#potheadsinner

There is a sigh that sounds to Kacey’s right where her fellow female staffer sits beside her, the pair perched atop a fallen log as out in the distance, two of their peers swim in the lake.

“You’re such a grandma, just come hang out with us after the kids go to bed.” There is a pause and then... “He’ll be there,” she follows up with a nudge of her elbow into Kacey’s arm.

It’s immediate, the scoff that Kacey exhales. Surely she hadn’t been that obvious - she was certain that her interactions with Matt were minimal at best and all of the glances his way were fleeting. Was she really that transparent?

“I can see through you like cellophane,” says her friend as she’d easily read her mind. A smirk quirks the girl’s mouth upward when Kacey’s head whips around to look at her. “Don’t think I don’t see how you two eye each other up.”

“What?! I don’t... He doesn’t...” Though Kacey shakes her head vehemently in protest, the girl on her right only carries on with her smug expression, as if she knows some unspoken secret.

“You’re blushing, Kacey. It couldn’t be more obvious.” As quickly as the topic has been brought up, it is dropped as the girl stands from the log and dusts off the back of her denim shorts before calling out to one of the two in the lake. “C’mon, Jude! We have to get set up for the kids’ talent show!”

In the distance, Kacey’s brother yells back, his voice carried away with the wind to make the response inaudible. The girl gives Jude a dismissive wave before offering a parting goodbye to Kacey and disappearing up the trail to make her way back to the cluster of cabins. It isn’t long until Jude joins her, a trail of water following him away from the lake’s beachfront - leaving Kacey alone with a still swimming Matt.

School goes on as it always has: they pass each other by in the hall and say nothing to one another. After the incident, as she refers to it in her own mind, she’d thrown a few glances in his direction, hoping that maybe she would catch him staring back. He never did. He never will, she’s convinced.

He does not like her just as she doesn’t like him.

So why does this awful, dull ache make a home in her chest each and every time she sees him paying even the slightest bit of attention to any of the other girls in school? And why do these lingering, intrusive thoughts pass through her mind every time she’s forced to bear witness to his behavior?

Why is she not good enough?

Is this some painful byproduct of being the little sister of Matt’s best friend?

Perhaps she is destined to live here, in this constant state of limbo—at least until Matt has graduated and moved out, that is. She can do this, she convinces herself when she finally picks herself up and dries her tears, soon exiting the bathroom stall. She can make it two more years until he’s gone and then it’ll be like he never existed at all.

That is, until he corners her in the hallway later that evening.

“Are you mad at me or something?”

The question, much like his sudden appearance, comes at her so quickly that she barely has time to register the words. “What,” she asks reflexively, eyes darting briefly to look over his shoulder, ensuring that Jude isn’t nearby.

“Mad. Are you mad at me? You haven’t looked at me in weeks.”

For a moment, Kacey finds herself stunned into complete silence. Mad. The word rolls around in her mind like a pebble battered by the waves, looking for a place to settle. But then, the remainder of his words begin to become more prominent. You haven’t looked at me in weeks. Weeks. Mad. Weeks. You haven’t looked at me.

Surely she cannot be hearing this correctly. She hasn’t looked at him in weeks?

She’s not sure when she she’s begun to touch him, but suddenly it’s as if she’s been thrown right back into consciousness only to find herself angrily poking an index finger against his solid chest, already well into her irritated reply.

“—the audacity. You’re the one who came onto me,” she starts, the all too familiar heat rising up to tint her cheeks pink again as she relives the experience all over. “You—you—you touched me.” The words leave her in an embarrassed whisper and she cannot possibly bring herself to look him in the eye, though her finger still pokes relentlessly at him. “You made me touch you and then it’s you who acted like I didn’t even exist, like that never happened. So am I mad at you?”

Kacey shifts her gaze to finally look up at him, her hand dropping down at her side as she momentarily presses her lips together to form a thin line to display her disappointment and displeasure. “Yes, I am.”

The pencil slams down onto the page, pressed down by the palm of her hand as she casts a glance upwards towards the ceiling to ask whatever higher power may be out there for some much needed patience and strength. After inhaling a calming breath, she pushes herself away from the small desk that sits just beneath her bedroom window and rises up onto her feet to exit the room. Small, bare feet carry her petite frame down the nearby stairs that lead to the basement where she knows that she will find her older brother and his best friend.

There is no knock, no courteous behavior on her part when she reaches the door and swings it open to enter the space sectioned off as the home’s fourth bedroom. As expected, she finds her brother, Jude, his tie loosened and the top few buttons of his preparatory uniform undone, in the midst of passing a joint. Her gaze swings from her brother to Matt who looks every bit the same state of undress as her brother as he reaches for the joint, not a care in the world that she is standing in the doorway with hands no perched atop her hips in disapproval.

“Dad’s going to kill you, you know.”

Jude exhales a sigh, simultaneously expelling smoke when he does so. He turns to her with a look of indifference. “Is that why you stomped all the way down here, to tell me that?”

“It reeks. I can smell it upstairs.” Her words go ignored as Jude turns back to the blonde who, she notices, spares her the most fleeting glance all while sporting the same expression of disinterest as her brother. “Turn down the music, asshole. I’m trying to study.”

“You’re always studying.”

“Jude...”

“We’re barely into the school year, you can’t have that much to study. Stop trying to outpace everyone.”

Kacey’s gaze flits back and forth between the two boys in front of her, her cheeks reddening from the anger that she can feel bubbling up within her. Her jaw works momentarily before she drops her arms to her sides and spits out her reply.

“Turn it down or I’ll fucking rat you out.”

As she pivots and begins to make her way back up to her room, the sound of Jude calling her a narc can be heard, eliciting a roll of her eyes upon her ascent.

Months Later

Months. It’s been months since this stupid, horrible, no good crush has developed and it makes her feel like crawling out of her own skin. Of course she would develop these unfounded and unreciprocated feelings for her brother’s best friend, the very same one who never looks her way or even acknowledges her existence even though they live under the same roof now—courtesy of the oh so generous compassion of her father. So when, in the middle of the night—the pair the only ones unable to sleep—she finds herself caged in between Matt and the couch cushion she finds herself confused and, well...

There’s something about the way the blue light of the television highlights Matt’s features as he hovers above her that only adds to the rush of this very surreal scenario.

The pad of his thumb glides along Kacey’s bottom lip, tugging on it slightly as he peers down at her through hooded lids. “Last chance, Kitty-Cat,” he murmurs into the quiet of the night.

Her lips part, breath hitched when his clothed cock presses insistently against the seam of the sleep shorts she wears, the friction of it all hitting her in all the best ways. As her head shakes, her eyes roll back whilst she exhales a soft pleasured sigh slips free. “Don’t stop,” she whispers in reply just before the words are cut off when his lips meet hers.

Master List