by Ivy Smoak
He groaned, and I had never heard such a carnal sound. I felt like I was on fire. And he was consuming me.
One of his hands fell from my hair, his fingertips running down my neck. He pressed his palm in the middle of my chest. Like he wanted to feel my heart beating. Like he wanted to know I was alive too. Like he wanted to see if my heart was feeling the same thing his was.
He pulled back far too soon. “Tell me I wasn’t too late.”
“For what?” I was panting. Desperate for a redo. My eyes gravitated to his perfect lips.
“To be your first kiss.”
Oh my God. Shit. I shoved him away from me. Damn it! That kiss wasn’t meant for him. I’d already promised it to Felix. Felix. Shit. He was probably waiting at my locker for me. God, what was wrong with me? “You’re a…a…you’re a kiss thief, Matthew Caldwell.” Apparently it was easier for me to throw the blame on Matt instead of myself.
“You kissed me back.”
I swallowed hard. “I did not.”
“You did.”
It felt like it was a thousand degrees in the auditorium. I had to get out of here. God, what had I just done? “I did not,” I said back as my fingers fumbled around the doorknob in the darkness.
“I’m going to be all your firsts, Brooklyn.”
My hand finally made purchase with the doorknob. I flung it open. The bright light of the hallway was blinding.
“Every single one of them,” Matt said from behind me.
I ran out of the auditorium as fast as I could. As far away from him as possible. Because I was terrified that he was right. He could take everything he wanted. He was Matthew freaking Caldwell. He never had to ask, he just took and took and took. He’d stolen my first kiss. I wouldn’t let him steal anything else.
Chapter 16
Thursday
As I hurried back toward my locker, a terrible realization crept into my mind. Worse than the fact that my first kiss had been stolen. Worse because what if…what if…I swallowed hard. God, what if I was related to Matt? I’d only gotten the all-clear about Felix. What if my first kiss had just been stolen by my half-brother? And Matt was right…I’d freaking kissed him back. No. I didn’t. Did I?
“Are you okay?” Kennedy asked. She was leaning against my locker. “All ready for our three amigas dinner? I’m excited that we can all walk home together.”
“Yeah. No. No, I’m not okay.”
“What’s wrong?” The smile that seemed permanently affixed to her face the past few days disappeared. “You look really pale, Brooklyn. Are you going to be sick?”
“I just…I…just…he…”
“Hey,” Felix said from behind me. I spun around and the guilt I felt from kissing Matt grew tenfold. I’d promised Felix he’d be my first kiss. And not just that…I’d wanted it to be him. Stupid fucking Matt!
“Are you okay?” Felix asked. “You look a little pale.”
Because Matt literally just sucked all the oxygen out of my body. Stop it. “I’m fine.” I did not sound fine. But I needed to immediately or everyone would know what just happened. And Felix could not know. No one could know. God, I may have just kissed my brother. And I liked it. No. No, I did not like it.
“Do you need to go to the nurse?” Kennedy asked.
“I’m fine.” I took a deep breath. “Really. Let’s get going.”
“If you’re sure?”
“Definitely”
“Okay.” Kennedy maneuvered herself between Felix and me. I was so grateful. It was like she could tell I needed a minute to myself. We all started walking. I wasn’t sure if the silence was awkward because of me, but it certainly felt that way. I kept my eyes trained straight ahead as I walked past the auditorium. Was Matt still in there?
“Earth to Brooklyn,” Kennedy said and lightly nudged me with her elbow.
“What?”
“Your hand,” she said like she’d just asked me a hundred times before. “What’s in your hand?”
I looked down at my hand. Matt’s most recent note was balled up in my fist. “Nothing.” We walked by a trashcan on our way out of school. I wanted to toss it. I wanted my mind to tell my heart that the kiss meant nothing. But I found myself quickly smoothing out the note, folding it, and sliding it into my blazer pocket. His words were stuck in my head on repeat. Please, tell me I’m not too late.
“So…” Felix said.
God, he knows. He knows what I just did. It felt like my heart was ricocheting against my ribcage. Is this what guilt felt like? A heart attack?
“What’s your uncle like?” he asked instead of accusing me of making out with Matt in the auditorium.
“He’s so nice,” Kennedy said.
Felix laughed. “I meant Brooklyn’s uncle. You know…the one I’m meeting.”
“Right, I know. But I call him Uncle Jim too. He’s always lived down the hall from me. He’s like a surrogate uncle I guess you could say. And he’s going to love you.”
“Okay.” Felix sounded more confused than anything. “So what does he do, Brooklyn?”
I’d completely forgotten about the awkward conversation we still needed to have. I pulled my jacket tighter around myself, trying to keep my heart from bursting out onto the dirty city street. The fabric was growing threadbare and it was too cold for the rapidly decreasing temperatures. And too thin to cover up the sound of my rapid heartbeat.
“She hasn’t told you?” Kennedy asked. She turned her attention to me and whispered, “You haven’t told him?”
Felix cleared his throat. “Told me what?”
That I kissed Matt! No. That he kissed me. Stupid kiss thief.
“Um…” Kennedy looked at me and then back at him. “It’s not my place to say. I’m sworn to secrecy.”
I knew she was waiting for me to start talking. But I was afraid if I opened my mouth I’d confess everything.
“Is he like in the CIA or something?” Felix asked.
Kennedy didn’t respond as we turned down a dingy side street. Well, not just any dingy side street. The street my apartment was on.
They were waiting. Waiting for me. Felix thought he was about to have dinner with a CIA agent and a girl who had never been kissed. I took a deep breath. “Kennedy, could you give us a minute?”
“Yeah.” She smiled reassuringly at me. “But just a quick one. I’ll meet you guys at Uncle Jim’s. I want to change real quick anyway.”
There was no such thing as a quick minute. A minute was 60 seconds no matter how you looked at it. And probably 80 heartbeats. Scratch that. My heart was beating at twice that rate.
Kennedy walked out in front of us and I stopped Felix, pulling him out of the way of the passersby.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked and grabbed my hand. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I shook my head. I needed to tell him what I’d just done. I couldn’t risk introducing him to my uncle and letting him in on my secret if he had no intention of forgiving me for Matt practically assaulting me. He didn’t assault you. “I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.”
“Hey.” Felix moved a fraction of an inch closer. “What’s wrong?”
I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat.
“I know this is kinda awkward,” he said and discreetly nodded toward Kennedy. “But she put us in a position where we couldn’t exactly say no. And it’s fine. After I get your uncle to like me, I’ll be able to take you out just the two of us. No three amigas bullshit.”
He thought I was being weird about Kennedy. I wasn’t even able to process how awkward her overly enthusiastic third-wheeling was because I was stuck in my own threesome from hell. One that included Matt and his stupidly kissable lips.
“Really, it’s okay.” Felix squeezed my hand. “Let’s just have a fun night. I’m excited to meet your uncle and see your home.”
Home. For the first time the thought was comforting. And I realized that my uncle’s apartment was quickly becoming my home. It was the first th
ing I’d thought of.
A part of me felt like a traitor. Like believing this was my home was somehow forgetting about my mom and my real home back in Delaware. The one with the foreclosure signs in the windows. The one with the yellow kitchen and the memories of dancing. Laughing. Not being sick.
“I live in a 500 square foot apartment.” I said it more to convince myself it wasn’t a home. Not Felix. But it was a double-edged sword. It made me feel guilty for making it seem like I didn’t love that my uncle had given me a place to call home now. And I think a part of me was hoping it would make Felix leave. As much as he said he didn’t fit into the world of Empire High, he did. I’d seen his fancy apartment. I’d seen how different we were. And it would be a hell of a lot easier if Felix decided to leave now rather than me telling him that I’d kissed Matt and him leaving because of that.
“Is that what this is about? Brooklyn, I don’t care where you live.”
That. That right there was why my first kiss should have been with him. Because he was kind and caring. And he didn’t make me feel small. He didn’t hide me away in a dark auditorium and leave unsigned notes in my locker. He wasn’t ashamed of me. I was the one acting ashamed of myself.
“I really like you,” he said.
“I really like you too.”
He smiled. “So let me see this awesome 500 square foot apartment.”
I laughed. “Okay.” He turned to start walking again, but I stopped him. “There’s one more thing. Well, two more things.” I focused on the fact that his hand felt comforting in mine for a second. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Don’t tell me I really am related to you,” he said with a laugh.
“No. Nothing like that.” I really wished I’d never told him I was worried he was my brother. I wasn’t sure the teasing would ever end. I swallowed hard, trying to figure out how to word what I needed to say. “I’m not a scholarship student.” God, that felt good to say. “And my uncle isn’t in the CIA. His name is Jim Sanders.” I waited a beat, hoping that Felix would just figure it out on his own. I’d heard a few faculty members at school call my uncle Mr. Sanders before. But Felix didn’t react. “The only reason I go to Empire High is because my uncle is a janitor there.”
Felix laughed. But he quickly stopped when he saw I wasn’t laughing. “Oh.” He cleared his throat. Finally the realization hit him. “Janitor Jimbo is your uncle?”
“What?”
“Janitor Jimbo. The one with the big beer belly?”
I pulled my hand out of his. “Don’t call him that.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just what everyone calls him.”
“I’ve never heard anyone call him that.”
“Brooklyn, literally everyone calls him Janitor Jimbo. It’s not a big deal.”
“It is to me. Don’t call him that.”
Felix held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I won’t call him that anymore.”
“Good.”
“Can we just rewind until a minute ago? I meant to say…Jim Sanders is your uncle? Oh, right Sanders. I should have put that together faster. Awesome. Now I know his profession and I’ll have something to talk to him about because I love fixing stuff too.”
It was really hard to be mad at him when he was smiling at me like that. And when he was trying so hard to make peace.
“I’m excited to meet him,” he added. “Come on. If we’re lucky you can give me a tour of your place before Kennedy gets there.
***
“And that’s my bedroom.” I nodded toward the open door without walking toward it. The tour had taken all of two minutes.
“I never got to show you my bedroom,” Felix said and walked over to the open door. “Aren’t you going to finish the tour?”
I had no idea how my uncle would feel about a boy being in my room. But for some reason all I could think about was the fact that there was a huge box of condoms hiding in the top drawer of my nightstand. What if Felix saw them? “I mean…it’s just a normal bedroom.”
He leaned against the doorjamb. “Come here.” He reached his hand out.
I walked over to him, slipping my hand into his.
“Are you nervous to have me here?”
“I feel like this is a trick question.” My heart had started beating again, but not because I felt guilty. Felix had nailed it. He made me uneasy. Being alone with him made me uneasy. Him finding out about Matt made me uneasy.
“Not a trick question.” His eyes drifted to my lips. “You make me nervous, you know.”
“I make you nervous?”
“Rumor has it that the best way to squash nerves is to distract yourself.” He pulled on my hand, drawing me closer. “I can think of a few ways we can distract ourselves right now.”
“A few ways?”
“Well, one way in particular. After all, I think I promised you something.”
The kiss. The kiss I gave to someone else.
He leaned forward.
“Yay! Group hug!” Kennedy yelled and lunged at us, somehow wiggling between us, creating a Kennedy sandwich. “We should probably get some studying done, don’t you think?”
“The only class I have with Brooklyn is PE.”
“Awesome. That means you can do pushups while Brooklyn and I go over English notes.”
“Kennedy,” I said. “I actually need to start making the lasagna. Maybe you two could help with…” my voice trailed off when Kennedy dislodged herself from her attack hug. She was wearing…well, she was wearing barely anything at all. Because a miniskirt, a tight top that revealed her midriff and way too much cleavage, and a pair of heels didn’t count as clothing to me. And she’d applied a lot more eye makeup. Like the amount of eye makeup I’d seen some women on the corner down the street wearing.
I was still in my school uniform. Knee socks and Keds included.
“Oh how about a game?” Kennedy asked and looped her arms through either of ours, pulling us away from my bedroom. “Let’s play Twister.”
I hadn’t played Twister since elementary school. “I don’t have Twister.” Which was a relief. Because if Kennedy bent over she’d be mooning the entire apartment.
“Bummer. Okay, let’s do your dumb lasagna thing. Come on, Felix, I can show you how to thinly slice some mushrooms.” She pulled Felix away, leaving me alone in the living room.
What the hell? There weren’t mushrooms in my vegetarian lasagna. I hurried after them before they could mess anything up.
***
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Felix pulled out a bottle of wine from his backpack. “Where are your wine glasses?”
“What are you doing with that?” I asked.
“I grabbed it from my parents’ wine rack. I wanted to make a good first impression.”
“By bringing a bottle of wine? My uncle is going to kill me. Put it away.” I pushed his hand holding the bottle back toward his backpack.
My uncle walked in a few seconds too early. He spotted the wine bottle and my hand on it. I removed my hand like the bottle was on fire.
He cleared his throat. “You must be Felix Green. The young man who’s been serving my very underaged niece alcohol.”
Kill me now.
“Hi Mr. Sanders,” Felix said and lifted up the bottle. “I brought this for you.”
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” he said.
“Sixteen.” My uncle took off his coat and hung it on the hook by the door. “That’s five years too young for that.”
“It’s just for you,” Felix said. “I wasn’t planning on having a drop, sir.”
A bomb slowly ticking down to zero. I waited for an explosion. But instead, my uncle smiled.
“Right answer.” He took the bottle from Felix. “It smells great in here, kiddo,” he said to me. “What are we having?”
“Vegetarian lasagna.”
“Sounds good.” He uncorked the bottle and poured himself a glass. “Will you be joining us for dinner, Kennedy?”<
br />
She was currently adjusting her shirt to cover herself a little more. “Mhm.”
He grabbed four plates and set the table just in time for the timer on the oven to go off.
“So, Mr. Sanders,” Felix said as they took the seats across from each other.
“Please, call me Jim.”
Felix smiled. “Jim. How long have you been working at Empire High?”
“Ever since I graduated from high school. What do your parents do?”
“My mom is an art dealer. And my father manages the business.”
“I’d like to meet them.”
“They’re in France right now for some art gala. I can arrange something when they’re back in town.”
“Are you living alone?”
“We have a staff. I’m not a good cook like Brooklyn,” he said and put his hand on my knee underneath the table. “I’m pretty sure I’d starve if I was left to my own devices.”
My uncle’s rapid-fire interrogation continued as I silently chewed my lasagna. My very delicious, mushroom-free lasagna. I was pretty sure I learned more about Felix in that thirty minutes than he’d ever offered to me. He didn’t have any siblings. He used to go to public school when he was little. He’d lived in a small apartment on the wrong side of town like this at one point. He was pretty much a C student. He didn’t participate in any extracurriculars. At least, not ones he was willing to share with my uncle.
“I was actually wondering if Brooklyn could come to a party with me on Saturday night?” Felix asked. “I know she has work, so I was hoping it was alright if I took her after? I’d have her back here no later than 1.”
“Will there be alcohol at this party?”
“I won’t drink. And I’ll make sure she doesn’t either.”
My uncle pushed his plate aside. “No later than 1 you say?”
Felix nodded and squeezed my knee beneath the table. I smiled over at him. There was something so comforting about the way he kept his hand there all throughout dinner.
“Uncle Jim,” Kennedy said. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be there too.”