It looked different. He kissed the tip with his perfect mouth and held the smoke in for so long she almost went up on tiptoe, thinking of herself in bed a few nights before, trying to contain all the sounds in her body. And then he just let it out in a little plume, too thick and coarse against the strange, blue-lit almost-darkness.
It made her want to bang on the glass the way her mother did, when the landscaper got too close to her peonies. Stop that. Stop that, you…you ruffian. You filthy devil, smoking illegal things so close to my flowerbeds!
But then the urge fluttered away, as quickly as it had appeared. That was her mother talking. Not her. If he wanted to…do that, he could. It didn’t hurt you—or so she’d half overheard on some radio program she shouldn’t have been listening to on the bus. And it didn’t make you violent, the way drinking could.
Which was more than a bonus, in her book. Let it make him goofy and hungry for junk food. She had cookies in the cupboard, if he desperately needed to eat them all in a big rush.
Of course, none of these thoughts helped her slide back the patio door. Only Van’s gaze did that, when he seemed suddenly sensible of her presence and turned his head, to stare at her through the glass.
God, why did he have to be so handsome? Because she recognized now that he was—incredibly, impossibly handsome. He hid it well beneath the tattoos and the hair dye and the mildly illegal behavior, but it shone out of him anyway.
Those eyes, that mouth, the way he carried himself. So still and calm, as though nothing in the world could move him to aggression. It made her feel still and calm inside. It made her reach for the door handle and slide out into the night.
“Evie,” he said, just like before. Only this time it had a note of regret in it, and as she approached, the hand that held the little smoking stub dropped below the line of the fence.
Like maybe he wanted her to see, but just for a second. Any more, and perhaps she wouldn’t be able to take it.
Only then he said, “You’re early.” Which completely reframed the entire scenario. It made her think of the first and second time they’d encountered each other, and how much of his relaxedness was to do with his personality.
Maybe he needed a little help to be this laid back. The way her mother needed help to not bang on windows and freak out over throw cushions, shortly before passing out on the chaise lounge.
“I didn’t know we had a set time to meet,” she said, then immediately wanted to take it back. It sounded too jagged, too like an accusation—and even worse, it implied something about their relationship.
It implied their actually was a relationship. They met-up. They did things together like swap iPods, even though she had no iPod to give. She had nothing to give him, nothing at all.
“I’ll put it out,” he said, and though she tried to tell him that she hadn’t meant it in a nasty sort of way, she could see it was too late. They’d reverted right back to their default state—horrid drug addict and scared virgin.
Lord, how she longed to be something other than a scared virgin.
“Don’t. Don’t. It’s okay. I trust you.” She swallowed. Tried to rephrase the words into something that made sense. “I mean, I trust that you wouldn’t do anything bad.”
Somehow that sounded even worse than her first attempt. And he had one eyebrow raised too, so she knew she’d made a god-awful mess.
“I don’t know how to say what I’m actually trying to say,” she said, and though that seemed like the absolute pinnacle of idiocy, he visibly relaxed on hearing it. His eyebrow went back down again, and when she continued rambling his shoulders dropped. “I just know that the music was really…it was really amazing. It’s probably the coolest thing anyone’s ever done for me, so I’m not going to suspect you of being enthralled to Satan or coked out on goofballs.”
“I don’t think that’s a real thing.”
“No, I don’t either. But I feel phrases like that will give you some measure of what you’re dealing with here. I am a person who knows almost nothing about anything.”
“Don’t you think it’s dangerous?”
“What’s dangerous?”
“To know almost nothing about anything but trust me all the same.”
She studied his great, still face. His steady gaze, the way the corners of his mouth seemed to turn just a touch inward.
“Well, I suppose I could go on like this. Never risk anything. Never put my faith in anyone.”
A line of pain appeared, right down the middle of his face.
“I take it back,” he said, as he glanced away at nothing. “Don’t ever be like that.”
She reached forward for the bolt on the gate. Drew it back, then swung the whole thing open for him.
“You want to come in?”
He looked as though he did, but for a moment he hesitated. The smoking thing was still between his fingers, she could tell, and he seemed caught between putting it out and asking her permission and a million other things she couldn’t name.
She had to say to him, instead, “Just come in. We can sit on the porch.”
But even such a tiny thing proved somehow difficult. The steps were too small for him, for a start. His legs looked like immense triangles, once he’d sat down and folded them almost in two.
And all the while the cigarette burned away between his fingers, smoke curling from it in spirals and wisps. The smell of it trapped somewhere between tea and newly cut grass. Every part of her aware of how easily she’d start to smell like that, if neither of them were careful.
But then, Van was careful. He held the smoking tip as far away from her as he could physically get it, without dislocating something on his body. And oh it looked so odd, once she’d taken the spot next to him, on the step. Like those “Be Good” videos of boys and girls who’d somehow had to sleep together in the same bed, only the boy kept one leg on the floor the whole time so as to never accidentally put his penis in the girl’s vagina.
Or something like that. She didn’t quite remember and didn’t really want to with Van sitting next to her. Best not to think of anything that contained references to either penises or vaginas.
“Does it make you feel relaxed?” she asked, purely through want of something to say. But once she’d done it, she realized an explanation was in order. “You know, like a Xanax?”
She thought of her mother again, and that time she’d driven her car straight into the Ryersons’ trash cans because she’d “only sort of” fallen asleep at the wheel.
“No. Sometimes it goes in the other direction.”
“It makes you more tense?”
He shrugged, that big shoulder of his drawing her attention in an entirely unwanted sort of way.
“Sort of. If you smoke it too much.”
“You’re not having paranoid hallucinations are you?”
Hey—it was possible. She’d heard it on How Pot Killed Johnny in high school.
“Oh my God, how come your head just swelled to twice its normal size?”
She didn’t expect him to actually prove How Pot Killed Johnny right, however. Her pulse spiked. Stupid words came out of her before she could properly think them through.
“What? I don’t—”
“Evie—I’m teasing you. I’m just teasing.”
He hadn’t seemed the sort to do things like tease. But it looked okay on him—gentle, not cruel. His mouth almost turned up at the corners, which compensated for the embarrassed flush that went through her.
“Oh.”
“It just makes you feel…a little fuzzy around the edges. Pleasantly drunk.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never tasted alcohol either.”
She had no clue why her mouth wanted her to feel even smaller than she already did. But apparently it just had to get out all shameful information at once. She’d never had a drink. Never so much as tasted a sherry at Christmastime.
But he didn’t seem to mind.
“Okay, so it’s sort of like…floating
in a tub of warm marshmallows.”
“This is your sales pitch, right? Because that sounds awesome.”
He shook his head. Seemed to move even farther away without actually going anywhere at all.
“This is so not my sales pitch. I shouldn’t even be smoking this around you.”
She thought of the song. Thought of the word pitiable again.
“Why? Because I’m so fragile?”
But he answered whip-quick, without a hint of judgment.
“No, because your dad will smell it on you.”
There it was. Evidence. Evidence that he knew exactly what her deal was, and how things went down in the Bennett household. But surprisingly, it didn’t sting half as bad as she had thought it would. And once he’d finished saying the words he just went right on with something else, as though none of it really mattered.
“I’ll put it out.”
He went to do it—licked his fingers in a way that made her stomach bottom out, then came close to pinching the tip—but she had to stop him. Just the smell of it all around them, like burning tea leaves…the look of it, forming a haze around them…it made her limbs feel like liquid. It made her want to do something probably insane.
“Don’t. Wait.”
He turned his head, eyes suddenly sharp and narrow.
“For what?”
Obviously he knew. He knew what she was going to say, before the words came out.
“I want to try,” she said, so faint she suspected she hadn’t actually spoken at all.
But he caught it just the same.
“I don’t think so, Evie.”
“Are you forbidding me?”
His mouth tightened.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I would never forbid you. I can’t forbid you. It’s not in my power to, and it never should be.”
Something inside her grew very light, suddenly. So light that she expected her head to detach from her body at any moment and float away into the night.
Which probably just meant she’d started turning into bad Johnny, and soon a cop would turn up and explain that Evie’s head had reached the upper atmosphere and then simply popped, like a balloon.
“So I can. If I want to.”
“You can.” She watched him hold out the joint to her. Smoking end up, those big fingers of his almost pinching it at the base. “But you know you’re going to reek of it, right?”
“I already reek of it. And besides, there’s this invention—I think it’s called a shower. And another one…is it a moshing washine?”
It startled her when he laughed. He didn’t even rein it in, this time, or try to keep it behind a closed fist. He just let it all the way out, deep and throaty, until it seemed to vibrate through the air and into her body, to that place she absolutely wouldn’t think about, ever again.
She didn’t think about him that way. She didn’t she didn’t she didn’t.
“You know, you look innocent. But inside you’re like a cracking whip.”
Oh God, she totally did.
“Are you going to give me the thing or what?”
“Here then, smart ass,” he said, but the term didn’t bruise. It didn’t sound the least bit like her father, saying don’t be clever.
As though being clever was such a crime.
He handed it to her and she took it, fingers fumbling now that the moment of truth was on her. She was about to smoke drugs, right there on her own porch. Only as the moments ticked by she realized one rather important and probably humiliating fact.
“I have absolutely no idea how to smoke this.”
“Just figured that out, huh?”
“Now who’s being smart?”
He gave her a rueful smile. Shook his head.
“Put it to your lips. Take a breath. All there is to it.”
She thought of the way he’d touched it to his mouth—almost like a kiss, but not quite. Unfortunately, the image just made every bit of sense run out of her, right when she needed it most.
“So I…suck it in.”
“Yeah. Suck.”
More sense went the way of the dodo. He probably hadn’t meant the word to sound dirty, but somehow it did anyway. And he had a way of hitting a really low note when making S sounds, so that they vibrated through her in the same way his laugh had.
“Okay. Okay. I’m going to do it. I’m doing it. Is it supposed to be burning my fingers? I think it’s burning my fingers.”
Of course, she expected him to see her half-feigned panic as a cue to take the thing from her. If he took it from her, she wouldn’t have to actually do what her father’s voice was telling her not to, somewhere in the back of her mind.
And to his credit, he did half of what she secretly probably wanted. He took the joint from between her trembling fingers, just as her insides reached critical meltdown.
But he also said a word, as he did so. A perfectly innocent, simple sort of word.
“Here.”
And then he leaned forward with a newly drawn mouthful of smoke, and ghosted his mouth so close to hers she couldn’t do what was obviously expected of her. She couldn’t breathe in what he was trying to pass from his body to hers. He had to tell her, through a coil of smoke like a snake, emerging from between his lips.
“Take it,” he said, and she forced her body to relax. Tried to open her mouth without actually touching him—which proved an almost monumental task.
He just took up so much space. And with him being this close she could make out every detail of his face, of those lips she’d dreamt about and the almost too-straight shape of his nose. The little scar in his eyebrow, where the piercing had been. The hint of silver in his ear in the periphery of her vision.
And then heat filled her mouth and her throat and her lungs, to meet the inferno that had already started burning, low down in her belly.
She couldn’t help reveling in it, for a second. His lips were so close to hers she could almost feel the shape of them, through the slight stirring of the air in between. Plus, he didn’t seem to be moving away. He’d done the thing he’d set out to do, and now he wasn’t moving away.
Almost as though he expected her to do something more, something—
He pulled away as abruptly as he’d put himself there, and when she opened her eyes he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He took another drag on the joint instead, as though nothing had ever happened.
And really, nothing actually had. He’d just given her what she wanted—a taste of pot.
A hint of what kissing someone might be like.
“I don’t feel any different,” she said, though that wasn’t exactly true. She did feel different. Just in a completely unexpected and world-altering way, as opposed to anything to do with relaxing marshmallows.
“Give it a second,” he said. He sounded gruff, she thought. Angry, maybe, as though she was the one who’d leaned in toward him and stirred the air around his lips.
It made her want to explain, somehow, but how could you explain something you hadn’t done? The words I’m sorry I almost sat there while you didn’t kiss me sounded completely ridiculous, even to her.
Though fortunately, she didn’t have to go to that place. He just turned his head, instead, and settled that charcoal gaze back on her. Said in some foggy, non-angry sort of voice, “Want some more?”
Would he hold it against her, if she told him yes?
“Okay,” she said.
Okay seemed safer. Or at least, it did until he actually moved forward, and then it just seemed insane and like something that sent her heart through the roof.
She tried to appear cool about it, though. The last thing he wanted was a girl who freaked out at the slightest thing, and this was definitely a slight thing. He didn’t even touch her when he moved close, and though his lips parted so slow and sensuously around the smoke, and his hand went real close to the side of her head, he didn’t actually kiss.
It just felt as if he did. It
made her eyes drift closed and her whole body lean in to him, despite the fact that she didn’t really want it to. He’d know, if she got too near him. He’d get that she kind of maybe wanted to do the thing that started with a K and ended with an S, instead of this smoky breathing that wasn’t really doing anything to her anyway.
He’d said she should feel like a warm bath filled with marshmallows. And although she was getting the warm bath thing, she felt almost certain it wasn’t because of the pot.
“I really don’t think anything’s happening,” she said, the moment he pulled away. Only her voice came out all funny—lazy, somehow. And when he spoke, his voice sounded that way too.
“You sure?” he asked, while her body sagged against the rail around the porch steps. Of course she almost missed and slid right through the gap to the grass beyond, but that didn’t mean anything. And besides, he was there to grab ahold of her suddenly bendy body.
“Whoa there, Miss-Nothing’s-Happening,” he said, but weirdly she didn’t feel bad. She didn’t feel clumsy, like usual, or like she’d proven her lack of coolness again. She just felt…easy.
“Did I almost fall? I definitely almost falled.” She paused, thinking. “Fell. I almost fell.”
“I think falled is right.”
“It’s not. You’re weird.”
“I know. Want some more?”
She thought about his ghost-lips again, and came close to saying no.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“Close your eyes this time,” he said, and though a piece of her wondered why he might request something like that, most of her thought that piece was an idiot.
So she just closed them, and after an interminable amount of time felt him move toward her. Slow, slow, and like that word. What was it, again? Sensuous, she thought, as he drew close. Everything had been cloaked in sensuousness, to the point where details seemed fuzzy and languid.
Like the cuff of his sleeve stroking over the back of her hand, or the feel of his breath stirring against her lips. Her lips had grown seventy thousand nerve endings between yesterday and right now, and they seemed to buzz whenever he moved.
The buzzing got louder when he put a hand in her hair.
He did it in the exact way she’d seen people on TV do it—like they needed to pin another person in place before they could…do whatever. Only Van wasn’t going to do whatever, was he? He just needed to hold her there so he could breathe the hot smoke into her lungs, like giving someone the kiss of life only backward.
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