I want to just fit in, okay? I just want to fit in.
“No, not exactly—it just isn’t that strong, you know?”
“Sounds like it kinda might be strong, somewhere in there.”
“No, no, it really isn’t. We moved here when I was a kid,” I say, but I know he hears the lie in my voice. This odd little frown passes over his forehead the second he catches it, and his eyes narrow for the briefest moment.
Not in a bad way, though. There is no suspicion in the expression at all. Instead there is just this other emotion—one I find hard to believe in, no matter how familiar it seems to me. I’ve felt it on my own face a thousand times, yet still I try to fit it into a different box altogether. He probably just has indigestion, I think.
Even though I know, I know.
It stung him, that I couldn’t be honest.
He was stung by that, a little bit.
God, I don’t want him to be stung.
“Actually, no, that isn’t true,” I say finally, and when I do, I speak completely in my own voice. I let the words sink right down into the depths of Darlington, just for him. “I came here for college just after my twenty-first birthday—almost a year ago now. I just said that because I prefer to be…I just want to be like everyone else, you know? I want to be normal.”
I have to take a big breath once I’m done, but doing so is completely unnecessary. He barely seems to respond. He just shrugs one large shoulder as though my deepest, darkest secrets are no big deal at all.
“Ain’t nothing wrong with that,” he says, and I could kiss him. I would kiss him, if I was not so mortally afraid of kissing and all the parts of it that I would probably get wrong. As it is, I just have to make do with another mental handshake. In fact, I’m right in the middle of this when he adds something that pulls me up short. “If that is actually what you want.”
I stop dead, imaginary hand still reaching for his.
What does he mean by that, exactly? Of course this is what I want. I want to live in a sunny American neighborhood with white picket fences and bubblegum and bake sales and trick-or-treating, trips to things like farmers’ markets, and fun on Sundays in the park. And if I’m going to have any of that stuff, I can’t be like this.
British people named Beatrix, who spent their teenage years trying desperately to do all the right things for their impossible-to-please fathers, are not permitted into that inner circle. I have to be better than that. I have to be more like everyone else, and if I start with my accent and my name, the rest will follow.
Surely he understands this?
“After all, here you are out in this dirty place talking to me. Seems like the kind of thing a normal person might not want to do so much, know what I mean?”
I guess he doesn’t understand this at all.
Or is it me who isn’t understanding?
It feels as if it might be me. I’m getting this funny tingling feeling the more he talks, and when I try to answer, it grows even stronger. It spreads right to the ends of my fingers.
“But this is…this is different,” I say, even as I see things as they really are for quite possibly the first time. Maybe I don’t want to be that suburban American dream. Maybe that was just the kid I was who watched movies about people who never got locked in the basement and always seemed to have a glamorous time at proms. Maybe the adult me wants something else. The only thing is—I have no idea what that thing might be.
“How is this different?” he asks me, and all I can say in response is:
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe you feel like you have to talk to me.”
“No, that isn’t it. I don’t feel like I have to.”
“Maybe you took pity, seeing me out here.”
“There was no pity. I wanted to…talk to you”—I start then stop just shy of saying the true words more than I’ve ever wanted to talk to anyone. I stop and substitute something less terrifying—“about things and what-have-you.”
“Even though I could be a stalker?”
“You don’t seem like a stalker.”
“Might want to reconsider your definition of that word if you really believe that. I mean, it could be that I just happened to pass through your college campus at the crack of dawn. And maybe, just maybe, I didn’t find out anything about you, and never spent the last three days thinking about you. Perhaps I just felt like hanging out by some dumpsters for no reason at all—but you got to admit that sounds unlikely.”
There are many things about this little speech that encourage me to go very still, and very silent. The smallest of them is the way he says about you, as though the two words are one. He splices them together, and in the process makes them so much more than the sum of their parts. Now they are abatcha, which sounds like a spell for finding your true love.
And that’s before I get to this:
He’s been thinking about me.
He’s been thinking about me, and finding out about me, and though I know I should find that scary, I don’t. I can’t. He’s stripped it of any possible unsettling connotations without even really trying. He just hasn’t insisted the way most guys do, or behaved as though he was entitled to my attention.
If anything, he’s done the opposite. He’s accepted that I shouldn’t want to be around him and admitted to things I haven’t accused him of—almost as though he’s taking responsibility before he’s even done anything wrong. In fact, I could probably take out the word almost in that sentence. It’s exactly what he’s done, and that is…oh, wow, that is. I don’t even have a word for what that is. I only know that I’d buy ten of it if someone put it in an advert. It’s possible I’m drooling, even though drooling seems insane and excessive.
He’s only said stuff, for God’s sake.
But that just makes me wonder what would happen if he did more than say stuff. Is it possible for a person to explode over a touch? Even a casual one would probably be too much. He’s ten feet away from me with his arms folded, yet somewhere inside me I can already hear the countdown to my ultimate destruction.
“You’re being real quiet suddenly. Did I just scare you? ’Cause that was me saying all of that is bad. And it worries me that you might not know that. Or that you maybe think you can’t tell me to go in case I do something violent, even though I’ll tell you right now I’m never gonna put a foot out of place if I think for one second it makes you uncomfortable. You say the word, and I’ll take ten steps back. I’ll take a thousand steps back if that’s what it takes to keep that sweet face smiling.”
It isn’t the words or his voice that make me react—though they’re good enough on their own. His voice swings so low and lazy I could use it as a hammock on some sleepy summer day. His words are full of things I never thought of before, like the idea that someone would want to see me smile this badly.
But it’s his expression that really does the work. He looks so watchful and wary, like some wounded animal that doesn’t know how to fix what it has done, and I don’t enjoy it one little bit. It’s giving me that weird ache in the middle of my body, and the longer I let this go on, the bigger and more uncomfortable it gets.
I have to put a stop to it, but of course I do it all wrong.
“No,” I say, only it comes out much too fast and far, far too loud. It’s so loud his eyebrows actually lift, which should put me into a humiliation-based coma. It should, but it doesn’t—for one very delicious reason.
The corners of his mouth are kind of trembling. They’re trembling just a little bit, as though he’s doing his very best to hold them down. He doesn’t want to give in to smiling, but after a moment of valiant struggle, he simply has to. His upper lip curls, and then the deal is done. The evidence is there, plain as day.
He’s happy. He’s happy that I want to talk to him and like his company and don’t want him to go—a concept I can hardly wrap my head around. I’m not sure anyone has ever been pleased by my desire to be around them before, and that makes my second no much
more stable. I’m blushing so hard someone is going to have to admit me to a burn ward pretty soon, but I manage it anyway.
“No, that’s okay. You don’t have to take any steps back. And I don’t think you’re stalking me because you stopped by. I’m glad you stopped by, no matter what the reason is,” I tell him, and the inadvertent smile gets bigger and firmer. He seems to realize both corners have the ability to turn up, and when they do, something gets hold of my vocal cords and squeezes. It squeezes out words I don’t want to say.
“Is the reason really…that you can’t stop thinking about me?”
I know immediately it’s the wrong thing to ask. His expression shifts from almost relaxed to a trapped kind of tension in the blink of an eye, and when he answers, his voice is different. Gruffer, I think, with maybe just a hint of embarrassment.
“Didn’t mean it like that. I meant I just been worried—about you and your brother and whatever. I heard some stuff about him being at a bar down in Harkerville and thought I should come tell you,” he says.
Then I disappear into a hole in the ground. Or at least, I want to. Why on earth did I imagine he meant thinking about you in the good way? It’s never the good way. It’s always the shitty way that ends with me mistaking concern for flirting. I know so little about men that I once leaned in for a kiss when a guy was aiming for the girl behind me.
And now here I am again, digging myself out of this embarrassment hole.
“Right, of course. Of course. My brother.”
“Seems to cause you a lot of trouble.”
“Yeah, I guess he does, kind of.”
“So I figured I’d help out.”
“That’s great. That’s so kind of you, thanks.”
“No problem. You look like you need it.”
“I do?” I ask, head flooding with all kinds of terrible symbols of needing it—like massive worry lines all over my face. Maybe I suddenly look about seventy-six, or have somehow forgotten to wash my clothes in the rush to be concerned. All seem hugely possible, until he goes with the one thing I would never have thought of.
“Come on, girl. ’Course you do. Can practically see ten thousand years of fighting and losing in those too-dark eyes of yours,” he says, and all I can think is How the fuck does he know these things about me?
No one else has ever noticed the ten thousand years. I didn’t even notice the ten thousand years, and now I’m worried I’m like that Stephen King story where the kid travels through infinity and ends up with yellow, wrinkled eyeballs. I almost put my hand up to my face to check if that’s the case, when I see a certain sort of expression cross his face.
A wince, I think it is. But just in case I’m unsure, he reinforces it with words.
“So what you want to do here?” he asks, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt what he’s trying to do. It’s not just a dumb suspicion that I’m going to facepalm over later. He isn’t aiming at the girl behind me. He’s said something that could be misconstrued, something that sounds as if he really has been thinking about me, and is now attempting to change the subject. He’s trying way, way too hard, and that gives me pause.
Maybe he isn’t all business, or just offering help.
Maybe there is something there, hidden beneath fears he can hardly express and concern that I might not feel the same way. After all, isn’t that how I feel about him? Isn’t that how I feel about myself? I barely believe a single thing he does or understand one tiny fact about my own emotions and desires. I thought I wanted picket fences.
But one word from him and I’m no longer so sure.
In fact, all I can think now is that I do not want this to end. Even if he cares only in that perfunctory way and forever hides any real feelings behind a mask of indifference, I want to keep going. I need to see where this path will lead me, and so I go ahead and ask. I ask the most terrifying question any person has ever asked anyone in the history of the world.
“Will you take me?”
Chapter 4
I know I’ve said completely the wrong thing the second the words are out, but I pretend for a while that I haven’t. I pretend so long that it starts to become reality. Somehow I’m smiling and full of a sense of success, despite the fact that I am going to have to do the thing I just suggested. There is no getting out of it now. The second I’m done speaking he tells me Okay, and then he simply strolls over to his bike.
He strolls over to the bike that I will have to ride on.
Why didn’t I think about the fact that I will have to ride on that thing? Did I imagine he had a spare moped sitting around somewhere? Maybe I thought he would ask me to walk with him to this place, even though the place is probably miles away. In fact I know it is miles away, yet somehow I still asked him to take me.
Jesus, I asked him to take me.
I used words that have a double meaning. I said something vaguely sexual to him without really meaning to, and now I have to touch him almost everywhere just to get this thing done. He is going to be between my spread legs. That big body is going to be between my spread legs. Of course it will be back to front and not in any kind of position to slide tab A into slot B, but even so…
My legs are trembling as I make my way over to him. Part of me just wants to fold down into a heap on the floor, but I know why I stay standing. If I show how nervous I am he will probably laugh at me. At the very least he might raise an eyebrow, and even that seems like too much. I have to seem like a confident, stable person who has no trouble at all riding a massive motorcycle.
The problem is I barely know how to be a confident, stable person in the easiest of situations. There is absolutely no way I’m going to come out of this looking cool—though God knows I try. I put one hand on this monster’s steel back with all the surety of someone who really knows what they’re doing.
Unfortunately, that’s all I do.
Mainly because I realize that the next step involves raising my right leg. I have to raise my right leg and hook it over the bike, but there is absolutely no way I can do that with any dignity. I’m just way too short, and this massive machine is way too big, and if I go for it I’m going to end up falling or flinging myself over the other side.
But I know I have to do something. It is vital, because now I can feel his eyes all over the left side of my face. At first the sensation is small—barely a fly buzzing around my head. However, as the time ticks on and on and the tension builds higher and higher, that little look he’s giving me starts to feel like something else.
It starts to feel like a hand stroking down over my cheek. And the longer I let this go on, the more physical his gaze feels. By the time I manage to halfheartedly raise my right leg, he’s practically caressing the nape of my neck. He must be—how else to explain all the hairs that are bristling and prickling there? How else to explain the heat?
I swear I am boiling alive inside my college hoodie. I have the strongest urge to take it off, but if I do I will be pretty much naked. The vest underneath is too tight and too short, and to top it off—it has a picture of the octopus thing from Firefly on it. I already had to explain to Sam what Firefly is. I do not want to have to explain to him.
He already thinks I’m a maniac.
I can tell by the way he’s leaning down a little now. He wants me to look at him, so I can see how high he’s raising his eyebrow and how amused he is by my inability to get on a bike, and I just want to believe for a little longer that I’m super-cool.
Not that he’s going to let me.
“You ever ridden before?”
For one awful moment I am completely certain he means the other type of riding. But it isn’t my fault, okay? I got my sex education from the advice column in a magazine about men getting really fit. For years I thought babies came out of belly buttons and masturbation meant chewing your food really well. It’s only really recently that I’ve learned otherwise, and even the word learned is very loose. Most of my new education comes from peeking at things Sam is watching from b
etween my fingers, in case the thing I’m seeing goes all the way up the butt. That I manage to process what he said correctly and answer him at all is a wonder for the ages.
“Does my neighbor’s lawn mower count?”
Though I wish I’d answered him with something better.
His laugh is a great roll of thunder, shuddering through my bones.
“Yeah…no,” he says, and I dare to glance at him then. I just do it quickly, when I know he’s looking off in that way people do when they find something hilarious. But a quick glance is more than enough. His expression is much warmer and friendlier than I had anticipated. In fact, it’s so warm and friendly I can’t seem to stop staring.
I want to, because in a second he’s going to look back. But somehow I’m still doing it when he turns his head, and that is definitely a mistake. Now he can see me looking, and I can see the full weight of his expression, and above all I know what that expression means. Suddenly I understand what is happening here, in a great rush of joy and terror.
This is what teasing is. He’s teasing me.
Only in the good way, you know—the one that gives me goose bumps all over my body, up to and including the place between my legs. In all my days on earth I don’t think I’ve ever had a guy be like that with me. Not even the ones Sam set me up with, who generally just counted the minutes until they could go find someone better.
Somehow I don’t think Serge is counting the minutes.
I think he’s doing the opposite of that. Nothing I do appears to annoy or bore him. He isn’t looking at anything but me. He even attempts to help me when it becomes clear how stuck I actually am. He reaches out both hands—one close to my elbow and the other near my hip—and only stops because of one rather glaring problem.
Another inch or two and he will be touching me. Not just hovering close by or gesturing in my general direction. His hands will be on my body, grasping and heaving and maybe even finding things he didn’t mean to explore. He might slip and accidentally get a handful of my bottom, and we both know what will happen if he does.
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