Kissing Ezra Holtz (and Other Things I Did for Science)

by Brianna R. Shrum

  I say, raising my chin, “I misplaced it.”

  “No shit,” he says. “It’s a complete wreck in here.”

  My face flames hot. There are, in fact, clothes strewn over the floor and assignments, both new and old, hiding in various corners of the room, and there are a few mostly empty glasses and like two bowls and—okay but that’s RUDE. It’s not nice.

  Ezra Holtz, as it turns out, giant shock of the century, is not nice.

  I clench my jaw. “Jesus Christ, Ezra.”

  “What?” he says.

  “Didn’t your dads ever teach you to be nice to people?”

  “I’m not interested in being nice to people. I’m interested in you finding your notebook.”

  “Oh. My god.” Now it’s my turn to rub my forehead, and maybe that’s karma. Maybe it’s just Ezra. Maybe I’ve been theologically wrong all along and hell IS real and it’s right here, right now, in this bedroom. “I don’t have it right now.”

  “Well,” Ezra says, throwing up his hands, “then what do we do? You can’t find any of your work because you lost it, and correct me if I’m wrong, but there is just no way you’ve already made a backup of your half of the work on your laptop.”

  I sniff and fold my arms. Glance down at the carpet.

  “And you’re not interested in us getting past this weird You Hate Me/You Don’t Hate Me thing that I can’t even begin to keep up with.”

  I huff out a noise and say, “Ezra, please. I don’t hate you. I’ve never hated you. And it takes two to tango.”

  He runs his hand through that straight hair and it falls back a little haphazardly over his forehead. “I’m happy to admit to playing along here, okay? This is just like . . . the dynamic. But the other day in class you were legitimately mad at me; I could read it on you. And today in your kitchen, you’re being weird again, and I get to deal with the question mark of that, and I hate question marks.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I can’t help ease your discomfort.”

  His nostrils flare lightly. “Look. I’m not interested in being friends.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “I’m interested in being cool enough, though, that we don’t get distracted by interpersonal drama. This is distracting.”

  “Are you saying,” I say, batting my eyelashes dramatically, “that I distract you, Ezra?”

  “Yeah.” He half-laughs. “Yeah, I am.”

  That makes me fall back half a step.

  He says, “You and your annoying attitude and your completely out of control hair and your—I don’t know, you’re impossible to manage, Amalia. I don’t know how to even begin to get a handle on you and so you’re consistently exhausting and consistently distracting.”

  “Because of my out-of-control hair.”

  He lets out a breath. “That one I actually wasn’t intending to say. But I’m a little turned around right now.”

  “You hate my hair.”

  “I like your hair.”

  I run my teeth over my lip. Ezra’s hands are on his hips, sweat dark over his collar. He says, a little ruffled, a little stuttery in a way I’m not used to, “I’m not sure how we got here in the conversation. But I intended to come here and work, and all I’m trying to do is get us to a point where we can do that. So. Logically, maybe what we should do is set some ground rules. Lay out a map for how this is going to function. Without—without distractions.” He swallows hard when his voice goes a little rough on that last word and I can practically feel my pupils dilate. Because I know. I know exactly what that roughness means. Exactly what he’s trying to avoid by glancing up at the corner of the room and busying his hand with his hair again.

  I snort.

  He narrows his eyes. “What?”

  “Just you,” I say, stepping a little closer to him. He raises his chin and looks down on me. “You. And your rules and your logic.”

  He says, “Rules and logic are the only way the world turns. Without definites, nothing functions.”

  “God,” I say. I almost laugh. “You’re such an intellectual tightass.”

  He stares right at my eyes, brushes a look over my lips and back up. His eyebrow tics, just enough to tell that I’ve hit a mark. That’s he’s irritated.

  I say, “I bet kissing you would be like kissing Alexa.”

  A muscle in his jaw twitches and he shifts closer to me. “And what have you been thinking about besides my mouth?”

  My breath is hitched when I inhale and he hasn’t even touched me. When I breathe out again, it’s pitched. A little too high, a little desperate.

  “Shit,” Ezra says and he’s almost laughing.

  That’s when he kisses me.

  It’s not tentative, it’s not a question mark, but of course it isn’t; Ezra hates question marks.

  His hand is curled in my hair at the base of my neck, the other poised around my jaw and when his tongue slides into my mouth, it feels like an inevitability. It feels like an answer we’ve been working toward for a while.

  He kicks my bedroom door shut, then slides over and leans against it, hands on me, a little rougher textured, even, than I imagined them, and holy lord, he kisses like he means it. Like he’s done it way more times than I would have guessed.

  I run my hands up to his shoulders, up his neck, sweat dampening my fingertips, heart pounding so hard in my chest, pulse racing in my throat. The fingers pressing into my jaw slide down my throat, over the curve of my shoulder, skim my waist. I’m breathless.

  “Ezra,” I say.

  “Yeah. Yeah I know. What—what are we doing?”

  I shrug; his hand is still on my waist. I’m still touching his biceps. “Something stupid?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. He’s breathing hard and it’s an incredible boost for my ego. “Two people who don’t even really like each other. Throw them together. Let them make out. Feels almost like an experiment.” He raises an eyebrow. And says, “Logically.”

  I repeat, “Logically. It’s a mystery, kind of.”

  “From where I’m standing.”

  “So we should—we probably shouldn’t stop. We should probably just? Keep doing this?”

  Ezra slides his fingers back over my ear, through my hair, and whispers into my mouth, “Yeah. For science.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Methodology: Arguably, the most important step in the scientific method is testing.

  Over. And over. And over. Otherwise your whole experiment is useless.

  It’s important to conduct as many as possible.

  RIGOROUSLY.

  It is the first night of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which means Dad has been fighting for several days with the principal to excuse me from school on Monday because Rosh Hashanah isn’t a federally recognized holiday, which means it’s not the same as Christmas or Thanksgiving or whatever. No big deal, it’s just the NEW YEAR and the start of the high holidays. And we will have this fight again (like we do every year) on Yom Kippur next week when Dad has to get me excused despite the fact that didn’t we just have our big holiday last week? She’ll have Chanukah off, isn’t that like your Christmas?

  1. No. No it’s not.

  2. Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year. I’m gonna need it off so I can go starve to death in synagogue, not throw a party, dude.

  3. Fine, don’t excuse me. I’m taking the stupid days off.

  It’s a little exhausting, honestly, but we can’t afford tuition for a Jewish day school so here we are. I got the days off after Dad about busted a vein in his neck, but I still have to make up all the work I’ll miss. Which means, basically, that Mom and Dad and Ben and Kaylee are in the kitchen making fish and pumpkin and mansanada—a million things that are making my mouth water—and I’m holed away in my room studying chemistry.

  Kill me.

  This—this is why I never got straight A’s. This is why I’m not fighting it out for valedictorian like Ezra is. Because studying sucks and it eats into so many things I�
��d rather be doing. I sigh and recalculate this molar equation that I probably could have gotten mostly done while the teacher was lecturing in class.

  Kids don’t have to do this crap on Christmas Eve.

  But whatever, it’s fine, I’m not bitter.

  At least it’s chemistry, which is a sentence I never thought I’d say. But I kind of love it. There’s an artistry to it, or maybe that’s just because of how colorful some of the chemicals are. But really, there’s a deep creativity to scientists, I’ve learned. You’re playing with the fundamentals of the universe, seeing what you can create, how you can rearrange the whole composition of the world to make things out of nothing.

  I feel like such a nerd, but that’s kickass.

  If it weren’t a holiday, I’d really be enjoying doing science-math. What the actual heck.

  My phone buzzes beside me and I studiously ignore it in favor of molecular balancing. Skylar and her girlfriend are gonna be here in like an hour for dinner and I absolutely refuse to be late for that because of school.

  Doing a fancy dinner is really common, but because we’re Sephardic, my family does a full-on Seder. It’s like . . . extra special, extra fancy, so so much food. Skylar doesn’t miss it if she can help it because I do want to brag: my, like, entire family can cook.

  Every single one of us.

  My stomach growls and then so does my mouth and I frown and get back to chemistry. Think about science. About everything carbon-based, which includes food. Food molecules, scent molecules, filling the house and my nostrils—god, this is hopeless.

  I groan.

  And reach for my phone to distract me for five seconds. I need something to keep me in here because if I walk down those stairs I will get sucked into that kitchen and never return.

  It’s . . . Ezra. My stomach flip-flops.

  Ezra: L’shanah tovah.

  I scrape my teeth over my lip. I’m not really sure how to answer. I mean, I know how to answer. I’ve been responding to “Have a good year” since I could talk; it’s just a repetition. But I don’t know how to respond to him.

  I haven’t seen Ezra since our little clandestine make out session in my bedroom Thursday, and I’m so nervous about even talking to him now that I just blink at my phone. This is not, for the record, how I usually am about things like this.

  Well. That’s a little untrue.

  I’m not completely badass about it, I’m human. I get nervous and stuff. But the whole OH LORD WHAT NOW WHAT DO I DO HOW DO I ACT NOW AAAAAHHHH thing is not usually me. Not since like tenth grade. The thing is, though, usually with people I kiss, they’re a known quantity. It’s the prelude to a (likely very temporary) dating scenario or we’ve already been dating for a few weeks or it’s understood to be a one-time thing because we don’t actually know each other that well; we just kind of got bored waiting for our friends who were making out outside and thought, Hey, what the hell.

  With Ezra though, well, I don’t actually know what we are. I don’t know what he expects. I don’t know what I expect. I don’t even know what I want except that I do kind of want to kiss him again, like a complete idiot, and I don’t want to date him because wow are we not candidates for falling madly in love.

  So, where does that even put us? We’re not together. I don’t think it was necessarily a one-time thing, based on the whole WE SHOULD KEEP DOING THIS FOR SCIENCE thing? We’re not exactly friends with benefits, though; we’re more just like . . . benefits.

  I don’t know why everything is complicated.

  I do know that my stomach is still tight, and that it makes me feel just a little bit slutty thinking about things in these terms, because I don’t think everybody does this kind of thing. Which I guess is my M.O.

  Also though, there’s nothing scandalous or slutty about “Happy New Year, dude!” Like honestly, I need to get it together.

  I text back, finally:

  Amalia: L’shanah tovah, Ezra

  He writes almost immediately:

  Ezra: Tell me what you’re eating. Different stuff than we are, probably?

  I smile, despite myself. Like he really is my friend. My boyfriend. My I Don’t Know What But Something. My Benefits. That’s it. My Benefits. And send:

  Amalia: Come over and find out.

  I immediately hear the implication in my own tone and almost want to erase it but kind of don’t.

  It’s too late, anyway, what’s done is done and I don’t feel bad.

  My phone buzzes again.

  Ezra: Can’t. We’re having dinner in an hour. Dad’s challah smells INCREDIBLE.

  I run my hand back through my hair and furrow my brow. I’m not sure what to do with all of this; this conversation feels too . . . too friendly? Too unlike the lead-up to anything untoward? It’s weird and I don’t know what to think about texting Ezra about his dad’s challah.

  So I chew a hole in my own lip and write back:

  Amalia: So come after dinner.

  Ezra: I doubt I’m allowed to leave the house that late.

  Amalia: Who said anything about allowed.

  I smirk, imaging what he looks like on the other side of the screen. Affronted, probably. Insulted by my astute observation. He’s probably adjusting his glasses at the screen, wishing it were me, wishing he could give me a proper dressing-down. My pulse spikes when he writes back.

  Ezra: You know kissing at midnight isn’t a thing for OUR New Year.

  Amalia: Well.

  Amalia: Maybe it should be.

  I am feeling bold and nervous all at once. He could very well have decided that the kiss in my room was a weird moment of weakness and hormones and be regretting it right this very second. He could be trying to figure out a way to let me down easy, which, honestly, would probably be the best choice. It would save us a lot of exasperation even if the hit to my pride would suck.

  I cannot resist saying something more. I hate being quiet.

  Amalia: Live a little.

  Ezra: 1) Shouldn’t it be kissing at sundown? Midnight doesn’t make any sense, PLEASE AMALIA.

  Ezra: 2) I’ll come over. But just to bring you some of this apple-stuffed challah.

  Amalia: Oh, is that what the kids are calling it these days?

  Dad calls me upstairs and that means it’s time to light candles and have a seder and stuff myself with the best food on earth. So much for chemistry.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Law of Electric Charges: Items with like charges repel. Items, however, with opposite charges, well. Those attract.

  The most well-known example of this is magnets.

  After the candles have burned down and no one can even think about eating another bite (with the exception of Ben, who can always think about eating another bite), I go upstairs with Skylar and Ellie, both of whom are staying over. It was perhaps poor planning on my part, given this, to invite Ezra to come make out in my backyard. But I can use my brain; neither of them is coming with us to synagogue tomorrow because school, which means they’ll both be out of here pretty early, and I know for a fact that Skylar, at least, needs her beauty sleep.

  They’ll both be unconscious before Ezra even leaves his house.

  Ellie settles in on the floor by my bed and leans up against the mattress. She’s in these cute matching penguin pajamas and her dreads are up in a black and white scarf that goes right along with the rest of the outfit. “I’m never eating again,” she says.

  Skylar kicks her lightly. “Suit yourself. I’m sneaking upstairs in the middle of the night for more honey cakes.”

  I smirk. “You and your sweet tooth.”

  She shrugs. “Nothing to be done for it.” She scoots over and lays her head on Ellie’s shoulder. “I’m gonna miss this.”

  “Miss what?” says Ellie, eyes already half-shut. Food comas—they are extremely real.

  “Just . . . this. How everything is easy.”

  I raise my eyebrow at her.

  “Well, no,” she says. “Not everything. I ju
st mean like, you guys. You’re accessible. I want to see you, I can see you. I can sit here on my best friend’s bedroom floor with my head on my girlfriend’s shoulder like it’s nothing because we all live just down the street, and the total ridiculousness that is college hasn’t hit everyone yet. You know? Where you’re like . . . eating ramen nine meals out of ten and studying all the time and like, spending Friday nights crying in the library.”

  “That’s not what college is gonna be like,” I say.

  Ellie says, “Babe. That’s what college is gonna be like.”

  “For you guys, maybe,” I say. “I’m gonna slide through it.” I grin and Ellie rolls her eyes and Skylar says, “Oh lord.”

  I shrug and take a drink of the Cherry Coke I snuck up here and ignore the sudden twist in my stomach that feels like I’m telling a lie. Skylar tilts her head at me and I drink a little more, then stretch. Exaggerated, I know it looks fake.

  “I’m about to take a food coma,” I say.

  “Well,” says Skylar, “too bad. We’re staying over, which means you have to stay up at least for the beginning of Atomic Blonde.”

  “Oh shit, Charlize Theron. Well, I can probably make that sacrifice.”

  Ellie says, “Truly kind of you,” and we put the movie in and pile around in blankets and pillows like we’re little kids at a sleepover.

  It’s . . . well. It’s pretty nice.

  It’s just after midnight when I catch Ezra’s headlights streaming in through my window. At least I hope it’s Ezra, or there’s something extremely clandestine going on around here, and I should be ready to possibly call the cops.

  But no; it’s him. I recognize his car. It’s older, small and efficient. I don’t really know shit about cars, but I know it’s not one of those cars that you look at and think, Damn, his parents dropped some CASH on that automobile. It’s one that you think, That guy takes care of his things.

  It’s meticulously maintained. Not a dent or scratch on it, shiny, always. Like he’s just taken it through a car wash. Last time I rode in it, it smelled almost new. Just the lightest couple stains from its age, which can’t totally be avoided. It’s the exact kind of car Ezra Holtz would drive.