by Kelly Oram
“How do you know? When you pulled that knife out earlier I seriously thought you were going to kill me. Then twenty minutes later we were making out.”
Seth laughed again, but I wasn’t trying to be funny. “What?” I snapped.
“One of these days I’ll teach you the difference between a single kiss and making out.”
I was glad he couldn’t see me blush. But then again, it probably didn’t matter, because he had to have noticed the way my heart started pounding.
“You only let me kiss you tonight because deep down you knew I wouldn’t hurt you,” Seth continued, finally answering my question. “It took me a long time to gain that trust and you still won’t even lay down on this bed with me. Believe me Ellie, you are not one of those girls. If your life were ever really in danger, you would put up one hell of an impressive fight.”
“It wouldn’t be enough, though,” I muttered. “I hate that I’m so helpless against you. I’ve never felt completely defenseless before.”
“You aren’t completely defenseless. You have to remember that I’ve been practicing self-defense since I was ten. I’m also a trained boxer, a black belt, and I’ve been through both boot camp and the police academy.”
“Really?” I gasped.
Seth shrugged. “Long story, but the point is, I’ve specifically been trained to take down an attacker and you still give me a fight. Most guys probably wouldn’t stand a chance against you. You don’t really have to worry, though, because no one is going to touch you. I swear it, Ellie.”
Seth hugged me fiercely and with that one squeeze finally convinced me that I was completely safe. Even if he turned out to actually be the Saturday Night Slasher and used his creepy knife-throwing skills to kill a million redheads, he wouldn’t hurt me.
I sat there in Seth’s arms, trying to wrap my head around the idea of him. All the things he could do. The strange, exciting, and lonely life he’s had so far. The tragic past that was somehow romantic. The most mind-blowing part of it all was the fact that he seemed to think I was the one thing he needed to make sense of it all.
I understood what he meant about feeling overwhelmed.
“I can’t believe you were stabbed,” I whispered, trying to come to terms with the things he’d told me tonight. “Do you have a scar?”
Seth’s chest shook with silent laughter and I was reminded of Eric Sherman in biology class. Unlike my old lab partner, Seth didn’t seem bothered by my morbidness. He also, apparently, wasn’t bothered with nakedness, since he said, “It’s not very impressive,” and pulled his shirt off quicker than you could say “rock-hard abs.”
Sure, I’d seen Seth shirtless once or twice, but the first time I was suffering from a concussion, and the other times had been from like fifty yards away through my bedroom window. This—having him here in my room, on my bed, in the middle of the night—was completely different. I sucked in a breath and tried not to stare.
“See?” Seth said, running his fingers over a small faded pink line.
“Wow, that’s really it?” I said when I finally noticed the mark. If he hadn’t pointed it out I might not have seen it. It made sense now why I hadn’t noticed it before. “I was expecting something more deadly looking.”
Seth laughed. “I told you it wasn’t impressive. The knife wasn’t very big, and it’s really faded over the years. You can still sort of feel it, though.”
I reached out automatically, but realized what I was doing before my hand touched his skin and pulled back my fingers.
“It’s okay,” he said.
I wasn’t about to just, you know, touch him, so he picked up my hand and placed it over the scar.
“So close to your heart,” I whispered in a shaky voice. I could feel his heart beating rapidly beneath my fingers. I couldn’t imagine someone pushing a blade into it. Making it stop. Killing him. “I’m glad they missed,” I admitted.
When I mindlessly began brushing my fingers back and forth across the raised surface of Seth’s skin his breath caught, and he grabbed hold of my hand. “Ellie,” he said, shaking off a wave of chills. “Be my girlfriend.”
“W-what?”
I scrambled all the way to the other side of the bed as far as I could. He didn’t try to stop me, but when I looked back his eyes were hungrier than I’d ever seen them, and his chest was heaving like he was having a hard time holding air in his lungs. He swallowed hard.
“I need you to be mine. I can’t handle this chasing you around nonsense anymore. These moments we have, where it feels like I almost have you but I’m always wondering what you’re thinking and waiting for you to run from me? I can’t take it. It’s time for this to be a real relationship.”
“I… Um… I don’t…”
“Yes, you do.”
“Let me think about it.”
Seth shook his head and crawled toward me. “I’m not giving you a choice here,” he said, coming to a stop just a couple inches from my face.
“You’re not?” I asked stupidly. So much for all that fight he said I had.
Seth shook his head again and closed the distance between us. “I’ll be good to you, though,” he said against my lips.
I couldn’t have argued with him even if I’d wanted to. Which, lets face it, I didn’t.
He kissed me lightly at first, but the instant I kissed him back he threw his weight into it. I had to wrap my arms around his neck to keep from falling backward off the bed, and that was that. I was on my back pinned beneath Seth’s full weight. Only this time I wasn’t scared he was going to kill me. I was worried he was going to try and teach me about a whole lot more than just making out.
“Seth,” I gasped once he finally gave me a chance to get a breath.
He moved his mouth to my neck, and don’t get me wrong, I liked it. I liked it a lot. But I hadn’t even been his girlfriend for like thirty seconds yet and something told me Seth needed, if anything, less encouragement than I’d already given him. I pushed him back a little and tried again. “Seth, wait. Stop.”
“Sorry,” Seth said, snapping out of it somewhat. He brought his lips back to mine for another kiss and then said, “I’m sorry. You’re right. You’re not ready for that yet.”
“No. No, I’m not,” I agreed quickly before I could change my mind. Then, for my own benefit I added, “Not for a long time.”
“All right,” Seth said with a laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m stopping.”
He rolled off of me then and pulled me so my back was against his chest, somehow molding his body around mine. “How about this?” he asked in a teasing voice. “Can you handle at least this?”
Are you kidding? I’d never felt anything more comfortable in my life. “Yes, this I can do,” I said, already half asleep. It was nearly two a.m. after all, and I’m more of an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of girl.
“Actually, I could get used to this.” Now that I wasn’t worried about anything anymore, sleep was taking over so fast I was already practically in a state of delirium. “This is nice. There should be a name for this.”
“Spooning.” Seth chuckled.
“Huh?”
“It’s called spooning.”
“Spooning. I like spooning. Wow, I need to shut-up before you change your mind about me.”
Seth laughed again. “Get some sleep, Ellie,” he said. So I did.
I was out within seconds and slept like a brick. It was the best night’s sleep I’d had all summer. In fact, I was so gone I didn’t wake up until the sun was just starting to light up my room and Seth was sneaking back in my window—which meant that he’d snuck out of it at some point and I hadn’t noticed.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.” He climbed back into my bed and did that spooning thing again. It was still awesome even when I wasn’t half asleep.
“Good morning.”
“It’s early. Go back to sleep,” Seth said as he kissed me on the neck and then nestled right back to the position he’d been in when I
fell asleep.
It was like he’d never left, except now he was showered, in fresh clothes, and smelled amazing. I, on the other hand, probably had hair like a haystack and morning breath, and was glad I wasn’t facing him.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Six thirty.”
“When did you leave last night? I never heard you go.”
“About an hour ago.”
“An hour? You stayed all night?”
Seth laughed at the surprise in my voice. “I told you I was going to. I wouldn’t have left at all except I had to solidify my alibi.”
“Huh?”
“My aunt doesn’t really pay that close attention to when I come home at night, but I think she’d notice if I didn’t come home at all. She gets up to do yoga at six and always checks in on me.”
“Speaking of parents who like to check in on their kids, you have until about nine before mine wake up and then you’d better not be here.”
“Eight thirty, then. Which means we have two more hours to sleep, and I promise I’ll be gone when your parents wake up.”
Seth kept his promise. Come nine a.m. when Angela barged into my room like always, Seth was right where he was supposed to be—in his garage working out.
Angela let my shade fly up obnoxiously to announce her presence. “Late night?” she snapped when I groaned and threw the covers over my head.
“As a matter of fact,” I grumbled.
Since there was no chance of her leaving, I joined her at my window to spy on my boyfriend while he worked out. My boyfriend. It sounded so strange. And it still didn’t feel real. For a second I wondered if it was real. Did it count if he’d simply told me I was now his girlfriend? Or did I have to actually agree to it for it to be real? After thinking about it, though, I was pretty sure I’d agreed to it, even if I didn’t do so vocally.
My boyfriend.
“Hello!” When did Angela start snapping her fingers in front of my face? “Earth to Ellie!”
“Huh?”
“Spill it. Right now.”
“What?”
“You’re smiling like Mom at a New Kids On The Block concert.”
“I am not!”
“And now you’re blushing. Tell me what’s going on!”
Seth is my boyfriend now. My drool-worthy boyfriend. And how was your night? “Nothing’s going on.”
I couldn’t tell Angela about Seth. She’d kill me. Though I doubted Seth was going to let me keep us a secret very long. He was probably going to burst through my front door singing it to my parents the minute he was done working out. Geez. That was going to be awkward.
Whatever. I wasn’t saying a word.
“Liar, liar. Pants! On! Fire! I saw him!”
“What the freak, Angela, shut-up!” I hissed, sprinting across the room to slam my bedroom door shut. “If Mom and Dad find out he spent the night here I’m dead!”
Angela’s eyes turned to saucers. “SPENT THE NIGHT?” she screamed. Thankfully she screamed it in a whisper. “I only saw him walk you home from babysitting. What do you mean he spent the night?”
Crap! “Did I say spent the night? I meant walked me home last night.”
“You tell me everything right now or I’m telling Dad.”
“You wouldn’t rat out your own sister.”
“If you don’t quit spending the night with Seth I won’t have a sister!”
“Would you chill? It’s not like we did anything.”
“Oh, my gosh, you’re blushing again! What did you do?”
“Nothing!”
Angela looked like she had steam coming out of her ears and I felt like I had it coming off my face. The entire conversation was whispered, but we were screaming so forcefully at each other that we were probably both going to end up horse.
I was the one to give first. I sank to the bed and calmed down enough to speak in a normal voice. “He kissed me. I’m his girlfriend now. But nothing else happened. We just slept.”
Angela didn’t follow my example with the whole calming down bit. She seemed to get even more pissed off. “The freak was getting info from dirty cops and stalking crime scenes and you decided to be his girlfriend?”
“No,” I said indignantly. Wow. Now I sounded like a five-year-old. “He just told me I was. He said I didn’t have a choice.”
“And you didn’t think that was kind of creepy?”
Actually it was kind of hot.
“ELLIE!” Angela screamed, appalled. For real screamed this time.
Crap. I really have to fix the stupid filter on my mouth.
“Yeah, you really do.”
CRAP!
“Give me a break, Angela. He didn’t have a shirt on. How could I resist? You said it yourself, that you’d let him drag you into a dark alley for a chance to make out with him.”
“What do you mean he didn’t have a shirt on? You said you guys only kissed.”
“It’s not what you think. He was just showing me his scar from where he got stabbed.”
“Where he got…” Angela turned a little green and slumped down onto the bed. “Start from the beginning,” she demanded. “And don’t even think about leaving anything out.”
I sighed. “Well, I was watching Delta Force...”
I told her everything. All of it. And she was pretty good about not interrupting. Well, good for Angela. Which meant she let me finish the story without taking over and making up her own version based on what she wanted to happen. But that’s about it.
“So,” I said once I got to the part where I woke up to her opening my window shade. “You see how we were wrong about him, and that he’s totally sweet, and that it’s okay for me to be his girlfriend? I won’t lie to you, Ang, I’m kind of excited about it. After last night, I’m not even really that nervous anymore. It’s like you said, I think this could be good for me.”
I looked out the window again. Seth was now doing pull ups with his legs out in front of him like an L instead of dangling beneath him. Man, he is so hot. And he’s all mine. The thought was enough to make me giddy.
“Ellie, stop it.” Angela said. “No more swooning.”
“Why?” I couldn’t help getting defensive. Angela was totally being a buzzkill.
“I’ll tell you why. Lets break it down,” she said, taking on a businesslike manner. “What you’re telling me is that your orphan boyfriend watched his mother get brutally murdered, was stabbed, lost his father, was sent to live with a crazy aunt, taken out of school so he never met any other people his own age, trained to be some kind of lethal weapon, and is now forcing you to be his girlfriend.”
That about sums it up. “And I’m saying that all of that explains why Seth can be a little…”
“A freakshow?” Angela offered. While I tried to find a better word for it, Angela got up and started pacing my room. “Okay, I totally agree that that all makes sense—it explains a lot about Seth. The problem is where somewhere in that warped little brain of yours you use all of this to see excellent boyfriend material, I see Jack the Ripper or the Unabomber.”
“Angela.”
“Antisocial. Eccentric. More issues than Sports Illustrated. Possible personality disorder—aka sociopath. You know who else was a sociopath? Ted Bundy.”
“Seth is not Ted Bundy, Angela. And he’s not the Saturday Night Slasher.”
Angela gasped as she remembered something. “Ellie, there was no murder last night!”
“What?”
“It’s been all over the news this morning. No bodies were found. There was no murder.”
“Good.”
“Not good,” Angela disagreed.
“Not good that nobody was murdered last night?” I asked, confused.
“Don’t you see?” Angela asked.
Obviously not. “See what?”
“There was no murder because Seth was with you all night. It’s him! It’s really him! It has to be.”
“Give it a rest, Angela!” I finally e
xploded. “You weren’t there last night. You didn’t see him—he’s not a psycho. You don’t know him like I do. You have no idea what you’re talking about, so just shut up!”
“I won’t shut up! Your boyfriend is a psycho! He’s dangerous!”
“You’re just jealous! You’re mad because Seth picked me and not you!”
This is when my dad finally burst into my room half asleep, rubbing his head like he had a migraine. His timing couldn’t have been more vital, either, because that jealous crack had pushed Angela over the edge. “Get over yourself!” she screamed and then called me a name that was sure to get her grounded. Dad stepped in between us, and even though Angela started it, Dad grabbed hold of me. Good thing, too, because I was about to rip her freaking head off.
“Girls!” Dad yelled. “What is going on in here? The entire neighborhood can hear you shouting.”
“Angela’s being a dillweed!”
“Eleanor,” my dad said, yanking me across the room and pushing me out my door. “Go walk it off.”
“But I didn’t do anything! She’s the one who—”
“Walk it off!”
Uh, yeah, so that was not the first time my father had said this to me. It’s probably not even the thousandth time he’d said it to me. He meant it, too. He expected me to go for a nice long walk—something about me being completely unreasonable and not willing to listen to anyone when I’m really pissed off.
Eh, he’s probably right.
“Whatever,” I spat, and made sure to slam the front door so hard the walls shook when I left.
I took off down the street in my pajamas and bare feet, punching a dent in our mailbox as I went. I heard Seth call my name, but I didn’t look back. The last thing I wanted to do was get in a fight with him because I was pissed off at Angela—displacing my anger is also a lovely quality of mine—or worse, accidentally tell him what Angela and I were fighting about. Yeah, that would go over real well.
I must have walked for a good two hours. Dad was gone when I got home, but Mom was waiting for me, killing the time with a book—probably some psychobabble about how to control your out-of-control teen.
What she said when I came in the door was, “Feel better?”
