Possess: An Alpha Anthology Read online

“Sure.”

  “Do I have your cell phone number? Hmm, no I don’t. I have Bran’s. Give me yours.” She had her phone out and I didn’t really want to make a scene in the middle of the party by refusing to give Kayla Swenson my phone number. I noticed Bran watching us from across the room with a strange look on his face. I told her the number and she cheerfully punched it into her phone.

  “Thanks, Crick.” She kissed me on the cheek. It felt like a fingernail scratch. “I’ll call you tomorrow, babe.”

  “Awesome,” I muttered. “Can’t wait.”

  Suddenly Bran was right there at my side. “See?” he said with a grin while a powerful arm draped my shoulders. “Not so bad, is it?”

  I nestled into his chest and breathed him in for a few seconds, remembering the first time he ever held me, remembering how good it felt. “Can we go home now?”

  “What?” His arm wilted from my shoulders. When I looked up into his face he wasn’t smiling anymore. He was puzzled by me. Again. Puzzled by this strange girl who didn’t know how to relax in a sea of drinking and raucous laughter. My fingers twitched and I wriggled them. It was an old compulsion, only soothed by the feel of a pencil or a paintbrush, or hell, a magic marker. It was born of a need to create a scene outside the one I was living in. No matter how much I’d shunned it those past six months, it just wouldn’t quite leave.

  Bran sighed. “Can you just stick it out a little while longer, Crick?”

  “Yeah,” I answered, looking down. “Sure.”

  Bran moved his hand to the back of my neck, massaging lightly. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

  The room burst into a universal yell of disappointment when Bran waved goodbye. We’d walked over since the party was only two blocks away and even though he held my hand for the whole frigid walk home, a chill hovered between us that had nothing to do with the weather.

  When we reached the narrow staircase that led up to our apartment, I stopped him. He took a long time to answer when I suggested he should return to the party and hang out with his friends for a little while longer.

  “You sure?” he asked but I didn’t miss the eagerness in the voice.

  “I’m sure,” I replied.

  After a quick, sweet kiss on the forehead he waited for me to climb the stairs and disappear inside the door before he took off.

  The apartment was so quiet, so empty. I dropped my pea coat on the floor and just stood there for a minute, listening to the groans of the antique heater that never really managed to warm the place.

  There was a real lack of storage space there so I’d taken to shoving things under the bed. After crawling around for a few seconds and cursing when the button on my skirt broke, I hauled out the bags of pencils, paints, canvas and drawing pads that Bran had accused me of hoarding. I sat cross-legged on the floor and stared at it all. I never kidded myself that I was an unusual talent who would be celebrated worldwide. But I could hold my own. I was good enough to get admitted to a second rate art school. It was my dream to absorb everything I could and someday teach all that I’d learned to kids who were looking for a reason to be hopeful even if everywhere they looked things sucked. That was what art was; a reason to believe that beautiful things existed, that there was meaning in things that seemed senseless.

  Once I put pencil to paper I couldn’t stop. It started out being a pencil sketch of the bed. I didn’t know why. Just because it was right in front of me I suppose. But then I started outlining a figure sitting on the edge of the bed. His wide shoulders were slumped, his elbows rested on his knees and he was the image of dejection.

  It didn’t even occur to me that the figure was Bran until my pencil started filling in the face. Faces were always tough for me. I could never shade or detail with enough skill to make it look how it looked inside my head. I pulled the pencil away just as I heard the key in the door and when I looked down it was Bran’s unhappy face staring back at me from the paper.

  An instant later the door opened and there was Bran’s identically unhappy face in the flesh.

  “Did you have fun?” I asked, setting aside the sketchpad and wincing over the ache in my shoulders. How long had I been curled up in an artistic trance?

  “No,” he said and dropped his leather bomber jacket next to my coat. He paused and looked over my shoulder before I could flip the page. “You were drawing.”

  “Yeah.” I closed the book. “It’s nothing.”

  “Looked like me.” He took it out of my hands, opened it and stared.

  “It didn’t start out being you,” I explained, wondering why it made me nervous to have Bran looking at it. It wasn’t like I drew him with devil horns and a pitchfork.

  “It’s good, Crick,” he said quietly.

  Even though it was a compliment, something about his words had a ring of sadness. I took the sketchpad back. “Why didn’t you have fun at the party?”

  Bran looked away. “Just didn’t. Same old people talking about the same old shit.”

  Well, I could have told him that. In fact, I had told him that. There was no point in saying it again though, especially since something seemed off about his mood. He was almost melancholy and Bran was depressed about as often as he willingly cleaned the bathroom.

  “You going to bed?” I asked, watching him strip and not feeling the least bit sexed up about it.

  “Yeah.” He pulled the down comforter back and climbed on top of the sheets.

  “I think I’ll stay up for a little while.”

  “Fine. Can you turn the light off?”

  “Sure. I won’t be able to see a damn thing, but sure.”

  I flipped the lamp off and sat there listening to him breathe. Somehow the room was always colder in the dark. It didn’t have anything to do with the time of day it was.

  “Hey, Cricket?”

  “What?”

  The bedsprings creaked as he sat upright. “You never tried for anything else, after your dad took off with your college money I mean. You’re smart, you’re talented. You had other options, even if they weren’t ideal. Why didn’t you try?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered plainly. “Why didn’t you?”

  He didn’t ask me anything else.

  That was the last night we ever spent in the same room together.

  The next day Bran had left for work before I woke up. Maybe he had important lumberyard business to attend to. Or maybe he just couldn’t face me.

  At any rate, I was innocently serving the lunch crowd at Garcia’s when an atomic mushroom cloud erupted. It started with a few people staring at me, whispering. There was a general buzz in the air that was unnerving. Finally Berto pulled me aside and in a gentle, fatherly voice told me I could have the afternoon off if I needed it.

  “Why would I need it?” I asked, trying to quell the rising panic in my belly.

  The answer was waiting on my phone.

  It was the sext heard around the world of Hickey, Ohio. Kayla Swenson obviously didn’t care about things like future employers Googling her name and catching a glimpse of her swallowing a dick. I looked at the picture once. I saw whose name was tagged. And then I went home, where he was waiting for me.

  I didn’t cry, not yet.

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed, eerily in the same position I’d drawn him last night, wearing the exact same expression. It was the only moment of supernatural mysticism that I’ve ever encountered.

  We looked at each other and there was something not altogether healthy between us right then.

  “Bran. I need you to tell me it’s not true.”

  He didn’t shrink. He looked me right in the eye. “No.”

  Bran didn’t try to stop me while I rolled my clothes into haphazard balls and packed them into shopping bags. An invisible band was slowly squeezing the air out of my chest. I needed to get out of there. Anything I ended up leaving behind wasn’t worth having anyway. On my way out the door I ripped my ring from my finger. It was cheap, thin gold, all Bran could affo
rd, but that never bothered me. In the beginning he told me he would get me a real one someday but I laughed and assured him this one would always mean more.

  I didn’t check to see where it landed when I threw it.

  Before I closed the door I looked back at him. Matthew Branson, Bran, my lover, my fantasy, my husband. I didn’t say goodbye and neither did he.

  He just sat there.

  And watched me go.

  Chapter Seven

  When Cinnamon calls and asks me to help pack up her room, I tell her it’s fine. Her mother had whisked her back to Portland a week after her shattering balcony dive. She’d already had surgery but would need more, along with months of physical therapy.

  “Sorry about all this,” I say over the phone. “Maybe you could try again next semester?”

  “Nah,” she sighs. “It was my stupid fault and anyway I think I’m better off at home. Don’t get me wrong, this whole thing sucks big time but you know what? I couldn’t wait to get out of here, but I didn’t realize how homesick I was until my mom and Kellan, my boyfriend, showed up.”

  I’d run into them at the hospital when I visited Cinnamon with a box of cookies after her surgery. One was a high-strung woman who had a compulsion for constant throat clearing and the other was a skinny dude with black horn-rimmed glasses. They fawned all over Cinnamon like she was a grand duchess.

  “I met then,” I tell her. “They seemed nice.”

  She perks right up. “They are nice. Kellan has a new job at an auto body shop right down the road and he brings me lunch every day when he’s on break. We’ve been together since junior year of high school. God, I love him. I was dumb for thinking I needed to go so far away. You know, Connie – can I call you Connie? – I’ve got a pretty damn good life. And I learned one thing in my short college odyssey and that’s that I don’t want to waste my time trying to remake myself, to be someone else. Listen to me,” she laughs, “I sound like I’m going off the hormonal deep end.”

  “You’re not,” I assure her. “There’s no shame in realizing what matters to you.”

  She sniffs. “Thanks. You have the address for the boxes, right? Let me know how much the shipping is and my mom will email the money to your Paypal account.”

  “I got it. I’ll ask Peggy if she minds me hanging out in there to get it all done tonight. If so, I’ll get it shipped out first thing tomorrow.”

  “Thank you so much, Connie. Listen, I hope we stay in touch. Okay if I send you a buddy request on Face Me?”

  “Actually, I’m not on Face Me.”

  She’s shocked. “You’re not? Wow. I don’t know anyone who’s not on Face Me. Even my grandpa is on there and he’s eighty-six. How’s anyone going to find you?”

  Indeed. I’ve been going somewhat out of my way to hide and now it seems I can’t even remember why. What had I been afraid of? Bran? The gossips of Hickey? My own freaking self? I’m a grown woman and it’s high time I start owning all the pieces of my past, even the sharp ones, the ones that struck deep and left scars.

  I grab my Mac and start tinkering. “You know, Cinnamon, you talked me into it. I’ve been tossing around the idea of signing up for an account. I am actually doing right this minute. There. You’ll be able to find me under my real name. It’s Cricket. Cricket Monroe.”

  “Cricket?” She tries out the name and then repeats it. I brace myself for a barrage of questions, but Cinnamon, who probably has name issues of her own, just says, “Hey, that’s a hell of a cool name.”

  I smile. “Yeah. I kind of like it too.”

  When I end the call I’m in a pretty good mood. I’m planning on running to the office supply store for some shipping boxes so I can carefully pack all the worldly possessions of Cinnamon.

  The hallway is quiet. It’s Saturday night and the first football game of the season. Hours ago the fans headed out to the stadium in their maroon and gold finery to stand on the bleachers and scream until either their lungs give out or the game ends.

  As always, I scan the scene for hints of Bran. As always, I’m relieved and disappointed when I don’t find him.

  Ever since our little heart-to-heart on an uncomfortable bench two nights ago, I get the feeling he’s scrupulously avoiding me. A few times I caught myself wishing things were different. I know he was young and foolish. I know a lot has happened and he’s not the same guy now. Somehow that’ll never matter more to me than the fact that he left me alone on a cold winter night to push his dick into the mouth of Kayla Swenson. No matter how many times I keep running the idea through my head or many years go by, I’m never going to get over that.

  No matter how much I loved him. How much I still love him.

  You can be furious with someone forever and yet still love him. You can force your heart into a dormant state and do your best to smother the fire within. It’ll continue to burn there anyway.

  Peggy, Cinnamon’s former roommate, is not around so I stick with my original plan and head out with keys in hand to buy boxes. This part of the campus is pretty deserted right now. When I pause on the dark quad, I hear the roar of the stadium crowd on the far north end of campus. A few second later the roar is follow by an explosion in the air. Fireworks. A touchdown.

  I wonder if Bran is there. I wonder if he thinks of his old glory days on the football field, mourning what might have been. Of course the odds that he would have actually made it all the way to the NFL were always low, but it’s for certain he’d be somewhere different than he is now. I suppose I would too. Bran wouldn’t have hung around town that summer and we wouldn’t have ever had a date, let alone skipped off to the courthouse. Who knows how long it would have taken me to shake off the funk I was in and actually do something besides refill tiny bowls of salsa. Maybe it would have taken me a few years. Maybe I’d still be right where Matthew Branson found me.

  The nearest Wal-Mart is only two miles away so I’m on my way home with a trunk full of flat boxes in no time. When I pause at a red light around the corner from Agave Hall I hear the distinct growl of a motorcycle nearby.

  I don’t even understand why my heart jumps until I remember how Bran had told me that these days he’s riding around in a used black Harley. If there’s been a sexier thing invented than a hot guy on a bike then I sure haven’t heard about it. The guy pulls up next to me and he’s quite something, but he isn’t Bran. In an effort to redirect my mind away from sexy places I turn the music way up and a few minutes later screech into the parking lot with Aerosmith blaring. A few kids walking across the lot in the darkness turn and stare. I wave but they don’t wave back.

  There is another sonic boom of fireworks, another touchdown apparently. I’ve never been real keen on football. No matter how many times someone tries to explain the rules to me I can’t seem to grasp them. It’s like there’s a black hole in the center of my brain were things like football rules and the ingredients of a Long Island Iced Tea should live. I never saw even Bran play. I only knew he was a great player because everyone said so.

  Once I’m back in my room I sort through my choices for the night. I can tape these boxes together and camp out on Peggy’s doorstep awaiting the chance to pack up Cinnamon’s crap. Or, I can dive back into my Financial Modeling textbook and try to wrap my head around cost of capital calculations.

  Really, neither choice begs ‘Do me!’

  Pulling my Mac into my lap, I opt to browse Netflix, trying to find some mindless cotton candy viewing to pass the time. There’s a reality television series about a veterinary clinic that looks like it might be a good way to pass the time. After trying to get interested in the compelling case of a German Shepherd with hip dysplasia, I give up and switch to Dance Moms.

  My phone buzzes and it’s an email from Face Me. Apparently in the hour or so since I signed up, three people have tried to add me to their Face Me Buddies List. For some reason I’m oddly hopeful that one of them is Bran.

  The first buddy request comes from a middle-aged man named Ted Hollinge
r. I’ve never seen or heard of him in my life. He has three thousand contacts and a lot of pictures of clowns on his profile. I decide if I don’t know him by now than I don’t really need to.

  The next two are Cinnamon and a girl I went to high school with named Toni Barrett, who was part of the Kayla crowd but never bothered me much. After confirming those two I fiddle around with the site for a while. I send buddy requests to Hallie and my brother, Gavin. Feeling strangely nervous, I type Bran’s name in. I am not surprised to find him, nor am I shocked at the way my heart skips around like a deranged square dancer at the sight of his picture. He’s in profile, looking out toward a sandy moonscape that might have been one of his overseas deployments. He looks rugged, serious, jaw-dropping gorgeous. I close my eyes for longer than a heartbeat, maybe trying to force Bran’s image away. Before I open them again I hear a little ping, signifying a Face Me notification.

  “Fucking A,” I mutter in disbelief because the words staring back at me are some kind of a cosmic joke.

  Kayla Swenson wants to be your Buddy! Click Confirm or Ignore.

  Ignore. Ignore all the way. Just because I’ve opened the door to the past doesn’t mean I’m ready to invite its resident she-devil to sit beside me. I haven’t heard a thing from Kayla since the night she sucked my husband’s dick and recorded it for posterity. Even in a small town we managed to stay out of each other’s way in the short, painful months that elapsed between tossing my wedding ring away and running the hell out of Hickey.

  I’m about to sign off, thinking that this whole Face Me endeavor might not have been the best idea after all, when another ping alerts me to a message.

  Kayla: I know you hate me.

  My fingers hover over the keyboard. No answer comes. I’m not sure I do hate her. After all, no one tied Bran down and pushed his dick through her lips.

  Kayla: I don’t blame you.

  Oh, good. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering if Kayla Swenson blamed me for everything. I stare at her profile picture, a cloud of red hair surrounding a beaming radiance as she embraces a pleasant but average-looking guy I’ve never seen before.