Presently Perfect (Perfect #3)

by Alison G. Bailey

  I studied every part of her gorgeous face. Her teal eyes looked up at me between each long dark lash, as if I were the only thing that existed on Earth. Her lips were parted slightly with light spurts of breath flowing over them. Her soft skin flushed a deeper pink with each second that passed. Raising my hand, the tips of my fingers lightly touched her jaw. My thumb gently moved toward her mouth, skimming across her lips a couple of times before gliding back to her cheek.

  Our chests were pumping faster. The sound of blood surging through my veins got louder. My world felt like it was underwater. Nothing existed except me and Tweet. I barely heard our song, “Everything”, fill the air as I lowered my lips to hers.

  During baseball camp this past summer I had heard some of the older guys talking about making out with their girlfriends. I so wanted to make out with Tweet. It took every ounce of strength I had not to go full throttle. I wanted to shove my tongue down her throat, grab her ass, and pull her against me.

  Jake Ryan. I had to channel my inner Jake Ryan.

  As I placed my lips on Tweet’s, her eyes closed and her head tilted back. I applied slow and steady pressure, nibbling along her bottom lip before sucking on it slightly. Her body swayed to one side, both her hands gripping my upper arms in an attempt to brace herself. I read this as a good sign, so I let the tip of my tongue slip out and touch her lips. Her mouth opened. Tongues met. My head and dick were on the verge of detonating. Our tongues spiraled faster and faster around each other’s, deepening the kiss. My fingers twitched. I wanted to touch her everywhere. The reaction my body was having was getting out of control. I had never felt anything this amazing in my life. I needed to step back before I threw her down onto the table and pounced on top of her.

  A slight moan from Tweet vibrated across my lips as I slowed down the kiss. Pulling away slightly, I rested my forehead against hers, eyes closed, our lips still connected, and whispered, “You’re perfect.”

  We quietly stood in this position for several minutes trying to catch our breath. Simultaneously, her hands loosened their grip on my biceps as mine slid over her shoulders and down her arms, our hands clasping together.

  I didn’t want this to end. Finally, once our breathing returned to normal, I slowly opened my eyes but kept my forehead firmly glued to Tweet’s.

  “Wow,” I whispered. My voice sounded as if I had just woke up.

  “Man,” Tweet said, breathlessly. “Are you sure you haven’t done this before because you have some pretty awesome moves. Where’d you get moves like that?”

  The excitement and pride I felt hearing and feeling how much she enjoyed our first kiss was like winning the Super Bowl, the NBA Championship, the Stanley Cup, and the World Series all at the same time.

  “Wal-Mart,” I answered. A cocky grin crept across my face.

  Tweet’s pink lips slowly curled up to form a smile. “How long did it take you to think that one up?”

  “It just came to me actually. I thought it was pretty good.”

  I wanted to practice some more, lots more in fact, but before I could say anything Tweet stepped away and s cleaned up the trash from dinner. Neither of us said another word while we walked home. An awkward air surrounded us as we stood on the front porch of her house. It didn’t come from me not knowing how to say goodnight. It came from me not wanting to say goodbye. I didn’t have a name for the feelings I was having for Tweet. All I knew for sure was that they were getting stronger and not going away. I didn’t know how to talk to her about what was happening. It was weird because we’d always been able to talk about anything.

  Tweet let out a deep sigh, breaking the silence. “Well, goodnight. It sure was fun practicing with you. Brittani is a lucky girl.”

  Total shock and disbelief appeared across her face as if some force beyond her control spoke those words.

  It pissed me off that she mentioned Brittani. Tonight wasn’t about her. Tonight was just us.

  “Don’t bring her up, not now.” My gaze ran from her lips to her eyes. “Thanks for tonight.”

  I glanced away for a second, trying to decide whether or not to tell her how I’ve been feeling. I looked back and connected with her beautiful teal eyes. They looked sad or scared, I couldn’t figure out which. I also couldn’t figure out the right words to explain what was happening between us.

  “Goodnight, Tweet.”

  “Goodnight, Noah.”

  I walked backward down the steps, keeping my eyes locked on her until I had to turn away. With each step an empty feeling hit my stomach. The dim light from the porch brightened her eyes. They were full of tears. I didn’t know what the deal was. We’d be seeing each other tomorrow. I mean we saw each other every day. But for some reason leaving her tonight was hard.

  Stopping at the bottom of the steps, I said in a low voice, “Tweet.”

  “Yeah?” She tried hard to keep her voice steady but I could hear the shakiness.

  “Tonight was amaz…” I paused. It wasn’t tonight that was amazing, it was her. “You’re amazing.”

  “Noah…” Her voice trailed off.

  “I wish you believed it.”

  Before she could say anything, I turned and walked away.

  Monday morning I was headed down the hall toward my locker. I hadn’t seen or talked to Tweet the entire weekend since we kissed. I left voicemails and sent texts, but she never returned any of them. She was avoiding me for some reason. Could I have misread our kiss? I thought it was awesome, but what the hell did I know? Maybe it sucked and she didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Maybe the sadness and tears in her eyes Friday night were because she knew I was destined for the priesthood.

  I couldn’t be a priest. Communion wafers made me gag.

  I turned the corner and saw her standing at her locker.

  “Mornin’, Tweet.”

  She jumped a little when I whispered in her ear.

  “Good morning.” She wouldn’t look at me.

  I just had to play it cool. All she needed to do was look at me. If she could look me in the eye then chances were the kiss didn’t suck.

  Leaning one shoulder against the locker, I stared at her profile, willing her to turn in my direction. “I’ve missed you. I called you all weekend. I saw your mom yesterday. She said you were busy working on a paper?”

  “English,” she said into her locker.

  I reached out to grab Tweet’s arm, trying to get her attention when one of my teammates, Brad Johnson, slapped me on the back and said, “Hey Stewart, heard you had a great time this weekend. I just got out of class with Brit. She couldn’t stop singing your praises, dude. Way to go.”

  As Brad walked off, I turned to Tweet and shrugged my shoulders. I had no idea what he was talking about. I barely spent any time with Brittani the other night at the bowling alley. A group of kids from school were there. The guys pretty much hung out and bowled while the girls talked. Brittani and Beth tried to flirt with me a few times, but I was too preoccupied with thoughts of Tweet and the night before. Brittani’s dad dropped me at home around 11:30 p.m. That was all that happened.

  Two other teammates, Jeremy and Spencer, were coming down the hall and stopped when they saw me.

  Spencer tugged on the back of my neck and announced, “Heard you had a hot date this weekend. How about that, just a freshman and already a player.”

  I grinned as the guys walked off down the hall. When I turned and met the look on Tweet’s face, my grin busted out into a full blown smile.

  Innocently, she asked, “Your big date was this past weekend?”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Play dumb. You’re no good at it, Tweet.”

  “Well, it sounds like your first date was a success.”

  She was pissed and jealous.

  “I would say my first date was perfect.”

  I watched as her poor books took a beating while she shoved them around her locker. The more she banged things around the harder it was for
me to hide my laughter.

  “Uh… you about done beating up that innocent locker, Rocky?” I asked.

  “Congratulations! I’m glad your first date was…”

  “Perfect.”

  This is so much fun.

  “Perfect,” she snapped. “Oh, did I tell you that I joined the school newspaper? You know, maybe I could write an article about having the perfect date and interview you and your perfect date since your date was so perfect.”

  “Do you have any idea how adorable you are right now?”

  Teal eyes narrowed in my direction.

  “Those guys are talking about my second date,” I admitted.

  “You’ve already had a second date?”

  “Saturday night.”

  “Saturday night?” Her eyebrows scrunched tightly together as her face turned three shades of red. “I thought Saturday night was your first date.”

  “Friday night was my first date.”

  “But you were with me all Friday night.”

  She still wasn’t cluing in.

  I leaned in so close our noses were almost touching. My voice was low. “You didn’t think I wanted Brittani to be my first date and kiss, did you? I’ve shared all my firsts with you.”

  Her lips parted and a faraway look glazed over her eyes. I’d overheard girls talking before about other guys and how the guy made them swoon. I wasn’t exactly positive what that meant, but from what I did know, I was pretty sure I just made Tweet do it.

  I stared at her lips for a few seconds, remembering what they tasted like. Maintaining eye contact, I pushed off of the lockers, turned, and sauntered down the hall. Yeah, I wasn’t the only one who thought our kiss was awesome. There’d be no Father Stewart title in my future.

  As our freshman year continued, I thought things between Tweet and I would get easier and less confusing. I didn’t know much about girls but I wasn’t a complete idiot, except lately when it came to Tweet. She still managed to constantly confuse me. Every time a girl talked, giggled, or innocently touched me, Tweet would shake her head, roll her eyes, and a huff of air would pass over her gaping mouth. This came to be known as the shake, roll, ‘n’ huff. She did it so often that I could tell from a mile away when the SRH had been launched. I also felt her body stiffen each time we made any physical contact. Even something as simple as a brush of our shoulders caused her to jerk away from me.

  The idea of us drifting apart scared the shit out of me. We still saw each other every day but our time together was becoming less and less. She made up stupid excuses not to be around me, like she had to study for a specific class that I wasn’t in, or her Aunt Flo was visiting. We always studied together no matter what and I didn’t know who the fuck Aunt Flo was, but she seemed to visit a lot.

  There was a one week break before summer school started. In order to get ahead academically, Tweet and I signed up for classes. This would look great on our college applications. We hadn’t talked about it, but I always assumed we would go to the same university. We both had really good grades and the fact that we were willing to give up part of our summer would show our dedication and hard work. There’d be no question we’d have our pick of schools.

  I leaned back against the counter in Tweet’s kitchen while she popped open a Diet Pepsi and a bag of Sweet Sixteen donuts. I was getting annoyed. The last twenty minutes had been spent with me trying to convince her to come hang out for the day. Travis had just gotten his license and was coming to pick me up. We were headed to Folly Beach to go surfing.

  She gulped down a couple of swallows of soda, causing a seismic burp to catapult from her body. If there was an Olympic belching event, Tweet would win a gold medal. I swear some of the sounds that came out of this girl were truly impressive. She was tired of the subject and this was her way of changing it. We stared, challenging the other to laugh first.

  I shook my head. “You’re so damn dainty.”

  “Thanks. It’s my southern bellechness bustin’ out.” She tossed a bite-size donut coated with powdered sugar into her mouth trying to keep the smile from appearing. Her serious expression was beginning to crack.

  We faced-off for a few more seconds until another burp bubbled up from deep down in her gut. I heard it rumble up into her throat. Tweet tried to stop it from escaping by clamping her lips shut. This caused her cheeks to expand like a blowfish and a couple of small puffs of powdered sugar to fly from her lips. Tweet slapped her hand over her mouth and both of us doubled over as laughter blasted out of us simultaneously.

  She straightened, caught her breath, and said, “Did you see the puffs of sugar?”

  I wiped tears from my eyes. “That was classic.”

  “That burp was like a freight train. Couldn’t be stopped.”

  “You’re crazy. Now, go get your stuff. I told Travis to meet us here.”

  “Noah, don’t start on that again. I told you I don’t feel like doing the beach today,” she whined.

  She sat her drink and donuts on the kitchen island before pulling herself up onto the countertop and sitting across from me. My annoyance came back in a flash.

  “Lately you don’t seem to feel like doing anything, at least not with me.” Sarcasm dripped from each word as I held her gaze.

  “That is so not true. We see each other every single day,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, which caused her boobs to push together and my gaze to drop down to them.

  After a couple of seconds I brought my eyes back up to hers. “Sorry it’s such a fucking burden to be around me.”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  Tweet and I had never really argued before, not even as little kids. We joked around, teased each other, but this was the closest thing to a fight we’d ever had. I hated it.

  “Look, if you don’t want to go to the beach we can do something else, like a movie,” I said.

  “No. You planned on going to Folly, so go. You don’t need to change things because of me. It’s not like we’re joined at the hip.” Her gaze fell to the floor.

  At that moment, all the air was sucked from the room and time stood still. My heart shot up into my throat. I clamped my mouth shut in order to keep it from spewing out all over the kitchen. It was pretty clear that she didn’t want me around.

  I blew out a breath and pushed off from the counter. “Fine! Have a great fucking day.”

  I stomped across the room and swung the door open. As I stepped through, I heard Tweet yell, “Noah!” before the door slammed shut.

  I waited for several seconds, hoping she would come after me, but the door never opened.

  With one leg stretched out in front of me and the other bent with my arm resting on top of it, I stared at the waves rolling up to the shoreline. I was still pissed off and staring at the water wasn’t doing a damn thing to help. Since walking out on Tweet, I’d been trying to forget her. Travis talked the entire way to the beach. Occasionally, I threw in a grunt or a nod, but had no idea what I was grunting and nodding about. Once we got to Folly I focused on surfing, but she kept creeping back into my head. I couldn’t believe she let me leave that way. I didn’t know if I was more pissed because she didn’t want to hang out or didn’t come after me, or because I couldn’t seem to get her off my mind.

  Suddenly, cold water came raining down on me. Looking up, I saw the silhouette of Travis hovering above.

  “What the fuck, dude? You’re dripping water all over me,” I yelled.

  Dropping down next to me, he wiped his wet brown hair back and said, “You’ve been a big drip since I picked you up.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Jesus, what is wrong with you today?” Stretching out, he leaned back on his elbows and looked straight ahead.

  “I wish everyone would stop asking me that.”

  We stared ahead, listening to the waves for a few minutes.

  “Did something bad go down between you and Amanda? Is that why your panties are all twist
ed and shoved up your ass?” I narrowed my eyes in his direction, not answering. “Can I ask you something?” I didn’t respond. “Okaaaay. I’ll take that as a yes, Travis, happy to answer any and all questions.” More silence. “Exactly what are y’all?”

  For the first time in my life I didn’t automatically answer we’re best friends, because I didn’t know anymore. All I knew was that Tweet, who had been in my life since day one, had become a girl. A girl I thought and dreamed about all the time. A girl who made me feel things, not just physically, but deep inside. Feelings that I didn’t even have a name for.

  “I like her,” I finally answered, my voice low.

  I couldn’t believe I admitted it to someone. The words were out of my mouth before my brain registered what they meant.

  “No shit. I didn’t have to be fucking Einstein to figure that part out.”

  Looking over at him, I asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Are you kidding me? The look you gave me the first and only time I tried to sit next to her was like the fucking superlasers on the Death Star. My balls actually shrank up and hid behind my massive dick.”

  “Thanks for that visual.”

  “Stewart, you kill me. There are half-naked girls crawling all over this beach and you sit here like a pussy, wasting time daydreaming about a girl who blew you off today. And I don’t mean that in the good way.”

  “It’s not that I don’t notice other girls,” I said.

  “Then what is it?”

  I thought for a long moment. “I don’t know. They’re just not Tweet.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I think Amanda is great and she is definitely hot, but…”

  My muscles immediately tensed up as I glared at him.

  “Oh shit! There’s that look again.” Rolling away from me, he got up on all fours and frantically patted the sand with his hands. “My balls! Where are my balls?”

  “You’re an asshole.” I chuckled.

  Standing, he rubbed his palms together brushing off the sand. “I just don’t get wasting time on a girl who doesn’t seem to want to be around you when there are so many on the prowl for manly specimens such as ourselves. Maybe it’s not necessarily Amanda that you’re interested in.”