Excerpt: Frigid Bitch

It was Renee’s turn to blink. Maybe she had underestimated the danger, with that look in his brown eyes, the set of his jaw.

But she narrowed her eyes and murmured – her voice was lost outside the truck – “You try and come on my land, and I promise it will go badly. And it won’t be any fault or effort of mine. I’m sorry.”

She tugged herself away, and he let her go without much of a fuss. Renee looked around to see whether anyone had watched their little altercation, because if they had, she would have been mortified. But she was fortunate that where she had parked, the last building on the main street blocked most of the view.

“So I guess this is the royal brush-off again,” Josh said, leaning back against the truck as she fumbled with her keys. “Frigid bitch.”

She unlocked the door and whistled to Britt, who came over and jumped into the driver’s seat, then into the shotgun seat, settling into the bucket seat, and keeping a sharp eye on Josh. Renee pulled herself up – it was a big truck for a small girl. Before she shut the door, she said, “Don’t I know it.”

Renee thought she heard Josh snort before she revved the engine and left him and the main street behind. She breathed a sigh of relief and felt every muscle in her body unwind for every second she headed out of Antoine.

She turned on her truck’s CD player, enjoying the Celtic group Rua. They always made her more peaceful after a town visit, especially one that had Josh on its tail end. On her tail end.

In spite of the fact that Renee had always thought Josh looked down on her, she was surprised when he asked her to the winter dance, a gathering between the two Antoine east and west high schools, Barrington High School and Lex High School. At first, she was convinced that it was a Carrie-like joke, but after the third time he asked, she was surprised to find that in spite of the shiftiness of his glance when he asked her, he was serious. And she had no idea why – why he would want a girl who seemed afraid of her own shadow (seemed, not was), why he would want a girl who rarely talked and generally avoided his crowd, why he wanted a girl who never stopped to give him a second glance other than to get out of his way. After the third time she tried to walk past him in an effort to ignore what she thought was mockery, Josh had touched her cheek to stop her. And it worked, because she was not used to other people who were not her parents touching her at all. Then the next thing she knew, he was kissing her. His lips were soft and a little sloppy, but it was not as bad as she thought kissing might be. In spite of her nerves singing to get away from him, there was a strange warm running from her lips down her spine to pool low in her belly. It was not quite arousal, as she would discover later, but it was interest, and it was new and a little exciting. Her panic only magnified the feeling, at it magnified everything.

In spite of herself, in spite of the nervousness that Renee had taken for granted most of her life (and only getting worse the older she got), she felt herself lean closer. The kiss was nothing special, nothing fancy, nothing skilled. But they were only sixteen, and it was her first. Her fingertips brushed against his neck. She felt the warm velvet of his tongue on her lips, and that was when she jerked back. It was not that she did not like it, but she had reached her quote for closeness, and that was a little more invasive than she needed on her first kiss now that her nerves had reached a screaming pitch.

Renee had not given him an answer on whether she wanted to go to the dance, and while her father had bought her a dress for it, she did not go. She sat at home in her dark blue silky dress with the thin straps, corset tie back, and sparkles and watched Prom Night and Ever After in that order. She had regretted not going to the dance, but she had known she would not be able to handle it (no matter what her father had said about it). The next school day, Renee learned that Josh had gone with Leslie Fontaine. And she was just fine with that, although the touch of his lips haunted her for months as she hid under covers and tried to go to sleep. After a while, the memory faded and wrinkled. She did not even miss it.