Page 263 of Ominous: Part 1
Shuck off our clothes, pull on our swimsuits and scatter toward different sources of water.
The rain died off.
The storm remains.
I push up, toes flexing along the bottom of the pool to propel me to the surface.
The first thing I hear after I breathe, and swallow, in that order, is Eden’s laugh. Swimming toward the ladder, I pull myself up, blinking through the chlorine, to see her beside Dominic on one of the wicker couches, gray cushions damp from the earlier rain.
Her tan shoulder brushes his, her legs curled underneath her. One of the straps of her silver swimsuit is drooping from her arm, and I see the white line of skin beneath it from her tan. I want to push the strap up. It’s like a habit, an instinct, to keep her covered.
Even so, my eyes drop to the fabric along her torso, everything shredded and ripped like most of her clothes outside of school. My gaze roams over her thick thighs, the round curve of her ass just visible beneath the cut-out of her one piece.
She takes something from Dominic.
A joint, I realize.
Their fingers brush, and she doesn’t lose her smile, the aftereffect of her laughter.
My fingers tighten around the metal bars of the ladder at the deep end. I’m still on one of the rungs, and I don’t get out yet. They haven’t noticed me, I don’t think. All that time I was under, they didn’t notice.
Thunder cracks overhead.
Eden jumps, withdrawing from Dominic at the sound, as if it brought her back to a reality where she squirms away from the feel of skin on hers.
Dominic has his elbow propped on the arm of the couch, bleached head of hair resting in his palm as he watches my girlfriend.
His knees are spread, dark blue swim trunks rising just over his kneecaps. He’s shirtless, and even in the soft orange glow of lights around the pool, his skin is pale enough to mistake him for a cartoon ghost.
Eden inhales from the joint as I get out, water dripping on the cement. I make my way toward her, and she passes the joint back to Dominic as she exhales from her nose, smoke curling up around her pretty face while she watches me. I grab a towel from the opposite end of the couch from Dom, and scrub it over my face, patting my arms and torso dry.
Bottles of vodka, rum, and wine are nearly empty on the glass table to Dominic’s right, cups stacked up high, a trashcan Janelle thought to bring out shoved beside the table to keep things relatively clean.
“How was your swim?” Eden grins at me as I sit, then place one foot on the low table in front of the couch, the towel on my lap. Her eyes are red, lids lowered, but she hasn’t drunk anything at all, which surprises me.
“Good,” I tell her as lightning forks violently down from the sky. I hear a distant scream from the beach, but it’s too full of laughter to indicate true distress. “How’s the weed?”
Eden laughs, spreading her fingers over her mouth as she does, like she’s trying to hold it in.
“You wanna experience it yourself?” Dom asks, leaning across Eden, his ribcage touching her thighs.
I glance at the joint he’s offering. “I’m good.”
He looks surprised, brows flicking upward, but he just shrugs, then leans back, taking another pull.
None of the three of us are touching, but Dominic is far closer to Eden than I am.
I know what she sees in him. He’s hurting, unassuming, mildly funny, and she isn’t intimidated by him like she sometimes seems to be with me.
I’ve seen his mom’s arm, though. The way her fingers tremble as she sets the table in the Lander’s household. I’ve seen Dominic’s temper, and Eden has, too, but she writes it off as his grief over Winslet. The reality is he’s always been that way.
A bomb.
I don’t think children become their parents all the time. I’m nothing like Dad. But Dominic has the same temper as his father. I think he’s well on his way to filling his shoes, whether he wants to or not.
I wonder what Eden would think of him then.
“Lollipop”by Lil Wayne is playing from someone’s phone, connected to the speakers inside the house and around the pool. Definitely not my fucking phone. I run a hand through my damp hair, then grab the joint and the green lighter from the kitchen island upstairs, all black marble. The house is a contrast, light marble flooring, floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the ocean, bathed in black now, at nearly midnight.
