A Place So Wicked Read online

  Nobody argued about heading to bed. They all rose like zombies and started for the stairs one by one. It was something Richard was both joyous about and incredibly sad. The stress of raising young children was now a thing of the past, but there were times he missed having to carry them up the stairs, Trevor or Paisley’s head resting on his shoulder, the other holding his hand. Toby following close behind with Lisa. Kissing them all on the forehead and wishing them sweet dreams.

  He imagined the look he would get now if he tried kissing any one of them goodnight. He laughed, accidentally out loud. Lisa gave him a quizzical look. He just smiled, preferring to keep these thoughts in his head. There was no need to sour such a special moment in their lives, their first night in the new house, with yearnings for the past.

  Richard sat down at the edge of the bed and pulled his socks off, discarding them on the floor without care. It was their first night there, he could worry about being orderly later. Rays of bright moonlight shined down through the currently curtainless window, lighting up most of the bed.

  Behind him, his wife removed her clothes, sliding on a silky lavender sleep top. She crawled under the covers without adding the bottoms. She watched the back of Richard’s head for a minute, but when he didn’t turn to face her, she remembered how he looked a bit ago.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” she asked.

  He moved at her words, climbing into bed alongside her. She scooted closer, her nose just inches away from his scruffy cheeks. He couldn’t help but crack a smile and let his head turn to face hers.

  “It’s Robbie.”

  “What about him?” she asked.

  “Did you notice he didn’t bring any way of getting back home? He even brought his own box of stuff. I saw him try to sneak it by when you and I were setting up the couch.”

  “Are you sure he was sneaking it?”

  “Well, he didn’t exactly announce it. And he hadn’t mentioned anything before about bringing any of his belongings.”

  There was a pause.

  “I don’t think he’s planning to leave,” Richard continued. “He mentioned a couple weeks ago that he and Jasmine had been arguing. He was worried they were going to break up. I’m wondering if maybe they did.”

  She scooted further close to him. “Maybe you should ask him about it tomorrow.”

  “Maybe. I don’t want it to come off like I want him to leave, though. I mean, I do, at some point at least. But I don’t mind him staying here for a bit until he can figure out what’s going on. I just wish he would have told me, been up front about it, you know?”

  “He was probably worried you’d say no. Do you think he’ll get a job around here and just get his own place?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It might be good for him.”

  She slid her hand across his bare chest and grazed it downward along his side. He felt a tingle rocket through him, lighting fires of sensation in every corner of his body. Suddenly, he couldn’t think straight, half forgetting what he was even talking about.

  “Maybe we could discuss this another time,” she whispered like a siren calling his name from across the open sea.

  Lisa moved her hand further down his body until she felt him harden quickly. He pulled her in close, and she could feel his warm breath on her skin. She remembered just then that Toby was in the next room over. She would try with the best of her ability to keep it down. The house was still very empty, and sound would easily travel along its walls to every vacant corner. But all concern and logical thought fled her mind when he slid his hand under her top and started inching it up and over her shoulders.

  Trevor lay there in his bed, staring out the nearest window, as if, were he to take his eyes off it for even a second, the light would be whisked away by some unknown entity and his room would be plunged into an infinite darkness. It was a mostly irrational fear and one he should have been able to discard years ago, yet there he was, nearly shaking in fear. It was the new house. It was creepy. And it was too large.

  Being afraid of this gigantic, empty, dark thing was not all that crazy, he told himself. He knew, because he had looked it up before in an attempt to rid himself of it, that a fear of the dark was a primal thing for humans, something dating back to the dawn of man, stemming from the very human inability to see well in the dark. During the night, when the sun was down and the world was engulfed in shadows, was when humans were the most vulnerable, when humans went from being the alpha predator to the scared prey.

  He was afraid of the dark. But, if someone were to ask him if this was the case, or even assert that it was, he would stand tall, broaden his shoulders, and state firmly that it was not true. That usually worked. He was pretty large for his age, about the same size as his older brother, who was three years older than him.

  Not that many people asked him, though. The only one that really knew about his fear was his sister, and even she hadn’t asked about it in ages and probably assumed that he had gotten over it. He wished he had; he really did. He wanted to turn over and face the wall, to look in the direction that his sister was in, but he just couldn’t get himself to remove his eyes from the window.

  Secretly, he was very happy that Toby had passed on this bedroom, the one next to Paisley’s. For a fleeting moment, he considered standing from the bed and heading over to his sister’s room, but he didn’t. He wouldn’t. That was childish. What did he expect from her anyway? Anything, he guessed. Even though she was barely older than he was, he looked at her like an older sister. When they were little, when they still shared a bedroom, she would tell him stories to keep his mind off the dark until he fell asleep. He could remember it like it was yesterday.

  He smiled. She wouldn’t be over there cowering in fear. She was probably sound asleep by then. He wondered what time it was, how many hours he had left to steal some sleep before his family would arise and want him to help with the house.

  All he had to do was let his eyes close. He could feel the weight of sleep hanging over them, pressuring them to close, to allow himself to drift off into sleep. But if his eyes were to close, he wouldn’t be able to keep them on the light, and then, when it was no longer under his watch, what would happen? He was too afraid to find out.

  Paisley couldn’t stop herself from taking quick peeks at her phone. Normally, the light from the screen would blind her at this time of night, but with those damn windows and the big, bright, torturing moon, the phone’s light didn’t need to do anything. She felt kind of stupid looking at her phone so much, but it wasn’t like she was going to fall asleep any time soon, not without curtains.

  She rolled over to face the wall, taking her phone with her. She stuffed it underneath the pillow as if not being able to see it would stop her from thinking about it. But she knew this to be bullshit. She was already thinking about it, trying to talk herself into waiting just a few more minutes before looking at the screen in hopes of seeing a new message notification.

  She was glad she hadn’t mentioned Brent to her brother. He would think she was so pathetic. But, at the same time, she yearned to tell him everything. That’s what they did. They were twins, as close as twins could be, and they told each other everything. Yet she hadn’t told him anything about Brent.

  Brent was sixteen, almost seventeen she was pretty sure, and in the same grade as Toby. Her older brother may even know the guy, but she was too afraid to ask. She had been talking to him in the weeks leading up to their move. It started off as simple, friendly conversations about school, and home, and anything else that came to mind. He was so kind and really listened to her, even when she started rambling on about things she was pretty sure he didn’t care about.

  She felt this warmth within her whenever he texted, a feeling she couldn’t quite explain. She wanted him to text her so badly that she couldn’t even sleep. They had been talking a little earlier in the night, but he had stopped maybe an hour ago. He was sleeping, most likely. She should be, too. But what if she was sle
eping when he finally did text her back and then was too busy to reply when she woke up and saw it? What if they didn’t get to text at all the next day all because she couldn’t stay awake?

  It was so ridiculous, maybe even a little creepy. She hadn’t even known Brent a month, and there she was, wide awake in the middle of the night. Even now, she was in a completely different town, hours away from him. Whatever they had, it was probably doomed. The distance was too great. She didn’t have a car. There was no way her parents would drive her to see him. Worst of all, he had already started texting her less often.

  It barely changed at first, how often the texts came in the days after she told him she would be moving. But as new days arrived, so did the change, gradually but noticeably. Now the messages had dwindled down to only a few a day and she hated it so much. She couldn’t help but wonder who else he was texting and what he was saying to her.

  She wondered if he was saying the same things to the new girl as she had to him. The thought made her stomach twist but for more than one reason. She didn’t want him talking to other girls in that way, but honestly, part of her didn’t want him to talk to her like that, either. She remembered how she had felt when she opened her phone to that first, strange message.

  “We should do it,” the text read. It even had a little wink at the end like some tension-easing punctuation mark. It was his response to her telling him that he should do it, that he should join the football team again that year even though his parents wanted him to focus more on his grades than a sport. She read the text over and over, pondering the words, staring into them, asking herself if he really meant what she thought he meant, until he finally just sent another text.

  He was kidding. That was what the text read. It would have been a relief, it should have, except he wasn’t kidding. Not really. That was only the start. His texts got progressively more sexual until he was asking her for nude pictures of herself. She, of course, hadn’t caved in to the requests, always coming up with a reason why she couldn’t do it but never truly saying no. She could tell it annoyed him, but she was just too scared to do it.

  Two days before the move was when he asked her the question she was so fearful he would ask. Again. Only this time, he made no attempt to mask his intension. Could they have sex? He wanted to have something he could remember her by. Why he couldn’t remember her without that was a mystery to her. She said maybe, that she would have to think about it.

  She thought about it, a lot. And, on the day before the move, he asked to meet up with her at this one place on Adams Street where there was a trail. Down that trail, Brent and his friends had this place they liked to hang out. It was off in the woods a way, a spot where the trees parted into a small opening, complete with a table, a couch, tons of other things, and a bed.

  She dressed in shorts, something he suggested because they were easier to remove than jeans, and a tight T-shirt, because, she wasn’t really sure. She put on her makeup. Prettied herself up. Even gave herself a brief pep talk about how this was no big deal, how everybody was doing what she was about to do.

  Then she turned off her phone, tossed it on the bed, and went to go see if her mom needed help packing up. She never went to see Brent. And when they finally had everything packed into the back of the moving truck and were moving in the opposite direction of Brent, she felt relief instead of sadness. She was happy that she was away from him and his desires that he said were natural for people their age.

  It wasn’t until his texts became less and less frequent that she started feeling this sadness, this longing to see him again. She wasn’t even sure why. It was insanity, she thought, to feel happy to be away from a person one day and then complete dread to be away from them the next.

  All she wanted was a text from him as she lay there, trying to ignore the moon’s light. Even though she knew it wasn’t coming, not that night at least, and maybe not ever again. His responses to her were already short, and meaningless, just as she knew she had been to him in the end.

  She rolled back over and faced the wall, which she knew had her little brother on the other side. She wished she could tell Trevor what was going on. She wanted to get up right then and go over to his room, sit there with him, and talk the night away. But she didn’t want to seem childish, and he was probably sleeping. So she wouldn’t. Instead, she would lay there until her mind caved in and she fell asleep.

  5

  Robbie awoke early and started moving things around the house. He wanted to get on his brother’s good side and having half the work done by the time Richard woke up seemed like a good place to start.

  He yawned aloud as he opened a box, one of many that were stacked all along the far walls in the living room. He hadn’t slept much the night before. He swore this house’s walls were alive. They moaned and groaned like there was a storm raging outside even though the night had been crystal clear from what he could tell. A few times, he was startled awake by what he could swear, at least in the moment when he was still half asleep, were voices speaking long, dreary words that seemed to disappear into the air as he came to.

  But if they really were voices, he didn’t think they would suddenly stop talking the moment he was coherent enough to understand them. The reality was, the house, his brother’s new house, was probably old, the walls aged and weak. Even the slightest breeze, one he wouldn’t notice from inside, could probably make the wooden skeleton sway. He bet it was at least a hundred years old and chalked up a reminder to ask Richard about it later.

  The first box was mostly small sentimental items like photographs encaged in picture frames and paperwork that he wasn’t going to bother going through. He was sure Lisa would have specific places she wanted these things. If anything, moving them elsewhere may make her mad, and he didn’t want that.

  He wasn’t sure which of them had the final say, Richard or Lisa, but his fate was pretty much in their hands. He had nowhere else to go. He and his sort of long-time girlfriend had split, and the place they were staying at was hers. He was a little jealous of his older brother. He had joked about it years ago when Richard had told him that he had proposed to Lisa. Robbie had told Richard that marrying Lisa would ruin his life, or at least suck all the fun out of it.

  The joke was on him, though. Robbie was the better looking of the two, and the stronger one. He attracted more women that he could count. They were always so damn beautiful, and downright crazy. And Jasmine was no exception.

  Robbie remembered spotting her from across the bar, her long, beautiful black hair resting down her firm shoulders, her dark skin a shade of golden caramel, and the smile she flashed as she talked and joked with the man that sat across from her. He should have been wiser right then. Richard had told him on more than one occasion that no girl he met in a bar was going to make a good wife. But a wife wasn’t what he was looking for, not then at least.

  Robbie talked his friends into relocating to the other end of the bar, nearer to where the bathrooms were. He wanted to get this girl alone, or at least away from the guy she was with, and he figured she was bound to have to head toward the bathroom at some point.

  He was right, of course. Only fifteen or so minutes later, he watched as she stood from the barstool, said something to the guy, and then started straight for Robbie. She went into the bathroom, and when she came back out, he turned and pretended to bump into her. He flashed his own foolproof smile as he took a step back, laughing and apologizing for nearly walking into her. She didn’t seem to mind.

  Brushing her hair back, she introduced herself as Jasmine Ramirez. She was from Syracuse but was in town for her sister’s wedding. Robbie mentioned strategically how his brother was getting married as well. It was a hole-in-one conversation starter. While they spoke, he positioned himself between Jasmine and the man she had been there with, so that neither could see the other.

  They talked and talked, for how long, he wasn’t really sure. And, at one point, when Jasmine was talking to one of Robbie’s friends, Rob
bie risked a glance back toward where the guy had been sitting in wait. He watched as the man stood, craning his neck around the room, searching for the woman that stood right next to him. The man took a step in one direction, still scanning for his date, then a step in another direction, before finally giving up, with obvious frustration on his face, and heading toward the exit.

  Robbie feigned confusion when Jasmine finally remembered her male suitor and looked past him in the direction of her old seat. She wasn’t even sad when she noticed he had left. In fact, she never even mentioned having been there with someone. Robbie almost felt guilty. Almost.

  He didn’t feel guilty at the end of the night when she invited him back to her place. And he definitely didn’t feel guilty when he had her legs wrapped around him as she grabbed the sheets, her eyes rolling back, loud, orgasmic moan after moan escaping from the pit of her throat.

  The first few months were amazing, spectacular even. They lived hard and fucked harder, almost never leaving each other’s side except to go to work. It was the months after those when everything went to shit. She got jealous quickly and frequently. Her default mood seemed to be angry. He couldn’t pretend like he had been perfect. Constantly, his mind would wander to other women, to lust, a longing for others, for something new and exciting. He didn’t act on it, but he definitely wanted to. Maybe she knew that. Maybe she could see right into his mind. Maybe all women could.

  The first few months had been awesome—the rest, hell. But those final handful of months, the months capping off their couple-year-long fiasco, were the seventh circle of hell. They were at each other’s throats every second of the day. It seemed like any action one did simply pissed off the other to the point that they hated each other’s mere existence.