by Mila Gray
I still don’t get it, but then I glance down at her legs and wonder why I hadn’t noticed until now that she’s not wearing anything except my sweater. It’s riding up at the tops of her thighs, giving me a peek of her underwear. Wow. Okay. Look away, Tristan, look away. I give myself the order, but it takes a few seconds for my brain to obey, and the image stays with me, burned onto my brain like a cattle brand on flesh.
I can’t unsee what I’ve seen, and that tiniest glimpse of white and the image of her bare legs has stirred something inside me that is going to be a very visible problem in a few seconds. I turn around quickly, to protect both our modesties, and start thinking of unsexy things like Gunnie doing push-ups on the weight bench and …
… I hear her pulling on a pair of shorts and doing up the zipper, and immediately thoughts of Gunnie evaporate, and all I can think about is the sound of that zipper, and now I’m imagining what it would be like to slowly, very slowly, pull it down and ease the shorts over her hips and … Wrong. So wrong. What is with me? My problem is getting bigger. I focus on the square root of pi.
“Okay,” Zoey says.
I give myself a mental shake and a stern admonishment before turning back around. “You want to go for a walk?” I ask, running a hand over my head and hoping she hasn’t noticed how flustered I am.
“What?”
“The dryer will take a while. We can walk around town. I can show you some of the sights.”
“In the dark?” she asks me, one eyebrow raised.
It’s a good point. Hadn’t thought of that. What am I going to show her in the dark? I don’t know. I just wanted to get out of the close confines of the laundry room and into the cool night air, but I didn’t want to leave her out here alone waiting for the dryer to finish, and, okay, I also just didn’t want to leave her, period. I think back to what Kit said earlier about me having the hots for her. He was just teasing me, but as soon as he said it, I realized it was true. I was attracted to her. Am attracted to her. Shit.
“Okay,” she says quickly before I can even come up with a response to what nighttime spectacles Oceanside has to offer. I can think of only one thing I do for excitement around here at night. Okay, two. The first involves my bike and a long straight road through the desert, and the second involves … Why do I keep going there? Back the hell up, soldier, I tell myself. You just started thinking about kissing her, and now you’ve jumped all the intervening stages and gone straight to sex? Shit. Like it wasn’t bad enough thinking about kissing her, I have to go and open that Pandora’s box too? It’s too late, though, to unthink the thought, and my mind starts shooting off in all sorts of directions, picturing Zoey’s upturned face, her lips parted ever so slightly in a smile, her naked legs tangled with mine, her naked body laid out beneath me, before I force myself to quit thinking altogether. What is with me? It’s Zoey. I’ve known her since she was tiny. I’m best friends with her brother. She’s terrified, and her whole life is a mess; this is the last thing I should be thinking about.
“Are you coming?” she asks.
I startle. But she’s just waiting for me, wondering what I’m doing. I follow her outside, noting that she pauses and looks hesitatingly back at the knife she’s left on top of the dryer.
“You can bring it if it makes you feel better,” I tell her.
She shakes her head. “No, it’s fine,” but she sounds unsure. We start walking toward the street. “I didn’t mean to go all Psycho on you back there. You scared me is all.”
“No,” I say. “I’m sorry I snuck up on you. I should have thought of that.” I remember the look on her face when she turned toward me holding the knife in her hands—the terror in her eyes but also the shard-like glint of anger. She wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
I hate Zoey’s father for doing this to her—making her so afraid. I wonder where he is right now. Is Zoey right to worry that he could find them here?
“He’s in Scottsdale,” Zoey says as though she’s heard my silent thoughts.
I nod. “Do you still think it was him who started the fire?”
I hear her sigh. “I don’t know.”
We’re walking side by side. I really want to put my arm around her, and it’s not because I’m drawn to her or because I’m attracted to her, which I’m not even bothering to deny anymore. I want to put my arm around her because more than anything I want to make her feel better, to reassure her that I’m going to look out for her, watch over her, as Will asked me to.
She’s chewing her lip, and then suddenly she looks at me. “If it wasn’t him who started the fire, then the only other person it could have been is Cole.”
“What?” I come to a sudden stop.
She shakes her head, upset. “I know it sounds crazy, but … you’ve met him.”
“But arson?” I ask her. “He’s just a kid.”
“I know,” she says, her voice wrung out with stress. I figure this is the first time she’s spoken of her suspicions with anyone. “But he ran away straight after the fire. The firefighters thought it could have been him who set it.”
“Has he ever done anything like this before?” I ask.
Her top lip pulls up in a sardonic smile. “What? Blow up a car? No.”
I can’t help but laugh. She glares at me for a moment, but then she bursts out laughing too. I wish I could keep making her laugh, keep hearing it, because it’s the best thing I’ve heard all day. But soon she falls silent, pulls herself together, and we keep walking.
“I’m not sure which option I prefer,” she says. “Either my dad’s trying to kill me, or my brother is an arsonist.”
“Those aren’t great options,” I admit.
“I found these drawings yesterday that Cole had done. They’re of people shooting one another. It’s like a massacre of stick figures.”
“Okay,” I say slowly.
“That’s not normal, is it?” she asks, looking at me.
“I wouldn’t know,” I finally answer, aware she’s looking for reassurance that I can’t give. “My friend Didi is a psychologist, though. If you’d like, I can ask her to recommend someone he could talk to.”
“We can’t afford it,” she says. “And I know there are free counseling services, but I’m worried that if anyone finds out, social services will get involved. Or the cops.” She kicks the curb and walks on. “I’m so bad at this.”
I catch up to her and take her by the elbow to pull her around to me. “Hey, you’re doing an amazing job.”
She looks up at me, chin defiantly jutting but eyes watering. “No, I’m not.”
I take her by the shoulders. “Yes, you are. You’re amazing.” I don’t mean it in just the way she thinks but in every single way possible. I’ve seen her today, putting herself second to everyone, holding it together in front of them all. I’ve seen the kindness she reserves for Cole, who’d frankly test the patience of a saint. I’ve seen the patience she shows her mother, even though she’d be within her rights to feel mad at her for letting her bear the weight. I’ve seen her pride and her dignity and her strength, even when she’s feeling humiliated and broken and weak. I’ve been with her for close to twenty-four hours, but it’s more than enough time to realize that she’s amazing. And she doesn’t deserve any of this.
I stare into her eyes, willing her to know that I’m telling the truth and shocked, too, by just how much this girl has gotten under my skin in such a short time. She shakes her head sadly, takes a deep breath, then pulls away, and I wonder if she saw something else in my look, beyond my reassurance, because color rises in her cheeks.
“So, what sights are you going to show me?” she asks.
I try rapidly to think of what’s open in Oceanside past midnight, but the options are few and far between. Then I remember the pier. “This way,” I say, taking a right and heading to the beach.
It could be my imagination, but I think she’s edged closer, so our arms are almost touching as we walk. Don’t read anything into it,
I tell myself. She’s dealing with a lot, and for all I know she might even have a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. It wouldn’t surprise me if she told me she hated all men after seeing what her dad did to her mom.
“So, are you still a nerd?” I ask her as we walk.
“What?” she asks, turning to me surprised. “Who are you calling a nerd? You were the nerd!”
“True.” I smile. “But what I remember most about you is that you always had your head buried in a book, and you were obsessed with Greek myths.”
She cringes. “You remember that?”
“Oh yeah. I remember the costume you used to wear all the time. What was it? A gladiator?”
“No,” she answers, a little outraged. “I was Athena! A Greek goddess.”
“Right.” I laugh, remembering the white tunic, plastic armor, and headdress she wore for months when she was about seven. “Isn’t she the goddess of wisdom or something?” I ask.
“Yes, and war,” she tells me, her mouth curling into a smile that does something to my gut. Is she flirting with me?
“It was cute,” I tell her. Am I flirting back?
She snorts, flashing a quick glance in my direction. “Cute? You definitely did not think I was cute.”
“Yes, I did.” Still do, I add silently. And definitely not in a seven-year-old-cute way.
She snorts again, this time in disbelief. “You thought I was annoying—don’t deny it.”
“I didn’t!” I argue. “I swear to God. I mean, you were a little competitive—”
“When you let me play!” she answers, laughing. “You and Will were always leaving me out.”
“Sorry,” I say, shrugging, because it’s true. Will and I would often leave her out. In our excuse, we were ten and she was seven. And a girl. And all she wanted to do was play make-believe games that involved dressing up.
“You had that penguin phase too,” I remind her.
“Oh God.” She laughs, showing the gap in her teeth. “I forgot about Boris.”
“Boris?”
“We went on a visit to the zoo with school. There was a penguin called Boris. He looked really unhappy, like he was desperate to get out of there.” She pauses. “I wanted to break into the enclosure and free him. I hate zoos. You know, I read that penguins in captivity often have to be given Prozac for depression.”
I smile as I listen to her, because it’s great to hear her chatter away and see the darkness lift off her like a storm front passing over, revealing sparkling blue skies.
“Why are you smiling?” she asks. “It’s sad.” But she’s smiling too. “Poor Boris. I wrote to the zoo’s board of directors, demanding they free him.”
“Did they?”
She shakes her head. “No. Of course not.”
“Why did the penguin cross the road?”
She stares at me, only half-amused.
“To prove he wasn’t a chicken.”
She shakes her head, but there’s a twitch of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “You’re still collecting bad jokes, then?” she says.
“What do you mean?” I say, though I know exactly what she means.
I remember once going around to their house because Will hadn’t been at school for a few days. Zoey answered the door and took me upstairs to his room, where I found him drawing at his desk. And when he turned, I saw he had a black eye. Will told me he’d gotten the black eye from being hit in the face by a ball. I didn’t say anything, though I had questions. He got mad at Zoey for letting me in and yelled at her to get out of his room. She burst into tears, and I felt bad that somehow I was the reason.
I gave him his homework and told him I’d see him at school. But before I left, I knocked on Zoey’s door and found her crying on her bed. I sat down next to her, feeling awkward and uncertain.
“Knock, knock,” I said eventually.
“Who’s there?” She sniffed.
“Europe.”
“Europe who?” Zoey asked.
“No, I’m not.”
Zoey stared at me for a full five seconds, then burst out laughing.
I told her a few more bad jokes until the tears had fully stopped. I liked Zoey. I thought of her sort of like a sister, not like Dahlia, exactly, but Zoey was someone I wanted to look out for and take care of, the way Will did.
“Can I tell you a secret?” she whispered, glancing nervously at the door.
I nodded.
She leaned in closer. “It wasn’t a ball.”
She rocked away from me, her eyes never leaving my face, a vulnerability and fear in her eyes that I still recognize today. I didn’t know what to say to her then. I was only a kid myself. I didn’t ask if it was her dad, but I knew it was.
In the end, feeling like a coward, I took her hand and squeezed it. “It’ll be okay,” I said, and told her another joke.
“I remember you used to always tell bad jokes,” Zoey says to me, pulling me back into the moment.
“Bad jokes?” I say. “I seem to remember you laughing at them.”
I don’t tell her how that day I went home and memorized jokes especially for her, how making her laugh became one of my obsessions.
I look at her and see she’s smiling, and I get the same little sense of satisfaction I used to get when I made her smile as a kid.
“Are you still collecting baseball cards?” she asks with a slight smirk.
“No,” I answer, thinking of the collection sitting in a shoe box in my closet. “Not really. Are you still the Napoleon of board games?”
“What do you mean?”
“You always had to win. Like I said, you were very competitive.”
“You always let me win. That’s what made me mad.”
“I didn’t let you win,” I argue, a little annoyed she saw through my ten-year-old self’s ruses.
She cocks an eyebrow at me.
“Okay, not all the time,” I admit. “Just the Game of Life. I know how much you wanted to win it.”
She sighs. “I loved that game.” Her smile fades. “Don’t think I’m ever gonna win it in real life, though.” She says this last part with a bitter laugh.
“I’ll play you again sometime,” I tell her. “Fair and square. Okay, give me your foot.”
She stares at me, bewildered. “What?”
I point at her foot. “Give me your foot. I need to give you a boost.”
“Why?”
“We’re going over.” I point at the gate we’ve stopped in front of.
She looks at the sign stuck to the gate. “It says ‘Pier Closed.’ ”
“To other people,” I tell her. “But I’m Coast Guard.” I’m totally bullshitting, and she knows it.
“Couldn’t we get in trouble?” she whispers, glancing around for anyone watching, but it’s late and no one is around.
“I’ll tell anyone who finds us that we thought we saw someone about to jump off the end of the pier and raced out here to save them. We’ll be heroes.”
She takes a deep breath, then sticks her foot out toward me. I grin, cup my hands beneath it, and boost her up and over the gate. She’s athletic, gripping the top, swinging her legs over, and jumping down lightly to the other side. I follow her, noticing as I’m halfway over that a cop car has appeared with something like perfect timing, and is pulling to a halt on the street fifty meters away from us. Shit. I land in a crouch, grab Zoey’s hand, and start running down the pier.
“What?” she hisses. “Why are we running?”
I pull her into the shadows alongside the wooden building that houses the ticket office and arcade. “Shhh,” I say, glancing over her shoulder, noticing the cop is now out and lumbering over toward the pier entrance. Shit. Did he see us? He must have.
“Oh my God,” Zoey whispers, her hand clenching mine tight. “What are we going to do?”
Being arrested was not part of my planned entertainment for this evening. I really should have thought this through. “Shhhhh,” I say under my breath, watching the
cop pull out a flashlight and start probing the shadows.
I pull Zoey closer, and she shrinks away from the light, pushing up against me. I cradle her as close as I can, deciding that if we’re spotted I’ll just take the rap and pray I can talk us out of it. Zoey’s holding her breath, and when the cop rattles the gate to check it’s locked, she tenses even further and we’re pressed so tightly together that for a second I forget entirely about the cop and about the fact we’re going to be arrested. All I can focus on is the smell of her hair and the feel of her body, which is just as perfect as I’d imagined—softer, too, in all the right places. And I really shouldn’t be going there, but then she tilts her head up so she’s looking at me.
This is exactly what I imagined just twenty minutes ago, and for a beat, as I stare at her lips, which are parted ever so slightly, I think about what it would be like to lean down and kiss her. It feels like the universe has set it up. It’s just like a John Hughes movie.
I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing, because her breathing has become rapid all of a sudden and I can feel her chest rising and falling against mine, her hands gripping my arms, but even though we’re looking at each other, our faces are in shadow, so it’s hard to tell what her expression is. Maybe she’s not thinking the same thing at all. Maybe she’s glaring at me, furious about the situation I’ve gotten us into and the trouble we’ll be in if the cop spots her. Maybe the electric buzz I feel building like a static charge between us is in fact fueled by her fury, not by lust.
I seek out her eyes, trying to find the message in them. They’re gleaming, watchful but also wary, and it gives me another pause. The cop moves away a few feet and starts shining the flashlight on the other side of the pier. I wait for Zoey to step back out of my arms or at least put a few inches between us, but she doesn’t. We’re both just frozen, the only sound the waves and my heartbeat, which to me sounds even louder than the waves.
Slowly, cautiously, I let my hand trace its way down her back to her waist. I hear a sharp intake of breath from her, which could be either startled surprise or something more. I freeze, uncertain which it is, but she doesn’t move away, and then, to my own surprise and relief, I feel the very slight incline of her body toward mine, as she presses even further up against me. There’s no mistaking it, is there? She does feel it too. There is an attraction, and it does go both ways.