Awakening Foster Kelly

by Cara Rosalie Olsen

  “You got it,” he replied. “Will you walk me out?” He stood up and reached down for my hand. I took it with alacrity, and tried not to burst when he buried his fingers between mine.

  Fully aware that Dominic had promised his aunt he would be home in five minutes, I was prepared for a quick departure—and hopefully a quick return—once we reached the front door. So when he placed a hand on my lower back, guiding me onto the porch, I was surprised if not just more than a little pleased to extend our time together. Without a word, he closed the door behind him, then leaned down to place the guitar case he’d only just retrieved from the car a few moments ago on the ground. As he rose, the look in his eyes was fervent. I very nearly gasped when he settled both hands securely around my hips and pulled me toward him. Immediately my breathing became loud and irregular, and light flutters proliferated, turning rabid. Without thinking—not that I was capable of doing so had I tried—I bent my arms, placing my hands at the smooth underside of his arms. His skin wasn’t just soft, but improbably hard like the glass of a window warmed by a virulent sun. As his fingers explored my lower back, gently massing the base of my spine, my own fingers would not be left idle. The audacity and eagerness in which I roamed up and down the length of his arms—touching his shoulders, clavicle, then resting eventually at his elbows—came as a complete shock to me. I had never been held, myself, let alone held someone else. I could hardly excogitate how my hands flourished with knowledge and confidence, while the rest of me felt as if it might drop any second.

  I tried not to dwell on this possibility, locking my knees. Dominic continued to stare down, unleashing the full weight of his glowing eyes. Slowly, he leaned in. A torrent of heat flooded up my neck, and every single muscle in my stomach went tight as rock, cutting my breathing entirely. Near enough to smell his breath, both piquant and citrusy from the lemonade, he closed his eyes and let his forehead rest upon mine. Without looking, his hand came up, stroking the side of my cheek just once before returning to my waist.

  I could not close my eyes. I wanted to, but when I tried it was like willingly standing beneath freezing cold water, the urge to dart away strong and persistent. Woozy now, I released a slow, soundless breath through my mouth. I was mindful of nothing but him. As I continued this vigilant watching, shadows dancing over his neck and face, making him look even more angular than he was naturally, I finally took notice of the candles at our feet. Ten pillars, ensconced in lanterns lined the edges of the cobblestone steps, providing the only light around us. I glanced up, finding the moon was tucked in for the night, shrouded by bulbous gray clouds and leaving only navy patches scattered like tie-dye. For once I found favor with my absentmindedness, having neglected to flip the light switch on our way out. My attention returned to Dominic when he made a low sound in his throat, both sigh and murmur. With the shock of our posture just beginning to wear off, realization struck in the form of a whirling mind and flushed body.

  Our first kiss.

  His eyes remained closed, revealing to me nothing of the thoughts behind them. Unbelievably peaceful he looked as if he could be sleeping. No trembling, no lines creasing his forehand, not one bit of strain around his jaw—a surplus of tranquility, devoid of composure. Reeling now, I wondered if maybe this was because kissing was not uncommon behavior for him. Did he kiss many girls, perhaps? Were there expectations to this kiss? Should I be the one to initiate? Or was it better to stand here and wait to receive it? Did I honestly just refer to a potential first kiss with the words “receive it”?

  Oh, no, I’m completely panicking, I thought miserably. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead, and I cringed to think that Dominic might notice and be repulsed. Relax. You must relax, I said, in my most stern tone of voice. Surprisingly, it sounded not like me at all, but Emily, her words not unfamiliar. “Happy place, Fost. Go to your happy place.”

  The only trouble was, I was in my happy place; I could not possibly reside in a happier place. The message was clear, however: I was to focus on something else. Something calming. I waited until I could be sure he wasn’t about to kiss me, then forced my thoughts back to my surroundings. This seemed to help a little. I listened, soothed by the sound of the water fountain, the crickets’ song just barely audible above it. A breeze cool enough to make me shiver, blew through the curvaceous branched awning we stood under, rousing fallen leaves below to move about in circuitous loops. The vines webbing up the brick wall enclosure trembled. Tiny white flowers in the shape of pinwheels peeked through the spiraling branches, tangled and immersed between waxy green leaves. Running out of visual material, I moved on to another sense. The scent of jasmine bathed the night air in rich perfume, intoxicatingly sweet and potent.

  “Foster.”

  I jumped. My name was no louder than a low, languid whisper, but enough to send a vibrant thrumming throughout my whole body. My eyes swung back to his face, still ever composed, serene, and unseeing.

  “Yes.” My voice shook.

  Opening his eyes, he pulled back just slightly. The faintest smirk appeared on his lips. “You’re thinking awfully loud.”

  “I am?” I squeaked. “I—you can—”

  The pressure around my waist increased and I stopped stammering. I shut my eyes, opened them, smiled, exhaled for good measure, and tried very hard to relax. I sighed, hoping to convey an apology, then decided to say so with actual words. “I’m sorry. Just a little nervous.”

  “I want to kiss you,” he said bluntly. If my thoughts were loud before, I thought he may very well need to cover his ears at this point. “I’m not going to, though.”

  Houston, we have a problem. I couldn’t decide which was worse; Dominic’s asseveration, or my father’s favorite movie quote penetrating every terrified thought I was having momentarily.

  “For two reasons,” he said and paused. Although his tone of voice was almost casual, there was something highly controlled about it, giving me the impression that this announcement was equally meant for me, as it was him. “The first, I have to leave right now. I’m not about to rush something I’ve been thinking about doing all night. And two . . . I need to know that you want me to.”

  “I—I do wa—” I attempted to interject here, and assure him there was absolutely no contestation on my part, but again the firm but definitive pressure at my hips halted my mutterings.

  “That you still want me to.” His head tilted to the side and he smiled, the shadows changing positions on his cheeks. The firelight illuminated the sadness in his eyes, the worry and doubt, too. “After you’ve heard everything I have to tell you.”

  I surprised myself by being bolder than usual, remonstrating his concerns with more force than I thought was in me. “Nothing you say is going change how I feel about you.” His stoicism, for all that it was worth, cracked right down the middle, giving me a clear glimpse of the vulnerability and fear not so latent beneath. He hung his head, breathing out hard.

  “I’m trying really hard here, Foster . . . trying to do the right thing.” He sounded not only grave and ravaged, but frightened, and it only made my desire to allay his fears that much stronger. “I’m going to ask that you please don’t make this any harder than it already is,” he whispered, pleading. He raised his head, took my cheek in his palm. “I think you underestimate how badly I want to kiss you right now.”

  Maybe not, I thought privately; not if it was anywhere near as badly as I wanted him to kiss me.

  His throat worked to produce words. “I’ve done too many things wrong.” A deep line running between his eyes appeared, and though his voice was soft, it was not lacking in emotion. “This—you and me—I need this to be right.” I didn’t understand what he meant by this, and Dominic knew that. I could see what it did to him keeping secrets from me, explaining how he felt without giving me any concrete information.

  I reached up and laid my hand over his. “Okay.” This meager consolation was all I could offer him. Not because I wasn’t prepared and willing to give him more,
but because he wouldn’t take it—not until it was right. So for now my ability to comfort him began and ended with a willingness to be patient, to do things in his time. I promised myself that the moment I could do more, I would. Whatever assurance he saw in my face, it seemed to relax him, and for that I was immeasurably grateful.

  He took my hands then, and gathered them tightly in his own. This, I recognized was the thank you he wasn’t capable of saying just now. As each finger enclosed around mine, I was struck by the simple beauty of his hands. The same desultory thought had occurred earlier, in the greenhouse, though I was much too preoccupied with what he might say to do more than notice. Now, as conversations and affections were laid to rest for the time being, only the quotidian flutters of Dominic’s presence were left filling my stomach. I had almost grown use to them, the way one does to cold water after a while. Perfect piano hands, I thought again; brawny, but still slender, wide palms giving way to long, proportioned fingers and bespeaking an elegance of some form of artistry. He brought both his and mine, held together, to his chest. Steady and strong, I could feel his heart, beating rhythmically at a pace much slower than my own. He smiled at me, equal parts wistful and alluring.

  “Before I go . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t need to. For a solid minute he simply looked at me. And by this looking, everything else was made obsolete and irrelevant. Gone was the flickering candle light, the trickling fountain. No more were the crickets and their song, the patchy moonless sky. Dominic. This was all there was room for.

  At last he moved, bringing his hands away from his chest, opening them slowly—like two shells pried apart. Inside were mine, pressed together at the knuckles, much smaller and paler in comparison. He spread them apart, pulling one finger at a time to full extension, so that when he was finished they formed the image of praying hands. Dominic’s attention was given fully to the task, each movement unhurried, thorough, and something else, too; something that made me blush as I thought it. Sensual. He was not only touching me, but savoring me. My pulse was racing again. Dominic smiled with this knowing, each thumb coming to pause over the thin skin of my wrist. He moved his thumbs vertically, pushing them firmly upward into the middle of my palms. Then, higher still, he raised them to his chin, folding them together to form a heart. He dropped his head and began lightly skimming the tip of his nose back and forth across my knuckles. I shivered, then shivered again, each one beginning like a wave and ending with a crash at the back of my neck. Gently, he twisted my wrist so that it flipped and the back of one hand faced him. Peering over my knuckles, he never took his eyes from me. His lips came down on my smallest finger, soft and warm, pressing gently into the incredibly sensitive skin for a long second before he moved on to the next. This persisted until he had kissed each individual knuckle, lingering a little bit longer with every kiss. To the other hand, he gave the same time and attention. When this ended and I quite unfortunately had no more unkissed knuckles left to offer him, he pulled back, still keeping my wrists bound in his hands.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I’m finished,” he said.

  And then he was leaving, moving down the short stairway, and pausing briefly at the gate to give me his heartbreakingly beautiful smile. Soundlessly, he slipped through it—and was gone. I stared at the spot he last stood, still able to feel the warmth where his hands and lips had just been. I longed for more. Deep inside me something poignant stirred. I was trying to name it, growing frustrated when it would not make itself known, when I noticed Dominic had forgotten to take his guitar. I bent down beside it, trailing a hand over the bumpy case protecting his treasured possession from incurring damage. Involuntarily my other hand went to my chest, straight to my heart, mimicking the same gesture as the other. I moved along sideways, feeling the ribs tightly knit together, encasing the organ most essential to my existence.

  Then I knew. The guitar wasn’t the only one of his possessions Dominic had left behind.

  ~

  He never did make it back to my house that night. Sometime after midnight Monday morning, I received a text. Next to my ear it buzzed ostentatiously, my fingers clutching it in half-sleep. I rolled onto my side, squinting defensively as the bright light spilled into my weak soporific eyes. The message was preambled with an apology for waking me, then went on to explain that the electrical problem was more complicated than he could have expected. Promising me he would see me not soon enough, he ended the message with: Sweet Dreams. D.

  Waking now with a smile on my face, I hurried to shower and dress in a pleasurable mental fog, bits and pieces of the evening prior resurfacing in my mind. I hadn’t thought the morning could possibly be improved upon—though, I had been holding out hope—until Dominic showed up on my doorstep, half an hour before eight. After exchanging brief pleasantries with my mom and dad, we left the house, Dominic asking if I wouldn’t mind that he drove us to school. I nodded, furtively touching Hattie’s door dripping with condensation, as we walked down the driveway to where his restored Mustang was parked in the roundabout. Unexpectedly, our hands brushed, followed by the tentative turning of our heads. Seeing his face, I changed my mind, deciding that it was only I who was tentative. At some point, the uncertainty I often found lurking in his eyes had vanished.

  He took my hand and laced our fingers together. It was almost a clutch, just a little tighter than what was necessary to keep them locked. I didn’t mind one bit, and squeezed back. There was a surrealism about everything that was happening. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around all of it; him being here next to me, touching so overtly, and the contradicting ease and comfort that made it feel as if anything else would have been wrong. Less and less, that once so distinctive voice reminding me this could never be possible, died away. When Dominic opened the passenger door of his car, gesturing with a nod for me to look on the seat, I did so enthusiastically; however, I had trouble deducing just what it was I was supposed to be seeing. The small white plate was easy enough to discern, but the item it boasted—a foreign delicious looking chocolate pastry of some sort—was not. It was round in shape, not quite doughnut and not quite cookie either.

  Dominic spoke up from behind me. “It made me think of you.”

  “Thank you,” I said uncertainly, then turned to face him. “What . . . is it exactly?” He laughed, and seeing the wicked expression on his face I thought it was perhaps at my expense.

  “Well, that I’m afraid to tell you,” he managed to say through the laughing. Fear was not one of the emotions I would have guessed he was experiencing just now. His laugh, however, was highly contagious. I had to clench my teeth to keep from joining in. “You promise not to be angry with me?” He folded his arms over his chest, hedging his bets, though still unable to go for more than a few seconds without succumbing to deep chuckles. Terribly curious and quite a bit suspicious, I glanced at the innocuous chocolaty pastry-ish thing, looking long and hard. My effort proved futile; I simply could not see how I might be angered.

  “Promise?” he said again, a lilting mischief unmistakable.

  Turning, I found him so full of mirth, so evidently delighted by what I was failing to ascertain, that I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yes . . .” I replied, still chary. “I promise.” He nodded, swallowed back what would have been more laughter I presumed, and composed his face into a serious expression. It lasted for one and half seconds before he was sputtering, keeled over at the waist and grabbed a hold of his knee-caps. “Dominic.” I was way past curious, dithering with anxiety.

  “You promised!” he objected when I said his name, lifting teary eyes to mine.

  “I’m not mad, I’m scared,” I clarified, throwing another futile glance over my shoulder.

  What is it?

  With much effort, he was able to control himself long enough to finish a sentence. “I’ll tell you—but remember, you promised.” He eyed me as if I were the one not to be trusted. “It’s . . .” On the edge of losing it again, he blurted, “A moon-pie.”
>
  I stared at his euphoric face, the grin stretched wide and eyes that held both hesitancy and expectation. Contrariwise, I felt my own face contort in puzzlement. A moon-pie? With more patience then I would have thought him capable, Dominic uttered not a single word, letting me attempt to work it out on my own. When I raised my shoulders and exhaled as if to say I give up, he continued to smile, prepossessing even in mischief.

  “Are you sure?” He arched an eyebrow. “I’m really enjoying watching you think.” This compliment made me shy and I found my eyes diverted to my feet, then back up in an instant as an explosive sigh left his mouth. He raised both arms grandiosely into the air, as if presenting me. “Ah,” he said, grinning. “There it is.”

  I gasped. “Is that—” As I realized what was coming next, the flush on my face intensified.

  “Just like the moon,” he finished, enjoying himself all too much at this point.

  I shook my head at him, disbelieving, and trying hard not to let him know I was laughing on the inside. “I’m buying a mask,” I said plainly. “Maybe a helmet, too.”

  He launched himself at me, scooping me up in his arms and lowering his mouth to my ear. “That is unacceptable,” he declared, his voice stern and low. “I won’t allow anything to obstruct my Moon-pie.”

  And try as I might, it was of little effect; soon I was laughing as hard as he.

  ~

  Monday and Tuesday resulted in an exhaustive blur; life consisted of makeup work, exams, scattered conversations, and disjointed moments with Dominic. At times it felt insurmountable; even with his expedient jump-start, I was forced to use my tutorial and lunch periods each day to stay afloat. It was the only way if I was to continue seeing my kids after school. We developed a routine quickly, Dominic arriving in the mornings before school, and then on H.O.H. days—as he’d coined them—he would drive us to The House of Hope, dropping me off at home a little after six thirty. There we would sit and talk for a bit, attempting to get a day’s worth of hand-holding in under ten minutes. Leaving the car was like trying to remove boots without first unlacing them.