He chuckled under his breath, before dropping the trash bag and walking over to me. I looked up just in time to see him stop. He was close now, almost as close as the time he had to help me steady myself after I collided with him. “That wasn’t your present,” he said, his voice low as he looked around us. We were standing on the patio, in clear view of anyone inside the house who happened to look out through the glass sliding doors. Matt took my hand in his, as if it were completely normal, as if he had no idea that I’d never held a man’s hand before. Or a boy’s for that matter. Tugging gently, he led me to the corner of the yard where a large hedge kept us hidden, our own little bubble, and with one hand still grasping mine, he reached into his pocket with the other and pulled out a black, square, velvet box.
My chest collapsed into my lungs, and I inhaled a wheeze, exhaled the same way.
“This is for you,” he said.
“But—”
“I wanted to wait to get you alone to give it to you. I didn’t want your sister getting jealous.”
When I lifted my gaze to his, his eyes were clear, brimming with affection, and I couldn’t comprehend why. He smiled down at me, red lips surrounded by scruff that boys my age had only failed to grow. I tugged my hand free and carefully seized the box from his possession. Then I flipped the lid, gasping when the white gold pendant sparkled in the sunlight. My name had never looked as divine as it did spelled out in cursive, all letters joining, consisting of gold and a single diamond on the final A. “This is beautiful,” I whispered, pulse thumping madly beneath my flesh.
“A beautiful gift for a beautiful girl,” he murmured, stepping forward. I took a step back, not used to the proximity, but he simply smiled, moved in on me again. That time, I held my ground, frozen in all areas that were visible. He reached up, the heat of his hand against my jaw setting my body ablaze. “Can I kiss you?” he asked simply, and I must’ve nodded, must’ve silently agreed somehow, because the next thing I knew, he was inching forward. Darkness captured my vision when I closed my eyes and felt his lips on mine. “Sei perfetto,” he murmured. You’re perfect. And then we were kissing, kissing, kissing, and we couldn’t, wouldn’t stop.
Matt left for a business trip the day after my sixteenth birthday. The only reason I knew was because my grandfather had me checking his mail every day until his return. I didn’t know what we were to each other. We didn’t have time to discuss it before my grandfather interrupted our kiss by calling out for Matt from the patio.
It had been eight days. Eight long days. And with each day that passed, I found myself more and more confused. For eight days, I walked passed Matt’s name and phone number written on a yellow card, held onto the fridge by a magnet displaying three cats and a ball of yarn. I’m sure it was there to be used in case of an emergency, like if his house caught fire, not because the adolescent girl next door was admittedly rehashing the kiss like she had memorized the eleven digits after the decimal in pi.
With Milky-strength courage, I dug out my phone from my school blazer and typed out a message.
I have your mail, I stupidly wrote.
He responded right away. Thanks, Mr. Reynor. I really appreciate it.
I wrote back: It’s Andie.
My phone vibrated in my hand, and my pulse picked up, panic swirling in my blood. I expected a text message, not a voice conversation where I wouldn’t have time to plan my responses, so I let it ring out. Then it rang again. I reached into my pocket for my inhaler, shook it, inhaled it twice, then answered. “Hello?”
“Thank fuck, Andie. I’ve been going insane.” His voice, his words, felt like a hit of the Ventolin in the canister I was gripping—the sound relaxing my muscles and allowing air into my lungs.
“You have?”
“Well, yeah.” The man in possession of my first kiss chuckled. “When I gave your grandfather the card with my number, I assumed you’d use it. I know I should’ve gotten your number, but we have to be so careful, Andie. People—they won’t understand what we have.”
What we have.
I smiled, holding the phone closer to my ear. “I know. I won’t say anything. I promise.”
“Good,” he said. Then, “Fuck. I miss you, girl.”
“You do?”
“Shit. I have to go into a meeting right now, but keep your phone on you, okay?”
“I can’t have my phone on in class,” I told him.
He chuckled again. “I don’t plan on calling while you’re in class.”
“Then... when?”
“At night,” he said, his voice low. “Hopefully when you’re in your bed. That way I can picture it.”
He didn’t call that night.
He didn’t call at all.
Not until another eight days later when I rushed out of class to check my phone was there a message waiting from him: I’m home! Please tell me there’s even the slightest possibility I’ll be able to see you today. Please?
A smile stretched across my cheeks, and I covered it with my hand to hide it from the other students standing by their lockers.
I have college admissions prep class I have to go to. But there’s a general store a block east of my school. Do you know it?
His reply came in less than a second. Yep.
Can you meet me there just after 4:30? There’s parking at the rear. Wait for me.
I’d wait forever, babe.
I’d stood on a stage and been judged more times than I can count. I’d interviewed for and been interviewed by local and statewide media for various scholarly accolades. My academic achievements had always been the major cause of my anxiety and panic attacks, and yet I kept on with it, knowing it would somehow lead me to greatness. But none of those things would ever compare to the nerves twisting in every one of my organs as I walked through the general store—pretending to be interested in adult diapers—toward the rear exit. On the other side, a man was waiting for me, a man who’d given me a gift I’d been too afraid to wear in case it roused questions I couldn’t answer. A man who’d taken the lame expression of “sixteen and never been kissed” and made it just that: an expression. Not my reality.
Palms sweating, blood pumping, I pushed open the heavy glass door of the store and immediately locked eyes on the black SUV in the parking lot. Chrome rims and blacked-out windows, the vehicle belonged in a rap music video—not the leafy suburban town that’d been my home since my parents had left us.
The few yards felt like miles as my cement-weighted feet led me to the passenger side, fingers grasping my skirt, shoulders aching from the weight of my backpack.
I reached up and opened the door, the chrome handle acting as a mirror, reflecting my disheveled state. I didn’t look at him when I got in the car, leather seats squeaking under my weight. “Hey,” I said to his dashboard.
If smiles could be heard, swear I heard his when he said, “You have no idea how badly I’ve been waiting for this moment.”
“We should probably get going,” I said, still too afraid to look at him. What if he’d changed? What if the image I’d had of him standing in front of me with affection in his eyes was no longer the man sitting next to me. I added, “If we stay at one place too long, people can see us.”
“Tinted windows, babe, no one can see inside. And why are you refusing to look at me? Did you change your mind about us?”
Us?
Were we an “us?” He said it like we were, so we must have been. I found the courage to finally face him, but he was already watching me, his jaw flexing as he chewed gum between his teeth, the occasional green of it exposed every time his mouth moved. He was everything I remembered, everything I imagined him to be. He smiled, his eyebrows lifting, expressing he was still waiting for a response.
“No,” I said. “I haven’t changed my mind.”
Matt’s smile drifted higher, taking my heart, my hormones, to places they’d never been before. “Then get over here,” he said simply, motioning to his lap.
I ignored my
nerves, the flush of heat crawling on my skin at his words, and climbed across the generous car seat until I was perched on his lap, my back against his door.
His nose ran a trail from my shoulder, up my neck, and to my jaw, where he kissed me once. Twice. And on the third time, his hand found my bare thigh, and my mouth found his.
I was so lost, so consumed, so infatuated with the man whose stubble rubbed against my cheek, whose tongue danced effortlessly with mine, whose murmured words in a foreign language set alight a throb in the center of my being. And when his hands drifted higher and higher up my leg, I should’ve willed my body to protect its most sacred place.
I should’ve stopped him from pushing my panties aside, should’ve stopped him from using his fingers to fuck me until my pleasure was soaked on his palm.
I should’ve stopped him from covering my mouth with his to drown out the sounds of my very first orgasm.
I should’ve stopped it from the beginning.
Instead, I should’ve asked him where he’d been and what he’d been doing.
I should’ve asked why he never called when he said he would.
I should’ve asked what exactly he did to earn him the car we were cocooned in.
I should’ve done a lot of things I didn’t.
And did a lot of things I shouldn’t have.
Like getting in the car in the first place.
Chapter Thirteen
Andie
Milky stirs beneath the sheets of her bed, mumbling something about dollar bills while I rummage through her dresser trying to find something to wear. My pulse echoes in my ears, fingers brash as I flip through top after top, but there’s nothing here. At least nothing good enough. “What the hell are you doing?” Milky’s voice is as sleep-deprived as she is.
“I need to find something to wear,” I rush out, not turning to look at her. I find a top and hold it out in front of me, but it’s more Milky than it is me, and that’s probably a bad sign.
“What’s wrong with what you’re wearing?”
The laugh that bubbles out of me is nothing short of maniacal. “Everything.”
“You look fine, Andie,” she says, and I sense her getting out of bed and moving toward me.
“Fine doesn’t cut it. I need to look... I don’t know. But I need to impress them. And I think—” I turn to her standing beside me now and point up and down my outfit. “I’m pretty sure I wore this last time. I don’t want them to think I’m poor and can’t afford clothes.”
“You are poor and can’t afford clothes.”
“I know that!” I yell, frustrated and afraid, restlessness beating a pulse from my toes to my fingers. “I just don’t want them to know!” The anxiety is quick to consume me, wrapping its dark vapor around my heart and squeezing, crushing until all blood leaves my face and all air leaves my lungs.
Milky recognizes the signs before I do, her eyes wide as she rushes out of the room.
Inhaling razor blades against my throat, I try to settle my pulse while Milky opens and slams drawers in the kitchen. She’s quick to return with a paper bag, guiding me to sit on the edge of the bed. “Oh, Andie,” she coos, tears welling in her eyes as she watches the bag attached to my mouth inflate, deflate, inflate, deflate. She rubs my back and asks, “Where’s your inhaler?”
“Bag,” I manage, awareness of all senses returning.
She’s out of the room and back in less than ten seconds, my inhaler held tightly in her grip.
I use it once, twice, all while she watches me, concern unmasked in her features. “You can’t get yourself worked up like that; this is what happens. These panic attacks...” she trails off, chewing her lip and glancing behind me. She can’t look at me. I don’t blame her.
She wipes a fallen tear off her cheek with the back of her hand before her eyes meet mine again. Hands soft against my cheeks, she waits for my breathing to return to normal. Then she smiles, shifting my curls behind my ears. “You look beautiful,” she says, never once actually looking at what started this mess: my clothes. “You are beautiful. And they’re going to see that regardless of what you’re wearing.”
I nod against her palms, my twin’s raw emotion causing my heart to crack.
“They’re going to love you for you, Andie. It’s impossible not to.”
Chapter Fourteen
Noah
It’s not often I let my mind wander to the time before.
Before the flickering lights and the dark, dark, darkness of the moments that followed. But hearing that sound, the cracking of maple wood against cowhide makes my heart hammer, my lips twitch toward what may possibly be a smile.
I watch the ball fly across the field, red stitching like wings on a plane soaring through the air.
“You motherfucker,” Bradley calls out from the pitcher’s mound. Opposite to how we’re accustomed, he watches the baseball cross the sky, one hand on his hip, the other used to shield the sun from his eyes. “You said you haven’t been practicing.”
“I haven’t.”
“You’re a waste of space, Morgan,” he shouts, mocking. “Get your ass back on a team. Any team!”
“Nah.”
He makes his way toward me, leaving the baseball somewhere in the outfield. It’s early on a Saturday morning, and the park is practically deserted. Give it another hour, two, the place will be swarming. He begged me to come out with him, missing the sport as much as I do. The difference between us? This was supposed to be my future.
My path.
Before.
Bradley says, slapping my shoulder, “I see that look on your face, man, and it makes me weep on the inside.”
I shrug his hand off me. “Shut up.”
“I’m calling a comeback.”
“It’s not a comeback.”
“But you feel it, too, right?”
“I feel nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s true.” This game—a bat and a ball—and the pursuit of greatness are the reasons why I am who I am, why I act how I act. Why darkness invades my mind, my blood.
“Yo. Those girls are checking you out,” Bradley tells me, pointing to the bleachers.
Two girls sit side by side, heads bowed between them. I check them out, just for a second, but neither of them piques my interest. Neither of them is her. I start making my way back to the car, kicking the barrel of the bat.
“You’re not even the slightest bit interested?” Bradley pushes.
I ignore him.
“You’ve changed, man.”
No shit.
“Hey,” he says, his footsteps rushed to keep up with me. “Last week, at the party, you and Andie were gone a while.”
“And?” I ask, my heart racing at the mention of her name.
“Did you, you know? Get in?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Then what did you do?”
“Talk.”
“Talk?” he asks, disbelieving. “Until 3 am?”
“Yep.”
“You lie,” he accuses. My non-response makes him chuckle, and he slaps my shoulders. “I’m calling a comeback.”
“It’s not a fucking comeback.”
Chapter Fifteen
Andie
“Brad said we could use theirs, and think about all the time and money we’re going to save.”
On my knees in the living room, I throw our dirty laundry into a basket and turn to my sister. “Brad? Since when did he go from Bradley to Brad?”
My sister’s fake golden locks shift as she shakes her head. “Since I refuse to call him Bradley.”
I can’t help but sigh. “I don’t know. It feels weird.” Sure, in any other world, being offered the free use of a washer and dryer would be a blessing. But in this world, where the washer and dryer belong, in part, to a boy whose name I moaned when I was two fingers deep inside myself... yeah, it’s a catastrophe waiting to happen. What’s worse is that I haven’t seen Noah since last weekend, since he stood ju
st outside my glass sliding doors once the yard was clear of partygoers and waited until he was sure my door was locked before offering the slightest of smiles and a head nod as a parting gesture. It’s not to say I haven’t thought about him. I have. Every time I saw his car in the driveway, I’d wonder if we’d accidentally see each other. I almost hoped Miles would be home so he’d throw another party and Noah had a reason to save me again. Neither of those things happened. And when his car wasn’t there... I found myself wondering where he was. Who he was with.
Ugh!
The blushing heart-bandit next door has taken my mind hostage.
“What’s wrong with you?” Milky asks, eying me sideways as she throws an oversized shirt over her body, or maybe it’s a short dress. I can’t tell. She adds, “I thought you’d be happy about this.”
“I am,” I assure her. I just wish it didn’t come with a six-foot-two price tag.
“Maybe that cute, shy one will be home. I love teasing him.” She smacks my ass as she passes me and heads for the door. “Let’s go.”
Milky bursts through the boys’ front door with confidence I can only dream about. I stop just inside, taking in my surroundings. Clearly, Milky’s been around before, but I haven’t. The entryway is small, just wide enough for a small table, and the hall leading down to the rest of the house is only a few feet long. The first floor is open—kitchen, living and dining all in one space. Milky’s the one to reveal my crush’s presence when she says, “Hey, playboy, looking good.”
I cringe at her teasing, or flirting, whatever, and grip the laundry basket tighter as I follow her into the house.
Noah’s standing at the kitchen island, an assortment of sandwich fillings spread out in front of him, an already-made sandwich gripped in both hands raised halfway to his mouth, a mouth that hangs open at the sight of Milky. He’s wearing jeans, a plain white T and a gray NC State cap pulled down to his eyebrows. I don’t know how long I stare at him while he stares past my sister, but he hasn’t moved. Hasn’t noticed my existence.