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

by Brianna R. Shrum

  He pulls me in closer and draws his mouth right up next to my ear. I feel it when he whispers, “So this is what you do on Saturday nights.”

  I say back, voice all low and throaty, “Jealous?”

  “A little.”

  Ezra moves his hips and it’s a real surprise that the guy can dance. Not because he’s Ezra necessarily, but because he’s male, and I can count on one hand the high school boys I know who can actually dance with a girl.

  But he can. He knows exactly how to move, exactly how to get me to respond so heat is lighting up my stomach, my chest, my thighs. I say, because I need to get a handle on my own train of thought, “This not how you spend your weekends, Holtz?”

  He draws back to look at my face and I am sad at the lack of contact, but not at the shadows playing over his jaw, lighting up his cheekbones. That break, that freaking break in his nose. The one that makes him—of all people—look a little dangerous.

  He says, “Not typically.”

  “What do your Saturday nights look like?”

  “Havdalah.”

  I smile. “Yeah, that sounds right.”

  His almost-grin goes a little dangerous when he says, “And after that?”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  He answers the begged question: “Textbooks.”

  “Oooh,” I say. I fake a shudder.

  His eyebrows pop. “You like that? Algebra equations.”

  “Talk dirty to me.”

  He says, low and slow, “Split. Infinitives. Dangling participles. Con-ju-gation.”

  “Oh god. We’re in public.”

  Ezra smiles, a real one, the kind that I can feel all the way in my knees. He looks so uncharacteristically mischievous when he grins like this. “You wanna fix that?”

  “Please,” I say. “I thought you wanted to be a deviant for the night.”

  “And?”

  “And we’ve barely begun to deviate.”

  He cocks his head, still slowly moving his hips against mine. “You planning on getting me thrown in jail? Or is that not your . . . standard deviation?”

  I smirk. “Trying to get me to cuff you already?” I cluck my tongue. “Come inside. Let’s find some trouble to get into.”

  As it turns out, inside, the party is low on trouble. I mean, it’s got your standard fare beer, but it’s the three-two stuff. No one’s even smoking weed. I pretend I’m not disappointed by that, because part of me wants Ezra to think I’m just a little better than I am, but who am I kidding? I was extremely looking forward to lighting up.

  It’s been forever.

  It’s been forever since I did . . . anything like that, really.

  Behind me, someone says, “AMALIA,” and I whirl around to find Brent and Sasha. I break into a grin and they get me to come play beer pong with them. Ezra follows.

  I destroy; I always do.

  I have a reputation to uphold: kills at beer pong, can drink you under the table if she feels like it, more into weed than beer and knows who to score from, deep artiste. I’m mostly operating on all cylinders tonight. The black tank with a kind of gothed out Starry Night on it and the ripped-up skinny jeans do wonders for the artist rep that I still kind of feel like I’m faking, and no one here has weed, so I’m exempt from that (tragically). The beer, though, I can do.

  I haven’t drunk much, I haven’t had to. Like I said, I’m killer at beer pong.

  Just enough to be the tiniest bit fuzzy for the next few minutes.

  Ezra isn’t drinking at all, which is cool—it’s always good to have a DD.

  I get bored pretty fast, honestly; there’s just only so long you can play this kind of stuff before shit starts to blend together like watercolor.

  The littlest beginnings of any level of alcohol effect have completely worn off.

  I toss the ping-pong ball and it splashes, and then I fall back into Ezra.

  He leans over my shoulder and says, lips brushing the shell of my ear, “So this is trouble?”

  “What, you disappointed?”

  I feel him shrug against my back. “Nah, it’s fine. I guess I just thought a night, cut totally loose, with Amalia Yaabez, would be a little wilder than beer pong in a basement. But what do I know?”

  I narrow my eyes and turn around. A cheer goes up behind me and Ezra glances over my shoulder. Someone’s drinking. “Is that a challenge?”

  “Of course it is.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “If you think you’re up for it.”

  He laughs and I flip off the table, “Later, losers.”

  Brent takes a long drink and gives me this little salute of a wave. I slide my fingers down Ezra’s arm and grab his hand, even though that feels kind of relationship-y. Even though it feels, weirdly, like crossing some sort of barrier that neither of us has vocalized. But I need to lead him through the party and then through the woods, and if that means slipping my fingers through his, so be it.

  If it means I am brushing my skin over the lightest roughness of his fingerprints, the harder coarseness of his callouses, if it means I am completely, utterly, focused on the pinpoints of every place his palm presses into mine.

  Well.

  That’s just part of the plan.

  I tug him along behind me and, to his credit, he doesn’t ask me where we’re going. He just follows. Like he trusts me. Like he believes I know what I’m doing.

  And I guess when it comes to risk-taking behavior, I do.

  I follow the little faerie path with him until we hit the hot tub. I can’t believe no one’s out here, but maybe it’s just too warm. Yeah, that’s gotta be it. Hot tubs do not sound appealing on this suffocating, damp October night.

  Ezra says, “Man, Amalia. You know how to get a guy to safe out.”

  “No,” I say. “Trust, Padawan. I’m not dragging you into a hot tub.”

  “Thank god.”

  “WAIT,” I say. “SSSHHH.” I whisper-yell it, quiet but urgent.

  Ezra furrows his brow and I yank him back behind the hot tub.

  “What the hell, Amal—”

  “Look.”

  He pops his head up over the hot tub’s edge from where we’re crouching, and I follow him.

  “Is that . . .?” I say.

  “Whoa.” Ezra looks at me, eyebrows up (some people’s eyes are the windows to their soul. Ezra’s eyebrows are). He says, “Is that . . . Janelle and Lina?”

  Janelle’s back is against a tree just a few plants deep in the woods behind the hot tub. Her cane (patterned in exactly the same plaid as her wheelchair; I can see now even in the dim, lit only by the lighting in the ground around the hot tub, that it’s patterned duct tape, not washi) is leaning up against a nearby tree.

  They’re making out, like . . . INTENSELY MAKING OUT.

  I say, “Well this is weird.”

  “What’s weird?”

  “It’s weird to see people making out and know you had a hand in it. This must be how all matchmakers have felt throughout history: odd. All the time.”

  Ezra whispers, “So that’s what’s weird then, not ducking behind a hot tub and watching our classmates/experiment subjects stick their tongues down each other’s throats?”

  I choke and cover it with my hand. Lina’s hand slips up Janelle’s shirt and I say, “We should—we should go.”

  I stifle a cackle, and we creep away, back along the path I had originally intended.

  It is only now that I realize I still haven’t let go of his hand. I just, uh . . . l need the leverage to get him to move with me.

  I curl my fingers tighter and pull him just a little farther—just to the edge of Everett’s property.

  Across the nothing-feet-high fence are neighbors with a pool.

  “Shit,” says Ezra.

  My mouth curls.

  “We can’t—you want to hop their fence?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what? Jump in their pool?”

  “Yes.”

  Ezra presses his fingers to his
forehead and blows out a breath. He adjusts his glasses at me. I don’t know why his disapproval sends a flare right through me, but it does, and I giggle.

  “We could get shot, Amalia. Or the cops called. Or. I don’t know. There are a number of possible futures playing out in my head right now and none of them are good.”

  “Okay, Doctor Strange,” I say. I pull my top off and his nostrils flare. I have to force my face not to react, not to immediately tip into total smugness. But wow. Do I feel smug. Ezra glances down at my chest, this bright pink bra I picked especially because I look extremely good in it, and swallows hard. “I know these people. They don’t have guns, first of all. Their daughter goes to our school, and I’ve swum in the pool before.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can swim in it now. Uninvited. At ten p.m.”

  “Ezra,” I say.

  “What.”

  “They’re not home. There’s no cars in the driveway, and the Johnsons don’t park in their garage. Lights are all off.”

  He blows out a breath. Rakes a hand through his hair. It rests on the back of his neck. He’s nervous. Man, I love that he’s about to just lose his shit. I love making him nervous.

  “They could come back at any second.”

  “Then we’d better get in now.”

  “Jesus. Amalia—”

  I slide out of my skinnies—well, shimmy out. There’s no getting gracefully out of pants this tight. Then I hop over the fence and jump into the Johnsons’ pool in my bra and underwear.

  Ezra hisses, “Amalia.”

  I lean my head back and let the water coat all of my hair.

  “Amalia.”

  I dive under the water and do a front flip, then pop up, skin and hair dripping. I smile at him like this is nothing, like it’s completely fine and my heart isn’t crashing behind my ribcage, pulse threatening to rip right through my veins. It always is. The high of this has never dulled, even for a second. I’m always running through the terrible possibilities and panicking just a little under my skin. I smile, relaxed and confident, at Ezra. But inside it’s all adrenaline.

  The thing is, that’s what makes it fun.

  Ezra meets my eyes for several seconds. Then he groans. He pulls his shirt off and steps out of his shorts and then eyes the fence.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  I wrinkle my nose and I know my smile about covers my entire face.

  He hops the fence and sprints into the water, like as soon as he’s here, what he’s doing will be less risky. Less extremely against the law.

  “How you feeling?” I say.

  Ezra says, “Pissed.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to get arrested.”

  “Oh come on. I almost never get arrested.”

  “Almost?”

  I splash him in the face and the water droplets cling to his glasses. “Oh,” he says. “Oh you are dead.”

  I squeal and he chases after me, because of course that’s what I wanted him to do.

  I’m a fast swimmer, but he’s faster, and he has me around the waist, pressing me against his bare chest, entire expanse of my back touching him. Touching his skin. Holy shit.

  I hope he thinks I’m shaking because I’m in the water.

  Forget the fact that the water’s never cold here and it isn’t cold now.

  He spins me around to face him and I smirk.

  I open my mouth to ask him what he plans to do with me now that he’s caught me, but the words stick in my throat.

  Headlights.

  Coming up the driveway.

  Oh my god.

  “Ezra,” I say.

  “SHIT, yes, I saw.”

  He drops me and we both scramble for the edge of the pool; we have to be out before they get out of their car and hear us splashing, shit, shit, shit.

  “We were in there less than two minutes!” I say as I yank myself up the side of the pool.

  Ezra gets out with me and says, “Yeah. I deserve this for listening to you; what the hell was I th—”

  “Ssshhh,” I say.

  I look over at the car, the headlights pointed the exact wrong way. And I realize, the same time I watch Ezra realize: we can’t hop that fence again. The angle of the driveway has those headlights aimed exactly where we need to run to get back. They’ll see us.

  “What do we do?” he whispers. He’s starting to panic, which, yes, okay, fair, SAME.

  We can’t just stand here either because eventually they will leave the car, and the shades are open and the second they walk in, it’s a straight shot to the pool.

  “Wait,” says Ezra. “I’ve got it.”

  “Where—”

  Ezra grabs my wrist and now it’s his turn to pull me. Right down the little outdoor-carpeted path toward the little pool house.

  “Shit,” he says. “It’s locked.”

  “No,” I say. I punch in the code and don’t even have time to search Ezra’s face for the unsettlingly intoxicating approval before he’s jerking me inside and shutting the door.

  It’s dark in here.

  The air is thick and it smells like chlorine, and I guess someone could turn on the light but for reasons, well, knownst to us, neither of us does.

  He has me pressed against the wall, chest to my chest. Bare skin against my bra. And I am suddenly acutely aware that I’m not in a swimsuit. I’m in a bra. And underwear.

  Honestly, it’s not like I’m in a thong. If anything, these are boy shorts; they’re less revealing than any of my bikinis. This bra might have a little push-up action but it’s pretty full coverage; I got professionally fitted for it and everything.

  It doesn’t matter.

  How much skin I’m showing is meaningless next to the knowledge that these are the things I wear under my clothes.

  Ezra pushes just a little harder against me and the water droplets on his chest wet my skin, my bra; good lord, am I sweating? Probably. It’s a thousand degrees in here.

  I feel his heartbeat quicken against mine. Hear his sharp intake of breath when I shift my hips so they brush against his thighs. He’s just in his underwear, and, weirdly, for all the making out we’ve done, for all the sluttiness I’ve felt I’ve been engaging in, I guess I haven’t seen him in these.

  Ezra, it turns out, is a boxers guy.

  Check that off the getting-to-know-you list.

  He leans down by my ear and says, low but not quite in a whisper, “How long do we wait it out in here?”

  “You getting antsy, precious?”

  He pinches me and I have to cover my mouth so I don’t squeal.

  I tug on the back of his slightly too-long hair and he grits his teeth.

  I say, “Give it ten minutes. . . . Well, wait, can you see through the window?”

  “I was too nervous to look.”

  “They’re not spying on us, Jason Bourne. Just look.”

  He slides to my side and glances out the window, then breathes a curse, and I furrow my brow.

  I don’t have too long to be confused.

  The sliding glass door shuts, which means it was very recently opened.

  There is a very definite splash.

  Two.

  We wait.

  Breathe.

  Wait what feels like a freaking hour.

  No more splashes.

  The young screech and male laughter tell me it’s Dani and her brother, not their parents, which is good when it comes to like, tangible consequences. But ultimately worse for two reasons: 1) If we come barreling out of the pool house in front of them, who knows what rumors will go around at school, and 2) They will not be going to bed at Old Person O’ Clock.

  I widen my eyes and stare at Ezra.

  He stares back at me. Glances out the window again

  My eyes are starting to adjust to the light so I can make out more than the barest gray-blue outline of his face.

  “Lord,” I whisper, leaning my head back against the wooden wall, roughness scratching
against my scalp. My hair is sticking to my chest and back.

  Ezra leans forward and taps his forehead to the wall over my shoulder. Every bit of him is pressing against every bit of me. His shoulder to my shoulder, hip to my hip. I feel it when he breathes against me, water running down his chest to slip over my stomach.

  “Guess we’re here for a while,” he says against my neck.

  Breathes. Against my neck.

  I whisper, even though they probably couldn’t hear me even if I spoke out loud, “What did you wanna do?”

  He waits a beat. Then says, “Deviate.”

  He runs his teeth along my neck then pulls back and searches my face.

  I grin. “Look at you, Ezra Holtz. Criminal as hell.”

  “Yeah, I’m a real rebel.”

  “You’re asking me to hook up in a pool house neither of us was invited to while the owners are a few feet away.”

  He swallows hard. I can see it when his Adam’s apple moves. I don’t know if I actually hear it or if it’s just my mind, filling in the sound.

  “You’re a terrible influence,” he says.

  “That’s what they tell me.”

  Ezra backs up just a touch, just enough that I’m not at all trapped by him. Not that I really was before, but it’s clear that it’s intentional. “You okay?” I say.

  “Yes,” he says.

  We’re both still whispering. We will be whispering for a while, I think, or we will be getting caught in this tiny little out building on someone else’s property.

  “I don’t want to pressure you,” he says. “I want you to have room to breathe.”

  I slide my teeth across my lip. “You. You are worried about pressuring me.”

  Ezra runs his hand back through his hair. The water droplets on his glasses have finally started to dry, one by one. “Why wouldn’t I be? I know what I want to do. I don’t know what you have in mind to fill the time. Like I said, I’m not a fan of question marks. Especially not with, well, this.”

  “How many times have you had to clear up question marks in situations like this?”

  “What you mean is how many people have I hooked up with?”

  “It’s none of my business,” I say suddenly, because I’m worried now that he’s going to ask me and I don’t even know how to answer the question. I know I don’t want to because I’m sure my number would be higher than his and, for some stupid, infuriating, totally unfeminist, hypocritical reason, that matters to me. God, I exhaust me.