Cruel Beautiful World by Caroline Leavitt

Author:Caroline Leavitt
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2016-09-14T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

“What was up with that guy? Do you think he was high?” William said when they were driving home. He studied her. “You didn’t really know him, did you, Lucy?”

“No way.” Lucy hunkered down in her seat, her arms wrapped around her, feeling sick. William would be furious if she told him she had a job at the farm stand. He’d be even more angry about the lying, and now she was stuck and she couldn’t say a word. She had seen, too, the way Patrick looked at her. She was sure that he would fire her if she returned to the stand.

Lucy wanted to cry. He had been her only friend. And maybe she had wished that he was more than that, too. And then she had blown it.

She opened a window, the cool air flooding her face. “You hot, honey?” William said, rolling down his window, too. He reached over and tapped her leg the way he always did. Love taps, he called them, but sometimes they hurt. She stared at his hand, confused and miserable, and drew her leg away. She shut her eyes, pretending to sleep.

She thought how, at Patrick’s, she liked to snoop around his house. She had seen the photographs of him with that woman. The way they looked at each other, she knew it was some sort of huge, majestic love. Something had happened there. A mystery. Maybe the woman had left him, and he was hoping she would come back. Maybe she had cheated on him and he had left her. Lucy had stood in his closet, breathing in the smell of his leather jacket, resting her cheek against the sleeve. You have no idea how I feel, she thought. And she could never tell him. Especially not after the way he had acted when she had fallen asleep beside him, one of the biggest mistakes of her life.

WILLIAM PARKED THE CAR, and Lucy scooted ahead of him into the house. As soon as the door closed behind them, she wanted to go curl up in bed, but William took her hand, burying his head against her shoulder, kissing her neck. Not now. Oh no, not now. He kissed her neck, her shoulders. He tugged her dress off her body, and she let him, because she didn’t know what else to do. “Wait, wait,” he said, and then he rushed to the table and lit the candles so that shadows flickered along the walls. He lowered her to the ground, taking off his clothes. He touched her breasts and she shut her eyes, and then she put her hand on him. He was too soft. He’d never get inside her, but he was hovering over her, trying, one time and then two. “Just a little more,” he whispered, but she could tell it wasn’t working. His face shut and then he rolled off her and the two of them lay on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, and Lucy thought of the curve of Patrick’s back, the way he had felt when she slept against him.

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