Teen Addek. First meeting. Teen angst.
Addison is content and going out of her mind with her life in Darien, Connecticut. She meets a boy who works in the mall across from her and hates his guts - oh, wait, maybe it's the opposite. . . .
I Met Him in the Summer
Addison likes the summer. This summer so far and she spends it in a haze of bug bites and muzzy afternoons, brain half-scrambled from the damp heat of Connecticut in global warming. It has to be climate change because growing up, it never gets this hot, never past seventy-six degrees in summertime. Though, it cools down at night, just enough for the sweat to tickle as it dries on the back of her neck.
Her hair is getting too long and it sticks to her skin because it's so hot and humid and they don't have an air conditioner in the house. It's not that they don't, they do — or more like they did — because it broke, short-circuited due to overuse and exhaustion and made a puff sound in a mini explosion that stank up the whole house, and delivery doesn't come in until Thursday.
That's three long days away.
Crickets chirp somewhere out in the dark. She kicks her legs against the rotting wood of the porch, taking a sip of the warm beer she'd 'stolen' from the fridge.
Is it even stealing if no one actually cares?
The Captain is slumped over the couch, snoring loud enough to rattle the walls. It sets her teeth on edge, makes her chew her nails straight down to the bed.
She stays outside, mostly, these days. She used to do this with Archer and his friend every summer, last two summers — sneak out of the house and let the roads take them to wherever they needed to be. Mostly, they would end up by the pond to feed the ducks. Sometimes, they'd walk by a frat party or two and the boys would invite her in but Archer would never let her, just pulls her away from them and say that she's so stupid because — don't you know they only want one thing from you. But he's off in college right now and he isn't coming home for the summer and she doesn't ask him why and he doesn't tell her; she misses her brother.
Because of that, because she likes the look of the moon from here, through the tall trees rising up at the edge of their house. They look like teeth in the mouth of an enormous beast, and it all feels appropriately grim. Addison takes another sip of beer, tilts her head back, and watches the moon rise.
x x x
The job at Claire's isn't so bad, really.
She doesn't tell her mom where she works or the fact that she does have a job because Bizzy wouldn't approve or probably would be so displeased with her for working in retail of all places. But she wants that leather jacket, needs it, actually.
To be honest, it's so that the kids at school would notice her.
Maybe even a boy.
It's at least cool indoors in the mall, a damn sight better than helping Bizzy at their garden for the summer. While she could spend her summer in the country club like she used, with people just like her, she just doesn't want to do that anymore. It's so hideously boring to lounge around and gossip about who's dating who and who's cheating on whom. She would rather make her own money, even if it's only a few dollars an hour.
Plus it's not like Addison's ever been the most popular kid at school. She doubts most of the people here even know her name, so it's not like anyone recognises her to give her smack for having a summer job.
(God forbid word comes out that the Montgomeries are struggling, financially.)
She recognises them sometimes, though. A few of the girls from school come in for matching charm bracelets or dangling earrings that drip with fake diamonds. She sees them like clockwork.
She recognises them, but they look straight through her, like she's made of paper fading slowly into the walls. They don't ask her why she's working when she could just ask daddy for money and that's because they don't know her, they don't see her. It's not like it bothers her, though. Invisibility. It's better, she thinks, to be invisible than to be a target.
It mostly is. And if it's still not that great, well. That's just life, isn't it?
She's not invisible to everyone, though.
There's a boy she sees sometimes, must be around her age, maybe a little older. He's no one she recognises. Honestly, he doesn't look like anyone Addison would know. From the way he dresses, she figures he goes to the one of those public schools in town, the one she's sure is a place of havoc and chaos, where drugs run rampant, students with behavioural issues and fights.
She knows they work the same shifts because she always sees him while she's getting off work, or when she's getting in. She sees him across the food court sometimes, long legs and dark hair, looking weirdly out of place under buzzing fluorescent lights and sticky plastic chairs.
Her eyes are always drawn to him like a bug to a zapper, every time, in every room. She does it without meaning to, looking for the boy she's started to think of as her one comrade in the weird slog of teenage mallrat capitalism. It's a stupid thought, but it makes her feel better all the same, so she lets herself keep it. It's not like it's hurting anyone.
One day they look up at the same time, eyes meeting across a crowded mall lobby, and the boy raises his hand in greeting. He waves at her. He smiles, and his teeth are charmingly white — like hers, but better. She blushes something fierce and studies the floor, pretends she hadn't seen that and books it in the opposite direction and volunteers to stay late after work for the rest of the week.
She's busy fixing a display — some kid that couldn't have been more than five ripped down a bunch of shiny bracelets before their mother could hurry them away, shooting an apologetic glance behind her — and that's why she didn't notice the boy, the boy until he's practically right on top of her.
"You do piercings here," he says, startling the shit out of her, and it's not a question.
His voice isn't anything like Addison had imagined, not that she's been imagining in her head what he might sound like these couple of weeks. He's soft spoken though, and she thinks it's kind of cute, but it's not what she had been expecting. He doesn't have an accent and it marks him as an outsider too — someone like her in some small, inconsequential way that gives her far too much hope — and she's still trying to place it when the boy raises his brows, waiting for an answer.
"That's right," she coughs lamely. "Yeah, free ear piercing with any earring purchase." She gestures vaguely at the sign.
"I was hoping for a tongue piercing."
"Oh, um, you're going to have to keep hoping, then. We don't do those here."
"Could you, though?"
And it's something about the way the boy says 'you', something about the way the word rolls off his tongue, decadent and personal, that has Addison saying 'yes' before she thinks of the reasons it should be 'no'.
They agree to meet at midnight, right here in the shitty mall they both work in, and the boy is walking away before Addison can even figure out what the hell just happened. She remembers one thing, something besides ocean blue eyes and a conspiratorial curve of lips — he said his name was 'Derek'.
She's always hate that name, Derek — in second grade, a boy named Derek stuck gum in her hair and her teacher had to cut a chunk of her hair from the roots and she remembers walking around in school and being called 'bald spot'.
It's stupid. Kids are stupid.
Derek isn't, though. This Derek. (Her Derek) Maybe he is stupid. She doesn't know him.
Derek, she still hates that name but she tries it on her tongue when she's alone and she thinks it's growing on her.
x x x
Addison is surprised when Derek actually shows up.
"You came."
"Did you think I wouldn't?"
She shrugs. "You don't seem like the type to go sneaking around deserted malls in the middle of the night."
Derek smiles, a tiny lift at the corner of his mouth that has her stomach doing funny things. "What type do I seem like?"
Addison scowls, annoyed. "I don't know. Not that type."
She opens the door with her key, hurrying Derek inside and looking around to make sure no one's spotted them. She keys in the security code to stop the alarm from going off while he takes a look around, touching everything like he owns the place, examining the rack of Sensitive Solutions earrings like he cares.
"Were you hoping for rhinestones?" Addison asks. It's not a good joke. No one ever said that sarcasm was a funny coping mechanism, just a functioning one.
"No," he says, answering like it's a real question, and that irritates her too. He holds up a tiny ziplock bag with a silver barbell inside. "I brought my own jewelry."
"Is it pointed in the end? Because if it's not, it's not going to work."
"It's sharp enough, I guess."
She shakes her head. "This is such a bad idea. Are you sure you want to do this? Last chance to back out."
Derek shrugs. "I trust you."
"Well, that's stupid."
"Why?"
"Because for starters, you don't know me."
"I feel like I do."
She sets everything up anyway, stupid or not, because they're here and he'd agreed to do this. If she's honest with herself, she feels a fizzy rush at the idea that she'll be allowed to mark Derek this way. It feels intimate — romantic, even, and Addison wonders what the fuck is wrong with her.
She unlocks the case that holds the piercing supplies and spreads them out over the table. She adds the mostly-full bottle of Smirnoff Cinnamon Gold she'd brought with her to the stash, deeming it a necessity. People in movies always drink before doing improbable medical procedures on themselves. So, she figures it'll help.
Derek raises an eyebrow at that, and she just shrugs. "You're getting your tongue pierced by a teenager while committing about three different crimes. What do you expect?"
He laughs a little, and she likes it.
The interior of the shop, so quaint and comfortably middle class by day, takes on a sinister hue at night. The candy-coloured walls seem to loom, and Addison feels a headache brewing. She takes a drink to make it stop, holding the bottle out to Derek who shakes his head.
Addison shrugs and picks up a pair of gloves while Derek watches with interest, surveying her supplies.
"You're not going to mark it first?"
She narrows her eyes, hands on her cocked hips. "You really want me taking a Sharpie to your tongue?"
"I suppose not."
"Alright, good." Addison pushes the small plastic flask back toward Derek. "Now, drink up."
And when he takes the bottle from her, he raises both brows at her and asking, "Is this real gold?"
She nods, pointing at the label. "23-carat gold leaf."
"Did you steal this, too?"
Too?
"It's not stealing when no one care," she explains, "Do you want to drink or not? I don't have all night."
And when he finally drinks, he doesn't even have the good grace to look grossed out while he takes a pull of the Smirnoff. Addison half expected him to think it would be disgusting. She knows how sickly sweet it is, after all. She tries not to let the disappointment show on her face as Derek wipes his mouth on the back of his hand before passing the bottle back to her, chasing the flavour with a smack of his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
Maybe he thinks he can taste the gold.
Addison takes another sip herself. She feels a weird illicit thrill at the fact that she's putting her lips where Derek's were, as if swapping spit secondhand is the most dangerous thing they're doing tonight. The thing is, it feels like it.
She takes a deeper drink to ignore it, screwing the gold cap back on before setting the (significantly lighter) bottle down on the piercing table.
"Okay," she says. The word echoes strangely in the empty room. Or maybe that's just her being strange again. "Sit down."
Derek does, folding himself onto the stool, and God, she hates him. Wants him. Or something. Thinks he's so blindingly handsome.
She snaps on a pair of latex gloves and wipes the piercing gun down with an alcohol swab. She feels oddly like a surgeon. Like her father. She loads the jewelry Derek picked into the gun and stands in front of him. She realises that she's going to have to stand a lot closer if she's going to do this right. She takes a deep breath and stands as close as she dares but she still can't reach him with his legs there, between him and her. And Derek seems to sense that and he parts his knees to let her through, and Addison can feel the heat of them bracketing her hips.
Derek just looks up at her with that placid, contented look on his face, as if everything is right with the world. As if Addison isn't about to shove a piece of costume jewelry through his tongue.
"Okay," she says again. "Stick out your tongue."
He does as he's told, and fuck if that doesn't send shivers through her. She grips his tongue in gloved fingers. The muscle is slippery and shockingly vivid beneath her hands. It feels like she's holding a fish, like catching an eel.
Not that she knows what that's like, though. She would nevet want to go fishing.
"This is such a bad idea," she mutters before she brings the piercing gun up to his tongue, before he can change his mind. "Deep breath."
Derek does, and it's done, just like that. Addison pulls the trigger, finger against the metal bar, and he makes a sharp noise of protest as the needle shoves its way through.
"Almost done, just hold still." she sets the piercing gun down on the table and picks up the other end of the barbell, the bright, shiny ball winking at her from the table. "Shit, that's a lot of blood." she says out loud when she's not supposed to.
Derek makes another angry sound, and Addison bites her own tongue.
"It's fine. Don't worry. Head wounds always bleed a lot," she says, trying somehow to fill the air.
He glares at her. "I trust you." He's a surprisingly effective communicator, even with his tongue still firmly clamped in her increasingly sweaty fingers.
"There," she pronounces at last, stepping back and stripping the gloves off. "All done. How does it feel?"
She can see Derek trying to figure it out, moving his tongue around behind his teeth and swallowing the blood pooling ruby and slick in his mouth.
"Fine," he says at last. Then, "Thank you."
"Don't mention it. You want another drink?" She holds the bottle of Smirnoff out, shaking the dregs, and Derek shakes his head.
She shrugs and drains the last of it for herself. She feels awkward now, nothing to talk about and all her confidence fled now that she doesn't have a needle in her hands. No pun intended. She busies herself cleaning up so she doesn't have to look at Derek. She wipes the piercing gun down with more alcohol and tosses all their trash into a grocery bag she brought with her for the very purpose.
She expects Derek to leave.
Derek doesn't leave.
He stands there watching her put things away, not saying anything, and she can feel his gaze like a gun to the back of her head. She resolutely ignores it, checking the store one last time and then, another. The last thing she needs is to get fired over this.
"We should go. Mall security comes around every hour or so, even this late at night."
Derek just nods. He doesn't ask why she knows that, and she is glad. He probably assumes she sneaks in here to get drunk and fuck around with boys — maybe she does, maybe she doesn't. But he has no reason to know that she comes here sometimes when her parents are fighting, that sometimes it's the safest place she can think to go.
"Do you want a ride home?" Derek asks. His voice has changed, softened and taken on an edge of sibilance as he talks around the swelling in his mouth.
It's kind of cute. It softens something in her, gives her a certain affection for this person she usually can't stand. Derek looks different in the dark, strangely beautiful with the neon glow from the bar outside illuminating the side of his cheek.
She shakes her head. It takes her a few seconds to find her voice, as if she's the one who's had her tongue skewered through. "That's okay. I don't mind the walk."
"Can I walk with you?"
She startles. She wasn't expecting that.
Addison thinks of her father, probably passed out drunk — in his bed if she's lucky, on the couch if she's not. She thinks of their home, the distance between each other is vast, how no one talks to anyone in there, the cold and icy hallways. She tries to imagine Derek in there and finds that she can't. Her imagination is good, but it's not that good.
"Okay," she says anyway.
Because she wants it. Because she's curious. Because her veins are thrumming with cinnamon vodka, her head pleasantly fuzzy, and right now nothing sounds better than a walk beneath a sky of patchwork lights with Derek.
Thank you for reading. Just a little teenage angst with Addison and Derek.
Also, I know Derek doesn't seem like he'd get a tongue piercing, but let's just say Mark dared him to.
Let me know what you think. Review!