by Cora Carmack
Or maybe he won’t. Maybe he won’t like that I’m a virgin, and he’ll find the whole thing bland and a waste of his time.
UGH.
I groan, and flip the page in my spiral so I won’t have to look at the words anymore. Starting small with the alcohol had been a wise decision. Perhaps I should do the same with other big items on my list. But how did one get smaller than sex and hooking up? I couldn’t just put “kiss.” I’d done that before, and a few more kisses weren’t going to make any difference in my confidence when it came to sex.
Really, it’s the unknown that bothers me. Not just on this list, but in everything. So maybe that’s what I need to get used to.
I skip to the bottom of my list and add . . .
17. Kiss a stranger
I tap my pen against the page, surveying the words, and decide that kissing a stranger is a good stepping-stone. Then a voice comes from over my shoulder, making me jump up and drop my spiral in shock.
“Do I count as a stranger?”
I press my hand over my thundering heart and turn to face the subject of my rumination.
“You scared me.”
“My bad.” Contrary to his words, Torres doesn’t look the least bit sorry.
He bends to pick up the spiral, and I lunge forward to stop him. “Wait! Stop!”
It’s too late. He already has ahold of it, and lifts it up above his head, completely out of my reach. He’s got nearly a foot on me in height, and when I try to jump, I barely get my unathletic self a few inches off the ground.
“Give that back.”
“Hold up, sweetheart. I just want to take a little peek.”
“Don’t you dare! It’s private.”
Frantically, I try to recall what was written on that page as he holds it above his head in an attempt to read.
“ ‘Go skinny-dipping’?” he says, his eyes dancing suggestively. “Whatever this is . . . I like it.”
I step toward him, and he angles his body to the side so that the spiral is farther away, but we’re still close.
“ ‘Pull an all-nighter.’ ‘Sing karaoke.’ ‘Flash someone.’ Oh, sweetheart, tell me this is a list of things you want to do. Please, God.”
“It’s none of your business. That’s what it is.”
“Unlucky for you, I’m a nosy person.”
He starts to turn the page back, and my heart tumbles in fear. He cannot see the first page. Not ever. I hurl myself at him, practically climbing up his body in an attempt to retrieve my list. And all he does is laugh, and stand there as if there isn’t a whole person hanging on to him.
“Asshole!” I say, pushing at his chest.
“Come on, you can do better than that.”
“Nosy bastard.”
He rolls his eyes. “Well, if that’s all you’ve got . . .” He starts to turn the page again, and there’s thunder in my ears, and my lungs feel all twisted up inside my chest.
“Fuck you,” I say once, quietly. Then I repeat it, louder, my voice raspy from fear and exertion. “Fuck you, Mateo Torres.”
And I resign myself to the fact that I’m not going to get my spiral back until he’s had his fill of humiliating me. But to my shock, he bends and picks up my pen from where I’d dropped it when he surprised me. Then he draws a line through something on the paper.
“Congratulations. You’ve officially completed number sixteen. ‘Cuss someone out and mean it.’ ”
He hands me the spiral, then the pen, before folding his arms over his chest and meeting my eyes with a carefully blank expression. I glance down at the item on the list that he’s crossed out, and I don’t know whether I want to laugh or stab him with my pen. Maybe both.
“You . . .” I begin, and then trail off. I take a deep breath and speak the truth: “You are the strangest person I’ve ever known.”
The things that are the most off-putting about him are also what make him undeniably interesting. He has no respect for personal space. He says whatever pops into his head with no attempt at polite censorship. But he does it all with such ease and confidence that there isn’t a drop of malice in it.
He laughs at my calling him strange, and the sound is raucous and light and completely uninhibited. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed like that. He reaches out and tugs on one of my pigtails, then says, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
It might actually have been one. In the aftermath of our little scene, I’m feeling oddly . . . exhilarated.
“Come on,” he says, picking up my bag and slinging it over his shoulder. “Walk with me.”
I should ask him where, ask questions of any kind really, but I don’t. Instead, when he holds a hand out to me, I take it. I do it without thinking or evaluating or planning a single thing. And having his large hand curl around mine . . . I don’t have any words for it. I search for them, for a description of the way it makes me feel, but it’s a muddle of emotions, and those have never been one of my strong points. I cannot separate all the things his touch makes me feel, let alone identify them. But whatever it is . . . it’s not bad. So I don’t resist when he pulls me toward the back of the house.
There are a few people hanging out smoking, and I tense thinking maybe he means for us to join them, but he pulls me farther along toward the back of the yard. They’ve got an old, dilapidated privacy fence, and there’s a whole section of it that looks as if it had been knocked down in a storm. Or perhaps a more man-made disaster, knowing the residents of this house. When he steps onto the broken pieces of the fence, I hesitate.
“Trust me, girl genius. This will be worth it.”
I swallow, and step up onto the board and follow him out of the yard into a wooded no-man’s-land between the houses. We turn right and walk past a neighbor’s house, and then another before stopping. There’s a metal fence, with a gate on one side, and he lifts the latch and walks through.
“What are you doing?” I hiss, pulling my hand away.
“What?” He smirks. “Trespassing isn’t on your list?”
I shake my head sternly, and he reaches for my hand again, and this time his hold is too firm for me to pull away. “It should be. Add it.”
When I still resist, he steps back through the gate to stand directly in front of me, mere inches away. With the hand not holding mine, he reaches up and pushes a lock of hair off my forehead.
“Relax. I know the family who lives here. They’re out of town all this week.”
This is crazy. And ridiculous.
“Why are we here?”
“That’s up to you, sweetheart.”
I let him lead me through the fence, and around a wooden shed to the central open area of the backyard.
“I thought,” he says, “we could just hang out. Talk. Away from all the noise.” He pulls me up beside a quaint tire swing, and gestures for me to sit down on it. It takes some finagling, what with my short skirt, but I manage to lift myself up on it without making too much of a scene. He crosses behind me, takes hold of the ropes on each side, and I hold on tight, preparing for him to push me forward. But before he does, he leans down close, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. He points a finger to the far side of the yard and says, “Then I thought, if you were up for a little more adventure, we could check skinny-dipping off your list.”
Chapter 8
Mateo
Nell’s eyes take in the swimming pool, surrounded by a mesh fence because the Del Vecchios, the people who live here, have a toddler. A little boy. Her mouth drops open, then closes, and opens again.
She’s been remarkably agreeable for the last few minutes, letting me drag her over here, and I don’t want to screw that up by pushing her too fast, so I add, “Or you can stay here on this swing and tell me all your deepest, darkest secrets.”
Okay . . . so maybe I don’t know how to not push her at least a little bit.
She gives what might actually be a laugh and says, “What a choice.”
“Well, I do like to be fair.”
/> She looks at the pool one more time, her gaze lingering just long enough to make me think she might say yes. I imagine her flicking open the buttons on her white shirt, shedding that cock-teasing costume, and I’m hard in seconds.
Damn. I just can’t keep my cool around her.
It’s got to be her similarity to Lina. Has to be. I cut myself off from thinking about Lina in that way a long time ago because every time I let myself remember her . . . it would fuck me up for weeks. Messed with my head. With my game on the field. And considering the game is why I lost her, I refused to let myself screw that up, too. That would mean I’d lost her for nothing. So, ruthlessly, I burned away the memory of her in my bed. I replaced it with new memories. Not just in my bed either. My truck, too. Anywhere that made me think of Lina. And not just places either. It sounds psycho, but I did my best to blot out memories of actions, too. There’d been this time with Lina when she wouldn’t let me kiss her the whole time we had sex. She held her mouth half an inch away from mine, but anytime I lifted up to seek out her lips, she’d pull away. Only after we both came would she kiss me, and it was the best goddamn kiss of my life.
Last year, three months into my first semester here, I re-created that night with one of the girls on the cheerleading team. It wasn’t quite the same. I’d had to hold her face to control her movements, but I held her just close enough, teased us both until we were desperate, only kissing her at the very last moment.
It wasn’t the best kiss of my life. It wasn’t even particularly good.
But it served its purpose. It had taken the edge off that memory, dulling it with this new one, until the grip of the past eased. I’d done that so well and so often last year that I rarely thought of Lina these days.
Until Nell.
Because it isn’t sex that raised the memories this time, but the cute indentation in her brow when she’s thinking. It’s the way she talks. Using words that I’ve only ever read in textbooks, rather than heard out of a person’s mouth. The arrogant tilt of her chin when she knows she’s right. Those are the things I’ve never been able to burn away about Lina, and I see them all in Nell.
And I’ve starved myself from the memory of her so much that I’m too damn hungry now to separate the past from the present. That’s the only explanation for why Nell can practically bring me to my knees with a tilt of her head or a long look.
I can’t decide whether that means that I should stay far, far away from her, or take this one last opportunity to demolish the remains of my broken heart. I can’t help but think that after a few weeks with Nell, I could break Lina’s hold on me once and for all.
“Well?” Nell asks, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Are you going to push me or not?”
I smile. “Your wish is my command.”
The tire is laid flat so that you can sit with your ass in the opening, but Nell is sitting primly on the other end in a way that’s sure to throw the whole thing off balance when it’s moving. I reach forward, hooking my hands under her arms and tugging her backward. She falls back, squealing, her body cradled by the tire. After a few seconds, she realizes that she’s not going to slip through, and she tilts her head back, looking at me from below.
My mouth goes dry at the sight of her.
Quickly, before I can do something stupid like lean down and devour that plump mouth of hers, I pull back on the ropes and send her swinging. When she comes back my way, I push on the tire, sending her higher, faster. I do this a few times before I allow myself to say, “So tell me about this list.”
Her tone blunt, she says, “No.”
I notice then that she’s still got ahold of the spiral, pressing it tight against her chest.
“Fine. I don’t need you to tell me what it is. It’s a list obviously, and judging by the contents, it’s a bucket list of things you want to do. What I don’t get is why. Most people’s bucket lists are about seeing the world and following their dreams and seeking adventures. Yours is about cursing and kissing strangers, which leads to the obvious conclusion that you’ve never done those kinds of things. Keep swinging if I’m right.”
I punctuate that last sentence with another push, and I think I see a faint smile across her lips as she flies away from me.
“I knew it.” Her eyes meet mine when she returns, and I grin down at her. “So I’m going to guess you’ve been pretty sheltered. Maybe your parents were strict. Religious probably. If you were a freshman, I’d say you were sowing your wild oats now that you’re out of your parents’ house, but I’m pretty sure Dylan said once that you two are the same age. So that can’t be it. You’ve been out from under your parents for a while. You are a puzzle, sweetheart.”
“It’s not that complicated,” she says, and I tamp down my wide smile at having won this little battle.
“Enlighten me.”
“I’ve just been really focused on school, and I’ve not had that much of a social life since I got here. I thought it was time for that to change.”
I ease back on my pushes so that her swinging slows to a lazy glide. “So you’ve been busy with school. Studying biomechanical engineering.”
She sits up on her elbows as she swings, looking back at me with raised eyebrows. “You remembered.”
“It might not seem like it, but I do listen. When I’m interested.”
“And you’re interested in engineering?”
“It’s a related interest.”
She frowns. “Meaning?”
“Meaning it’s connected to something else I’m interested in, so I’m interested by association.”
“You mean me?”
God, she’s direct. Just like . . .
I cut off that thought and focus on Nell.
“Yes, I mean you. I’m interested in you.”
“I gathered that.”
“So, let me ask again? Do I count as a stranger?”
She sits up in the swing, upsetting the balance, and I have to grab on to the ropes and pull back to bring the thing to a stop. Before she can wiggle out of the tire, I circle around her. I stand and grip the ropes, just as she gets herself to the edge, ready to jump off.
“Torres . . .” she says, stretching my name out uncertainly. It’s not how I’d like her to say my name, but it’s not quite an admonishment either. It’s just . . . hesitant.
“This list is obviously something that matters to you, or you wouldn’t carry it with you. You wouldn’t have brought it to a party, of all places.” Something occurs to me then. “That’s why Dylan is suddenly bringing you around. She’s helping you with this list. That’s why she warned you away from me. She’s probably the one who made you make the list in the first place. I like the girl, but Christ, does she like to tell other people what to do, how to behave—”
Nell pushes to her feet, her chest grazing mine before she jolts back. “Dylan doesn’t know about the list. And I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell her.”
I frown. Now, that is not what I expected.
“Why doesn’t she know?”
Nell worries her bottom lip between her teeth, and God, her lips are already full enough without being swollen from her nibbling. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was doing this on purpose, trying to distract me from prodding further.
“Because this is something private, and you’re right. Dylan can be very opinionated. She means well, but these things . . . well, it’s more of an experiment for me, and experiments aren’t for an audience. They’re for discovery.”
“I promise I won’t tell Dylan.” Her shoulders slump in relief just before I add, “If you’ll let me help.”
“What? But I just told you this was private. You’d be just as much of an audience as her. These are things I need to do alone.”
“As I recall, there’s at least one thing on that list that can’t be done alone.”
Her cheeks flush, and I’m suddenly bursting with curiosity to know what else is on the list. What else might require two people.
&nbs
p; And there goes my body’s traitorous reaction again. Even if she doesn’t want to go skinny-dipping, I might need my own dunk in the pool just to cool down before I go back to the party.
She holds the spiral tighter to her chest and says, “It’s not just that I want to do this alone. I want to be through my list before the semester ends in a month and a half. It’s easier and faster to do this on my own.”
A month and a half. Sounds like a good amount of time to accomplish what I’m looking to do, too.
“For you, sweetheart, I would make time.”
“Some of the items on the list are . . . they’re of a personal nature, okay? And I don’t know you.”
“You don’t know me? Does that mean you’d go so far as to call me a stranger?”
She lets out an exasperated sigh, but I can tell by the frantic clutching of her fingers around the spiral that she’s not just frustrated. She’s downright terrified.
“Listen.” I take hold of her shoulders, stilling her nervous movements and forcing her to look at me. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. And I promise I won’t look at your list again. I swear, okay? And I won’t tell Dylan or anyone else about it. But I want you to swear that whenever it’s something you don’t have to do alone or something you shouldn’t do alone . . . you’ll call me. I sing a mean karaoke, and I pull all-nighters all the time, and I—”
“Okay.”
I pause, letting my arms trail down from her shoulders to her elbows.
“Okay?”
I lean a little closer, pitching my mouth closer to hers. “Does that mean I can be your strange—”
She covers my lips with her hand, cutting off my words, and with that familiar proud tilt of her chin she says, “The list says to kiss a stranger. Not be kissed by one.”
And with that she pulls out of my arms and starts toward the pool, her hips swaying to the heavy pounding of my heart.