DREAMS of 18

by A. Kent, Saffron

  It’s different.

  It’s from the olden days, thick and edgy.

  I’m itching to go to him and I don’t even care about the logistics of it all, the front door, approaching him through the crowd and all that.

  But then, I become glued to my spot like I’ll never move again. Because he’s not alone anymore.

  A woman approaches him.

  She’s tall, made taller by the heels she has on. She moves toward him slowly and with swaying hips, which look very rounded and soft in the tight dress that she has on.

  I can’t tell the color of it through the lens of my glasses but I think it’s dark and appealing. Mostly because Mr. Edwards lifts his eyes, finally.

  So far he’s been staring down at the bottle like he doesn’t care for the world, like nothing is interesting or worthy of his attention. But now something has suddenly appeared.

  As soon as his spiky lashes flutter up and his eyes come into view, I breathe on to the glass, fogging it up.

  Those eyes.

  Hazel, chameleon, unpredictable.

  So unpredictable that I used to make up silly guessing games about them. I used to wonder about the nuances and shades of brown and green when he was unhappy with one of his players.

  On the night of the kiss, his eyes appeared black.

  I wonder what color they are now, as he’s flicking his gaze up the body of the woman, both emotionlessly and with such laziness that I can’t help but bite my lip again as I feel every fucking inch of it.

  The woman is smiling in what I think is a seductive way, so I guess she can feel it too. The intensity of his eyes.

  For some reason, it makes me want to claw through the glass and run to them. It makes me want to stop them.

  Should they really be looking at each other that… sexily in a public place? There are people here. There needs to be some decorum.

  Then, I forget everything when he deigns to lift his face.

  At last, I can see his features. I can see the sharp jut of his cheekbones and that hard jaw. God, he has a beard now.

  A beard. Thick and dark. Almost wild like the front yard of his cabin.

  At the discovery, I really go and claw my fingers on the glass, digging in my nails.

  While the woman who’s now bending over him, exposing her fantastic cleavage, buries her fingers in that beard of his.

  Mr. Edwards turns to the side and opens his powerful thighs and she steps into them. When she does, he smiles.

  Jesus Christ, he’s smiling.

  Not the full-blown smile. No, he’s too serious and too stern for that. It’s half a smile. Maybe even less than that: a quarter of a smile. And since he doesn’t do it often, or at least I haven’t seen him do it a lot, pull up his strawberry lips like that, it has an effect similar to a thunderstorm.

  At least, in my heart. Which is pounding in my chest.

  He says something to her – I can’t hear what obviously but the shape of his lips and the way they move and stretch makes me think that his words were low and rough. She laughs at them, which in turn makes him smirk.

  Oh God.

  He’s smirking.

  Mr. Edwards is smirking. Has he ever smirked before?

  I press my entire body into the glass like I’m really about to burst through it as I realize this is the way he is with women. This is the way he acts – smirking and lazy and all intense and sexy – when he’s turned on.

  Is that what he did on that night, as well? He was coming back from a date and I can definitely imagine he went out with someone like her, like this woman, all sexy and mature.

  I think I’m having a heart attack.

  Can eighteen-year-olds have a heart attack?

  I have a pain, severe pain, in my chest and my left arm. It has to be a heart attack. What else could it be?

  My heart is being attacked.

  And then, it dies – my heart dies – when Mr. Edwards grabs the back of her neck in a possessive hold and brings her close before kissing her.

  He’s kissing her, out in the open, in front of all these people. I can’t see the finer details of it, but I can at least see that his mouth is moving. His mouth is moving in a very dominating way.

  So dominating that even I can feel it.

  I feel it so much that I have to put my lips on the fogged-up-by-my-rapid-breaths glass. I have to press my lips on it the same way as I did on the night of my eighteenth birthday.

  Yes, I’m kissing glass – a non-living thing with no warmth or breath – because the man I kissed ten months ago is kissing someone else.

  He is kissing another woman and she’s going wild in his arms and here I am, going crazy.

  This is what happens when he kisses back. This.

  You go wild.

  You forget where you are. You forget the people around you, and you become this thing. This sexual thing and you put your hands on his broad shoulders. That’s what this woman is doing.

  They’re perfect together.

  So perfect and beautiful that it makes me sick.

  It makes me think that I’m spying on a king and his queen, in the hopes that the king will look up and catch me. He’ll catch me staring at them with this feverish, turned-on look in my eyes and he’ll leave the queen.

  For me.

  Instead of the sophisticated, experienced queen, the king will want me: the plain, bedraggled princess who can’t control herself.

  God, I so, so want that.

  I’m so weak in the moment that I can’t even pretend to deny it.

  I want him to look up. I want him to see me.

  “Please, Mr. Edwards,” I whisper like he can hear me.

  Just like that he does, though.

  He rips his mouth away from her, his fingers now fisted in her loose, wavy hair. His chest is heaving, panting. The woman’s confused and she wants him to come back to her. She even tries to put her mouth on his but Mr. Edwards turns his face and his eyes somehow, miraculously, land on me.

  On me?

  I actually stumble back with the force of it. The force of his gaze and the sheer absurdity of what just happened.

  It was like he heard me or read my mind or just knew that I was there.

  And I know the moment he figures out it’s me. The girl who kissed him that night.

  His jaw tightens. A frown emerges between his heavy brows and his eyes begin to narrow.

  I don’t wait around for his eyes to become slits because I’m running away.

  Without really thinking about it, I pick a random direction and start walking really, really fast. The sidewalk is packed with the dressed-up evening crowd.

  I’m bumping into them, hitting them either with my hunched shoulders or my fat hobo and my anxiety is jacking up.

  Finally, finally I find a secluded spot where I can stop.

  It’s a narrow alley wedged between two buildings and I get in and lean against the wall, almost falling into it, breathing hard.

  The bricks at my back are damp and hot but they feel good against my bare thighs and the nape of my neck.

  My entire body is burning, and I know it has very little to do with my speed-walking or even my anxiety.

  It has everything to do with that kiss I witnessed. That kiss and his stare.

  My hobo slides down and off my shoulder, dropping to the ground, and I look at the sky, exposing my flushed throat to the night air.

  I sigh when the breeze flutters over my skin. But my relief doesn’t last long because someone appears at the mouth of the alley.

  Him.

  Mr. Edwards.

  He’s standing by the opposite wall, staring at me.

  My feet kinda slip on the ground, even though it’s dry as the desert, when I try to stand up straight. My breaths are coming in short bursts like bombs exploding in my chest. Too much air one second and the next, not enough.

  “You f-followed me?” I whisper hesitantly an
d also unnecessarily.

  Of course he did.

  He’s here, isn’t he?

  At my question, he comes off the wall and moves toward me.

  His eyes are deep and unfathomable, and it seems like he hasn’t unclenched his jaw since the moment he saw me minutes ago.

  “I didn’t mean to run,” I say when he doesn’t utter a word. “It was a reflex. Absolutely no thought involved. You shouldn’t have followed me though.”

  In fact, I came to the bar to find him. But I don’t say that.

  Words are falling out of my brain with every step he takes toward me. Slow and fraught with some underlying meaning.

  I can figure it out though, the underlying meaning. His clenched jaw and furious eyes are super clear about that.

  He’s angry.

  As soon as he reaches me, I blurt out the only words I seem to remember in the moment.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You are?”

  His voice is the same, low and rumbly.

  It makes me jump the same way it did that night. In fact, it makes me jump and it makes me arch up against the wall. Like the gravel in his voice controls the curvature of my spine.

  “Yes.”

  He cocks his head to the side, studying me. “For what?”

  The eye-sweep he gives me is completely different than what he gave her, the queen-like woman. With her, he was slow, and he was deliberate.

  With me, he’s dismissive. He takes one look up and down my body, my t-shirt and shorts, and that’s it.

  I bet he’s already forgotten what I look like even though he’s staring at me directly.

  Fisting my hands at my sides, I lick my lips. “For running and, uh, for ruining…” Your life. “Your evening.”

  That’s the least of my crimes but it’s the only thing I can think of to say right now, especially after his careless look.

  Not to mention, that’s the only thing I’ve got the courage to say.

  “Ruining my evening,” he murmurs, scratching his jaw, and I swear I hear the rustle of his thumb and his beard and it steals away my breath. “Yeah, you did that. You ruined my evening.”

  “Maybe you can still save it,” I whisper, feeling foolish and breathless at the same time.

  “What do you suggest?”

  I swallow, wanting to look away from him.

  I mean, I should. I really, really should. I’m staring at him a little too much.

  Even though he’s doing the same to me, I highly doubt he’s harboring the same thoughts as me.

  Thoughts like how tall he is and how his shoulders are massive. Massive enough to block out the street beyond him and all the people and buildings. How the open collar of his plaid shirt gives me a peek of the triangle of his throat along with a smidge of his chest hair.

  “You should…” Looking down, I fight the urge to stick my tongue out and gag at the words I’m about to speak. “You should go back to her and uh, finish what you started.”

  “What was it? That I started.”

  I whip my eyes up at his question. I do it so fast, I nearly bump my head against the wall.

  Is he really asking me that?

  Looks like he is. His jaw is dipped, and his eyes are on me, intense and watchful, like he’s waiting for my answer.

  “I… Well, you know, you were kissing her, so,” I say lamely, childishly. Like I can’t understand the concept of kissing and things that happen because of it.

  He squints his eyes a little as if he really can’t figure it out. “So?”

  I swallow.

  I wait for a few seconds, debating what to say, and then go for it.

  “So, I’m sure you wanted to do more.” And just because I can’t help myself, “She definitely wanted you to do more.”

  It’s a muttered add-on. I completely had no right to say that and no right to let my teeny-tiny bit of bitterness show.

  I mean, why am I even bitter? What am I bitter about?

  Why wouldn’t he kiss that woman? Why wouldn’t he make out with her and do other things with her?

  Mr. Edwards’s lips pull up again like they did back at the bar, in one direction and only slightly. Again, it’s nothing like the smile he gave her. This one’s cold and mean, but still, I respond to it.

  I respond to it by going breathless again. By putting my left foot over my right and clenching my thighs.

  “What do you think she wanted me to do to her?” he asks.

  With every question that he asks me, the answers become more and more difficult. I should really put a stop to it.

  Mostly because it’s none of my business. But also because I don’t wanna talk about her. I don’t wanna talk about what that woman wanted from him and what he wanted from her.

  And yet, I can’t help it when my lips part and my answer slips out. “Keep kissing her and never stop.”

  His eyes flick back and forth over my face and I think this is it. He’ll stop now. He has to. I don’t even know what I’m saying.

  But he doesn’t.

  His face dips even more, like he’s trying to gouge the answers out of me. “What else?”

  As it turns out, he doesn’t have to gouge anything out. I’ll give him the answer anyway. I’ll keep talking and talking like an idiot.

  “Touch her, maybe.”

  “Where?”

  “Everywhere. All the places you could reach.”

  Stop. Stop. Stop.

  What am I saying? Why does he keep asking these questions?

  Why am I gauging the distance between us? Why am I trying to see the places he can reach on my body?

  “Her hair, maybe?” he asks curiously, as if I’m telling him something he never could’ve figured out for himself.

  I become hyper-aware of my own loose hair, brushing against my arm, my shoulders, going down to the small of my back. “Yeah.”

  “What about her neck? Does she want me to touch her neck?”

  My neck tingles. “Yes.”

  “Her waist. Maybe slide down a little?”

  I nod, feeling the brick wall brushing against my ass. “To her ass.”

  “What if I bring my hand forward, slide it down her stomach? Would she like that?”

  My eyes go down to his hands. They’re clenched into fists by his sides, mimicking my own.

  His stance is wide, and his body sprung tight, completely in conflict with his low, lazy, almost sleepy voice. And I realize that maybe this is how he looks when he’s aroused.

  Oh Jesus, is he aroused? Did she get him going that much?

  It makes me wanna sob.

  Instead, I whisper, “Yeah. Yeah, she’d like that. Very much.”

  “What if I don’t stop there? What if I keep going and going until my hand is somewhere else?”

  “On her thighs?”

  I say that but I’m not really thinking that. I’m thinking of something else.

  Something that I’m currently clenching and pressing between my thighs as I watch his tight fists. As I try to make my fists as tight as his, as tight as the knot in my lower belly.

  “Yeah. But that’s not what my hand’s after. You know that, don’t you? It’s after something else. My hand’s after her p –”

  “Okay!” I almost scream, trying to get him to stop talking. “I get the picture. She wanted you to touch her everywhere.”

  Jesus Christ, he has to stop now.

  He has to.

  I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take him saying the P word, and I’m not referring to all the P words he’s been called.

  He was gonna say something else, something like pussy, and no.

  Just no. I can’t.

  I can’t take that he can make me aware of my own body while he’s talking about touching someone else’s.

  Mr. Edwards’s smile goes even meaner, even colder. “You look a little flushed. Are you okay? A little turned on, maybe?”

&
nbsp; “I’m…”

  “Does watching people get you off?”

  My eyes go wide; I’m sure he can see it through the tinted lenses. “What?”

  “You watch people, Violet?”

  He just said my name.

  He said it the same way as he did that night. Like he’s murdering it between his teeth.

  I shake my head, scraping the back of it against the brick wall. “No. Of course not. I don’t… don’t watch people.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “So why were you watching me?”

  “I didn’t mean to watch you. I was just… I just happened to be there. A-and you were, you know. And then, I couldn’t stop watching. It was kinda hypnotic and I’m so so–”

  “Maybe next time when two grown-ups are kissing, look the fuck away.”

  I’m so freaked out that I don’t even take offense at his grown-ups. “Yeah, okay.”

  “Or try some porn in your free time. For educational purposes, you understand, so you don’t get hypnotized again.”

  I grimace; I knew that would somehow come to bite me in the ass, the hypnotized comment. “Okay. Porn, yeah. I’ll try that.”

  Then I see his lips twitch. Only once, but I catch it and for such a small, minuscule action, it has an avalanche of an effect.

  My heart skips a beat before jackhammering inside my rib cage.

  Was that his way of… smiling?

  “Jailbait,” he murmurs out of the blue, and my heart that’s been flying inside my chest slows down.

  I flinch, as if reality smacked me across the face. I loosen my fists and my shoulders go limp.

  In a very small voice, I say, “I’m not. I’m eighteen.”

  Like I was when I kissed him.

  Like I told people over and over after that.

  And then, I jump in and add, “And ten months. I’m eighteen and ten months.”

  It’s important.

  If I could somehow make myself age faster, I would. But I can’t. So I’m going to count every single day toward my pathetic, inappropriate age.

  “You shouldn’t be wearing that, then.” He jerks his chin up, pointing at something. “If you don’t want people to get the wrong impression.”

  I frown for a moment, then comprehension dawns.

  Oh.

  Fuck.

  Reaching up, I snatch off my baseball cap. It’s magenta with ‘Jailbait’ written in black. God, I’m an idiot.