THE SPAWNS

They Don't Condemn Skinny Dipping

Chapter XIV—Cole

© DarknessAndLight

When I opened my eyes in the morning—after a good eleven hours of sleep—the first thought that ran through my mind was that I couldn’t believe what I had done yesterday. I had almost kissed Beth. What was wrong with me? Sure the thought of almost kissing Beth made me giddy in an almost impossible level, but it was still wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I had never forced my feelings on Beth. I was stupid to have done this. I shouldn’t have rushed her, put pressure on her, or make her feel uncomfortable because I knew she had been at least one of those things with the way she acted after. She had been sad and gloomy all night long and it had broken my heart, and even if she had held my hand, it didn’t exactly mean she was okay with my feelings.

But it was kind of hard to think about right or wrong when she had been looking at me with those heart wrenching dark blue eyes of hers. And her lips just looked so inviting, I’m sure they would have been soft, soft and warm and perfect.

Why did everything about that girl have to be so god damn confusing. She was just also so soft looking, that was the thing. Beth just didn’t strike me as someone you could grab by the back of the head and kiss angrily, no she was the kind of girl you’d take your time before brushing your lips against hers, the kind of girl you’d kiss slowly and softly until you’d come undone, until it plucked at every single strings of your heart. And god only knew how much I would give to be able to kiss those lips.

And for fudge cake, as far as I knew, kissing Lilibeth Eaton wasn’t even legal. Unless I married her, and I doubted that was going to happen in the near future. If only she could have been a just a little older, or if I could have been younger…

I groaned and rolled out of my bed, dragging my feet downstairs before I made myself crazy with thinking about this.

Both of my parents had already gone to work, so usually I would have had the apartment to myself but I was greeted with an unwelcome sight when I walked in the kitchen to make myself some Fruit Loops—my delinquent cousin eating my Fruit Loops.

I glared at her and pointed to her bowl of cereals. “Those are mine.”

She smirked back. “I should have figured as much, you know them being the color of the rainbow and all. Isn’t that your kind’s trademark symbol?”

“Gay jokes in the morning, so clever,” I said in a chirpy tone bringing my arms close to me, my fists bawled like I was overly joyful. And then I dropped my arms and glared at her again. “Don’t fuck with my Fruit Loops.”

“Don’t worry, that’s not one of my sexual deviances. Now, melons on the other hand…” she trailed, waving her hand.

What have I done to the cosmos to have to endure this? “Will you just, I don’t know, get lost or something, or at least, don’t make an entrance in my life until I have thoroughly woken up?”

“I’m sorry, Nancy,” she replied in a sing-song voice, “do you want me to bring you Fruit Loops in bed too, and maybe a foot massage, and then maybe I can clean your god damn cat’s litter and repaint your entire living room.”

“You know, I wanted siblings for a while, but now I really don’t see what all the fuss was about,” I groaned.

“You’re not my brother, you’re my cousin and as far as I’m concern, you’re just a waste of perfectly good oxygen,” she glared at me.

“Wow, the insults are just flying on this bubbly morning,” I chanted, waving my hands in the air over my head.

“It’s simple doucheface, don’t fuck with me, I won’t fuck with you.” She was pointing at me with a butter knife but I kind of backed up anyway. That chick was scary. And then she just put the makeshift weapon back on the counter and smiled at me sweetly. “So, what are the plans for today?”

I assumed that pointing out she was a psychopath might put my pretty face in danger, so instead I just groaned, make myself some cereals and sat at the counter, slightly sulking. “Well, I don’t know about your plans but I’m going over to Jay’s. You can stay here and look at the ceiling.”

“Do you really want to leave me all alone in your home? I could do a lot of damage. And didn’t you hear what your parents told you last night. You have to take care of me.” I don’t know why, but while she spoke all I could think about was Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Let’s just say warm and fuzzy wasn’t how I felt right about now.

“Taking care of you doesn’t mean I have to entertain you,” I pointed out. “For all I know, I could handcuff you to the water pipes with a stack of journals under you so you can do your business on it, with a water bowl and a food bowl and you’d be all good.”

“Kind of kinky, don’t you think? I’m your cousin Cole and I don’t come from the backwoods.”

What kind of cousin do I have? Seriously, insanity doesn’t run in my family. Rather, it strolls through, taking its sweet time, getting to know everyone personally.

I ran my hands furiously through my hair, making it sticking up all around. “For fudge cake… UGH! Fine, whatever. You better not be a pain though otherwise, I’m locking you in your room for the rest of the summer.”

“You think a lock could stop me?” she grinned mischievously, and resumed to eat her cereals. I glared at her for good measure and then started eating too.

“Don’t touch anything, don’t steal anything, don’t break anything, don’t set fire to anything, don’t—”

She interrupted my ranting. “Would you maybe want to put me a collar on and walk around with me on a leash? It would suit in your “my cousin is the female of a dog” analogy.”

I sighed. Okay, maybe I was being a bit overbearing but I didn’t trust the red head beside me. Not. One. Bit. “Just… just don’t fug anything up will you? These are my friends.”

She rolled her eyes for an answer.

Usually, I’d just walk in, but with Dakota beside me, I felt weird and knocked on the door instead. Jay and Beth’s dad answered the door. He looked at me, confused for a second, like he thought “why did you just knock?”

“Hello Cole…” he smiled my way and then looked at the red head mess beside me and still smiling nodded towards her. “Dakota.”

She smiled back, but it was fake. I wanted to bash her head against the threshold.

“They’re in the pool,” Jay’s dad automatically told me, “Maika got here about an hour ago.” He added.

I thanked him and headed around the house to the backyard Dakota on my tails.

“You didn’t tell me they had a pool,” she said in a reprimanding tone.

“It didn’t think it would matter,” I replied simply.

“Well it does,” she shot back. Seriously, when had my summer became a nightmare? “Water must be freezing though.”

It took me a second too much to answer that. “It’s a heated pool.”

She replied with something I really hoped she wouldn’t say. “Well I hope they don’t condemn skinny dipping.”

We had gone around the house and I could see the pool by now, but I still turned to face my cousin and glare at her. “You’re keeping your clothes on.” I wasn’t going to have her run around Jayden naked. Buddha damn it. That was a fugging recipe for disaster.

“You’re not my mom,” she scolded and step around me. Obviously she had seen the pool and she knew where she had to go from there. I sighed heavily, looking up at the clear blue sky. I shook my fist at it for dramatic effect and then followed my red headed nightmare.

I arrived just in time to hear Dakota say “Well, if I would have know you had all of this hidden under your clothes I would have come much sooner.”

This is great, just fugging great.

Today was a very sunny day, the kind of day that started off your summer perfectly, and Jayden and Maika were floating away on air mattresses in the pool. Normally I would have joined them and probably fallen asleep there and then, and then get woken up when one of the two morons pushed me off my mattress, but today wasn’t one of those days. First, because of the delinquent that was practically eating my best friend with her eyes.

Normally, I could have accepted my friend with my cousin, because hey, wasn’t I doing the same thing with his sister? But it was this girl that bothered me because she was screwing things up. I didn’t trust her. Ever since that time when I was ten years old and she had hidden a pocket knife and bubble gum in my pockets in a Wal-Mart and when I had stepped past the detectors and they had found everything, I had been so much trouble.

That’s what that girl was—trouble. She could only bring trouble. 

Also, there was the whole Beth matter that urgently needed to be dealt with. I needed to talk to her.

“Cocolishoo, you’re finally here!” Maika crooned, lifting her sunglasses off her eyes.

“Yeah, and I brought my court appointed delinquent of the month.”

Mai looked at my cousin for a second, an eyebrow raised, and then set her sunglasses back on her face. “Lovely.” I wanted to laugh. I could have kissed my double jointed friend at the moment. Dakota was glaring at her and her face was almost getting as red as her hair. ON the other hand, Jayden was completely obvious to this—he was just gapping like a moron at the new girl with tits.

I gazed around. “Where’s Beth?”

Jayden answered, finally breaking his gaze away from the red head. “In her tree.”

“How is she?” He made a face. Not good. “I’ll go talk to her.”

“If she scowls at you though, you leave,” my best friend warned.

“Of course Jay-Jay-Poo,” I tried to say it teasingly, but my voice kind of broke. I didn’t care though. I cared about the girl up in the tree.

I left Dakota with Mai and Jay and jogged to the big oak tree. I spotted her easily—she always sat on the same branches—and after taken my shoes off, started to climb up.

She didn’t tell me to stop or to go away so I figured it was a good omen. She just stayed on her branch, gazing at me, holding her book tightly to her chest.

When I reached her branch and sat beside her, we just kept on gazing into each others eyes. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or say. Should I apologize? Hadn’t her categorical NO yesterday been enough to hint that she didn’t want to talk about anything “holding hands, almost kissing” related? It was just a simple one time occurrence? I was over thinking and I was freaking out and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like not knowing what to do when it came to Beth.

I finally tore my gaze from hers and rested my eyes on her book. “What are you reading?”

“Jane Eyre,” she replied softly.

“Do you want me to read for you?” I asked, just as softly.

And then I saw it, the reminiscence of a smile, but it was enough. It was enough for me to know I was forgiven, enough to know she wasn’t going to ignore me like pest. It was enough to give me hope.

She handed me the open book and I started to read at the top of the page. “Because, he said, I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you,—you’d forget me.”

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A/N:

Helloooooo. Yes, awful waiting period, as always. I'm a bad person. 0_0 Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. What are your thoughts on Dakota so far? haha I know I asked pro Jay&Mai or pro Jayden&Dakota on Facebook and mostly got Jay&Mai love. What about you? haha

Now, I don't know when my next upload will be, but I do have a few new things in store for you. One is a new story, which will be weekly updated story that I'll start posting, in a week or two, which will be like, the quintessence of me not censuring myself. It's called My Wish Upon a Star if you want to get familiar with the character's faces and description, it's available on my Facebook page (Kay Darali aka DarknessAndLight). I'll also put up book recommendation, one every week too. I'll start that at the same time as MWUAS. Now, my next upload should be for The Family Curse and then probably The Eighth Time, but I do have stuff already written for the next The Spawns chapter and since it's Lilibeth's POV, she's always fun to write, so I'll see what I can do!

Thanks for your neverending patience. I reaaaaaaaally appreciate it! :D

Love you guys! :D