Temptation: A Novel by Travis Thrasher

that I’ve never heard before.
    She sings the words to me. Something about scars of love and having it all and being breathless.
    We haven’t even started to have it all.
    She mouths the words and spins around me, and I really, really try not to dance like a donkey. But I’m not doing a great job.
    It only amuses her.
    She lifts a hand, and her lips curl up as she closes her eyes. She needs a mike and a stage, not a stagehand stumbling around her like I am.
    The music stops except for singing and clapping, and she urges me on—clapping. “Come on, white boy, show a little soul.”
    Then she keeps dancing, a girl in her own world, not caring a bit about the onlookers, the guys checking her out and the girls wondering who in the world she thinks she is and the older people amused at her passion.
    The song ends, and she just laughs, locking an arm in mine. “So you wish you were still at that party, shooting off fireworks?”
    “I went there hoping you’d be there,” I blurt out in an honest way, just like her dancing seconds ago.
    “Guess it was all in the cards. Pun intended.”
    We are back in the dark, sleeping town of Solitary in front of the place Lily guided me to. It’s a large Victorian house not far from the main strip of downtown.
    “This is your house?” I ask, glancing at the two-story home partially hidden in the woods.
    “Ha. Hardly. This is a bed-and-breakfast. My mom and I are staying here while we go through my grandmother’s place. It’s pretty messy. Not really in any condition to stay there.”
    “This looks nice.”
    “It’s very—well, quaint. Kinda like you.”
    “Quaint?”
    “Totally quaint,” she says with a smile.
    We’re standing at the sidewalk leading up to the inn.
    “I don’t think many guys would like being called quaint.”
    She walks up to me, and since she’s tall enough in her heels to look directly at me, that’s what she does. She moves her head inches away from mine.
    “I wouldn’t call many guys quaint. But you are, Chris. You’re sweet.”
    “Oh, come on, if I—”
    She interrupts me with a kiss. A soft and mesmerizing and confident kiss. And Lily knows just how long to kiss me, because she gently moves away and smiles at my surely dumbfounded face.
    “This was really nice, Chris.”
    The kiss? The evening?
    “All of it,” Lily continues, as if reading my mind. “Hanging out. Getting away and just forgetting.”
    “Yeah, I know.”
    “Thanks.”
    “No, thank you,” I say. “I want to forget. I need to forget.”
    She studies me and waits for more.
    Maybe more will come eventually. But not tonight. The only more I want tonight is to continue where that kiss left off.
    “Have a good night. And a good weekend.”
    “I don’t—” I start to say, thinking about the long weekend and about whether or not I’ll hear or see or—
    “You’ll hear from me. ’Kay? Soon.”
    I think I’ve started to breathe again. “Okay.”
    She smiles and then walks off into the shadows and up the steps of the inn. Then she’s gone.
    And yes, just like that—just that easily—so am I.
    Lost again in the lair of some beautiful girl I want to know and love.

28. Rolling in Something Else
     
    I come back down to earth when I enter the cabin and smell the unmistakable smell of a party gone bad.
    For a moment I check to see if Midnight is somewhere down here, laid out on the floor after getting into something she shouldn’t have eaten. But no—it’s as I thought. As I feared.
    The stench comes from my mom’s bedroom.
    I walk in and see the bathroom light on. For a second my heart and stomach drop, and I rush over to look at the sink. I open the cabinet doors and look at the piece of plywood at the back that I recently nailed shut.
    It’s still there. Hasn’t been touched.
    My heart is beating fast, and I go back into the bedroom. Mom is lying on her back. The sheets and comforter are all on one side of the bed, like she was wrestling with them. I pull them