by Piper Lennox
“Is this how you treat all your dates?”
He hesitates, but only briefly. “So this is a date, now?”
“If you were operating under the….” My brain, fogged and battered from the stars and whiskey, fumbles for the word.
“Premise?” he prompts. There’s the arrogance again. He trails his finger, the one he just had in my panties, down my neck and shoulder. “Idea? Assumption?”
“Assumption. Yes.” I take a breath and jerk away from him. “If you were operating under the assumption this wasn’t a date, but just a hangout with a friend, well…that makes what you’re doing even more inappropriate.”
“So let me get this straight.” He leans farther, invading my armrest with half his body. “You don’t like the idea of me tying you to my bed? Or is it the other part that bothers you—me giving you so many orgasms, your voice gives out because you just can’t stop screaming my name?”
I’m lost. In his words, the sky, in the smell of bodies all around us and the cold, aging seats of the theater.
“I didn’t say that, exactly.”
He tongues his cheek, laughing to himself.
“But,” I add, as another guest twists in her seat to glare at us, “it would be nice if you, you know…tried to woo me, or something.”
“Woo you?” Blake leans back in his own seat, giving me space. “I don’t have to win you over, Mellie. We both want the same thing.”
“Maybe so.” I watch the fake starlight glint off his flask as he lifts it to his lips. It must be a new one; we emptied the first in the car. At least, I think we did. I suddenly can’t remember. “But it would still be nice if you pretended to work at it. I mean, damn, I invited you to a planetarium. That’s romantic. The least you can do is sweet talk me a little, instead of jumping right into the dirty stuff.”
Instead of laughing again, the way I expect him to, he sits up straighter. “Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it?”
“If you want romance, I can do that.” He reaches towards my lap once more. I recoil, until he takes my hand off my leg, laces his fingers into mine, and settles it on the armrest between us.
Somehow, the brush of his thumb there, the pulse points of our wrists connecting, sends an even greater shock through me than all his promises for tonight combined.
Blake
A real, official date with Melanie Thatcher. Teenage me would have a coronary.
“Too bad you can’t see the stars out here, too,” she sighs, when we get out of the planetarium. I follow her eyes into the pale yellow wash overhead, courtesy of the city lights.
“I know where we could see real stars.”
“Let me guess: your apartment balcony. Or some fancy skylight thing in your bedroom. You look like you’d have a skylight.”
She pops a handful of Dots into her mouth. When I brought them back from the concession stand, she marveled that I’d remembered her favorite theater candy.
“Not to be confused,” I added, whispering right in her ear, “with your favorite candy bar—Snickers—or your favorite holiday candy: chocolate oranges.” We both loved those as kids, mostly because they had to be smashed open. The day after Christmas, every year, we’d hammer them against her kitchen counter to loosen the slices, already melting from the heat of our palms.
“Wow.” In the man-made twilight, her blush turned purple. “You have a really good memory.”
“Only when it comes to you.”
She scoffed. “Okay, I said give me sweet talk. Not lines.”
“Not a line if it’s true.”
She rolled her eyes, but let me kiss her again.
“I look like I’d have a skylight,” I repeat now, catching her as she stumbles. Even once she’s steady, I don’t move my hands from her waist. “What does that mean?”
“You know,” she chews, “the power suits, the ad man thing. I bet you live in, like, Canal Heights or Pike’s Landing.”
“No way you guessed that. You saw my license or something, didn’t you?”
“I was right?” She squirms away from me, both of us laughing and tripping our way to the parking lot. “You really live there?”
“Yeah,” I sigh, smiling, “Pike’s. But I don’t have a skylight. Sorry to break it to you.”
“I bet I know exactly what your living room looks like,” she challenges. She finishes her candy and studies me. “Leather couch. Lucite or marble coffee table. Gray curtains, no blinds on the window, because you hate cleaning them.”
“My curtains are black.” I unlock my car. “But still, impressive.”
“You like modern and minimal.” Her mouth barely spits out the last word, she’s so drunk. I expect her to fall into the car, thrilled to have somewhere to sit again, but she just stands there while I open my door.
“Are you getting in?”
“You can’t drive. You’re drunk.”
“You’re drunk, Mellie. I didn’t have that much.”
She squashes the empty Dots box and shoves it in her purse, then takes out her phone. “I’m getting a ride-share. You had even more of that whiskey than I did.”
I put my arms on the roof of the car and stare at her. “I’m also about sixty pounds heavier than you. Trust me, I’m good. Get in.”
“No way.” Hands raised, like I’ve got her at gunpoint, she backs away from the car until she bumps into the next one and stumbles. “I’d rather walk.”
“Fine.” I open my door and slide into my seat. “Then walk.”
Other girls I’ve dated would back down around this point, and I wait for Mel to do the same. We both know she isn’t going to walk around in the city at night, drunk and alone, or even wait for a car by herself.
So when she looks at me through her window, shrugs, and starts for the street, I let her get several yards away before getting out of the car.
I should have known better. With Mel, you can call her bluff—but she’ll call your call and raise the stakes, every time.
“Okay,” I shout, when I’m within her earshot. “If you really want a ride-share, we’ll get one.”
She pivots on her heel, no hesitation. Like she knew, all along, I would follow.
“But I’m paying for it,” I add firmly, and pull my phone from my pocket.
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those types, now.” She watches me order the car. “The whole ‘I’ve got to pay for everything because I’m the man’ types.”
“I’m not.” I can hear how defensive I sound, but can’t manage to fix it. The truth is, I am like that. It’s a big reason I studied marketing and went into advertising, instead of getting a studio art degree: you earn way more money, and money means power. When you’re the one paying, you get to call the shots.
While we wait for the car, Mel ducks into a coffee shop to use the bathroom. She comes back with two drinks.
“See?” she says. “You hesitated before you took it from me.”
“Only because I was trying to figure out what it was.” I take a sip.
“Iced hazelnut macchiato.” She leans against the wall with me and taps our cups together. “I’ve got a pretty good memory, too.”
We drink and rattle ice for a while. When some guys pass by and let their eyes linger on Mel too long, I slide close and put my arm around her waist. They move along.
“Hmm. Maybe you’re one of those types, too.”
My sigh fills the air between us. “I’m sure I’ll regret asking this, but what type?”
“The kind who has to make sure every other guy knows his girl is off-limits. Like…like dogs, marking their territory.”
“Apart from the tasteless analogy,” I concede, pushing my face into her neck until she laughs, “yeah. I’ll admit to that.”
The car pulls up to the curb. I hold the door for her, hoping she won’t construe it as any “type” trait other than politeness. Quietly, she thanks me.
“Where are we going, anyway?” While the neon of downtown streaks around us, she tilts
her head and rests it on my shoulder. I think about kissing her again, but decide to wait: if she wants romance, I’m going to deliver.
“You’ll see.”
Thirteen
Mel
“I can’t believe you brought me here.”
My grip tightens on Blake’s as we slip down the hill to where the ground levels out. The engine of the ride-share car fades, until all we hear are crickets.
“Why?” he asks. “Surprised I remembered this, too?”
“No.” I finish my drink and wave the cup at the dilapidated barn in front of us. “Because it’s creepy. I hope you don’t expect me to go in there.”
“You used to.” He kneels down, feeling through the grass. We lose sight of the rock after he pitches it into the night, but can hear it hit the side of the barn with a thump. “In fact, I was always the one who told you it was creepy.”
The barn was a popular site for parties, when we were younger. When Fridays rolled around and no one’s house was free, droves of us gathered out here in the field. Someone would start a bonfire or two. Kegs were set up in the glow, grocery bags of cups and snacks strewn between groups. The barn itself—just as rundown now as it was then—was used for hookups and drunken daredevil acts. Swinging from the hayloft was how Carl Linkheart sprained his wrist before a big lacrosse match.
Whenever I was single, Blake and I stuck to the fringes of the party. He said the barn didn’t interest him; there were bats inside. When I was in a relationship with someone, the guy would always work me into the barn, one way or another, while Blake stayed by the fire.
It was always the same: my back pressed against the splintered wood of a post or wall, dodging the hands that fumbled up my shirt, my breath swamped with beer as I whispered, “I’m not ready for that.” Some of them took it well, happy to stick with kissing and over-the-clothes gropes. Most, not so much.
“It’s because of Foster, isn’t it?” Carl spat. He tore his hand off my back so fast, I felt his thumbnail scratch me. “You know, all the guys on the team think I’m a dumbass for dating you. Everyone talks about it.”
“Talks about what?” My fingers were too clumsy, joints softened from alcohol, to fix my bra. He’d unhooked it as soon as we came inside, without asking. It took at least a minute of kissing before I’d summoned the bravery to stop him from removing more of my clothes.
“You and him. Felix told me that’s why he broke up with you, because the guy is just…always there.”
That’s what I get, I thought, for dating teammates.
“Oh, yeah?” I straightened my shirt and edged away from the wall, so he couldn’t keep hemming me into the corner the way he was. “I’m guessing what he didn’t tell you is that Blake had to drive us on all our dates, because Felix failed his driver’s test nine times. He’s a dumbass.”
Carl cursed and pushed his hair back. It was sun-bleached and fell across his face in gelled shocks, which he often flicked away with a sporty jerk of the head. How did I ever find it sexy? Now, I understood why Blake was always saying, “It’s like a horse flicking flies off its ass.”
“Are you sleeping with him? Is that why you won’t let me get even close to touching you, after all these weeks?”
“What?” I pushed his shoulder away when he tried stepping closer again. “No!”
“Then why are you always at his house? Why did he drive you here tonight, when you could’ve ridden with me?”
“He’s my best friend. Of course we do everything together. I don’t bitch when you’re at Elliot’s house.”
“Exactly. Because Elliot’s a guy. If I did hang out with a girl the way you hang out with Foster, trust me—you’d have something to say about it. It’s weird. It’s…it’s not right.”
“Why, because you say it isn’t?” Finally, I’d managed to creep close enough to the door that I could make my escape. “I don’t even think of Blake like that.”
“Maybe not. But he does think of you that way.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Don’t blame him because you’re jealous and—and controlling.”
Carl blocked my exit attempt with his arm. I thought about ducking under, but knew he would just follow me out into the field. The last thing I wanted was an audience to what, I already knew, would culminate in a breakup.
“It’s not controlling,” he argued, “to get pissed when my girlfriend holds some other guy’s hand.”
“He was helping me down the hill! Jesus.”
“Okay,” he sighed, letting his hands slap down against his legs. “You don’t like him that way, fine. I’ll buy that. But he does like you. I’m a guy. We can tell when another guy is into a girl.”
“You’re insane.” I shoved past him and made it outside. The world was cool and open now, and I relaxed. Even Carl’s hand on my back, grabbing the hem of my shirt, didn’t bother me, because at least now I could run away. If I had to.
“Look at him.” His mouth appeared by my ear. “Right there, by the fire.”
“So? He’s just standing there.”
“Exactly. He’s not talking to Becca or Tanya or anyone, two feet away from him. He’s not dancing. He’s just sitting there, drinking.” Carl paused. I heard him grind his teeth, a nasty habit of his I would later cite as our reason for breaking up. “Waiting for you to come back.”
I shrugged, hard, and knocked my shoulder into his chin. He let go of my shirt and backed away.
“You don’t believe me? Go. Go over there and tell me he doesn’t, like, instantly change and get into the party,” he hissed after me. “You’ll see. I’m right.”
“No, you’re not.” I turned, stumbling backwards but still upright, and gave him the finger. “And even if you are, it doesn’t matter. We’re done.”
By the time I got back to the fire, Carl had begun spewing obscenities about me across the field. People glanced over, mildly interested, but it wasn’t like my breakup with Bastian: the world went on.
“What’s that about?” Blake asked. “Is Carl fighting with somebody again?”
I sat beside him in a patch of hay thrown over the mud and took his drink. “Just me.”
“You need me to shut him up?” He paused, listening. “Sounds like he’s saying some shitty stuff.”
“Nah,” I exhaled, lying back. Blake stretched out beside me. The fire warmed our feet; our faces were cold, tilted into nothing but the midnight sky. “Let him pout. I, uh…I dumped him. So he’s bitter.”
“Oh.” I expected him to ask why, but he didn’t. Not yet. That would come later, when we were sober and rigid in our roles. Best friends, and nothing else, the line distinct and stark.
Right now, the line was dug into the sand. Deep, and indisputable—but easily crossed, if we really wanted to try.
My hand slipped into his.
“Missed you,” he whispered.
I looked at him. The moon was huge that night, turning our tans chalk-white. “I was only gone, like…twenty minutes.”
Blake smiled and shrugged, “Still.” He put his free hand behind his head. I could see his eyes, darting from star to star. As if he could tell which ones would burn out first, and which ones already had. Or like he could count them, one by one, if we stayed here long enough, just like this.
Blake swings the ladder up into place against the hayloft and shakes it, testing the strength. He holds out his hand. “Ladies first.”
“Not in this scenario. That thing probably has dry rot.”
“It’s safe,” he insists, shaking it again for good measure. “Besides, I’ve got to be down here to hold it for you. Do you want to see stars, or not?”
I look up. Through the rafters, the fallen sections of roof reveal the exact same sky we could see outside the barn, safely on the ground.
“Mel.” His voice is a strange blend of reassuring and authoritative. He’s not just telling me I’ll be safe; he’s promising it.
My first steps are shaky. Instead of canceling
each other out, I feel the alcohol and caffeine vying for first, and can’t decide if I’m sleepy or jittery, relaxed or keyed-up. When I feel Blake’s hand on my back, then my butt and thigh, as he pushes me up gently, I realize it might not be either of those ingredients at all, making me feel this way.
“Should I hold the top, while you climb up?” I call down, when I’m finally in the hayloft. Blake is already halfway up the ladder, so I decide it’s best if I just back up and get out of his way.
“Careful,” he warns, and pulls me away from a loose board. The entire thing creaks under our weight, especially his, but he tests each spot before choosing a seat. “Oh, hang on.” He takes off his suit jacket and lays it out for me.
“It’s going to get filthy, you know.” The loft is filled with old hay and a thick, gritty layer of dirt, most likely blown in from the roof.
“That’s what dry cleaners are for.” He pats the coat. I sit, then lie down beside him as he stretches out.
I find his hand. It’s just like the night I broke up with Carl Linkheart, when we watched the sky until the fire died, and kids drove home or called older siblings for rides, the sunrise cresting over the hill.
“Better than the fake stars, huh?” he asks.
I nod. Somehow, even just ten feet off the ground and staring through a patch of broken roof, the stars seem brighter. Closer. But even more than the stars, I notice the spaces between them: tiny windows of nothingness, navy and infinite, as empty as they are full of potential.
Blake
“No, really—I’ve wanted to bring you in here since we were fourteen.”
Mel’s laugh quiets. She turns in my arms, pulling her attention from the stars and putting it on me. “You said you’d never come in here,” she reminds me, “because of bats.”
“Well…I would have gone in, with you. I’m here now, aren’t I?”
She rests her head against my chest. “Everyone thought there was something going on between us, back then. That’s the real reason Carl broke up with me. And Felix.” Her fingers trail along my tie, loosening it. “They were jealous of you.”