The Rarity of Falling

by Leeann M. Shane

  She gave me a cheeky smile. “That’s okay. I want to save room for my pasta.”

  As if our smiley waitress was waiting for that comment, our food arrived, steaming hot and so good looking my mouth filled with drool. I wanted to pile it into my mouth, but we were in public and I didn’t want to risk choking again, in front of Ava or Waitress Smiley for that matter. It was torture unraveling my napkin and extracting my fork and knife.

  Ava was first to bring a forkful of her pasta to her mouth. Her eyes closed and she moaned, her tongue darting out to slowly lick at her bottom lip.

  My food was forgotten. I watched her tongue, the way her bottom lip was left plump and shiny from the slow action of lapping at the pasta sauce left behind. It was there, sitting across from her at a booth, steam rising from our dinner plates, when I felt the punch of attraction right to my chest. The blow took my breath away and I wasn’t prepared for how badly I wanted to lean over and taste her bottom lip, too. It was the first time in my entire life I felt the desire. I’d never, ever, wanted to kiss anyone before. And you’re not supposed to want to kiss your friend.

  My life was primarily about surviving and hockey.

  Not girls.

  But then again, Ava wasn’t girls.

  She was only one.

  One girl with eyes the color of sweetness and a personality that spun the same.

  Her eyes opened slowly, and she gave me a happy grin. “It’s so good. How’s yours?”

  I blinked. Food. Right. I dug in, hoping to distract myself. From every single part of me who felt different toward her in the matter of seconds. “Good.”

  “Hey, I didn’t want to say anything, but, um.” She leaned close to whisper. “Is this within your budget?”

  I told her about the job Coach had landed me.

  Her eyes brightened. “Bishop, that’s great!”

  Her excitement made me not want to talk about it. I hadn’t known that college hockey was what I was working toward until Coach made it sound like it was a possibility. I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I didn’t want to put my dreams onto something that could crush them. “Yeah. Great. Can I taste your pasta?”

  She frowned, probably wondering why I wasn’t as excited as her. “Sure. Can I taste yours?”

  I cut her the best bite. Eggplant, chicken, cheese, and tangy tomato sauce. I held hers out for her and she held mine out for me. We met in the middle, both rising a little to reach the bite with our lips. Our eyes locked as we both tasted it, and then she did it again, closing her eyes and moaning.

  I sat down quickly and filled the empty parts of me with food. Bite after bite. Ava gave up half-way in.

  “I can’t eat anymore.” Her cheeks puffed out and she leaned to the right, holding her stomach. “You’re going to get sick.”

  I took advantage of the food while it was there.

  “Are we going to talk about why we’re really here?” she asked, watching me.

  I’d almost forgotten. We weren’t here to watch pretty girls moan or stuff my face. We were here to talk about how bad I’d screwed it up with her. Too full to bother with preambles, I told her the truth. “I guess I’m just preparing myself for when you wake up and realize you’re too good to hang out with a guy like me, so it’s kind of like I push away your friendship before you can split.”

  Her eyes softened and she bit down on her bottom lip. “Does that mean you don’t want me to push you away?”

  “I don’t know.” I frowned. “Maybe?”

  Now she just looked sad. She glanced down at her half-empty plate and pushed the contents around with her fork. “I like being your friend,” she mumbled petulantly. Her eyes shot up, defiant. “I’m never going to push you away.”

  Uncomfortable with the amount of defiance burning in her eyes, I cleared my throat. “I don’t want to keep doing it to you. I… like being around you, Ava.”

  “I like you, too, Bishop.” Her soft, sweet smile stabbed right through my heart.

  I was surprised to find I had one at all. “So, we’re okay?”

  She nodded, eyes on mine. “We’re okay.”

  I gave her a small smile, too. “Good.” I pointed at her food. “You going to finish that?”

  Giggling a little, she shoved her plate toward me. I finished hers off and then the rest of mine, proving her right after the last bite. I was stuffed to the brim. My stomach was churning, but I forced the feeling of wanting to puke aside. I paid the bill and tucked the tip between my drink and Ava’s empty sparkling water bottle.

  “Where are we going now?” she asked on the way out. She bounced on her feet, far too buoyant for my nauseated eyes.

  “Stop moving so much.” I burped, holding my stomach.

  “Let’s go study or something.” Her breath puffed out of her mouth, clouding in the air as she skipped around me on the way to our cars. “Anything but going home.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop. I looked down at her. “Please, Bishop? I don’t want to go home yet.”

  Things must still be bad between her parents. Maybe even worse judging by the low level of panic and fear in her eyes at the prospect of going home on her own. I sighed. “I’m too full to argue with you.”

  She wrapped herself around my arm like a flag pole, hugging my arm to her chest. “You mean now’s a good time to manipulate you?”

  I smirked down at her. “Yes.”

  She looked down, and then up, giving me wide, pleading eyes. “Can we see what Henny and Laurie are doing?”

  I was amazed and pissed off. First, the honey in her eyes were rich, sticky sugar in the dark, and secondly, I didn’t think she knew the sight of them pleading was impossible to deny, so then how’d she manage me to get my head to nod? “How’d you do that?”

  She stuck her tongue between her teeth and bit down, smiling like a brat. “My dad told me when I was a little girl that I should only talk to boys who said yes to this face.” She made the look again, all honey and wanting. “He said any boy worth my time wouldn’t be able to deny me, because he never could.” And then she got sad, seeming to realize she’d lost that part of her relationship with her dad.

  I did the only thing I could do. I told the truth. “I think he meant that the other way around. He wanted you to think you had the power in a relationship and to never be with a guy who didn’t want it that way. He never wanted you to be powerless.”

  “Then why did he leave?” she asked, bare. She hugged my arm hard, the cold of our breaths clouding in the parking lot of Amore Eterno.

  “I don’t know, Ava. But I don’t think it has anything to do with you. How could it?”

  She swallowed, pressing her chin to my bicep and gazing up at me. She was in the perfect position for me to kiss her. Her lips were there, and I meant there. But I wasn’t sure she wanted me to kiss her. Not to mention I didn’t want to take advantage of her pain.

  The sound of a car horn honking tore my eyes from her lips. “Call your friends,” I murmured.

  She did, playing a balancing game on the white parking space line as I leaned against her car and tried to keep my dinner down. “Henny can’t come out. It’s a school night, and Laurie’s got curfew. Again. Why? Because their parents still care if they’re home or not.” She shoved her phone in her back pocket roughly. “I guess it’s just you and me tonight.”

  She smiled before she could stop herself, hiding it by looking at her feet.

  She wanted it to be just her and me.

  My stomach filled with heat and I found it slightly worrisome how much this girl affected me. When no one before her ever had. And I was fairly positive no one after her would be brave enough to even try.

  “Let’s go to my place and watch a movie?”

  “Homework first?” I wagered. “And I leave by midnight?”

  She crossed her heart. “Homework first.”

  “And I leave by midnight,” I reminded her since she left that part out of her promise.

  “One?”

 
“Ava.”

  She gave me her eyes. “Why do you have to leave, Bishop?”

  I put my palm to her forehead and gently shoved her away. “Nice try, loser.”

  She laughed, skipping over to her car. “I’ll race you home?”

  “No,” I grumbled. “That’s not safe.”

  “Fine. I’ll drive like a turtle and get home when I get home.”

  “Perfect.” I sank down into my front seat and followed her car home. The brat drove ten miles an hour the entire drive there, her grin visible in the rear-view-mirror.

  Could she see mine, too?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ava

  I liked Bishop.

  As a friend, and as… more.

  But thinking about it was scary. I wasn’t entirely sure about his feelings. I thought he liked me, too, but the poor boy didn’t know how to smile; I didn’t want to overload him when I myself didn’t fully understand my feelings.

  All I knew was this: I’d had friends that were boys before and I’d had boyfriends, and not a single one of them made me feel the way Bishop did.

  He was special.

  Probably more so because he didn’t think he was.

  I parked my car in the driveway—empty driveway—and he parked in the street, walking over with his hands in his jeans. His black eye looked sore and I wanted to kiss it ten dozen times, but I didn’t have to ask to know he wouldn’t like that. I was just happy we were talking again and feared anything that would send us back to silent enemies.

  I unlocked my front door and stepped inside, assaulted by the scent of home. Only, it didn’t feel like home anymore. It was a house absent of warmth. I detested being in it alone. Bishop and I took our shoes off and I ran to turn the house alarm off, flipping on lights when I was done.

  He stood stiffly in my living room.

  Too tall, too cute, and too moody.

  “I’m going to change. Put a movie on and make some popcorn if you want.”

  He grunted.

  In my room, I tore my school clothes off and exchanged them for black sweatpants and a long-sleeved white shirt. I put my hair into a pony tail and washed my face, studying it only momentarily in the mirror before I wondered if I should put on makeup. The thought made me blush with embarrassment and I snapped off the lights. Bishop wasn’t that kind of boy. And I’d never been that kind of girl. Makeup was fine for me, but I couldn’t change my face and frankly didn’t want to. He was sitting on the couch when I came down, legs spread wide, head lolled back.

  His long, pale throat and head was slightly tilted to the side so he could see the screen. One arm was thrown over the back of the couch.

  I turned the lights off and grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch, sitting down next to him. “Want some?” I offered, wiggling the blanket.

  He shook his head.

  Crap. There went my snuggling scheme. “Let’s watch something funny.”

  “Funny?” he said, like comedy was a foreign concept.

  “Don’t you need a laugh?”

  “I laugh,” he argued.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he didn’t laugh. Like at all. That made me sad. He picked another horror movie, this one was about a group of underdressed teenagers playing a game of truth or dare gone wrong. Five minutes in, they were already making out. Like really making out. His tongue was down her throat and all I could hear was their saliva.

  I peeked at Bishop, but he yawned at the screen. His nonchalance about the make-out scene was either a good sign, or a bad one. Either I was a baby, or he was used to that sort of thing. Used to making out with girls who wore nothing and wore more makeup than I even owned.

  The dark made his face overrun with shadows. “What’s your type?”

  “My type of what?”

  I said it before I could stop myself. “Girl.”

  For some reason, his eyes filled with mirth and he laughed once, turning back to the TV. “I don’t know, Ava. Why?”

  And then I started wondering if I was too kiddy for him. Maybe that’s why he didn’t seem interested in the other girls at school. “I was just wondering.”

  “Well, stop.”

  I glared at the side of his face.

  After a few more minutes of the movie, he shifted, burrowing down on the couch. A few more minutes passed. And then he spoke. “What’s your type?”

  I hid my smile with my blanket. “I don’t know, Bishop, why?”

  He let that settle. Stared, unmoving for a moment, and then hit pause and looked at me. “Answer me.”

  “You didn’t answer me.”

  “That’s because I don’t have a type. But you do, don’t you?” He narrowed his eyes.

  Did I have a type? I didn’t think so. I tried to think about what I liked about my ex, Josh, but that relationship wasn’t exactly the stuff made of daydreams, that was for sure. He was cute, I guessed. With a head of blond, curly locks and a cute face. His personality, however, wasn’t. But with Bishop looking at me, waiting for my answer, I wanted to give him the truth. “I never really thought about my type. But if I had to compile a list, nice is the number one trait on my list.”

  “Niceness?” he snorted.

  I ignored him. He was nice, he just didn’t know it.

  “What else?”

  “Someone who never goes away. Like my dad. Don’t give me good years only to take them all away later on.”

  “What else, Ava?”

  “I’d like an onion. Someone with layers. Not just a transparent guy who never really knows himself. But someone who never stops learning who they are.” He was staring at me so hard, I was afraid to move. “Also, I wouldn’t mind if he looked like you, Bishop.”

  Once the statement was out, there was no way to take it back. Even if I wished I could. So badly, in fact, I closed my eyes and begged for a time machine. But when I opened my eyes, he was still staring at me. Boring into my brain with those icy, dark blue eyes of his. “But I can negotiate on that last part,” I whispered.

  He turned back to the TV and pressed play.

  Putting an end to that.

  “You’re way too good for me,” he whispered to himself like he was trying to compute an equation in his head, and it wasn’t adding up the way he thought it should.

  I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure he even knew he’d said it. His brows were drawn down and I just knew he was beating himself up inside.

  “This movie sucks,” I spoke up.

  “How would you know? You’ve been staring at me the entire time.” His knowing eyes cut to mine.

  I didn’t dare let him get to me. “What can I say? I like horror movies.”

  He surprised me by laughing. A real laugh. It lit up his eyes and cut the tension between us.

  He handed me the remote and I picked a movie that was terrifying. I didn’t have time to watch him because I was too busy screaming my throat out. When it was over, I was exhausted, and my throat ached. I grinned. “That was awesome! Want to watch another?”

  “What about homework?” he reminded me.

  Man, he was an overachiever… “Whatever, nerd boy. Let’s study.”

  He turned the lights on, and we spread our collective homework out on the coffee table. I made us some cocoa and we worked in silence. It was almost nine when the front door opened, and my mom came in. When she spotted us, she paused, blinked, and then slugged her purse over the side of the couch and kicked off her flats.

  “Did you talk to your father?” she immediately demanded.

  Like he was my problem or something. “No.” I didn’t mention that I hadn’t talked to him since they told me he was taking some time apart. She hadn’t asked that.

  “Did you eat?”

  I looked at my physics homework. “Mhm.”

  “I was thinking of ordering a pizza. You want to humor me?”

  I glanced at Bishop, who was being nice and pretending he didn’t exist. “No, but I think he can.”

  “What
do you say… what was your name again?”

  “Bishop,” he said unwillingly. He looked at me weird, an expression on his face that I loosely interpreted as him screaming: “what do I do?”

  “What do you say, Bishop? Want to help me eat my feelings?”

  He gave her an uncomfortable smile. “I can always eat.”

  I was amazed. One that he’d bothered to give her a smile, even if it were fake, and the boy was a black hole when it came to food.

  She gave a weak cheer and handed him her cell and credit card. “Order us a pizza. Ava Baby, you want some of those brownies?”

  Something awful was going on. My mother only called me that when she wanted me to remember that I was little once and thought she hung the moon. What was going on? What did my father have to tell me? I felt sick. Too sick for her stupid brownies. “No,” I mumbled, returning to my homework. But I couldn’t see the pages; the words blurred together. “I forgot something in my room.” I ducked out before Bishop could stop me and Mom could notice.

  I found it hard to breathe. Impossible. My chest ached and my head clouded. I sat on my reading couch and put my hand to my heart; it was pounding.

  My door opened and Bishop poked his head in.

  I couldn’t pull in a breath.

  “Put your head between your knees,” he instructed, closing my door and crossing my room in two, long strides. He stooped to his heels and put his hands on either side of my face. “Trust me. Do it and breathe slow and deep.”

  I lowered my head and tried to breathe. My panic swirled, making it difficult, but he counted for me each time I managed to take a deep breath. He rested his hands on my shoulders and rubbed my arms, his large grip warm and secure. I raised my head, our eyes locking; I flung myself at him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and crushed myself to his broad chest.

  He fell back on his butt, grunting under my attack. He was stiff and unmoving for the longest. Eventually, he unthawed and touched me. He rubbed my back with both hands, and I felt small and safe in his cocoon. I pressed my face into his neck and inhaled the scent of spice and soap on his skin, wondering when my life had gotten so unstable that I even needed to feel safe.

  “What’s wrong?”