Collide

by Megan Hart

  Word vomit again. I swallowed my explanation. Tried again.

  “It’s faster than boiling milk,” I said. “And I hate the way skim milk gets when you boil it. And when it’s scalded, gross. This way, using the powdered milk, the cocoa is as creamy as using milk, but without the gross parts.”

  “And the rest?”

  “That,” I said with a grin, “is all just bonus.”

  Johnny smiled, too, though slowly, as though he’d almost forgotten how. “Sounds good.”

  I handed him an oversize mug emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, and took down my favorite mug for myself. It was also oversize, with a picture of the TARDIS on it. I mixed the cocoa in a glass mixing bowl, the kind with a handle and a spout and a nifty plastic lid. I even used a fancy whisk.

  Johnny watched, saying nothing. I pretended I didn’t notice. I also pretended I wasn’t as clumsy as I was when I knew he was watching me.

  I poured the steaming cocoa into the mugs and pushed the marshmallows and chocolate chips toward him. “Here. You can add your own bonus.”

  “I think this is good like this.”

  “Really?” I plopped three marshmallows into my mug, where they rapidly melted and spread sugary white goodness all over the cocoa. I added a handful of chocolate chips. “It’s reallllly good.”

  Johnny took a marshmallow and put it in the cocoa, then a few chocolate chips. “Shit.”

  “No, no, much better than that.” I sipped and watched him through the steam. “You’ll like it, I promise you.”

  He lifted his mug and tasted, then nodded. “Yeah, it’s good.”

  I was grateful for the island between us. I leaned a hip against it, sipping slowly so we could both act like the hot liquid took up so much attention it was impossible to talk. I even took my time blowing on it so I didn’t burn my tongue. Usually I was so impatient I scalded myself.

  “So,” Johnny said after a few more minutes filled with awkward silence broken only by the sound of us both blowing on our cocoa and slurping.

  I waited. He didn’t go on. He put his mug down, though, and then his hands on the counter. He looked at me, but not the way he did in my imagination. In the fugues, Johnny looked at me like I was something special he couldn’t quite figure out how he’d been lucky enough to get. Now he looked at me as if he simply couldn’t figure me out.

  “Yes?” I played at being calm and composed, but inside my guts were doing jumping jacks.

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

  I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. Softly at first, just a giggle, then another and more until I had to cover my mouth to hold back a full-on guffaw. I managed to squeak out a “Really?”

  I’d seen his smile so many times in photos, in movies and in those magic times when I was dark. It looked the same now, but different, too. He was holding back a little. “Yeah. Really.”

  My laughter eased, my belly muscles hurting a little but in a good way. I wiped at the corners of my eyes. “So talk.”

  “I just thought we should discuss what happened at the studio.”

  This sobered me, though not totally. “Uh-huh.”

  “And that you should know why…it won’t work.”

  It wasn’t something I’d never heard before, or never said, but it wasn’t at all what I thought he’d say. I put my mug on the counter and licked my mouth, not wanting to face him with chocolate smeared on my lips. “What won’t work, exactly?”

  He still had both his hands on the countertop, and now his fingers twitched. “Us.”

  “Ah.” I wasn’t much good at flirting, but I wasn’t any better at faking a lack of interest. “Why not?”

  Johnny blinked, his smile growing infinitesimally wider. “Emm.”

  My breath hitched when he said my name. I wanted to close my eyes and drift on that sound, that single syllable. I didn’t, though. I kept my gaze on his, not looking away because he wasn’t, either.

  “Johnny.” I couldn’t disguise the longing in my voice, and wouldn’t have wanted to even if it had been possible.

  He groaned, under his breath but still audible.

  The sound shot pleasure all through me, tingly and unexpected. I felt my eyes go wide. My nipples hardened a moment later. My clit pulsed. I was glad I’d put down my mug, because I’d have dropped it, otherwise. As it was, I had to put both my hands on the island top to keep my knees from buckling. It was that intense, the sensation. That powerful.

  “I should go,” Johnny said a half moment later, before I’d had time to fully process the noise he’d made.

  He was half out of his seat when I moved around the island to stand in front of him. “Wait.”

  He sat back in his seat like I’d pushed him, though I wasn’t even close enough to touch him. Not yet. “Emm…”

  “Oh, fuck me, I love the way my name sounds coming out of your mouth,” I said without thinking.

  He groaned again. His throat worked as he swallowed. He looked a little wild-eyed. I could see his pulse throbbing at the base of his throat, just once, twice, quickly.

  Four or five steps separated us, at most. I took three of them, my feet sliding on waxed wooden floors, the hem of my T-shirt riding up too high for modesty. I wanted to smell him. I didn’t think about how it looked, my sudden approach. I didn’t care.

  “Emm,” he said again, and this time it didn’t sound like a warning or a protest.

  It sounded like an invitation.

  I moved. He shifted. His chair was high enough that when I slid between his parted knees, they pressed my hips. I leaned close, eyes half-closed, and breathed deeply. Johnny didn’t move away, didn’t move closer, just stayed as stiff and rigid as stone.

  I opened my eyes. I was so close to him I could see the speckles in his eyes. I could count his eyelashes. I could see the tiny speck of marshmallow at the corner of his mouth.

  But I didn’t kiss him.

  He kissed me.

  Eager, open mouths, tongues sliding, teeth clashing. It was perfect. His hand came up to cup the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair, and I gasped into his mouth at how much I wanted him. He tasted so fucking good, I wanted to eat him.

  The chair rocked alarmingly when I straddled him, but his arm went around me, his hand grabbing my ass as his feet hit the floor and kept us from tipping. My shirt rode up. His belt buckle was cold against me, the denim of his jeans deliciously rough. When his hand met my bare flesh, Johnny groaned again, louder, and broke the kiss just long enough to mutter my name again.

  I cupped his face in my hands and broke the kiss to look into his eyes. Our mouths were still so close that when I spoke, my lips brushed his with every word. “What about this isn’t working?”

  His other hand moved down to my ass, and both squeezed gently. The chair rocked again, but I didn’t worry it would tip over. I squeezed my thighs against his hips and drew my thumb over his lower lip.

  He drew it into his mouth and sucked gently before biting it lightly. “None of it. All of it. Whatever. I can’t think straight with you on my lap like this.”

  “I could be on your face instead,” I said.

  Johnny muttered an expletive so garbled I couldn’t be sure if he were cursing or praying. He kissed me again. His mouth punished mine, and I took it gladly. I was slipping a little, shifting on his lap as he moved to keep the chair from tipping, me from falling. It was messy and it was lovely, but I had to get off him or else find myself on the floor with him on top of me, and not in the way I wanted.

  With my feet braced on the floor, our mouths still fused, I could reach between us to press my palm against the bulge in his jeans. I’d never been so bold as this, never, except with him. There…and here.

  He put his hand over mine and broke the kiss. “Jesus.”

  I took the time to catch my breath. I didn’t take my hand away. I looked into his eyes, his pupils gone wide with desire. There was no faking that. I licked the taste of him from my lips and rememb
ered the flavor of him coming down the back of my throat. I shivered and the world tilted, not as though I were going dark. Just faint.

  “I want you so much.” My voice broke on the edges of my honesty, and as with everything else that had happened, I didn’t care. Not about propriety, or dignity, or pride.

  I turned the hand on his crotch upward, capturing the one he’d put over it. I moved it between my legs, against my hot, slick flesh. I rubbed his fingers over my clit, already hard, and down farther, sliding. I pushed his fingers inside me and shuddered, never looking away from his eyes.

  “See?” I said.

  Johnny moved his hand, fingers stretching me oh-so-fucking-good. Deep inside, he curled them a little, hitting some hidden spot I’d read about but never bothered with. Every nerve in my body zapped. My other hand found his shoulder, my fingers digging into him as I kept myself from falling. His thumb pressed my clit just right, just perfectly, just the way I knew he’d do it. The way he’d done it in my head.

  He moved his ass to the edge of the chair so his feet more firmly met the floor. He kissed me again, fucking me with his hand as his other gripped me tight at my hip to keep me upright. I leaned against his thigh, not caring about how awkwardly I had to tilt my head to keep both his mouth and his hand working on me. I lost my focus on his dick, helpless to do anything but ride the wave of desire already getting ready to crash.

  I was so wet his fingers had no trouble sliding in and out, and he moved them slowly, pushing inside, curling and withdrawing, while his thumb gave delicious counterpressure. I rocked against his touch. I sucked his tongue and took his breath when he moaned. I couldn’t keep my eyes open now; pleasure had made them too heavy. I couldn’t speak, either. I could only give myself up to this.

  And he gave me all of it. His mouth, his fingers. His voice, muttering my name into my ear when he left my lips to slide his mouth along my jaw and put the flesh of my throat between his teeth.

  My orgasm hit me like a freight train, hard and fast and without mercy. I buckled with the force of it, but Johnny kept me upright. I opened my eyes as it started, and my gaze found his face. He wasn’t smiling. His gaze had gone dark and heated, his cheeks flushed, lips parted and wet from mine.

  As the pleasure faded, I realized my fingers had cramped on his shoulder. I let go. Aftershocks rippled through me as he withdrew his fingers and I belatedly noticed I’d been on my tiptoes. I let myself rest flat-footed, knees still weak.

  “Wow,” I managed to say.

  When I angled my face to kiss him again, though, he turned just enough that my lips would’ve hit his cheek if I’d been persistent enough to keep going. I wasn’t. After all that, I was smart enough to stop myself.

  “I’m sorry,” Johnny said, and pushed me gently away. “I can’t.”

  He stood. I moved. He left.

  Chapter 16

  “…and I think I might need a new suitcase,” my mom said, continuing a conversation I hadn’t been able to focus on for the past twenty minutes.

  It hadn’t mattered. She’d been content to chatter on about the upcoming cruise while we wandered the mall, and I’d been content to mutter an occasional “uh-huh” when she paused to pretend she was asking my opinion. I should’ve known better than to believe I was fooling her, though. She was just waiting for the right moment to confront me, and it turned out to be over frozen yogurt in the food court.

  “So,” she said, digging her spoon into a mess of vanilla and berries. “What’s going on?”

  I had a dish of chocolate and fudge in front of me but so far had only painted my spoon with it instead of the inside of my stomach. “Hmm?”

  “Emmaline,” my mother said warningly. “I know something’s up. Talk to me.”

  I opened my mouth to spill it all. The fugues. The situation, in a much-censored version, with Johnny. Everything I’d have told her before I’d moved away hovered right there on the tip of my tongue, but my eye caught the pile of bags at her feet and I swallowed every single word.

  My mom was going on a cruise with my dad. A vacation, without me. The first they’d ever had in all their years of marriage. I knew my mom well enough to suspect, if not know a hundred percent, that all it would take would be one simple sentence and she’d cancel her trip. I didn’t say it.

  I said instead, “Oh, it’s boy troubles, Mom.”

  She brightened. “Really?”

  I had to laugh, though each chuckle hurt my heart. “Don’t sound so excited, sheesh.”

  “Boy trouble means there’s a boy,” Mom said with a lick of her spoon.

  “You act like I never had a boyfriend before.”

  “You haven’t talked about anyone since you moved,” she told me.

  I swirled my spoon around and around, making a soup of my frozen yogurt. I had no appetite for it but ate a bite, anyway, knowing that not eating it would alarm her more than anything else. I shrugged.

  “So. Tell me.”

  “Well, he’s not a boy, for one thing.”

  My mom was silent for a minute, and when she spoke it was with forced casualness. “Is he…a girl?”

  I laughed wholeheartedly at that. “Um, no.”

  “Oh. Okay. Because you remember Gina Wentzel, don’t you? I think she was a year or two ahead of you in school. Her mother works at Weis Markets.”

  I knew if I waited just long enough, this story would have a point. “Yeah, I knew her. She was a cheerleader.”

  “And a lesbian!”

  I laughed again. “Oh, Mom.”

  “It’s true. Her mom told me herself. Said she was with some woman she met while she was working in Arkansas.”

  “Because Arkansas is filled with lesbians?” I asked after a pause, trying to connect the pieces and failing.

  “I have no idea,” my mother said. “I’m just telling you what her mother told me. They’re thinking of adopting a baby together.”

  “Um, good for them?” I remembered Gina as a slightly slutty blonde who’d once made a rude comment about my clothes but who’d otherwise never really crossed my path.

  “Oh, it’s fine for them,” my mom said with a nod and another lick of her yogurt. “It would be fine for you, too.”

  “If I were a lesbian?”

  My mom pointed at me with her spoon. “I’m just saying, your dad and I would love you just the same, even if you were a lesbian. I mean, imagine how that girl on the radio’s parents must feel.”

  The fact I could no longer so easily follow my mom’s non sequiturs saddened me. “What girl on the radio?”

  “That ‘I Kissed a Girl’ girl. Imagine what her parents must’ve thought about that.”

  “I’m sure they’re proud of her, too, Mom.”

  “Well, your dad and I are proud of you, Emmaline. No matter if you’re a lesbian or not.” My mom’s eyes glistened with tears, though she was smiling. “You’ve grown up so beautifully. I mean, I always hoped, but never thought… I mean, we weren’t sure…”

  “I’m not a lesbian,” I said to fend off any emotional breakdowns. I was already close to an emo outburst of angsty sobbing brought on by PMS. I didn’t want to break down here in the food court or encourage my mom to do the same.

  “So, boy trouble? But not with a boy. A man, then,” my mom said with a shrug as though I were merely splitting hairs.

  “Well, yeah. He’s a man. He’s not a boy. At all.” I frowned, thinking of how Johnny had called me a girl.

  “I guess that’s fine. You’re in your thirties now. Time to date men, I guess.” Mom smiled. “So, what’s he like?”

  “We’re not dating. I mean, I like him a lot…” I sighed, clearing my throat to keep the emotion shoved way down deep. “He doesn’t like me.”

  “Then he’s a jerk.”

  “Gee, Mom, thanks, but I think you’re a little biased.”

  She smiled again and scraped the last of her yogurt from her cup. “Doesn’t matter. I’m your mother. If I say some boy—sorry, some man—is a
jerk for not liking you, I’m allowed. What’s his name?”

  “Johnny.”

  She scoffed. “That’s not a man’s name.”

  “It’s sort of… I guess he got stuck with it early on and now everyone knows him by that. That’s all. I don’t think he’d be a John. He’s just…Johnny. It fits him, actually.”

  “Are you sure he doesn’t like you?”

  I thought of how he’d pushed past me, leaving me alone with my T-shirt up around my hips and my kitchen smelling of sex. “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “He’s a jerk. Forget about him.”

  “I’m not sure I can, Mom. He’s pretty unforgettable.”

  “Any man,” my mom said with a glower, “is forgettable.”

  I sighed. “Not this one.”

  “Oh, Emm. Honey. I hate seeing you like this. Why do you always let yourself get so worked up?”

  I laughed even though it hurt my throat. “Geez, Mom, where’s the support?”

  “I said he was a jerk, didn’t I?”

  I laughed again. “He is a jerk.”

  “But you like him,” my mom said sympathetically. “I can tell.”

  “He’s just…special,” I told her with another sigh. I swirled my yogurt again but couldn’t manage to eat it, even to save her from worry. “He’s different. He’s so talented. So talented, so well-traveled. He’s lived so much, Mom, he makes me feel like some backwoods bumpkin. Like…well, like a girl.”

  “You are a girl,” she pointed out.

  “I’m a woman,” I said.

  She looked at me, eyes soft. “I know you are, honey. And there’s no boy…or man, for that matter, so special that you should ever feel like that.”

  I really love my mom.

  “I know. I can’t help it. He’s just so… Gah!” I stabbed my now unfrozen yogurt. “Stupid! He’s stupid! Stupid Johnny Dellasandro.”

  My mom chuckled, then paused. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

  “He’s an artist,” I offered, knowing that would be an unlikely connection for her to make. “He has a gallery in Harrisburg called the Tin Angel.”