by S. K Munt
But Ryan pried her hands away from her face and lifted them up above her head, pinning them to the couch so she couldn’t hide again. ‘Don’t be embarrassed Callie. I’ve always wanted to see what a dreamless sleep looked like.’ He smiled fondly. ‘It was as graceful as your dancing. You looked like Snow White, waiting for a kiss from her hero...’
Callie’s bobby pins were digging into her scalp under her hat and she needed them out before she got a migraine. She shifted to sit up and fix it, but Ryan’s grip tightened, keeping her in place. ‘Not yet,’ he said, ‘I’m still debating whether I should or not...’
Callie was confused. ‘Should what?’
Ryan wet his lower lip as his gaze drifted down to her own mouth and just like that, Callie was paralysed by equal measures of dread and amazement. Was Ryan actually thinking about kissing her? Her mind was slowly switching gears from ‘sleepy’ to ‘holy crap!’ but nothing he could have said would have been able to overwhelm his pointed silence. If Ryan had declared: ‘I want to kiss you,’ it probably would have made her laugh. But staring at her mouth well, that was something else. Something powerful.
Anticipation shivered through Callie. She knew she should flinch or turn her head to the side; because they were friends and that was all she wanted to be! She’d thought that was all he wanted to be too! But just as Callie parted her lips to say: ‘Don’t’ Ryan’s gaze flickered to hers and suddenly, Callie couldn’t have moved her lips or turned her neck if she’d tried. Those now aquamarine eyes of his were glowing, and his thick eyelashes cast shadows over his cheeks, making him look darker and more mysterious. In that moment, they weren’t Ry and Cal, but two young adults alone in a dark room together while rain pounded on the roof. It was so strange and exciting and somehow incredibly upsetting and her nervous system was going into overdrive. Logically, she knew that girl and guy friends probably always kissed at some point, and that it was just the whole hormonal thing confusing them both, but Callie and her mates liked to take stands against doing what everyone else did and now… now… she didn’t know who she was let alone what she wanted.
And then Ryan was shifting his weight and leaning down over her and the tension became a warm, paralyzing fog. The moment to say: ‘Oh whoops did I get too close there?’ And laugh the whole thing off had slipped away. Ryan was going to kiss her, and Callie knew that she was going to kiss him back. In fact, she went from feeling stricken, to impatient. She wanted to sweep up and close the distance, and her fingers were twitching, ready to rake his hair back of his face, only realizing in that moment that she’d always want to touch his hair like that, to see if it felt as glossy and smooth as it looked. Her stomach was in knots and she couldn’t draw a breath but she wanted to, wanted his scent inside her lungs.
Callie had always suspected that she was attracted to Hunter because of some half-concealed spark within him that was impossible to ignore, but she’d written her appreciation of Ryan’s looks and talents off as redundant. Who wouldn’t look at Ryan Weaver and go: ‘Touch me touch me now!?’ Being so aware of it had lulled her into a false sense of security, like she was somehow crush-proof.
But now, realizing that there was a chance that he’d thought of her as attractive too was exhilarating, robbing her of her anti-Ryan shield and holding her heart up between them instead.
‘Cal…’ Ryan sighed her nickname so sweetly that it hit her harder than any note he’d ever sung. His calloused fingertips stroked and then over her shoulder, making her skin sing. Her body melted into a puddle of need and for the hundred reasons why she knew they shouldn’t do this, only one reason carried any weight at that moment; Callie was about to experience a real, and perfect dream. She closed her eyes and lifted her face, feeling the warmth of his breath like mist against her lips.
And then the world seemed to crack open like a meteor had struck and Callie jerked up from the couch and screamed. The suddenness of the strike meant that Ryan only just managed to get his head out of the way before she could crack it with her own as she bolted upright, drew in her knees, blocked her ears and attempted to stand- to flee. By the time she felt his hands on her again her body reflexively tried to shake him off, like he was an obstruction.
‘No!’ She wailed when she was yanked back down to her knees. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried to twist out of his hands, the claustrophobic grip he had on her as terrifying to her as the initial tear in the atmosphere had been. ‘Let me go! Make it stop!’
The thunderous boom following the lightning strike rumbled through the mountain, the house and Callie, and her eyes flew open, searching for an escape of some sort, but Ryan held her against him, regarding her with anxious eyes. ‘You’re safe Callie,’ he said in a low, calm voice even though a sheen of sweat now glistened near the part of his hair. ‘We are inside. Our house has surge protection and you are not alone, okay? Ry’s here.’
‘B-but…’ Callie raised one of her fists to her mouth and sank her teeth into the tender skin at her knuckles. ‘That was close Ry! So close!’
‘It’s lights and sound, Cal, just lights and sound. Look-’ he reached behind him, picked up the remote and pressed play. The television came to life, right in the middle of Sunday Morning Callie’s absolute favorite No Doubt song. The uptempo drum beats and strong bass line always made her hyper. ‘Music. It’s the same thing right? Lights and sound.’
The boppy beat filled the room and Gwen’s voice crooning that it was all ‘your’ fault had an instantaneous soothing effect on Callie. She sagged in Ryan’s arms, leaning her cheek against his chest, so grateful in that moment for him and his tolerance of her weird panic attacks that she could have cried for that alone.
‘Oh man,’ she stiffened as light flashed around the edges of the blinds again, pale blue and piercing through her despite the fact that it was miles away. ‘Shit I knew it was going to keep raining but I didn’t think-’
‘I knew there was going to be a storm.’ Ryan cradled her into his lap and kissed the top of her hat, the pressure making the pins in her bun stab her again. ‘That’s why I got you in to watch a movie. We could have practiced more, but I didn’t like the idea of you throwing my Jackson through the balcony doors in your haste to head for the hills.’ He pulled back, making her look up at him with one crooked finger. ‘What’s with that anyway? The people in your life go to the upmost care to make sure you’re inside safely when the weather goes to hell and yet you’re always trying to run to the storms.’
Callie shrugged, the smallest shrug she could manage, for her arms were wrapped tightly around her knees and she liked it that way. ‘I just need to get away from wherever I am when I hear it,’ she whispered. ‘There’s no time for logic; it’s like there’s a puppet-master doing the thinking for my limbs, and I have no control.’
Ryan smiled gently. ‘You’re a little bit useless sometimes, know that?’
‘I know.’ Callie stared up at him, feeling small and suddenly, she was too warm in his arms. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so close to either him or Hunter for so long. Growing up as a trio, they’d wrestled and stuff, but they were only just getting to the age when they could sit comfortably close to one another without the fear of cootie contamination. But now that she’d slept beside him and woken up to… well, whatever had transpired- Callie was suddenly overly aware of Ryan’s scent, and the feel of his arms closed around her. It was unsettling but it was also so comfortable, she didn’t know how she’d ever manage to sit near him again without crawling onto his lap.
Another low, threatening boom reverberated through the hills behind them and Callie screwed up her face and burrowed into Ryan’s school shirt, the almost kiss forgotten as fresh panic began to mount inside her. Three, two… there was the crack again and Callie’s fingers twisted around the School Emblem embroidered on Ryan’s shirt-pocket and his arms became a vice around her. Under any other circumstances, she’d probably have been bruised from such an embrace but in that moment, it felt
exactly right.
‘Callie?’ Ryan asked, when the bluish light had faded from her eyelids. ‘I-’
The door flew open on its hinges, making a distinctive sound as it whacked against Ryan’s foyer wall, one room away. ‘Callie?!’ Hunter’s voice was unmistakable, as was the sound of his wet footsteps as he slopped down Ryan’s tiled foyer. ‘Ryan? Callie? Are you guys-’
‘We’re in here!’ Ryan called out, his voice traveling through Callie.
Hunter! Callie’s heart began to pick up its pace. Hunter’s here! And until that moment, she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him, or just how out of balance their lives had become in his absence. But before she could scramble to her feet, several things happened; Hunter, wearing a black rain hoodie skidded into the theatre room, just as thunder resounded again. Callie squealed and blocked her ears again feeling like her heart had just been broken.
‘Shut the door!’ Ryan snapped but before he could move, a feminine voice cried: ‘Got it!’ And then, there was a thud and the sound of the rain was muted, if not the thunder.
‘Oh!’ Hunter visibly relaxed, and then quickened his steps across the room to them, smiling at her empathetically. ‘You’ve got her. I was freaking!’
But Callie didn’t care who was there anymore. She wanted out. She wanted to go. And yet Ryan’s arm kept her clamped around him and she closed her wet lashes against his shirt and gulped in his scent- telling herself that it was nothing, just weather and not believing a word.
Hunter stopped then, and looked from Callie, to Ryan, and then around the room. ‘What’s uh… what have you guys been doing? I thought you were having a jam session?’
But before either Callie or Ryan could explain, Marnie and Reece hurried into the hall after Hunter, also wearing rain-jackets, and both stopped and stared at Callie and Ryan as though they were seeing something they ought not see. Marnie immediately deflated, her eyes roaming the room instead, but Reece’s green eyes hardened. ‘We interrupting something?’
Callie wasn’t stupid but Reece’s accusatory tone broke her out of her stupor. She knew exactly what it must have looked like to them all; coming into Ryan’s house to find them wrapped around one another on a big, comfy couch with only the television serving as light. It didn’t help that Gwen Stefani was now crooning: Don’t Speak which had been make-out track number one for the amorous couples at Horizon High the year before. She wanted to say what had happened, and be as upfront as she always was, only there had been more going on, hadn’t there? They hadn’t been caught doing anything, but if that lightning hadn’t struck… well, who knew what might have come of Ryan’s threatened kiss?
‘Callie has Astraphobia.’ Ryan said, standing up with Callie cradled in his arms, then supporting her lower back with one hand as she found her own feet on the floor.
‘Fear of thunderstorms…’ Marnie recited, even though Callie had never raised the subject with her before. ‘Wow. Bad?’
‘If she’s not held down, she becomes a fleeing lightning rod.’ Hunter stepped forward, cupped Callie’s face in his damp hands and looked into her eyes. ‘You okay, kiddo?’
Callie nodded silently, though she was on the verge of bawling again. Not just because of the thunder. Not just because of the almost kiss. But because Hunter was back! Now that the boom of the thunder had lowered to a hum, she could feel her mind working again.
‘That’s weird.’ Callie heard Reece mutter. ‘At eight years old yeah but… sixteen?’
Callie scowled at him over Hunter’s shoulder, any urge to flirt with him that she’d felt earlier disintegrating. ‘I’m not the only person in the world with a weird phobia, Reece.’
‘Or the only girl in the world with only guys as friends. Or the only girl in the world with a Canadian accent, a famous mother and tomboy proclivities… and yet when one girl has all of those attributes…’ Reece shrugged. ‘Can I say unique instead of weird?’
Callie smiled despite herself, for he had a point. ‘I’ll accept unique.’
The phone rang, startling them all. Ryan’s hand left Callie’s back, though he did so slowly, reluctantly. ‘That’ll be your parents.’ He said, smiling ruefully at Callie over his shoulder as he crossed to the black cordless phone on the coffee table.
‘Checking up on their poor widdle Callie-wallie.’ Hunter teased affectionately, tugging the brim of her cap down lower on her forehead. ‘You are such a baby, Cal. If you weren’t so talented, I wouldn’t be seen in public with you.’
‘Speaking of status…’ Callie punched him lightly in the upper arm, and her knuckles came back wet and cold. She shivered and tucked her arms together. ‘Where’s your prom queen?’
‘Hopefully, not still in the park.’ Hunter turned and waved Marnie and Reece in. ‘Don’t just stand there looking uncomfortable. We know you’re not going to steal anything.’ He pointed towards the door to the music room. ‘Pool room is through there. How about we go fix Callie, and perhaps ourselves a drink from Mr Weaver’s liquor cabinet while she talks to her rents, eh?’
‘Fuck yeah.’ Reece high-fived Hunter as he breezed past, then winked at Callie. ‘You brought a bikini, right?’
Callie rolled her eyes, not just from the dumb remark, but at Hunter’s chummy display with Mr Popular. ‘Because lightning storms are such an awesome time for a swim?’
Reece turned and backed out of the room, pressing his palms together in prayer and said: ‘If the gods love me- and I think that they do, this storm will pass just in time for you to be wet and liquored up.’ He retreated past Ryan as he said this, who bopped him on the head with the cordless phone, before extending it to Callie and smiling tightly.
‘Want to assure your parents that you were in my arms when that happened? I don’t think they believe that you’re not swimming across the Whitsunday’s.’ Callie reached to take the phone from Ryan’s hand but he held it slightly out of reach, looked at her with anxious blue eyes and whispered: ‘I’m really sorry about before Cal. It was a big mistake. We cool?’
Callie was surprised by how much that little statement cut her. But she smiled tightly and nodded. ‘We cool.’ And then took the phone from him and turned away before he could see her stricken expression. A mistake? What did that even mean? Suddenly, a drink sounded like a wonderful idea. Possibly seven. She was feeling both loopy and yet incredible aware, as she always was once her adrenaline had attacked her nervous system.
‘Hi mum,’ she said smoothly into the phone, turning her back from the guys in her life, to stare out at the stormy sky over the valley instead because suddenly, it was the least confronting view there was. ‘Yeah,’ she lied. ‘I’m cool.’
Like I have another option, she added silently.
6.
By the time Hunter’s initial panic about ditching Meredith, fearing for Callie’s welfare when the storm had let loose halfway across town to Ryan’s place, and then walking in to find his best friends in a tangle of limbs and clothes had abated, so had the storm. The party, which now included several other friends of Reece’s and Marnie’s, had actually become a party, and Hunter was in the thick of it; the epicenter of both cliques and yet somehow, on the edge of every social circle forming.
And he did not like it. He did not like the fact that Reece had gotten all worked up when Gotta Be Movin On Up had started playing, which was a shit song. He did not like the way Sacha had complained about him playing the same song he’d been playing at lunch the day before- because he wasn’t playing a fucking song at all, but tuning his guitar. He didn’t like the way Marnie was hanging off Callie and Ryan like she was the third, not him. He hated the way Reece’s obnoxious friends bomb-dived in and out of Ryan’s pool like they owned the joint and most of all, he hated the way Ryan and Callie seemed so much more comfortable with the interlopers than him. They were definitely avoiding him, and they’d exchanged quite a few loaded looks as though they had some silent dialogue going.
Exclusion was the sharpest blade known to man and Hu
nter was feeling the tip of it pricking at the flesh between his shoulder blades. He knew he’d been a jerk by blowing off band practice, but was that reason enough for Callie and Ryan to act like… like… Like they were best friends. And Hunter didn’t count the way he used to.
Hunter slammed his fourth tequila shot down on the tiled bench and turned away from where Ryan was silently handing Callie a margarita, which she accepted with an awkward smile. They’d obviously talked about Hunter so much that they couldn’t think of a single word to say to each other in his presence.
Well screw you too! he thought, without conviction, and pretended to be engrossed in the panoramic view of Horizon beneath them. Not so much as stretched out beneath them (for the town was so small) but nestled at the foot of the mountain amongst the cane fields. If he squinted, he could see the the dusting of lights in the distance on the coast, where the nearest city, Araulen Valley lay. It was a great little city and Hunter would have liked to have gone in more often than he did to try and finagle some gigs, but it was an hour’s drive away from Horizon. He often felt like he was at the end of the world there in Horizon, but on Ryan’s balcony, it was more like being on top of it but out of reach of the rest.
Shale Creek was the next nearest town, only a ten minute drive northeast from Horizon. But it was half the size of his own, and was a sandfly-riddled hell hole which just so happened to sit on a wide creek mouth near the coast. Hunter’s parents kept their yacht there, but he never went to the town, only passed it on his way to the one scrap of sandy beach near the marina. From where he stood, he couldn’t see a single light on in Shale Creek, like the city had an eight p. m curfew or something.