All of which conspires to make me draw back. I didn’t realize it would be so intense and mean so much. I thought I could do it but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. My hand feels as if I dipped it into electricity. I have to shake it just to get some of that static-crackle off my skin. I think I may never breathe normally again. My heart is trying to ram its way out of my body.
So how come I’m going back in for more?
Good God, I appear to be going back in for more. I inch toward the spider he has under his left arm with tentative fingers, just maybe wanting to see more of it. If I nudge him he might lift that limb and let me have a better look—but apparently that isn’t needed. He senses me just like he did before, and asks before I get near enough.
“Want me to raise it?” he asks.
And then he does. He raises it up in a way that should seem perfunctory. He hardly makes a show of it or bunches his biceps once the arm is there. Yet the sight of it…the way he goes about it…the stretch of his body and the sense of seeing secret hidden things…
That about does me in.
There is just something so intimate about the move. It lets me see the dark hair beneath his arm—hair that I somehow imagined wouldn’t be there. And now I can study tattoos that hardly anyone probably gets to see. Even if he wanders around without his shirt on, that spider is secret. It hides under all that muscle, along with the heavy bones of his rib cage and so much more of that silk-soft skin.
But I get to see it. I get to see everything.
Like those goddamn racing stripes.
I stand on tiptoe the second I realize I might get a closer look, and when he notices and leans down, my hand does the thing again. It moves toward him, without permission from me. I’m still dazed from the electrocution the last one caused, so am in no position to authorize this. It just happens.
Everything from that point on just happens. I reach up, and he leans down a little more, and suddenly we’re so close I could tilt my head and brush my cheek against his. The fingers that were just hovering somewhere south of those jet-black stripes are now pretty much touching them, and I can see the most intense detail. I can see that the hair there is kind of long. He obviously slicks it down with something.
I can feel that he slicks them down with something, when I finally dare to touch. They are sort of bristly with product and maybe smooth at the same time—though of course that isn’t what goes through my head the second I make contact. That electricity is the thing that goes through my head. It goes through my whole body.
And this time I think it goes through his, too.
The only difference is—he loves it. Oh, man, does he ever love it. His love is so massive I can’t even pretend it isn’t there. His eyes drift closed the second I make contact. He lets his lips part. But most of all he practically rubs himself against my hand. He rubs himself against my hand and everything is just too warm, and I can feel his shuddery breaths almost beating through my body and when he urges his face against my hand a second time…
His lips just come so close to mine.
They come so close—what else can I do? The most terrified, doubt-riddled person on earth would take the same chance. I barely have to move my head to close the gap. Our mouths are almost brushing as it is. I can smell the sharp tang of too-strong mint on his breath and feel the heat of it washing over my face. This cannot be the wrong move.
He wants me to kiss him.
And by God, I want to kiss him, too. I’m almost outside my own body with terror and excitement and a thousand other feelings, but all of them narrow down to nothing for that one slight touch of my lips to his. I swear, in that second hardly anything else exists. There is just that tiniest bit of pressure against softness, the barest hint of moisture. The sense that I am doing something that will change me forever.
Quite possibly into the kind of person I actually want to be.
And then the whole thing is over, as though it had never begun. He jerks back so abruptly I almost check to see if I accidentally slapped his face. It felt as though I was kissing him, but how can I know for sure? The only thing I’ve ever pressed my lips to is my pillow, and my pillow never talks back. It never reacts badly.
On the contrary, I think my pillow is very satisfied with my attentions.
But Serge is a completely different matter altogether.
He looks as if he just saw a car filled with clowns rolling down a road made of toffee and treacle. His eyes have gone all big, and one eyebrow is so shocked it seems to be raising and lowering all at the same time. And even though he hasn’t laughed his big booming laugh, I think it’s safe to assume I’ve done a bad thing.
Oh, Christ, I’ve done a bad thing.
He didn’t mean kissing. He meant something else. He was just trying to be really super-platonic with me. Like, the most platonic any human being can be with another human being. Eventually he was going to enter us in the platonic Olympics.
We would have won gold, only now I’ve blown it.
I have to apologize for blowing it.
“I…I…that was…I thought,” I start, but my insides are churning so madly I can hardly get anything else out. The most I can manage is stuttering and spreading my hands in the most supplicatory gesture anyone has ever done before. Please, I think at him. Please understand that I just made a mistake. Forget about my clumsiness, forget about the thing I did, forget about everything, just forget, please forget.
But of course he doesn’t.
How can he? What I did is just starting to dawn all over his face. His eyes search mine, looking for explanations I don’t have. Then once he is sure, absolutely sure—when the bright light of what I have done flashes through him—he responds in a way that says for certain that he can never not remember.
He takes my face in his hands and kisses me back.
Chapter 6
At first I try to stay calm. When I imagined myself kissing someone, it was always in this super-slow and dignified manner, with lots of moody rain falling and classy music playing and absolutely no spit getting anywhere. But the moment his mouth presses to mine, I realize how wrong I was. I have absolutely no chance of replicating scenes from romantic movies, because in them no one ever seems to want as much as I do.
Everything is just so new and fascinating that a slight touch is nowhere near enough. I put a hand on his arm to steady myself because my knees are trying to escape out of my body, and standing on tiptoe is really starting to take its toll, but my hand absolutely will not stick to that. Within thirty seconds of this kiss I can feel myself squeezing him. I get a taste of that biceps shifting beneath my palm and I just have to.
Is it going to be hard? Soft?
The texture is a total mystery to me, and must be unearthed immediately. First by just tentatively testing it out, and then with something I would call a grope if I was willing to admit it.
Which I am most definitely not. No groping is happening. I am not trying to break the boundaries of physics to get higher on my tiptoes. My other hand is nowhere near his shoulder, and even if it was, I am touching it in a perfectly normal manner. Most people would probably just call it a pat. At best, they could push it to a gentle stroking. There is nothing wrong with a gentle stroking.
But there probably is something wrong with the way I’m kissing him. I know there is. I can tell before my stunned brain manages to have a reasonable thought—though really, can I be blamed? He is the one who goes for it first. He tilts his head, and his lips part, and I can feel his face hair and oh, God, oh, God, I have no idea what happens to me. It’s as though someone jams down on this big tingling buzzer inside my body, and when they do I have to attack his face.
And the attacking is bad.
It isn’t just my dad who would disapprove. It is everyone in the history of the world. I think I try to get inside his mouth. I know for sure that I go too fast and press too hard. My lips already feel pulpy and bruised, and I’ve been doing this for only thirty seconds or so—yet
somehow that only seems to make it sweeter. It only seems to make me greedier.
Everything only seems to make me greedier. The way his hands keep hovering so close to various parts of my body, somehow so much more intense than if he was actually touching me. His mouth getting gradually more frantic against mine—at first hardly noticeable, but then just enough to make me think he really likes this. That I might, just might, be doing it right and in a way that he sort of enjoys. He even seems to shudder when I let my body brush against his, and for one wild second I let myself think that could be a good thing.
It certainly feels that way to me. The moment I make contact I get this lovely big gush of pleasure, and it seems pretty plausible that the same thing happens for him.
Or at least it does until he quite suddenly rips himself away again. Yeah, after that I kind of think I might have misinterpreted a few things—like my ability to kiss. Or the thumbs-up I thought he gave when he took hold of my face. It seemed to say that this was something he wanted, but right now he just seems even more horrified than he did before. Like I assaulted his face with my mouth, and now he has to deal with the terrible trauma.
I mean, how else to explain his expression? He looks as if I punched him in the gut midkiss. He rides a bike and has insane hair and knows all about dive bars and drug rings and how to rescue people from bad situations, and yet somehow I have freaked him out so completely he seems unable to say anything. I keep waiting and waiting for him to explain why he yanked himself away the second time, or even the first.
I would even accept any reasons for his horrified expression.
But nothing is forthcoming. Except for maybe my imagination and all the terrible things it can come up with in the ensuing silence. Like maybe I really did do everything wrong. He only wanted to test things out the second time, and I went way too far. I crossed several lines and a couple of boundaries, and now he wants to put everything back the way it was. He must, because when he finally speaks he says something that makes my insides sink all the way down to my shoes.
“We should probably go back now,” he tells me, which seems pretty much like the worst thing in the world until I follow him back to the bike. He barely speaks the whole way and goes much too fast for me to keep up and when we get there, oh, God, when we get there…
He just watches me climb onto it. He hardly helps me at all. He barely even looks as though he wants to help me, despite the fact that I struggle quite a bit. In the end I have to just kind of slide on like a banked fish, which would have been embarrassing earlier but is absolutely mortifying now. It just confirms every reason he probably has for being weirded out by my kissing. I am a clumsy, oafish buffoon who does clumsy, oafish-buffoonlike things, and now I have to be punished for all of them.
He barely says goodbye to me—though that is hardly the worst thing.
No, the worst is the sure and certain knowledge that I get as I watch him drive away….
I will never see him again as long as I live, and all because of one foolish kiss.
—
I try not to think about it. Whenever I do I cringe so bad my muscles kind of go into spasm. Part of me starts to worry that humiliation is doing me an injury, but if it is, then Google refuses to tell me about it. I search for solutions to crippling embarrassment over kissing a guy wrong and all I get in return is You are a giant fool. Stop bothering me.
And nothing else I do helps, either. I try to immerse myself back in my normal life by aggressively attempting to have conversations in the cafeteria over the kind of food that everyone else eats, but all that does is tell me how badly I am failing on all points. Other people just seem to know instinctively how to do things in a way I never learned.
For example: They understand when flirting is happening. Sam whispers to me that Brad Halverson is so fucking into her as she nibbles on a breadstick, even though all he did was jerk his head and grunt the word hey. I got way more than that from Serge and still somehow misread all the signals. I must be stunted in some way by my past, but if I am, then how come Hannah Yates seems so able to negotiate this stuff?
I see her by the vending machines talking away to Finn O’Hare, even though she is pretty much the least cool person in the world and he is the most. He is golden and glossy and the captain of the swim team, while she is just some little nerd. She is some little nerd just like I am and yet somehow, she is better at this than me.
She follows conversations more easily and laughs in the right places and most of all, she never makes clumsy advances on people who do not want to be advanced upon. I can tell she doesn’t, because when she puts a hand on Finn’s arm he seems to super enjoy it. They will probably go off to a date after her last class. She laughs in all the right places and he tells great jokes and when they kiss no one will ever be grossed out.
Whereas Serge is probably still grossed out now. And I definitely do not get to go on a date. He would probably faint at the very thought of it and even if he didn’t, I have other ridiculous things to deal with. After Eighteenth-Century English Literature I get a weird text from Tommy that makes just about no sense at all, and have to schlep all the way over there to see if he needs some kind of medical intervention. After all, I doubt anyone healthy would use words like beev and stal and amay. He even gives the last word an underline, despite how complicated underlining is.
Apparently he cannot make real sentences in English, but he can press twenty buttons at once to emphasize his nonsensical words.
That has to be a brain problem of some sort. Or maybe a new designer drug that puts all the letters in your head in the wrong order and forces your sister to brave your scary apartment again. Which on the one hand I am grateful for, considering now I don’t have to think about the thing that happened.
But on the other hand, his apartment is even scarier than it was before. I swear, on the way up I see a shoe dangling from a crooked banister, and I am not entirely sure that someone took their foot out of it first. Right next to my brother’s apartment someone has scrawled die bitch die, and the ink they used could well be blood.
Plus, the apartment itself. Oh, Jesus, the apartment itself. No wonder Tommy isn’t anywhere around. The whole place smells as if someone died of farting. For a second I actually worry that this person is Tommy, and then I find his stockpile of vomit-covered clothes and the undead hair monster in the shower and plates that seem to be growing their own small civilizations. Something runs over my foot as I venture into the bedroom—at which point I decide to take my leave.
Or at least I try to. I make it about as far as the couch before I realize that rattling sound is not a water pipe coming off the wall. It seems to be coming from the door. From the door handle. Someone is twisting the door handle back and forth in a way that makes me so unspeakably grateful that I dropped the dead bolt after stepping inside.
I mean, it could be like last time. For a second my heart even lifts at the thought. The person on the other side might be Serge again, come to bring an incoherent Tommy home. It could be, I think, but then if it is why am I still standing here frozen? Why am I listening for every little sound as though every little sound holds the possibility of terrible danger?
Of course I know the answer:
Good people tend to knock.
Bad people just try to get in.
And this person is definitely just trying to get in. After a moment of that horrendous turning and turning, I hear an even worse sort of sound. A clitter-clatter that could never possibly be keys in a lock. This is not Tommy whacked off his gourd and attempting to wrestle his way into his own apartment.
This is someone using tools to get in. I know it is, before I even hear strained words through the wood. One of them hisses at the other that the girl is in there, and the other replies with something I hear only part of. Probably a good thing I do, however, considering the words I can make out. I could swear it sounds like glass enema, even though that seems far too weird and specific for a threat.
I
try to think how it happens in movies when the bad guys come around for their money, but all I can think of is the times when they get their money, then decide to stab anyway. I see blood spurting up walls behind my eyes and oh, God, I should never have gorged myself on horror movies the moment I realized I could. It seemed fantastic at the time, but that was only because I had no clue that actual stabbings might be a reality in my future.
Now it just seems like a haunting prophecy.
It seems like my dad was right. Criminals will get me for being a whore or a smart mouth or a person who wears their socks out of alignment. I am about to be punished for thinking I could ever forget my own life with his hard-earned money. I should never have bought that dress that goes way above the knee, because that must be the reason they are currently messing with the lock.
I hear it starting to give.
I see it starting to give.
I have to do something. The only question is What?
I could call the police, but I know they would never get here in time.
I could run, but if I do, they will almost definitely wait for Tommy instead.
Which just leaves me with defending myself, even though I am completely unable to do that on any level whatsoever. The chair I grab is never going to protect me. Nor is the baseball bat I remember is under the couch, just seconds before the lock makes this ominous clunking sound. I hold it high and aggressively, but really I know I’m probably going to die. My only consolation is knowing my dad didn’t do it, like I always thought he would. I escaped that at least, I think.
And then I brace myself for that door swinging wide.
But not enough for it bursting off its hinges.
Would anything be enough for that? I swear the whole thing seems to rocket across the room. It almost hits me—and thank God that it is almost, too, because something else comes with it. A big, sprawling sack of God knows what that takes me a good ten seconds to identify. I see one flailing leg and a fat-looking face, but still it doesn’t quite dawn on me. Mainly because oh my God, oh my God, someone just hurled a man through the door. They didn’t kick it off its hinges.
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