbruiser · 2 years ago

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𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 ✯ 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞

✯ 𝐉𝐚𝐤𝐞 "𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐦𝐚𝐧" 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐧 𝐱 𝐘𝐨𝐮 (𝐍𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞: 𝐅𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐲) ✯ 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: Jake and Emmaline have a heated discussion. You ride on his handlebars to Silver Spring and affectionately call him piss-pants. Things get heated after that--up against a tree. ✯ 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬: 7.9K ✯ 𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 ✯ 𝐅𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐲'𝐬 𝐦𝐢𝐱𝐭𝐚𝐩𝐞 #𝟏 ✯ 𝐉𝐚𝐤𝐞'𝐬 𝐦𝐢𝐱𝐭𝐚𝐩𝐞 #𝟏 ✯ 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 ✯ 𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩, 𝐓𝐗 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝟐𝟕𝐭𝐡, 𝟐𝟎𝟎𝟖

“You’re fuckin’ kidding me, right?”

Jake blinks, swallowing hard. He feels like she’s gonna make something come loose.

“No,” he answers, trying to keep his voice from sounding as shaky as his hands feel. “No, I’m bein’ serious. Serious as a heart attack.”

Fuck--he knows it’s stupid when he says it. He has to stifle a grimace. But he said it already, it’s sitting in the sweltering air between him and Emmaline. He’s gonna have to live with it.

“You’re breakin’ up with me?” Emmaline asks for the third time.

Jake nods. For the third time.

She scoffs--it’s a sound loud enough for him to hear over the sprinklers on her lawn, loud enough for him to hear over the smooth jazz her mama has playing in the kitchen as she pretends not to listen to their conversation. He’s praying that her mama stays in the kitchen and doesn't try to interrupt this--he knows he would lose his nerve if her mama came out or, God forbid, her daddy.

Emmaline even looks pretty when she’s pissed off, which she is right now; her glossy lips are pursed so tightly that it’s turning them the shade of a pale primrose, her thin eyebrows are furrowed deeply, her cheeks are red as little apples, her honey hair is curtaining her pointed face elegantly. She’s not even sweating, which stupefies Jake because it’s about a million degrees outside, and she hasn’t moved from her spot on the porch’s sofa. She’s just narrowing her blue eyes at him with her arms crossed, the dictionary-definition of pissed off.

“You don’t wanna do that,” Emmaline says decidedly, the edge in her voice enough to make Jake’s brows shoot up. “Like, you really, really don’t wanna do that.”

He sighs and this seems to piss her off even more.

“Don’t you fuckin’ sigh at me when I’m tellin’ you what’s good for you,” she says with all the authority of her mama.

He contains another sigh--just barely. But he’s so very tired of going in circles with her.

“Why not?” His voice is pitched now--he’s so very close to snapping at her, which he’s made a very distinct point not to in the past. But she’s pressing on that special nerve of his, the one his sisters practically stomp on.

He’s been here for an hour. He rode his bike over and asked to sit with her. Her mama brought them iced tea and left the backdoor cracked slyly (he noticed anyway) and left them on the wicker furniture on their screened-in porch. Jake knew that if he went inside, if Emmaline tangled with her mama about Jake going to her bedroom (and eventually got her way like she always did), then they would have sex. And he doesn’t want to do that. He feels bad, in a strange way, about being unfaithful to Emmaline. Not bad enough to tell her and not bad enough to not stick by you--but bad enough that he doesn’t want to give Emmaline the wrong idea by having sex with her again.

He’s had two glasses of iced tea and he’s sweating through his t-shirt and she just won’t take no for an answer.

Really, they’re just chasing their own tails now. And he’s tired--he woke up early to head to the Carolina’s to hay and water the horses. He lunged a few of the mustangs and shoveled some shit--all before noon. And now this prissy, pretty girl won’t let him break up with her.

Emmaline stares at him like he should know exactly what she means. It makes his throat thick with annoyance, makes saliva pool beneath his tongue. He can almost feel that something ugly is about to come out of that pretty mouth--so much so that his fists are already clenching.

“You really think you’re gonna get anyone better?”

There it is.

It feels like she’s just shot Jake and, in a way, she has. She’s hit him right where it hurts. His chest is suddenly hot and achy and he knows that it isn’t just from the stuffy air in here or the fact that he wants to go home and sleep. It isn’t guilt that he feels anymore for touching you when he was still with Emma. No, he doesn’t feel bad about that anymore. Not when Emma is smirking up at him the way she is, twirling her hair around her finger.

Already there was that unspoken strangeness in their relationship. He lived in a double-wide with his mama and sisters; her brother went off to college four years ago and left the Odette’s in a house with four extra bedrooms. She’s going to Arkansas to party with no scholarship; he’s going to Austin to play baseball on a full ride. She doesn’t have to work; he does if he wants to have hot water. To put it plainly: he’s poor and she’s not. She’s actually the furthest from poor that someone can get. He knows it--she knows it. And now she’s smearing it across his ruddy cheeks like he’s a rodeo clown and his financial standing is a custard pie.

“Whatcha mean by that, Emma?” Jake asks, narrowing his eyes at her.

Maybe he’s a glutton for pain. Or maybe he knows that there is a loathsome beast gurgling inside of him and he wants the justification to release it.

She leans forward, shrugging with her brow perched. She takes a long drink of her sweet tea, seemingly basking in the glow of his anger. She makes a long ahh sound before setting the glass back down and smiling softly at him.

“Jake,” she says, tutting very condescendingly, “don’t make me say it. You’re Jim Bean and I’m Johnnie Walker. I’m silk and you’re cotton. You pickin’ up what I’m layin’ down, baby?”

She’s relishing in this sudden anger that’s permeating the air around Jake. She’s never been able to raise his hackles before--and she’s certainly tried. This is the first time she’s successfully gotten under his skin and it feels good.

“Spell it out for me,” Jake all but spits through clenched teeth.

He can feel his pulse behind his eyelids.

Emma adjusts herself; adjusts that little denim skirt that sits so low on her hips, snaps the spaghetti straps of her tank, lets her platform flip-flops fall to the deck so she can curl her legs around herself. She’s pissed, honestly--like really pissed. She doesn’t want to break up with Jake, not at all. But even just knowing that she’s struck a nerve in him makes her feel better, more comfortable. She delights in making him feel this way.

“Baby,” she says softly, tilting her head, “you’re a mutt. Trailer trash. You and yours.”

Emmaline knows that Jake practically worships his mama--she’s called him mama’s boy here and there, which is the closest she’s come to getting under his skin. She doesn’t understand why; the woman looks like she’s lived a thousand lives, each one more difficult than the last. But she knows that she’s done it now--she can tell. Calling him and his mama white trash.

Jake’s vision goes white for a moment--white with utter and complete rage. For a moment, he’s afraid that he’s going to break the glass in his hands. He’s afraid that he’s going to set fire to the outdoor pillows with just the temperature of his skin.

So he stands up, lets the glass slide out of his hand and shatter on the wooden planks below him. A few pieces of glass embed themselves in his leg but he doesn’t pay it any mind--he just grits his teeth, lets his nostrils flare, lets that ugliness crawl up his chest.

Emmaline startles at the noise, blinking in surprise and looking up at Jake with her brows knit. He looms over her, suddenly bigger than she remembers him being, and full to the brim of an unpleasantness she’s never seen before.

“You’re a stuck-up bitch,” Jake spits, his voice low and lethal. “And I only kept you around to fuck you. That’s why everyone does, Emma. You know--they call you butter. Wanna know why, honey? Cause you’re easy to spread. Hell, you’re just easy. Took no time at all for you to let a mutt into your snatch, now, did it?”

He’s kept her nickname from her since they’ve been together, even going so far as to rough up a few of the other baseball boys who called her that in his presence. He knows that it hurts her--that prissy little thing that pretends to be her daddy’s little princess but sucked his dick in the dugout a few weeks ago.

And Jake knows that he shouldn’t be saying any of this at all. He knows that he shouldn’t be talking to a lady this way, not even Emmaline Odette, especially not at her house where he knows her daddy keeps his guns. He shouldn’t be pointing at her with his eyes narrowed to slits, he shouldn’t be letting little bits of his warm saliva fling onto her side-swept bangs. He shouldn’t be making her eyes well with tears right now. He shouldn’t be making her lower lip tremble. He shouldn’t be full of fire right now the way he is. He should have just left--yes, he should have. But here is--doing everything his mama would tell him not to.

This happens to him sometimes. Sometimes he gets so mad, can feel the rage sitting inside him like hot oil ready to bubble over, and he says things that he knows will hurt. It’s like he’s inspecting an apple and when he finds that ugly little bruise, he pushes down hard enough to break the skin.

His mama always tells him that it’s the only time he’s like his daddy.

“Get off my porch,” Emma suddenly says very quietly. “Get the fuck off my porch!”

Jake doesn’t waste another moment. He’s gone before her mama can come out on the porch and ask if Jake wants another glass of iced tea. He doesn’t even mind that there’s blood dripping down his legs.

You’re not like his mama. When he picks you up from Dairy N Berries, which is nestled between a shoe cobbler and a dog groomer’s, you point to the blood on his legs with a grimace. You don’t move to tend to the little wounds, don’t move to ask him if he’s okay. His mama would be fussing over him, floundering for bandaids and slapping him on the back of the head in tandem.

“Yuck! You’re bleedin’,” you tell him, stirring the mostly-melted cup of strawberry ice cream you stole for him. “Cat-fight?”

“Hey to you, too,” Jake says flatly.

Jake’s still trying to calm down. His heart is still hammering and his tongue is still thick with anger and his legs hurt and his bones are aching from riding his bike so furiously from the Odette’s to you.

But here you are, squinting under the blistering sun, dressed in the ugliest hot-pink collared shirt and dirtiest pair of tennis shoes he’s ever seen. Your hair is wild, even though you would consider it pulled back right now, and your eyes are tried.

“What happened to your leg?” You haven’t moved from your spot against the building.

“Broken glass,” he says with a shrug, nodding for you to hop on his handlebars. “C’mon, Filly.”

“Why’d you roll around in broken glass?” You ask, biting your lip when he doesn’t even smile at you.

You look at him for a moment, realizing that he’s pissed off right now. You don’t often see him pissed, really. Annoyed, sure. Hell, even mad. But this is different--his cheeks are so red and his eyes are so glassy. Something has rattled him.

“For Christ’s sake, can’t you just get on the damn bike?” He asks, totally exasperated.

You furrow your brows, crossing your arms. You don’t like to be spoken to like that. You get that from your daddy, who’s started bar fights over the tone someone’s used with him. You’ve never been one to sit back and let people talk to you like this.

“Well, since you asked so nicely,” you scoff at him. But you don’t move. “What’s your problem, mustang?”

This is what you do. You’re a pusher. You push him, even when you know he’s upset. It’s what your daddy always does when your mama is upset, what you’ve witnessed from a young age. You can’t help it--even if it wasn’t what you’ve seen your entire life, it’s just your nature. It’s in your bones to pick and press.

And Jake doesn’t like to be pushed, doesn’t like it at all, but he’s more careful with you than he is with most people. Even as angry as he is right now, even as badly as his throat aches right now, he knows that he won’t explode on you. No, he can’t--he won’t. He’ll save it for when Harper or Callie says something real rotten to him, which will probably not be long from now.

“Well, right now, you’re my problem!” Jake says. Sweat is starting to pour down his back and you haven’t moved closer to him. “Damn stubborn thing.”

Now you’re biting a smile. He’s still mad, but just watching you chew that little grin makes something settle in his chest.

He leans back on his back, sighing, squinting in the heat.

“You aren’t gonna get on this bike unless I tell you what’s wrong, huh?”

You nod, taking a bite of his ice cream, cocking your hip.

“Yup,” you tell him.

He looks up at the endless blue sky, the one that is housing the relentless sun. And he takes a few breaths, watching the clouds drift ahead and over the black cherry trees. He looks at the decrepit rooftops of all the crumbling stores. He looks out across the cracked pavement and all the wonky sidewalks. All the mangy dogs and the cigarette-smoking figures feeding change into crooked meters. He’s trying to steady his rapid breathing and he can feel your eyes on him.

You just watch him from your spot, wishing you weren’t in jeans, wishing you were already in the spring. He looks very beautiful under the sky--it’s just something that he is. It’s intrinsic to him. He has a thick Adam’s apple and precious stubble in patches across his sharp jaw and cheeks. He has those pretty aspen-colored eyes that are coated with thick lashes and that blonde hair that gets lighter beneath the summer sun. Sometimes you get choked up just looking at him; he used to be a little kid with grubby hands and a plush belly and a red ring around his mouth. And now he’s so big--so handsome.

It’s moments like this, this strange quiet one where he’s upset and you’re pushing and you two still haven’t talked about what happened the night of graduation, that the reality of life dawns on you. This is your final summer together in Silverkeep. Come August, he’s going to be a college boy and you’re going to be staying here. You’re going to be lucky if he visits on the weekends and even then, you’ll both be at the mercy of the bus schedule. You probably won’t be able to make any of his baseball games and he’s gonna fall in love with a pretty girl and you’re going to be working at this stupid fucking ice cream shop until you die.

“I broke up with her,” Jake tells you.

You nearly choke, broken out of your thoughts so suddenly that there’s a lump in your throat.

“You did?” You ask.

It isn’t necessarily that you disbelieved him--Jake doesn’t lie to you. It’s just that you didn’t think he’d want to, didn’t think he’d made up his mind fully about it. Since he hadn’t spoken a word to you about what happened, you thought maybe he just wanted to forget about it.

Jake nods.

He watches your eyes as you blink at him, your shoulder suddenly pinching. You hold tightly to that cup of strawberry goop and just look at him.

“Isn’t that what��” he starts, not brave enough to finish. There’s a lump in his throat now.

Isn’t that what you wanted?

You just look back at him, throat suddenly thick with saliva.

“Did you do it just cause you thought I wanted you to?”

Jake shakes his head.

“No,” he says.

Somewhere down the street, an old truck engine sputters and continues moseying on down the road. They’re playing their radio loud enough for Jake to make out Should I Stay Or Should I Go by The Clash.

“Okay,” you answer.

You feel suddenly naked right now. This feels entirely too vulnerable of a conversation to be happening right here in the middle of town. You wish that he would just talk to you about it--about graduation night.

“Well, a deal’s a deal,” Jake says after a moment, nodding towards his handlebars. “Hop on the bus, Gus.”

You ride all the way to Silver Springs on his handlebars, letting your hair flutter in the warm breeze. You’re good at balancing yourself and Jake is good at bracing your weight as he pedals. You’ve been doing this for so long that you don’t even hold on anymore--you focus more on spooning melted ice cream into his mouth, which he accepts with only a slight grimace.

“So, Emma threw glass at you?” You ask with a teasing smile.

Jake rolls his eyes, chuckling despite himself, inhaling all that citrus on your skin. You two are only a few minutes away from the spring, weaving between mailboxes and lawn ornaments.

“Nah,” he answers. “Dropped a glass and it got me, I guess.”

The blood is still dripping down his calves and over his tennis shoes.

“Gnarly,” you answer, taking another bite of strawberry soup. “She piss you off?”

Jake just nods, lips pursed.

“Yeah,” is all he responds.

It’s making his knuckles white just thinking about what she said. Trailer trash. She called him trailer trash. A mutt.

Bitch.

Hyde’s truck is jackknifed at the head of the path you’ve all beaten over time. It’s empty and unlocked, more rust than metal and more junk than trunk. You throw the empty ice cream cup into the bed of his truck and it falls over a dirty blue tarp.

“Bullseye!” You call, kicking your legs up in glee.

With every little rock his tire is going over, with every sharp turn that makes you lean back into him, he’s feeling better. All that rage, all that hot oil, is fading into the background as you two near the water.

“Done bein’ a piss pants now?” You ask him as he parks the bike near a desert willow, letting you off on a pile of the tree’s fallen pink flowers.

Jake laughs softly, pressing his kickstand into place.

“You’re the worst person to be around when you’re mad,” he tells you, a smile tugging at his lips as you stretch yourself out and reach towards the tree tops. A sliver of your skin peeks out from your collared shirt, a piece of skin he’d love to touch. “Such a pusher.”

You shrug.

“And yet, y’always come runnin’ back, don’t you?”

It’s a short walk from where the two of you park the bike to the water. It’s almost entirely green, lush black cherry trees and desert willows growing in abundance. They create a canopy above so the sunlight breaks through their leaves in thick cylinders of yellow, kissing your hair and skin.

You’re walking beside Jake, your shoulder bumping into him, thinking about graduation night. He’s been so radio silent about it that you’ve almost started to doubt that it happened. Maybe you dreamed it--you were drunk. Really, though, it’s eating you alive. You just want to be frank with him--you want him to tell it to you straight.

Jake is thinking about graduation night, too. He wants to say something. But even more than that, he wants you to say something. He wants you to tell him that you want to do that again and again, that you want to do more than just that.

“We should talk about it,” you finally say.

You’ve always been braver than him.

His ginger pace stutters and falters. You take a few more steps, the Kentucky blue grass thick under the beaten soles of your shoes, before you notice that he’s stopped. It really isn’t in your nature to be bashful--especially not around Jake--but when you see his parted lips and half-lidded eyes, you flush.

“You know,” you continue, unable to stop yourself. “When you…fingered me.”

Jake would cringe if any other girl said this to him. It sounds so brash, so juvenile. But it’s you--his best friend, the girl he’s utterly and completely in love with.

So he nods, biting his lower lip, not moving from his spot. He wants to have this conversation away from Ruth and Hyde--doesn’t even wanna chance them hearing it.

“Okay,” Jake says, nodding. And because he’s only eighteen and because he’s chalk-full of hormones and because it’s been eating him alive, he asks, “Did you like it?”

You find yourself nodding before you can stop yourself. You press the toe of your show against a stone and don’t let your gaze drop from his.

“What did it mean?” He asks.

You bite your lip.

“That’s what I was gonna ask you,” you tell him.

It’s quiet for a beat. If you strain, if you let the cicadas and the calling cowbirds and the bullfrogs fade, you can hear Ruth and Hyde just down yonder, splashing in the spring. You can even hear the shitty little radio that Hyde brings with him, the one that hardly ever gets service. But right now it’s playing I’ll Fly Away by Gillian Welch.

Jake swallows hard. His heart is almost racing. He wants to be honest with you--he wants to tell you how in love with you he’s been for the majority of his life. But he knows he can’t do that right now--he can’t risk losing you and your friendship.

But he knows he has to be honest a little bit.

“I wanna do it again,” he says.

You swallow hard now, biting your lip. Suddenly, there’s a pulse in your belly, one that you know only he can lessen. But you don’t move closer to him and he doesn’t move closer to you.

Jake watches a bead of sweat roll down your forehead and onto the collar of your shirt--he’d like to catch it on his tongue, like to have the salt of your skin in his mouth.

“Me too,” you finally say.

He swallows thickly. He can’t believe this is happening.

“When?” He asks.

You’re nervous suddenly--the kind of nervous you get when you’re about to dive head-first into something you’ve never done before. And you’ve never come close to telling Jake how you ache for him, how much you’ve thought about his fingers pressed against you.

“Whenever you want,” you answer, your voice thin.

Another beat passes. Jake’s holding his hands on his hips now, letting his eyes wash over you. You’ve got ice cream on your hands and he’s got blood on his shoes. You’re dirty and so is he. Mutts. Maybe that is what you are. But it doesn’t seem so bad now, no, not when you’re blinking those pretty eyes at him.

“And what would happen if I kissed you?”

“I don’t know,” you answer. Your heart is racing. But you’ve never been one to back away, never been one to hang your head and leave. “Let’s find out.”

Now he moves. He walks slowly across the uncut grass, stepping on anthills and twigs, and makes his way over to you. You’re frozen, completely unmoving with your hands limp at your sides.

And when he’s close enough to you for him to smell you, that familiar sweet scent, his skin gooses. You can smell him, too--all that sweat drying on his skin, all that anger thick in the pits of his body. Warmth is flooding your core, your chest, your throat.

Jake’s been waiting a long time to do this. He kind of can’t believe it’s happening right now. He can’t believe he’s this close to you and he’s going to press his lips against yours. But before he does that, he lets his hand rest on your belly. And you don’t flinch, you don’t move away; you let him.

He pushes you with an un-carefulness and you stumble backwards into the thick trunk of a willow tree, your head knocking into the bark. And Jake encases you with his body, suddenly so much stronger and bigger than you remember him ever being. He holds your waist, feels each of your ribs beneath his splayed fingers, and lets his other hand brace his weight against the tree.

“What’s it gonna mean if we kiss?” He asks. He isn’t sure he wants to know the answer.

You shake your head in a small way, cautiously bringing your hands to rest on his waist. You’ve touched him here dozens of times before, all throughout your life, but it’s only now that you’re feeling the plane of sinewy muscles that are hiding just beneath his faded tee.

“Nothin’,” you tell him because you think that’s what he wants to hear.

He recovers quickly--just a little pinch between his brows.

“Good,” he responds because he thinks that’s what you want to hear.

You’re nearing each other now, the bark of the tree digging into the flesh of his palm and the back of your head. All the heat of the day fades into the background when his body is this close to you--a personal heater.

“You ever kissed a boy with tongue before?” He asks you.

He’s not trying to sound like all those other desperate boys, not trying to talk you through everything like you’re an idiot. But the guilt he felt from being rough with you the first time he touched your cunt is enough to make him be overly-cautious.

“No,” you whisper.

He nods.

And then you lean in for a kiss--the both of you, like you’re in total sync. Just before your quivering lips touch his parted ones, just before you let yourself get lost in the scent of his sweat and the feel of his hips against yours, your forehead presses into his with a slight thunk.

Somewhere in the heat of the moment, you two miscalculated where your lips were.

Heat floods your cheeks and a smile bites at your lips, but you don’t open your eyes except for a crack. Jake is smiling down at you, too, eyebrows pulled together.

“C’mon,” Jake whispers, “let’s try that again.”

So you do, still smiling, feeling suddenly less serious about this whole kiss thing.

But you almost gasp when his lips come down on yours. It’s surreal, really, when you realize that you’re kissing Jake and he’s kissing you and you’re pinned up against a tree by the bones of his hips. And his lips are warm and wet and he tastes like strawberry and sweat.

His fingers dig into your waist and you shrink beneath his palm, your heart racing, your brain pulsing.

Jake’s holding on tight to you--he knows that. But he’s afraid that this is fleeting. He doesn’t want it to be fleeting. This is what he’s been waiting for his entire life and here you are, beneath his lips, so soft and sweet.

When he licks your bottom lip, you almost giggle. It tickles--but it feels good. And you part your lips, trying not to let your brows furrow. But then his tongue is in your mouth and you think you can taste how angry he was earlier. You can taste every bit of his mouth and he can taste yours and suddenly, you’re gripping his shirt and pulling him closer to you. Fuck--he’s always wondered what it would feel like to be pulled closer to you like this.

He groans--it’s a sound that vibrates the both of you, a sound that makes the warmth in your core suddenly pool.

And before he can stop himself, his hands are inching under your shirt and raising to your chest. You don’t stop him, don’t want to stop him. You’re dizzy from his spit in your mouth and your body against his.

His hands come down over your breasts and this time, you moan. He drinks that sound in, squeezes the flesh of your breast, licks your top lip, groans. Blood is rushing to his cock and he knows that blood must be rushing to your core, too. Your nipples are hard beneath his palms and he can fucking tell that you’re wearing that tired yellow bra; he can feel the underwire poking out.

“Don’t stop,” you mutter against his lips, face entirely flushed.

You’re scared that when you open your eyes, you’re suddenly going to be back in reality. And you just want to stay here in his heat, here beneath his hands, here against his lips.

“I won’t,” he mumbles back. It’s a promise--one he knows he’s going to keep.

If someone were to happen upon the two of you right now, a stranger, they would never know that you and Jake have ever been anything but lovers. You’re holding onto him so tight that your knuckles are wide and he’s kissing you so hard that it’s making his head hurt. It’s desperate and frank and achingly, achingly honest. If you two were brave enough, if you two were older than you are now, maybe you’d both admit that this isn’t just a kiss. You’d admit that this doesn’t mean nothing.

But you’re eighteen and he’s eighteen and he doesn’t want things to get muddled and you’re afraid of him leaving. So you don’t tell each other the truth. You just keep kissing.

Jake, still pinching your nipples and drinking in those sounds falling from your parted lips, presses wet and sloppy kisses all across your freckled cheeks and down your neck. You fumble with the two little buttons at your collar and he doesn’t stop his assault on your throat--that makes you glad.

Really, you only reveal a tiny few inches of your chest, but Jake devours it anyway. He will do anything to be closer to you, anything to have more skin to kiss, anything to breathe that hot breath onto.

You’re panting now, aching for him. Your mind is fogged with delirium.

His cock is pressing against your core now, hard and straining against his blue jeans. You’re too nervous to reach down and touch it--you don’t really know what you’re doing--but you decide that you like the way it feels against you.

You’re the one that unbuttons your jeans and he takes the hint, letting his lips linger on a spot on your collarbone as he wriggles his fingers against the band of your underwear, wedding his hand between your skin and denim.

It’s all happening so fast, just like it did the first time. Except now there is no Emmaline to think about and you’re only thirty yards away from your friends and you’re so sick with want that you might have a fever.

Neither of you say a word when his fingers come down in your folds. It takes everything in your power not to moan--one loud enough to echo off the trees--and you shudder against him. It’s still a new feeling, those rough fingers parting your wetness, pressing near your clit.

Jake is swallowing his own moans, too, pressing his forehead against yours. You’re so wet--so wet and all the two of you have done is kiss. That’s all--just kiss and you’re soaking him, wetting his fingers to his knuckles. And you’re gasping against his mouth, gripping him so hard. He likes the feeling of your fingers around him, relishes in the way your hips are twitching like they don’t know where to go.

“Good?” He asks breathlessly, swallowing hard when you sharply nod.

He swirls his fingers in your wetness, wishing that you weren’t wearing jeans, wishing that you were in his bed and naked, wishing that he could tell you how much his chest hurts when he looks at you.

It’s only a few minutes, but it feels like an eternity--an eternity spent in another lifetime--when his fingers suddenly halt at the sound of a twig snapping. Both of you gasp, detangling yourselves from each other, buttoning pants and tucking things away.

Nothing’s there, of course. It was probably a squirrel or something.

But now the two of you are standing there in silence. Your shirt is mussed and his is wrinkled from your grip. Your cheeks are flushed and his forehead is dotted with perspiration. You’re wet, soaking through your underwear, and the zipper of your jeans is crooked. Jake is still straining very obviously against his jeans and it’s uncomfortable--he has to adjust himself as he lets his weight fall on his left foot.

When you meet each other’s gazes, all those words and sounds and touches lost between the two of you, you start to laugh. You can’t help it--it’s not even that anything is funny. It’s just that it felt so good and he was so close to you and you kissed and now the both of you are horny and your friends are waiting on you.

Jake watches that gap appear and suddenly he’s smiling, too. His legs are itchy with flakes of dried blood, the blood that hasn’t melted off from his sweat. He’s still panting and his fingers are stained with your arousal and he wants, more than anything, to keep going.

“Hey,” he whispers because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Hi,” you return, smiling.

But then you’re biting your lip, zipping your jeans.

“Wanna swim?”

He nods after a beat.

“Yeah,” he says.

And the two of you walk silently to the water, your shoulders resting comfortable against each other’s. He wipes his fingers against his shirt and you take deep breaths. It’s a comfortable silence, one that’s punctuated with Rocket Man by Elton John crackling over Hyde’s radio.

You kick your leg up, letting your tennis shoe come down over the seat of Jake’s pants. He gasps, laughing. And then he kicks you right back. Things are okay, things are good. You both know it won’t be the last time you do that.

“Well, look who finally decided to show up?” Ruth calls from her spot on her floaty in the middle of the muddy spring. She pushes her little sunglasses to the top of her head and flips you and Jake the bird. “We’ve been waitin’ forever!”

“Yeah, what kept y’all?” Hyde asks, lounging against the grassy banks. Mud is staining the soles of his feet and his plaid underwear is wet.

You shrug, already unbuttoning your jeans and letting them pool at your ankles before taking your shirt off, too.

“Nothin’,” you answer, looking back at Jake. “Mustang was bein’ a piss-pants.”

He bites his lip when you effectively strip and are left in just your bra and panties. He had been right--you are wearing that tired bra, the yellow one with the busted underwire. You’re wearing a pair of blue panties--old ones with a tear in the seam, but that doesn't matter to Jake. You look fucking perfect right now, your lips swollen from his own, a little quake still in your thighs that he know he inspired.

You dip your toe in the water; it’s cool, cooler than you expected it to be. It makes the knot in your belly untie and wave in the hot breeze.

Hyde’s looking up at Jake with a perched brow, not that Jake notices. He’s too busy letting his eyes rake over your form, too busy watching every single crease and fold and hill and valley of your body move with you.

“Piss-pants?” Hyde calls to Jake.

Jake finally looks down, his brows furrowed.

“What happened to your legs?” Hyde points to the little cuts.

“He rolled around in broken glass,” you interrupt, not turning to look at Jake over your shoulder. You’re in the water just to your ankles, trying to ease yourself in.

“Why’d you go and do a dumb fuckin’ thing like that?” Ruth calls.

She’s a brash girl--which is the polar opposite of how she acts around her daddy, who’s a sheriff’s deputy. She reserves all her wisecracks and curses and insults for her best friends in the world: you, Jake, and (begrudgingly) Hyde.

“I was in a rare mood, I guess,” Jake calls to Ruth with a grin.

Ruth shakes her head in disapproval.

“Filly, you got your flask?” Ruth asks with a tentative smile. Smiling looks unnatural on her; she doesn’t look unfriendly or ugly, but she looks like she’s forcing something. She looks like she’s pushing the limit.

“Yup,” you answer, letting the sunlight kiss your cheeks as you tip your face towards the canopy of trees above you.

“Can you spare some whiskey for a poor soul?” Ruth asks, holding her hands in a pleading gesture.

You nod, bending down and reaching for the flask in the back pocket of your jeans.

It’s the prettiest thing you own, a gift from your father that he scrimped for to secretly slip you on your sixteenth birthday--that’s when everyone starts drinking in Silverkeep, anyway. It’s a turquoise color, adorned with glitter and little images of bursting stars. There’s a frilly F engraved on the front of it: F for his Filly.

“You gonna get drunk and puke in Rusty again?” Hyde calls to Ruth, perching a brow.

She gives him the bird, too and barely catches the flask.

“Like that’s the worst thing that truck’s seen,” Jake laughs.

He’s still watching you as he takes his clothes off. You’re acting remarkably normal for what just happened between the both of you. He’s glad. Things feel good. Things feel really good.

Ruth takes a swig from your flask, grunting and groaning her way through the aftertaste. She may hang around with the lot of you, but she won't succumb to drinking the spring water the way y’all do--she draws the line there.

“How’s it taste, honey?” You call to Ruth, giggling.

Ruth sends you a prominent thumbs down, her round face still pulled into a grimace.

“Fuckin’ awful,” she says. “What the fuck is this? Lighter fluid?”

“Everclear,” you tell her with a shrug.

It’s what your daddy keeps at the back of the liquor cabinet, not exactly inviting you to drink it but not stopping you either.

“Well, it’s fuckin’ awful,” Ruth sighs, tucking the flask against her float.

“Ruth Gabriel, you’re so grumpy today,” you laugh, letting the water kiss up to your knees now. You’re pretending like you can’t feel Jake’s eyes on you. “What’s the occasion?”

Ruth pushes her sunglasses back over her head as Jake steps over Hyde’s pale form and beside you. He’s close enough that your elbows are touching--it makes you warm all over.

“Born this way,” Ruth answers, letting her hands dip in the water. “Can’t be helped.”

“You’re too pretty to be so damn mean all the time,” Hyde says--strictly to get under Ruth’s skin.

“I’ll wring you out like a washrag, stringbean,” Ruth promises, her voice even.

Hyde holds his hand over his heart, heaving a sigh and making his bird-chest puff out.

“She really loves me, don’t she?”

You roll your eyes. Ruth and Hyde are always going back and forth like this.

“Waitin’ on an invitation?” Ruth asks the two of you.

You shake your head, squishing the mud under your toes and watching a few water-gliders slink across the rippling water.

Silver Spring is the only place in Silverkeep that could be considered nice objectively. It’s uncharacteristically pretty for this part of Texas--the kind of pretty that almost makes you feel guilty, like if you touched the Mona Lisa or sneezed on The Thinker. Maybe because it is so beautiful--that sticky, guilt-inducing kind of beautiful--that no one ventures down this way. You, Jake, Ruth, and Hyde are almost always alone here, save for a few reckless middle schoolers that are easy to scare away and some drifters who mind their own.

The black cherry trees and American sycamores are thick here, sprawling across the hills and thinning only when the St. Augustine grass rolls to a sudden stop at the edge of the spring. There are patches of thistles and black-eyed Susan’s spanning across all this fertile land--it always smells sweet here.

Jagged, brown rocks climb out of the green water and up the hillside--there’s a lip where you sometimes jump off. There’s a pipe, a big ugly and dirty thing, that acts as some sort of man made waterfall. Rock rose plants are starting to cover the pipe now--it’s been here for a long time.

The water never gets very warm--there’s too much shade. But on days like today, days when the only solace is being neck-deep in a bath of ice, that’s mighty fine. The spring is not very deep, either--only nine feet at the very center. Hyde was the one that figured it out, diving into the murky water with a measly stick as his measurement gauge.

“M’comin’ to get my flask,” you promise Ruth, finally submerging yourself in the cool water.

It feels like being dunked in ice--but you relish in the feeling. You were already running hot your entire shift at Dairy N Berries, but then Jake had gone and made you burn with a desperate fever only a few minutes ago. And he’s right behind you now, treading the water, staying beside you.

When he knows no one can see it, when he knows that the water is too murky and you’re too far away from Ruth and Hyde both, he nudges you softly. It’s just a little thing, just something against your hip in the water. If Ruth and Hyde did see it, they wouldn’t even bat an eye. You and Jake have always been all over each other--everyone at school thought you were a couple, anyway. But he wants this to be a private touch, one only you can feel, one only the two of you know about.

You all stay in the spring until late that night, despite Jake having to be up so early to get to the Carolina farm. You’re all mildly tipsy, passing around the putrid alcohol in your flask, laying out on the banks in the mud to dry off. You’re nestled into Jake’s side, which isn’t unusual, and he’s humming softly.

“Where’s Misty?” Hyde asks, coughing softly when he pulls the flask from his mouth and passes it back to you.

Night has moved in completely now--there’s hardly any light now except for the puny fire Ruth started, which she only knows how to do from her one and only summer at Girl Scouts camp. It’s not warm enough to keep any of you warm, but you refuse to put that ugly pink shirt back on.

“In my room, I hope,” Jake answers, wrapping his arm around your shoulders when he notices that your lower lip is trembling with cold.

“Should’ve brought her,” you tell him, moving to lay your head on his shoulder.

And this isn’t a new touch, either; but both of your hearts race just the same anyway.

“Would’ve been you or her,” Jake breathes, “and I chose you.”

Your heart squeezes.

“Such a gentleman,” Ruth sneers, stoking the fire with a stick she found. “Chose you over an inanimate object.”

Jake glances up at the stars breaking through the tree branches. He at least likes that about Silverkeep--he can always see the stars so clearly.

“Reckon I’d choose her over any inanimate object,” Jake sighs. “I’m just such a romantic.”

“Emma ain’t gonna like that,” Hyde laughs, judging Jake.

You tense up. You glance at Jake’s face, which has pinched suddenly. But then he shrugs.

“Won’t have to worry about her anymore,” Jake says with a shrug.

Hyde and Ruth lean in, mouths parted.

“Y’all done?”

Jake nods.

“Since when?” Ruth asks.

“This afternoon,” Jake answers, scratching his scabs as if just the mention of Emma makes them itch.

“Well, hot-damn,” Hyde says, raking a hand through his stringy red hair. “Thought she’d be worth keepin’ around for the summer.”

The crickets are singing now, right along with the bullfrogs and the owls. The fire is crackling minutely and you think that if you strain, you can hear the words Jake wants to say.

“Nah,” Jake answers finally. “Not worth the trouble.”

“Good riddance,” Ruth adds after a moment, crossing her arms.

Jake cracks a smile, squeezing your arm softly.

“That is exactly what my mama said, Ruth.”

When you’re sitting on the bars of Jake’s handlebars again, his shirt over your body and your pink polo slung over his bare shoulder, you can’t help the smile on your lips. It’s been a good day.

“What’re you smilin’ about?” Jake asks you, chin perched on your shoulder.

“You, I guess,” you answer, sighing as the breeze tickles your nose.

He swallows hard, his chest squeezing.

“What about me?” He asks as he pedals past pastures lined with listless cows.

The only thing lighting his path is the moon now. But he knows his way home--he could do this blindfolded. It’s muscle memory at this point, especially when you’re reclining against him.

“Can’t I just smile about you?” You ask, biting your lip.

A beat passes--gravel crunches beneath the bike’s tires.

The two of you are utterly alone now, in the thick of the country, just you and Jake and his bike and his shirt over your body. Your hair is dried now and his blood has mostly been washed off. The moon is bright and the stars are bright, too. It feels good out here--smells like sweetgrass.

“I reckon you can do whatever you want,” Jake finally answers.

But then he does it. He does it really without even thinking, like it’s muscle memory even though he’s never done it before. He takes his eyes off the path and presses his mouth against your shoulder, the one that’s covered by the oversized sleeve of his t-shirt. And you bask in the warmth for a moment before you turn to meet him. And he keeps peddling and you keep sitting on the handlebars and no one is watching where you’re going when you lean in and kiss again.

He can feel the steering getting wonky, can feel that he needs to open his eyes, but your mouth is so wet and warm that it feels like taking a bath. He doesn’t want to stop kissing you. He really, really doesn’t.

So he starts to brake, not accounting for the fact that you’re not holding on. Just as you’re about to call out that you aren’t holding on, just as you’re about to reach for purchase, Jake balls your shirt in his fist and tugs you back against him. Neither of you care about the awkward angle, neither of you care about anything but each other as you kiss in the moonlight.

He’s hungry for you and you’re starving for him.

“Gotta get home,” you pant against his mouth, not pulling away when he kisses you again.

He’s holding the back of your head and you have your palm on his chest, over his racing heart.

“Okay,” he mumbles back, but he doesn’t stop kissing you either.

“You’ve gotta get up in a few hours,” you say breathlessly, letting your hand cup his cheek.

He leans into your touch, groaning softly, holding you tighter.

“Yeah,” he mutters.

But neither of you pulls away.

✯ 𝐚/𝐧: love these stupid idiots.

✯ 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫

✯ 𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝

✯ 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐭𝐚𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭