by Daryl Banner
I remember reading a few pointers in some shady advice column this past summer when I was bored at the movie theater and a fellow concessionist left her magazine by my butter pump. The columnist suggested taking every opportunity to subtly touch the man you’re attracted to, whether it’s a hand on his shoulder, or an accidental touch of his arm when you’re laughing at a joke, or pretending to pull a piece of lint off his shirt. Each time you touch a man, you make him think of sex.
Is that true? Are men really that simple? Or is it that the columnist thinks women are really that gullible to believe such “science”?
Dmitri squints at me. “I’d like to hear you play piano sometime. I’ve always been really intrigued by people who can play instruments. I tried to learn guitar once, but my hands are too big.”
“My hands are too small,” I murmur.
He laughs.
I laugh too. Then, driven by the advice from that column, I force myself to slap a hand onto his shoulder.
It lands so hard that his balance is thrown and his forearm gives away completely, bringing him face-first to the grass.
I stare at him, horrified, until I find him laughing even harder.
“Damn, Sam! You have quite an arm!” he says on his back. “Do you gotta work out to play piano or something??”
“I …” Are you thinking about sex now, Dmitri? Did it work? Or do I have to assault you to get the point across? I turn my hesitance into another stupid giggle—as if imitating Amy and half the girls I have to call sisters now—and then put a hand softly on his arm. “I … guess I underestimated my own strength,” I murmur through my giggle.
Me. Giggling.
Putting a hand on a cute boy’s arm.
Those deep, intense eyes. The way his chest rises and falls. His lips …
Dmitri looks up at me from the grass, as if just the touch of my hand cast some sort of spell over him. But was it dark magic or good magic? Is he happy, or is he repulsed? His face is so, so frustratingly unreadable.
Instantly, I’m terrified by what I see in his expression. Then I’m excited by it. And then I’m sick in the stomach, warring between whether the touch on his arm is too much or just right.
“Hey,” he says suddenly, breaking my own trance. “Let’s—”
I pull my hand to myself at once.
“—get something to eat,” he finishes. “I’m frickin’ starved.”
I have Intro to Music in twenty minutes. It’s the lunch rush right now at the University Center. I was planning to save my money for dinner tonight, and there’s no way I’ll be able to get through lunch and make it to class on time.
But apparently this boy-touching, hormone-happy, giggly version of Sam doesn’t care. “I’m starved too,” I answer.
Half an hour later, we’re at a table in the crowded, noisy University Center cafeteria sandwiched by a gathering of athletes in sweaty gym clothes and a booth full of girls and gay guys who scream every five minutes at something scandalous one of them says. Dmitri is working his mouth on a sub sandwich. I’m eating the world’s smallest burger from the dollar menu along with a cup of water. He made some comment about me apparently not being as starved as he is, to which I just shrugged and offered another of my invisible smiles.
“So tell me about you,” he says with his mouth full. “Do you come from a family of twenty siblings and a mom with frazzled hair?”
I give a breathy, almost nonexistent chuckle, then say, “I’m an only child. My dad took off two years ago during my junior year of high school to go on tour with his band.”
“Oh, awesome! What band?”
“He calls it Hard Hart & The Hermits. They kinda do this whole soft metal, glam rock, goth opera thing.”
“Wow. Sounds … unique. How often is he gone?”
I take a sip of my water before answering, or perhaps to delay my answer. “Permanently, I guess. My mom is beautiful and should move on, but I guess they’re technically still married. Even though I’m sure Dad’s having his fair share of groupies on the road. Anyway, I don’t want to go that route with my music. I want to compose music for video games. Those composers have the most fun, I think.”
Dmitri smirks appreciatively. “Music in video games is the best. It’s all I ever listen to when I write, actually. The music can be pretty … versatile.”
“That’s what I like about it.” I nod at him, desperate not to return to the subject of my rock-star-wannabe dad for as long as I can manage. “What about you? What’s …” I swallow hard. I can’t believe I’m having an actual conversation with Dmitri that doesn’t have to do with rhyme analysis and vocabulary. “What’s your family like?”
He swallows the last bite of his sub, then folds his arms on the table as he answers. “I have two sisters—one older, one younger. My younger sister is deaf, so we all know sign language.”
“Sign something to me,” I say at once.
The most adorable flush crosses Dmitri’s face. He lets out a genuine laugh, which shows all his teeth. Even his teeth are perfect. Then, after a little shrug, he starts moving his hands.
I have no idea what he’s saying. I don’t even care. I could watch those hands all day.
Then he stops and folds his arms. “Can you guess what I just said?”
I shake my head no.
“Well,” he goes on, putting on a cocky expression. “I guess it’ll just be my little secret.”
Is he flirting with me? Is this flirting? “Oh,” I murmur, my heart starting to race. What if he just signed that he thinks I’m cute? What if he just signed that he wants to ask me out on a date? What if he signed something super dirty to me?
The possibilities race through my rapid-fire imagination, casting a cold front of chills to every nerve ending and all my fingertips.
“Anyway,” he says, twisting his body around to pull something from his backpack, “I totally forgot to share my newest poem I’m working on. I was thinking of replacing the, uh … the ‘Rock Bottom’ piece I showed you last week that I wasn’t happy with.”
“I liked ‘Rock Bottom’.”
“I like this one better. It’s called ‘Her’.” He slides a sheet of paper across the table. “Tell me what you think. Be brutal.”
I glance down, reset my glasses on my nose, then read.
Through the glass, there’s a woman walking by.
She’s the breath and shape of a million women
but her lips are long-lasting in what they say.
Red, like her cheeks when I look her way.
I’m just another man, I know, through glass just the same.
I’m certain there’s a million men of my breath
until the doubt in her eyes sets me free
or is it doubt in my own that I see?
Like a million before, I let the words on this page, long-lasting, say all
because I’m too weak to simply tell her:
“You are the one in a million I see.”
And my cheeks, red like hers, as she walks away.
After reading the last two lines ten times alone, I swallow and continue to stare at the paper, unable to bring my head up.
There is no way … no way in hell … that he’s talking about me.
This can’t be a poem about me. There’s no way. He can’t be into me, not in the way these words describe. I’m not one in a million. I’m a girl who fades, unnoticed, into every crowd.
This has to be about someone else, right?
“What do you think?” he murmurs. “Is it bad? I kinda thought maybe the middle part needs a bit of work, but—”
“It’s beautiful.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “Really?”
Maybe this is his secret way of confessing his feelings. Maybe all of the shoe-touching beneath the library table was a sign. Maybe every time his elbow grazed mine in the library, he was trying to signal me. He could be as shy as I am. I could’ve written a poem about him just the same, my secret way of confessing my feelings to h
im without having to do it at all.
He’s communicating with me. This is how the tortured writers do it, isn’t it? It’s such a stereotype that it has to be true.
I look up at him. “Let’s put together our series tonight,” I tell him at once, feeling a spike of confidence I know won’t last, so I must grasp at it as quickly as I can. “At my dorm. Room 202. West Hall. 7:30.”
His eyes reflect the surprise in my own. “S-Sounds great,” he chokes out.
Oh my God. He wants this, too. He wants this like I do.
My heart is hammering so hard, I feel the table shaking.
“Tonight, then,” I say, ditching the lunch table at once without even so much as a goodbye, making my way to Intro to Music.
I don’t make it in time. The class had ended five minutes ago when I arrive. I stare at the empty auditorium, lean against the doorframe, and breathe deeply, imagining the fantasies that could ignite tonight.
I can’t believe it’s going to happen.
Dmitri confessed his feelings in a poem. To me.
Me, of all people.
I rush down the hall and take the corner so fast, I nearly knock into the Theory professor. I put myself in one of the private piano rooms and sit down before my familiar landscape of ebonies and ivories. With no sheet music or concept, I start to play the keys and listen as the heavy chords swallow me up. In the course of my improvised song of torment and sexual longing, I play just about every seventh chord that exists, major and minor. I collapse on the piano when I’m finished.
I’m a fucking wreck.
By the time I’m back in my dorm room, I’ve skipped dinner and am waiting impatiently for my roommate to make her nightly departure to a friend’s dorm on the fourth floor where she’ll remain until at least 2 or 3 in the morning. It happens every single night without fail.
On cue, Kelli, petite and chestnut-haired and wearing all green and lilac, says absolutely nothing to me when she grabs her phone and a pillow, then vacates the room.
The door slams heavily at her back.
I check my face in the mirror twenty times. I lay out all our poems on my desk in seven different ways, constantly trying to optimize their appeal. I can’t seem to control my breathing, so worked up as I am. I pee five times. I brush my teeth. Twice. I even dare to sneak a few gummies from an opened box in the closet that belongs to Kelli—a red gummy and a bluish-teal gummy.
And while in the closet, I spot a few of her tops. I have nothing sexy or cute to wear. I know Kelli will be gone the rest of the night. Can I risk wearing something of hers? She’s a size or so smaller than me, but maybe I can manage. I wring my hands as I nervously poke through her clothes. Gosh, I feel like such a creep.
I pick a lavender top and a pair of jeans. I put them on in the closet.
I am officially wearing my roommate’s clothes.
I check myself in the mirror again, redoing my hair. I take my glasses off and put them back on ten times. I can’t see a damn thing without them.
I’m a mess.
Then there’s a knock at my door. It’s not even seven o’clock yet. Who the hell is trying to ruin my night with Dmitri?
To the door, I shout, “Go away! Studying!”
There’s a short pause, and then I hear: “Uh … it’s me …?”
I blink. Dmitri’s early. Crap. I race to the mirror, give myself another once over, then breathe deeply as I stand behind the door. I will my central nervous system to behave. Maybe nothing will happen, I reason. Maybe this is all in your head.
I open the door.
He’s wearing a dark blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms and a pair of black jeans. His hair is perfectly messy and his glasses, thick-framed and black, accent his hair and clothes in just the right way. His face is clouded with that brooding, strong temperament he always exudes.
“Come in,” I murmur breathlessly, holding the door open.
He steps inside. As he moves past me, I get the biggest whiff of his sexy cologne or hair product or deodorant—whatever it is that I’ve become so accustomed to, sitting behind him every Poetry class.
“Oh,” he lets out at once, coming up to my desk. “This is all of them, huh?”
I let go of the door. It pulls itself shut with a slam that makes me jump. “Y-Yes,” I sputter. “Except for y-your new one.”
“I’m renaming it ‘A Million’, I think. What do you think?”
“Sounds great. Million. Yeah.” I’m so damned nervous.
He picks one up and starts studying it, slowly pacing the room as he does so. I watch him, frozen in place and mesmerized by the presence of a boy in my room. But he’s not just any boy. He’s Dmitri Katz. The fluttering in my stomach won’t quiet down in the least.
Suddenly, he sits down, still reading the poem. It’s on Kelli’s bed that he’s absently made himself a seat.
“Did you bring your new poem with you?” I ask quietly.
He nods, not looking up from the poem.
He’s nervous, I tell myself. Just like you. You’re both nervous. I push myself across the room and, after a speck of reluctance, I sit on the bed next to him. The springs squeak slightly in protest.
He doesn’t move—only his eyes as they flit back and forth, reading each line with a surgeon’s precision. I stare at the side of his seemingly permanently-flushed face, waiting for him to say something.
Touch him, I encourage myself. Make him think about … things.
“S-So …” I say, thankful that my voice still works despite the war in my nervous system, “do you think our series is ready yet? Or …”
“There are definitely pieces that express the cry for attention.” He licks his lips, still reading the poem in his hand. “I think, though … we might be missing some of the … um …”
“Yeah?” I murmur encouragingly, scooting a bit closer to him.
“The passion, maybe? Are we missing passion?”
“I think we have lots of passion between us,” I state flatly, staring at the side of his face, deadpan.
“We definitely do,” he agrees. “I mean, wow. Your piece about candy hearts and real hearts … It’s really gripping.”
“Halloween inspired me,” I admit, scooting even closer, and closer, and closer. “Even though it sounds more like a Valentine’s Day poem.”
“It’s a kick-ass poem, that’s what it is.”
Our thighs touch. We’re side by side.
I can’t believe I’m doing this. I don’t even know if I’m breathing. I might not be breathing.
“You think there’s passion here?” I ask him almost too quietly.
“Definitely.” He’s still staring at the paper. He’s not looking at me.
He’s too nervous to. I have to make him look at me.
“So why don’t you prove it?” I spit out.
His face wrinkles up, confused. He turns my way. “What do you—?”
And then I shut him up by leaping into his lap and throwing my arms around his neck.
His eyes flash wide, locking onto mine.
I bring my lips to his.
Our faces come together so fast, our glasses crash into one another. His breath lets out all over my cheeks and his hands are hovering in the air on either side of me, my poem still clutched in one of them. He has no idea what to do with his hands. His eyes are wide open.
Oh, and so are mine, I guess.
To be clear, I’m straddling Dmitri Katz’s lap and sucking his face.
I pull away at once, horrified by my sudden action. I stare at him, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. I slowly unhook my arms from behind his neck where I latched them.
He stares at me, out of breath as suddenly as I am.
“I’m …” I choke out. “I’m so … so sorry. I just …”
I’m out of words. We’re still staring at each other. The only sound that fills the whole room is my breath and his.
Then, I feel something flex between my thighs in a very se
nsitive place.
We both look down.
He’s hard as a rock, pushing against the material of his jeans from within its fabric-and-denim prison.
We look back up at each other.
Suddenly, he knows exactly what to do with his hands. He throws the poem into the air and brings a hand to the back of my head, pulling my face right into his once more. My mouth opens for his tongue, which thrusts inside the moment we connect. His other hand clutches the small of my back, pulling me against him. I’m out of breath at once.
Then, to my surprise, he lifts me up—my legs involuntarily hooking behind his back—and he drops me onto the bed. Yes, my roommate’s bed. Dmitri crawls over me like a panther.
He’s discovering what to do with me in each moment, just like I am. We’re clumsy and curious and horny for each other.
I feel like he’s my secret, like he doesn’t belong to anyone else in the world, and he never will. How crazy possessive is that? My heart has claimed him in this one, breathless moment, and I feel like it’ll never let go, not for all eternity.
Our lips connect again.
How do people make out for longer than ten seconds? Seriously. I’m dizzy and can’t feel my legs.
And I love it.
His hands race up my sides, feeling every inch of me. Suddenly, he’s cupping my breasts and kneading them between his fingers. He finds my nipples.
Oh my God. Is this what I’ve been missing all these years?
No one has ever touched me this way. No one has ever taken control of my whole body and pulled me emotionally inside-out.
Our mouths never seem to detach, which is a fortunate thing because I’d probably spill a hundred embarrassing words about how good he’s making me feel, about how insanely horny he’s made me, and about how wet I’ve become.
I’m not a million women. I’m one. And I’m his.
And there’s so much passion between us that it’s soaking wet.