Forget You(42)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Doug had held the flashlight for his brother. Now he turned the beam on me. "I need to lie down. My leg’s swelling again."

I winced for him.

"Lie down with me." He leaned so close, I felt the heat of the flashlight beam on my cheek. "Y ou’re tired."

I was tired suddenly, bone-tired and sore, as if I’d swum a hundred races. Or was this Doug’s power of suggestion?

I couldn’t lie down with him, though. Lying in the back of a police car with him would not be my consolation prize after I couldn’t go parking with my boyfriend. That would make me a ho.

Keeping one hand on a crutch for balance, he put the hand holding the flashlight on my shoulder. I couldn’t see him as well anymore in the dim light of the parking lot, but my other senses took over. His hand was hot through my shirt and his low voice vibrated in my gut as he coaxed, "Come on, Zoey. Y ou look like death. Lie down with me. I won’t try anything."

I left the keys in the Benz and walked with Doug to the police car. Doug spoke a few words to his brother, who stuffed a couple of pillows through the window between the front seat and the back. Doug must have been using the police car as a sleeping car quite a bit. He had the whole drill down. He put one pillow on the seat for our heads and one at the other end to elevate his leg, and folded his tall frame into the space.

I lay in front of him, just as we’d lain together on the swim team van. Except the police car seat was smaller than the van seat, so we couldn’t lie together without touching each other. We touched. He didn’t put his hands on me or anything obvious like that, but I couldn’t help that the crooks of my knees hugged his knees. His thighs pressed the backs of my thighs. My butt was tucked against his pelvis. His chest radiated heat against my back, and his warm breath whispered in my hair. My headache slowly dissipated. Officer Fox cranked up the thrash metal on the radio and cruised out of the lot.

"Doug," I said softly.

"Zoey," he whispered.

"When you ran away, where did you go?"

He sighed into my hair. Chills raced down my neck. Finally he said, "Seattle."

"That’s a long way." I tried to picture Doug at fourteen, as innocent as I’d been at fourteen, alone in Seattle. Smaller than he was now, just a kid. His Florida-weight jacket was no match for the wet breeze off the Pacific, and his wallet was empty.

"I went as far away as I could." He nuzzled the back of my neck–inadvertently, I was sure–as he made a bigger hole for his head in the pillow.

We didn’t say anything else. The car hummed, buildings flashed by. We must have been taking the longer southern route through Fort Walton and Destin, along the beach. Streetlights flashed in and out of the car. And Doug’s breathing at my back fell into a deep rhythm.

He touched me all over, down the length of me, yet his hands touched me nowhere. He didn’t mean to touch me. I shouldn’t touch him either, because I had a boyfriend, and I didn’t want to lead Doug on. But my hand lay along my side, resting on my hip. I wouldn’t need to slide it far to touch Doug in a place I really shouldn’t touch Doug.

The closer to home we got, the stronger the urge grew. Every car we passed swished a sexy Doppler effect: do it, do it, do it. If I did it and he was awake, I would die of mortification. If I did it and he was asleep, it would seem almost criminal, like I was taking advantage of him when he was most vulnerable.

I could not do it. But just thinking about it, I was hotter than when Brandon and I had actually done it.

Familiar landmarks flashed by–Slide with Clyde, the Grilled Mermaid. We were close to home. Doug would wake soon. I would miss my chance. Slowly, slowly, a millimeter at a time, I slid my hand down into the space between my butt and . . . him. Let him think I was asleep and my hand had slipped there. Let him be surprised.

No. I did not dare.

And then, as I watched Jamaica Joe’s flash past out the far window, his mouth took the back of my neck, kissed it like it was my mouth or my ear or my breast. I wasn’t sure where these ideas came from. A boy had never put his mouth on my breast before. The thought frightened me and I loved it. His tongue massaged circles across my neck and made me lose my mind. His hand found my hand and pulled me back against him until I rubbed him as I had imagined, then harder.

The engine and the thrash metal on the radio switched off.

We both sprang up, blinking under the dome light, as if we shouldn’t have been lying down together in the first place. Guilt is a funny thing. If we hadn’t been guilty, I wouldn’t have noticed how pink and swollen his lips were from kissing me, or how glazed his green eyes looked from the way I’d touched him.

"Don’t get out," I said. "I’ll see you tomorrow." I climbed out of the seat and stopped at Officer Fox’s window. "Thank you so, so much for everything."

Officer Fox touched two fingers to his forehead in a salute, like a complete dork. "Just doing my job, ma’am."

"Uh-huh." I hoped he couldn’t tell I was still tingling and swirling from everything Doug and I had and hadn’t done to each other. I hurried into my dad’s house, past the cameras and into my room, to finish what we’d started.

"ZOEY."

"Mmmmm."

"Zooooooooeeeeeeeeeey, wake up."

I jerked upright in my bed at the sound of Doug’s voice. He’d hovered just above me all night in my dreams, but I knew they were just dreams. Reality wasn’t that good. Then I figured out I was pressing my cell phone to my ear. "Y I’m awake."

ep,

"Are you coming to school?"

I flopped back on the bed and gazed at the clock on my bedside table. "I’m not late."

"I just wanted to let you know you have a ride. I thought it might not occur to you to look for it, but my brother’s friend fixed the Benz. It’s parked outside your house."

I rolled over and gazed toward the front of the house, but my room didn’t have a window in that direction, and I couldn’t see through walls. "Y ou’re kidding. What was wrong with it?" "Y know how people speak Japanese and you know it’s Japanese but you have no idea what they’re saying and you definitely couldn’t repeat it?"

"Y mean you don’t know anything about cars?"

He laughed. I pictured him throwing his head back and laughing.

"Wow," I said. "I’m so grateful to your brother. I think. Do you know how much it cost? I have a credit card." I hoped the garage bill wasn’t too much–but if it was, at least I hadn’t rolled a joint on the cutting board while my dad was gone. Of course, that was the sort of argument I’d make to my mom, not my dad.

"No charge," Doug said. "My brother and his friend may have drag-raced the Benz and the cop car."