Fat Girl by Leigh Carron Page A

of his girls, and that makes Dee off limits. I’m not the nice boy she deserves.
    Noticing my hesitation, Dee suddenly tugs at the front of her top in a way I’ve come to learn she does whenever she’s feeling self-conscious. “It’s okay. I just thought…you know…if you wanted company. Don’t worry about it, you don’t have to—”
    “I want to,” I hear myself say. “If you’re sure I won’t be in your way.”
    She looks up shyly. “You won’t be. I was just reading.”
    “Okay, if you’re sure.”
    “I’m sure.”
    Dee gets me a clean T-shirt of Victor’s. I change into it after she leaves. I’m not modest about my body, but I can’t let her see the marks on my chest.
    I ball up my soiled shirt and place it inside the garbage bin, burying it beneath trash. Winded from the exertion, I lean against the sink, allowing the throbbing of my ribs to subside before I wash the dried blood off my neck and hands. When I’m done, I go to Dee’s room.
    She’s lying on her back, knees bent, head raised on a couple of pillows, reading Jane Eyre , our required assignment for English Lit. I look at the twin bed. I look at her. She glances up and dangles a blue gel ice pack. I get a sense of what Adam must have experienced in the Garden of Eden. I know this is wrong, but the temptation to be near her is bigger than my will to resist.
    I slide in beside Dee and take the ice pack from her hand. Our fingers brush in the exchange. We both pull back quickly, and I gingerly press the bag to my cheek.
    “Wanna give me the Cliff’s Notes version?” I ask to distract myself from the fact that I’m lying in bed inches from a girl I can’t stop thinking about naked and under me.
    “That would be cheating,” she says.
    “C’mon. I’ll still have to read it to write the essay. Just the highlights.”
    Dee mulls that over, rolling that juicy bottom lip, and I’d like nothing more than to bite it. Being this close to her is sweet torture.
    “Okay.” She puts the book, page down, on her stomach and turns her head to face me. “The main character is Jane…well, obviously,” she says with a nervous laugh. “The story’s told from her viewpoint. It starts with her being orphaned at ten and going to live with relatives.”
    Does Dee relate to this Jane character? I don’t ask. I don’t want to make her sad. Instead, I close my eyes, listening to the soothing cadence of Dee’s voice. I catch glimpses of Jane’s hard life and her tragedies. But she also has a strength that I can hear Dee admires.
    At the part where Jane becomes a governess, Dee stops, probably assuming I’ve fallen asleep. I can feel her eyes on me and confirm it through a covert peek. Thinking she’s going unnoticed, she slowly skims her gaze from my face to my chest and then inches past my stomach to the fly of my jeans. I have to force my dick to heel. A reminder that she’s Papa T’s daughter does the trick.
    “Go on,” I say.
    “Oh,” she says, flustered, “I thought you were sleeping.”
    “Nah. I was just enjoying the sound of your voice.”
    I open my eyes to find her blushing. Damn, she’s sweet. Sweet and innocent. And I’m neither of those things. I’m known as a fuck ’em and chuck ’em kind of guy. Not that I pretend to be anything else. I use girls for sex, and they use me for whatever thrill they get from screwing a popular jock. But Dee’s different. She doesn’t care about my local fame or NBA potential. She likes me. And I like her too. Hell, if I’m honest with myself, I’m in love with her. I have been for a really long time. All those other girls have just been poor substitutes. But nothing can happen between us, which is why I’m going to keep my feelings and my hands to myself.
    “Where was I?” she asks, breaking into my thoughts.
    “Jane went to work as a governess.”
    “Oh, right.” She shakes her head, as if forcing her mind to focus. “So Jane takes a job as a governess, but the employer, whom