“I’m going to take my time with you, with this body of yours, with this heart of yours,” Lincoln said, so much thoughtfulness in his gentle tone.
His hair slipped across his forehead and his curls lifted in the breeze. I couldn’t stop looking at him. I wanted to memorize this moment. Memorize that way his smile pulled up more on one side than the other. Memorize the exact shade of his amber eyes and all of the golden flecks strewn through them. But I already had. When I closed my eyes briefly, I could see an exact representation of Lincoln in my head, in my heart.
Because it was my heart that had memorized him so long ago.
“I’m going to kiss you now.”
“Yes. Please.”
Shimmying my body down, I met Lincoln halfway, his shoulders straining up toward me. But he didn’t appear strained. His right hand cupped the back of my head while his left supported our weight behind him, pushing on the ground.
“I’m seriously overwhelmed by you, Eppie.”
Our mouths met slowly, like the first time. With connected lips, Lincoln straightened fully up, grabbing onto my backside to tug me closer. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and crossed my ankles to keep him pinned there. His hair coiled perfectly around each individual finger, looping within my grip. I ran my hands along his shoulders and I pulled my mouth from his to bury my nose in his neck, wanting to inhale his musky scent from the damp sheen of sweat that clung to his skin. He’d already gotten an unfortunate hickey from our earlier adventure, so I chose to forgo that area and instead worked my way up to his ear, leaving small kisses along his neck and jaw the whole way. When I sucked his perfect earlobe into my mouth, I think I just about did poor Lincoln in.
“Uhh,” he groaned, and then with an audible smile he said, “Wow. You can keep doing that all you like. Please, in fact. Yeah, please keep doing that.”
Playing a little, I bit down with my teeth and Lincoln went wild.
“How did you learn to do that?” he breathed, pulling my face from his ear and palming it between his hands. His eyes looked shocked and equally excited. “Where did you learn that, Eppie?”
“I didn’t learn it anywhere.” It made me shy to talk about what I was doing—what I was doing to him and what he appeared to like so much. “I’m learning with you.”
“What a lucky teacher I am.” I felt his smirk spread against my lips as he came in for another kiss. “Anything else you care to learn?”
THIRTY-FOUR
Kyle Strauss killed the engine and fidgeted in his bucket seat like his corduroy pants were about three sizes too small. He’d been doing that all evening, shifting his weight around nervously in a manner that made me think his brain and his body weren’t quite on the same page. Like they hadn’t talked things over prior to the date and so now they were all discombobulated and out of sync, not knowing what to expect from the other.
“I had a really good time with you tonight, Eponine.” Kyle had a gap in between his upper teeth that was slightly larger than what would be deemed acceptable in opting to forgo the customary ritual of teenage braces. During dinner, a grilled piece of asparagus lodged in between the two, and when he talked—his mouth full of food, mind you—it stuck out like a mini tree, planted in his goofy grin. Even though it wasn’t in there now, I could still envision it every time his lips parted.
“Yeah,” I stammered, lying through my teeth. Apparently I had something of my own lodged in there, as well. “Me, too. Lots of fun.”
“Really? Cuz you hardly touched your meal. I was hoping the waiter wouldn’t charge me for the whole thing. That set me back like twelve dollars. That’s like nearly two hours working down at the yard.”
He was fishing for an apology with his blunt, guilt-inducing assessment of our evening and my leftover plate contents. Sam had lied when she’d said dating older guys was the only way to go. Though Kyle was a junior and I just a sophomore, I could name at least a dozen freshman boys I would much rather be out with at the moment. All of which could have an entire garden full of veggies fit between their chompers and it wouldn’t bother me one iota.
“Wait. You’re not sick, are you?” Kyle said it as some sort of revelation, like this would all make sense had I been feeling under the weather or been suffering the lingering effects of some stomach bug. “I mean, that’s not why you didn’t eat, is it?” I shook my head in answer. I just hadn’t been all that hungry. “She didn’t like completely ruin you, did she?”
“She?” I unclicked my seatbelt, readying to go, but the strap stayed paused in my grasp as I asked him to clarify his statement.
“Your mom. I mean, you’re not like terminally ill now, are you? Cuz I’ve heard things, and I just wasn’t sure.”
“You’ve heard things.”
My house was just a lit pathway away. All I had to do was unlock the car door and race up the walk, bolting the door shut behind me. It would be so easy to run from Kyle and his ignorant remarks, but I didn’t want to do that tonight. I wanted to set the record straight. Maybe it was finally time to set everyone straight.
“I’m not sick, no.” In fact, I’d been healthy for so long now that I couldn’t even remember that sensation of feeling as though you’d never be well again. That part of me was just fine. My physical health was no longer a concern.
“Good,” Kyle nearly cheered. He raked his stubby hands into blond hair, cut too short to possibly style in any way other than up. “Cuz I don’t want to catch anything when I do this.”
And then, suddenly, Kyle’s overly-large-for-his-face lips came careening toward me, the way things seemed in movies when the camera zoomed in super close with a fish-eye lens. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear and all that. I had to duck out of his way to avoid the post asparagus onslaught of his mouth, and even still his lips slammed onto my cheek, sloppy and wet with what I could only figure was drool.
I would never kiss another guy again.
Kyle ruined it for me, and if he didn’t peel his lip-suction from my skin quickly, he’d ruin the male gender altogether.
“What the hell, Eponine?”
Using my shoulder, I wiped everything from my jaw up to my temple with the fabric of my sweatshirt. I’d burn that shirt once inside my house.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me.” I pulled my hand into my sleeve like a turtle ducking into its shell and used that cloth to do another vigorous face wiping. “I’m fine.”
“You are not. I was just trying to, you know, kiss you. Because I thought that’s what you wanted.” Kyle dropped two frustrated hands onto the steering wheel and strangled it. “It’s what most normal girls want.”
“I don’t think I’m like most girls.” I knit my hands in my lap, keeping them securely there because if I didn’t, they’d continue scrubbing my skin until my cheeks were nothing more than raw strips of flesh.
Annoyed, Kyle huffed so loud I assumed all of my neighbors heard it. Maybe even the whole county. “No, you’re definitely not,” he said with rolling eyes. And then, “Maybe you should work on that.”
Disappointment sank deep in my gut. It wasn’t that I sought approval from the likes of ill-mannered boys such as Kyle, it was just the growing knowledge that stigmas weren’t easily shaken that did that to me. I’d been branded by her choices, and I wondered when I’d ever get the chance to do my own choosing. Maybe I never would. Sometimes it felt as though she’d determined my path the day I was born and solidified it the day she died. The problem was, none of my peers would ever let me change direction. Their whispered rumors kept me hemmed in on all sides. I felt destined to remain on this broken road, especially if I kept hanging around with Kyle-like adolescents.
I’d have to find someone already on their own path. Someone taking a different direction. That’s the only way I’d ever be able to change my course.
The problem was, I doubted any guys like that existed in Masonridge.
I doubted they existed anywhere.
“Cowabungaaaaaaaaa!”
Lincoln was able to drag out that last vowel in an impressively long manner before it was swallowed up by the rush of water that sucked him under the surface with a big “gulp.” He was gone for several seconds, and when he ultimately crested, he sprung up quickly, shaking his hair back and forth like a sprinkler. Or like a dog. Actually, like a dog having just run through a sprinkler. A dog like Herb/Ralph. Oh, that made me so sad.
“You seriously have to try that, Eppie,” Lincoln breathed. His eyes darted toward the rope swing hung crudely from a tree at the water’s perimeter. Even from this distance, I could see the frayed edge of the twisted knot at its bottom, along with the thinned out midsection that threatened to snap with any amount of weight pulling it down. “I liken it to the bungee experience, only more horizontal than vertical. Swinging versus springing, I suppose.”
Water slipped down his naked torso in beads as he waded closer my direction. Beads I wanted to lick off. Never before had the thought of lapping up possibly parasitic water droplets from someone’s body ever crossed my mind. Lincoln was definitely challenging me to think outside of my well-secured box.
“I’ll pass,” I giggled. “Though it does look like you’re having an unreasonably good time without me. I could use a little excitement tonight, too.”
Walking through water was a slow-motion task, which only added to the subtle drama as we made our way to one another, arms outstretched.
“We can’t have any of that. I say we find something else to satisfy both of our needs for a good time then, shall we?”
Oh man, that idea made me buzz with nerves. Though we technically weren’t skinny-dipping, we both had on significantly fewer layers of clothing than during our earlier make-out session. Lincoln was down to his boxer briefs, and I still had my tank top, as well as my boy short underwear, which had been a completely random, yet convenient, choice when dressing this morning. So no, it wasn’t quite skinny-dipping. More like fat-dipping or whatever skinny-dipping’s more-clothed counterpart would be called.
“Ever kissed underwater?” A light sparked in his eyes, even though the sun was nearly completely tucked away for the evening, already having put herself to bed. Apparently, Lincoln’s own aura was enough to illuminate things all on its own.
“No. In fact, I’ve had enough on-land disasters to steer clear of any submerged smooching.”
“Eppie!” Lincoln was a kid on Christmas morning as he bounced with excitement. Rings of water rippled out from him. “I’ve always wanted to try this! I used to have a serious thing for Ariel.”
“That’s so very creepy.”
“Oh, please. Don’t tell me you’ve never crushed on an animated character.”
“Can’t say that I have.”
He thumbed his chin quizzically, disbelief in his devious smirk. “What about Tarzan? I mean, he’s kinda hot, what with all the bulging muscles and the loincloth that never once shifts out of place. Seriously, not even when swinging from trees. Those are some impressive undergarments right there. Though I suppose they are technically his outer garments. Either way, Tarzan is one sexy beast.”
Treading the water, I fluttered my hands back and forth at my sides. It was shallow enough that I could stand fully upright here, but the chill in the air was colder than the water’s temperature, so I stayed under in an effort to keep warm. “Why do I get the feeling you were channeling your inner Tarzan when trapezing from that rope just now?”
“Me Tarzan, you Ariel.”
“You’re getting your story lines crossed.”
Lincoln dipped under the water right as I said that, and when he came back up for air, his hands slicked through his hair to push it all to the back of his head, his curls clumped just at the nape of his neck. “What about my loin cloth?”
“I said lines crossed.”
“Oh, that’s unfortunate.” He shook his head down and to the left like he was attempting to free water from inside his ear. “For a moment I thought both this conversation and evening were about to get really exciting.”
I popped my eyebrows up and down as a challenge. “But they are, right? Unless you were just tossing around false promises with all that underwater make-out talk.”
“Nothing false there. But the truth of the matter is that it involves the unfortunate risk of death, what with the not breathing and all.”
“A growing trend with you as of late. Now even your kisses have to be death-defying.”
“In fairness,” he said, tapping the side of his head with the broad heel of his hand as he shook his ear again. “This level of risk taking is new for me.”
An owl hooted in a nearby tree, reminding me that we really were in the middle of the wilderness, among woodland creatures and those sorts of feathered and furry inhabitants in this dark setting. That also called to mind the likelihood of fish swimming around us, though undetected. I never liked the idea of sharing water space with creatures you couldn’t see. Kind of like the notorious legends of spiders crawling into your open mouth while you slept. I’d studied the odds of sleep-swallowing insects before and knew that the ingestion of five arachnids per year was five too many for me. So the thought of even one fish bumping up against my bare thigh just about made me hightail it out of the lake right then and there.
But then there was that kiss offer still dangling in front of me.
“How do we do this?” Based on the narrow size of my ribcage, I assumed my lungs couldn’t be all too big. Their capacity for holding air would be no longer than seven seconds, max. I’d played seven minutes in heaven once my freshman year at a coed party, and based on how that went, I knew that even just seven underwater seconds with Lincoln would be so much more heavenly than anything that happened (or didn’t happen) in the birthday boy’s coat closet in seven minutes time.
“I’m going to dip under the water first,” Lincoln explained, his index finger pointing to the lake below. “I’ll keep my hands on your hips and then tug you down with me.” He’d thought this through. “We can’t do open mouthed or anything, just lips.”
“Got it. Just lips.”
He nodded. “And don’t open your eyes. The water’s all murky. We don’t want to contract some scary eye infection as a result. There’s no real evidence that this lake isn’t some toxic dumping ground for local nuclear plants.”
“Right. Okay. No eye opening.”
“But that’s pretty much the norm with kissing anyway, so it should come naturally.” Lincoln’s chest puffed out in a barrel shape. This must’ve been the practice round, since he held his air for an impressively long time, then hissed it out slowly between parted, pink lips. “Okay. I’m all set. You?”
“Yeah. Ready.”
“Spread your legs a little,” he said, giving a final instruction that made me shudder with embarrassment.
“Wha—?”
“This is super shallow right here and I won’t have anywhere to go once I’m under. I haven’t mastered the acrobatic art of folding up into a human accordion, so I’m gonna have to stretch all the way out along the bottom. You’ll have to basically straddle and sit on my lap to make this work.”
I came back down to earth. “Right. Of course.”
Lincoln smiled. I figured he’d discovered my unwarranted embarrassment based on the sweet look he offered. “Here we go, my little mermaid.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“My little fishy.”
“This is getting weirder and weirder by the minute.”
He laughed. “Okay. Let’s just do it. Ready, set...” Then his mouth made a huge gasping sound as it stored up the available night air and he slunk into the water. Bubbles rose to the surface where he submerged and popped like little balloons. Pop, pop, pop.
His hand on my hips squeezed once as a warning and yanked me swiftly down. Before my face was completely covered with water I managed to suck in a large pocket of air to last me for what I hoped would be lo
ng enough. Or at least I felt like it was an Olympian-sized breath, based on the searing pain of it.
It was disorienting under the water, like floating through space. Similar to earlier in the day, the terms up and down lost their definitions and it all just became surroundings. I tried not to think about the things that could possibly surround us, and instead focused on what I was certain of. Lincoln’s hands. They were tight on my waist, dragging me down on top of him. He was right, the shallowness of the lake didn’t allow for him to do much other than lay nearly flat on the bottom, so he had to pull me down in a way that forced my knees to the ground on either side. Stones and smoothed rocks and underwater plants grazed my legs, but the inside of my thighs pressing against his hipbones served as a much more pleasant feeling, so I focused my attention there.
The water took away every last one of my senses but touch. I couldn’t see Lincoln in front of me, couldn’t smell his familiar scent that usually wafted into my nose when he edged in for a kiss. I couldn’t taste anything yet. And I couldn’t hear—my ears plugged with pressure from the water quickly filling them up.
Only touch could guide me. A hand jutted out and palmed my jaw, languidly dragging my face forward with fingers wrapped around my neck. I bobbled a bit until I could reach out enough to find Lincoln’s face, too. My finger recognized the softness of his lips as I searched to locate him in the darkness of closed eyelids and opaque water. I thumbed at his bottom lip, feeling a bubble escape against my skin as he let air out through what I knew must be a grin.
There couldn’t be much time left. I was already feeling the effects from the lack of oxygen in my spinning head and aching muscles. Lincoln sensed the immediacy, too, because he drew me toward him, a quick pull of my neck, and our lips brushed together, not lined up quite right. My mouth pressed more onto his chin, so I adjusted my angle to lift my lips back up to his. They were still smiling. I could feel the curved tautness of them against my own. When they relaxed, they felt soft, plush and slack.
Love Like Crazy Page 22