Being Not Good: as opposed to being bad

by Elizabeth Stevens

  Finally he stopped. “Okay. All you have to do is hit enter.”

  I looked at the inoffensive little key. I’d used that button so many times for so many things. But never once to set the fire alarm off.

  “Will we get into trouble for this?”

  “We’re setting it off in the science labs. They always get a pass when they find out it’s a false alarm.”

  “So…no one’s going to get in trouble for this?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  Including Ebony who would also not get in trouble for punching her classmate.

  My finger hovered over the key.

  I was still too good. I couldn’t do this. Surely it was fairly innocent? And all for the greater good? Well it was definitely for that boy’s greater good. I’d been on the receiving end of one of Ebony’s punches, not that it had been entirely intentional, and I didn’t wish that on anyone.

  “Think of Ebs, baby,” Davin whispered in my ear.

  Well I was thinking about Ebony. But something in Davin’s voice resolved me. I hit ‘enter’ and felt a little rush of adrenalin.

  “Okay. Full disclosure,” Davin said quickly as the fire alarm started blaring. “Someone’s going to know it was me. They won’t have proof, but they’ll guess.”

  “What?” I rounded on him, adrenalin fading.

  He shrugged apologetically. “I get out of most of it because I block the signal from going to the fire station. The worst the school gets out of it is another fire drill ticked off.”

  “Davin!” I snapped. “What happens when there’s a real fire?”

  “I only block that specific alarm,” he said calmly like it was all fine.

  “So they’re going to know it was you.”

  He nodded. “But they won’t know it was you. And I might not even get detention out of it.”

  “Mr Ambrose. Miss St John.” I looked up to see the librarian frowning at us. “The fire alarm does not mean snuggle with your significant other. Get to the check point, please.”

  I nodded as I jumped off Davin’s lap. “Yes. Sorry.”

  Davin was a little slower than me and I caught the mischievous glint in his eye as we passed her on our way out.

  But that little flutter of pride and glee started up again in my chest as Davin and I fell into step with other kids and I realised that I’d done this. I hadn’t done any of the programming stuff. But I’d hit the button.

  I’d been decidedly not good and it felt good… As it were.

  Sixteen: Davin

  I’d all but told Avery if she wanted a date that weekend, it was going to be at one of our places because I was over people. Dad was away again, so I had to admit I wasn’t upset when she chose mine.

  “So, what have you got planned for me tonight?” Avery asked as we walked in the front door.

  We’d stopped passed her place so she could change and pick up her overnight bag. I’d stopped to talk to her Mum for an unprecedentedly long time in which I think I’d had three coffees and Ebony had told me how much she’d loved Le Fanu and wanted to know what to read next. Avery had managed to pull me out of the house before Phil got home and, while I didn’t hate talking to Phil, I was feeling incredibly deep in debt on my socialisation credits as it was.

  “I didn’t really have a plan. There is a plethora of movies you need to see before you die–”

  “Now who’s planning murder-suicide pacts?” she quipped and I very nearly let a smile slip.

  “I was more thinking that there is really not enough time for you to see them all.”

  “Okay.” She grinned. “So what’s on the agenda tonight?”

  I don’t know why or how she found everything so…stimulating. It didn’t matter if I was showing her an old horror, a drama, something cult, or one of Gran’s romantic comedies, she went into every single one of them enthusiastic to experience something new. And even if she didn’t really understand the point of it or didn’t like it that much, she never thought it was a wasted opportunity. She just put it in the experience basket and moved onto the next thing.

  “I was thinking The Godfather tonight.”

  That pondering frown crossed her face and it was getting harder to deny I thought it was more than a little endearing. “I think I’ve heard of that. My granddad was obsessed with Dad reading the book when he was younger.” She smiled fondly. “Dad’s teen rebellion was not reading it.”

  Given the way Avery had turned out, I actually wasn’t surprised by that in the slightest.

  “Shall we order pizza in advance?” she continued as she helped herself to leading the way to my room.

  I cleared my throat. “I’ve got dinner covered.”

  She looked back at me as she put her bag in the corner of my room that was apparently becoming hers. “Okay. What are we having?”

  “Casserole.”

  “Naw,” she teased. “Did you cook for me?”

  “No. Gran sent it over.”

  Gran had not sent it over. Gran had told me in no uncertain terms that I couldn’t feed my girlfriend pizza every time she came over so I had begrudgingly put together a casserole on the Thursday night that I could just throw in the oven when Avery was there. But I was not telling Avery that. Avery did not need to know that I had in fact cooked for her.

  I got changed into a pair of jeans and a plain t-shirt and we went back out to the living room where I introduced her to The Godfather. While we were watching the second one, we had dinner and then I suggested we take the third one to the bedroom, if she was still amenable to watching it.

  As I was working out where I’d dropped the remote for the TV, Avery cleared her throat for the second time as though she wanted me to look at her. So look at her I did. And I didn’t quite understand what I was looking at.

  Because Avery was holding up a pair of red Converses.

  And they were far too big for her tiny little feet.

  Which only meant one thing.

  “What are they?” I asked, horrified.

  “It’s called colour.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  Her smile made me feel a little less aggravated than usual. “Try them on.”

  “Ah. Hard pass.”

  “You can’t just hard pass everything you don’t like, Davin.”

  “Watch me.”

  “Would it kill you to add one colour to your wardrobe?”

  I nodded. “It might. It’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”

  She frowned at me and I swore she knew what that did to me. In case she didn’t, I rearranged the growing bulge in my jeans.

  “Need help with that?” she asked, that wry tilt back to her lips.

  “Give me the shoes,” I sighed, holding my hand out, knowing if I got my hands on her now then the shoes would be forgotten for hours.

  She passed them to me and I dropped onto my bed to take my others off.

  “How did you even remember what size I was?”

  “My memory’s good like that.”

  I nodded as I reached for the red ones. “When it comes to shopping, yes. When it comes to Math, not so much.”

  “Yeah, but my boyfriend’s helping me with that.”

  I paused in tying up the laces to look at her. “Yeah. He is.”

  Because as well as helping her be not good and trashing her reputation, I had also for some unfathomable reason signed myself up for helping her pass Math.

  She beamed at me again, hands clasped behind her back expectantly. Well I couldn’t let that face down, could I? So I finished the laces, pulled my jeans down over the tops and stood up.

  “Well?” I asked her.

  She squealed, but it was tame compared to some of the noises she elicited. “Oh, they look great!”

  “I’ll bet.” I sat down again to pull them off.

  “Don’t you want to see?” she asked.

  I sighed and got back up again. Pulling open
my wardrobe door, I looked down at my feet. And it could have been worse.

  “See?” she asked, coming up behind me and wrapping her arms around my waist while she peered around me.

  “I do see. Can I stop seeing now?”

  Our eyes met in the mirror and there really was no stopping that positivity, was there? Then I stopped to look at the two of us next to each other. Me in all black or near black and her in green and blue and orange and a bunch of colours I didn’t care to know the name for. She was smiling and her eyes were bright. Meanwhile my eyes were almost always hiding behind my hair and my glasses, and I didn’t remember the last time I smiled.

  I knew we were different, but I’d never stopped to think about just how different. Or how other people might look at us. I didn’t care what they thought of me. But I wasn’t sure how I felt about what they might think of her.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  I cleared my throat and nodded, “Sure,” as I slid out of her arms and sat on the side of my bed to take off the shoes.

  “You sure?” she asked, dropping stomach-first onto my bed behind me, her head at the end.

  “I didn’t know I had the range of emotion for you to think there was a time something was wrong.”

  She snorted and I looked back to find her on her back now. “I didn’t either. Maybe you’re growing as a person?”

  “Please say it isn’t true…” I muttered and she laughed.

  I pulled the second shoe off and awkwardly spun around so I was lying over her.

  “There was no deal about me getting emotions out of this.”

  She bit her lip as she tried not to laugh at me. But I shook my head before she could reply.

  “Nope. None of that.” And I kissed her.

  She wrapped herself around me as our bodies pressed together. My hand made a beeline for the skin under skirt as usual. I couldn’t help it. Her legs were soft and warm and she practically melted into me every time I gripped her thigh firmly, holding it against my hip.

  As I slid my hand between her legs, she grabbed my wrist to stop me.

  I pulled back to look at her. “You okay?”

  She nodded and bit her lip uncertainly. “I just…don’t want you to do that…”

  My hand was anywhere but between her legs quick smart. “Okay. No worries.”

  “I want you to do something else instead…”

  Well, hello. I was open to any and all suggestions. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Have sex with me.”

  Except that, apparently. Why was I not open to that? “What?”

  “Did you have another lesson planned for this date?” she teased.

  What was happening here? “Sex isn’t a lesson, Avery,” I told her.

  “Why not?”

  I looked at her. “Why do you think it is?”

  She wasn’t shy about maintaining eye contact, that was for sure. “Because I want to know how to feel comfortable with a guy.”

  “You weren’t comfortable with Miles?” I knew they’d had sex, but it’s not like I’d cared what kind or how often. Now I suddenly cared. But only just a little.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think much of it at the time. And I wasn’t…pressured into it or anything. I just felt…”

  “What Avery?” I asked when she didn’t elaborate.

  “Like we were just going through the motions because we were meant to. I didn’t mind having sex. It’s just…” She shrugged. “I didn’t feel particularly sexy. I wasn’t as turned on. I rarely–”

  “As turned on as what?” I heard myself interrupt.

  Her cheeks went bright pink, but her eyes never left mine. “As turned on as I am with you.”

  Well, fuck me. The exuberant tyrant had actually rendered me speechless.

  “Miles never made me feel the way you do. Looking back on it, all I felt like was some shy, awkward, boring girl in bed.”

  I cupped her cheek uncharacteristically tenderly, really not liking the way he’d made her feel like that was even a possibility. “I keep telling you. There is nothing boring about you.”

  She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I just want to know if it’s possible for me to not be that girl. If I can let go a little, really enjoy it, feel like I’m not doing it wrong.”

  “And having sex with me will teach you that?”

  “I want to have sex with you, Davin. If it can count as a lesson as well, why not?”

  Good Jesus. Why – how – did that feel so very wrong and so very right at the same time? I ran my hand over my chin as I thought about it. I was all for corrupting her. I was all for getting her off in the cinema, for getting us both hot and bothered at school to the point Mrs Mack threatened to hose us down, for showing her how to program the fire alarm and getting her to push the button, for getting her drunk for the first time and watching her enthusiasm rub off on my dour friends. But this…

  There was something about this that made me pause. And I didn’t know why.

  “Are you not attracted to your girlfriend?” she asked, aiming for playful, but the doubt still snuck in. “Because you can tell me if you’re not.”

  “Not attracted…?” I scoffed, my eyes sliding from her for a second. “That is definitely not the problem here.”

  “Then what is?”

  I huffed a deep breath as I rolled to sit up. “I get the lessons, Avery. I’ve accepted I’m all-in with helping you do this not good thing. But…” I sighed.

  What the hell was it that was holding me back? Did I want her? Fuck, yes. So why was I hesitating? I’d never hesitated before. A girl says she wants me to have sex with her, I’m there. But Avery St John says she wants to me to have sex with her… And I stop to check with her if she’s sure?

  I got off the bed and stretched my neck, feeling weird and antsy. Well weirder and antsier than I usually was around her colour and…all that life.

  “But what, Davin?” she asked.

  I looked at her and saw she’d sat up and was watching me with the closest to unhappiness I’d ever seen on her face. I breathed out again, turning away from her as I tried to kick some fucking sense into myself.

  “I’m not some virgin who doesn’t know what she’s asking, Davin. I’m not asking you to take my virginity or roleplay or introduce me to BDSM. I just want to have sex with you. If you want to, too. I guess I kinda thought that you wanted me the way I wanted you, and I wanted to see if it was different like that. If it was the lesson thing that turned you off or whatever–”

  “Nothing about you turns me off,” I said.

  “What?” she asked.

  I sighed and went over to crouch in front of her. “Nothing about you turns me off. Your obsession with neon and your unrealistic smile can blind me and annoy me, but I have no problem being turned on around you.”

  “So you don’t not want to have sex with me?”

  I huffed the closest I’d let myself come to a laugh. “I definitely want to have sex with you.”

  “I’m sensing a but…”

  “I just want you to be sure about it.”

  She looked at me like I was testing her patience and that was a definite turn on. “Are you sure about it?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure about it. Why?”

  “Then why don’t you think I would be?”

  That was a fair question. But she kept talking before I could answer.

  “Just because you think you’re more experienced, what? You think that means I don’t know what I want?”

  I shook my head, feeling like an absolute shit. “You know if I was intending to be condescending, you’d be perfectly aware of it.”

  “Then why don’t you think I know what I want? I thought you didn’t see me as that stupid little girl.”

  Ah fuck. I’d fucked right up now. I pulled myself to standing from my crouch so my legs didn’t give out and sat next to her. “I don’t, Avery.” And I
didn’t. I thought she was a blight on my ocular nerves a lot of the time, but a stupid little girl? No. “I just didn’t want you so wrapped up in this being not good concept that you were just happy to sleep with me because I happened to be here and then you’d go and regret it later.”

  She crawled into my lap and took my face in those unbelievably small, soft hands. “I don’t want to sleep with you because you just happen to be here. Why is it you never believe me when I say I like you?”

  Because two people in my life liked me and they were obligated. Because how could anyone like me when I didn’t even like myself? Because even if they could, I was not the sort of person that Avery St John would like.

  I thought it best not to say any of that though. “Because you have a track record of having terrible taste.”

  She laughed. “Was that you actually implying something positive about yourself?”

  “Take it to your grave, babe,” I said as I pulled her to me and kissed her.

  She slid her hand between us as best as she could without actually having to pull away from me more than absolutely necessary.

  “Are you sure about this?” I asked her.

  She did pull away from me then with the deepest, moderately adorable frown on her face. “Seriously?”

  “I just…” I grunted. “I want to double check I’m not taking advantage. For my own piece of mind. No crossed wires.”

  There was no sign of unicorn farts and lollipops on her face. She gave me this incredibly confidant, sexy half-smirk as those baby blues flashed. She reached behind her back to unzip her top, took it off tortuously slowly and dropped it on the floor before running her hand up my body.

  “Yes,” she said, leaning towards me.

  And I was officially done for.

  I’d thought the sultry goddess on our first date was near impossible to resist? I was completely powerless in the face of the woman in my lap just then. Avery could have asked me to go to school in a purple and neon green candy striped suit the next week and I would have agreed.

  And the way she kissed me? I would have added a matching top hat. Complete with feather.

  Her hands slid up under my t-shirt and I wasn’t slow in helping her get it over my head. I found her lips again like I was going to forget how to breathe without them. But then she trailed them over my cheek and down my neck and my hands tightened against her hips.