The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy

by B. T. Gottfred

  I’m not ready.

  Not ready for what?

  I don’t even know!

  I say or whisper or maybe just mouth, “With our underwear on?”

  “Yeah … yeah, then it’s not weird.…”

  “Why would it be weird to take a shower together with our underwear off?”

  She laughs because I’m hilarious, but I don’t laugh because I’m fending off a nervous breakdown.

  We stand there for a moment, not moving, not talking, and is this going to really happen or am I going to wake up?

  But Zee takes off her shoes, then her socks, and then her shorts and I guess she can’t take her sports bra off because that’s why they call it a sports bra (I’m so immature!) … and I’m seeing a girl in her underwear (they’re black boxer briefs, but that’s still underwear!) for the first time ever and I’m just studying her, every inch of her, like she might disappear at any moment and I’m going to be tested on how many freckles she has on her left hip when I’m eighty-six years old.

  “Are you going to take off your stuff? Do you not want to do this?”

  “No, I do…” I say. “I’m…”

  She knows I’m a disaster. So she says, “I’ll get in and then you take your time. If you change your mind, it’s cool.” Zee’s eyes offer a final burst of their burning light before she turns and steps through the shower curtain and out of view.

  So …

  Yes?

  No.

  Yes!

  … shoes off and then socks and then pants and then shirt and my penis is calmer than me, so that’s good and so I say, “Coming in!” like she needed to be warned, and I pull back the curtain and—

  ZEE

  My head’s under the water, the heat bringing my senses back to life. Including my common sense. This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. But it’s too late because Art yells, “Coming in!” so now all I can do is wait for him to step inside this insanity with me.

  Then he’s there at the far end of the shower. Standing. Shivering. Skinny. His bare chest is hairless, pale, pristine. His eyes are so wide and white and innocent that I feel he can lighten everything dark inside me. The steam reveals this faint glow pulsating from him. Flawless bright face, lips bursting with roses, and glowing skin. Art’s a fucking angel, isn’t he? Right. If he’s the bright angel, am I the dark devil? I don’t know. But I do know he’s … fucking beautiful. Did I just call him beautiful? I’m in a shower with a boy I think is beautiful. But that’s what he is. He’s a beautiful boy.

  “Come here,” I say, pulling him under the showerhead with me. Our bodies are touching everywhere. And everywhere he touches … this isn’t like taking a shower with a girl.

  “Is it okay if I hug you?” he asks.

  “You can always hug me.…”

  “I know, it’s just this is different—”

  “Yes,” I say, so neither of us overthinks this. He wraps his arms around me and lays his head in the crook of my neck and collarbone. I hook my right arm around his head, use my left hand against the small of his bare back to seal us together. We’re one. Singular.

  “This feels so good,” he whispers. He’s so gentle now, so … feminine. No. That can’t be. I’m the girl. Maybe there’s another word. But I can’t think of it. All I can think is he’s feminine, and I like it, and that makes me masculine, and maybe I really am a lesbian? Except I can feel him getting aroused and that’s getting me aroused. Maybe I like boys that are half girls because I’m a girl that’s half boy and maybe we make sense even if common sense says we shouldn’t.

  art

  This is the most romantic embrace that has ever occurred under a shower, so please, please, please, please don’t do this. No, no, no, no, no, no, please, penis, no … please?

  “I’m sorry…” I say, mortified. I always thought I’d be able to control when this happened!

  “It’s okay…” Zee says.

  “Do you want me to get out?”

  She laughs. Laughs! She must think I’m so inexperienced, so immature. I should have practiced with other girls more!

  “I’ll go…” I try to break from the best hug in history, but Zee doesn’t let me. She pulls me tight.

  “I didn’t mean to laugh … I’m sorry … I’m nervous too…” And you’re not going to believe this, but she presses her pelvis tighter against my penis.

  This …

  … she’s …

  … I don’t know …

  … I lift my head from her neck and our eyes are so close, but the water is also still pouring between us, so nothing is clear.…

  * * *

  Ask her if it’s okay to kiss her.

  Okay.

  You were supposed to argue with me on this!

  My lips are magical! They’ll make her forget about Cam!

  No they won’t!

  Too late.

  * * *

  “Zee?” I say. Ask. Oh-my-god, my heart is beating so fast it probably could power all the lights in the world.

  “Art…”

  “You’re my best friend.…”

  “You’re my only friend,” she says.

  “But even though you’re my best friend and I told myself to wait until you knew for sure that you wanted to be more than my best friend … would it be okay if I kissed you?”

  * * *

  And then she makes me wait six thousand years for an answer.

  It probably wasn’t that long.

  But it was close.

  * * *

  And she says, “Yes, it would be okay.”

  I take a deep breath because I know before it even happens that this will be the greatest kiss ever kissed—

  ZEE

  —something changes between the moment I tell him it would be okay to kiss me and the moment he leans in. I don’t know what. Something. But I feel like I grow small, and he grows tall, and his lips are as confident as his words have always been. I expected … I’m not sure what I expected. Yes, I am. I was sure his lips would be limp against mine, but instead they are full and alive. He’s alive. He’s so alive, and now his arms wrap around me and I’m the girl.…

  I was always the girl.…

  I mean … now, I’m feminine … or whatever he was before … and he’s whatever I was … and this kiss, Art’s kiss, is beautiful like him, but strong like me … or strong like him? And beautiful like me?

  This is the best kiss of my life. I haven’t kissed many, maybe ten boys, but all those kisses felt like they happened to another person. This kiss is the first kiss I felt like I was present for. The first kiss that happened to the real me.

  And he doesn’t let up, his lips explore my lips, not aggressively, but with a tender longing to take me in. He’s so in control, which I love, I do, but now something’s building inside me, and I need more, I need to taste him like he’s tasting me, I need to consume and not just be consumed.…

  art

  I almost stop our kiss after a few minutes to say, This is the best kiss ever, isn’t it? because sometimes I just need to say things to make sure those things are really happening, but I stop myself from saying anything because this kiss—our kiss—is so good that it leaves even me speechless.

  Our rhythm is slow, sensual, almost musical. It’s a love song. Our kiss is a love song. And I could do this forever, literally—yes, literally!—but Zee starts nibbling at my lower lip. One nibble. Another nibble. Then a bite—

  I want to say I don’t like it, but I do like it, or I don’t know if I like it. She grabs the back of my head with her hands and her lips overwhelm mine and I fall back under her power and let her devour me and it feels like she’s lifted me off the shower floor even if that’s impossible. Her nails dig into my neck and it hurts and I don’t like it—but I want her to do it harder too—and I’m yours, Zee, I’m yours …

  … and her hands, her arms, they grab at my back now, lowering, touching all of me, and then they take hold of my butt and it feels good but I’m not su
re how good I want this to feel, and then her hands slide quickly around to the front and grab at me, at my penis, and—

  No.

  I can’t.

  It’s too much.

  It shouldn’t be too much! I love her, she’s the only person I ever want to love, there should be nothing that’s too much.…

  But it’s too much anyway and I say—

  “I’m not…” And my lips stop kissing and so she stops kissing me and her hand retracts from my—

  “Doesn’t it feel good?” she asks.

  “Yes…” I think. Yes! But also no.

  ZEE

  I say, “Art, if it feels good, then that’s all that matters.” As soon as I replay those words in my head, I hate myself. Didn’t Glen say that the first time we slept together?

  “You’re right,” he says, but doesn’t believe it. He leans to restart our kiss.

  “No, I’m sorry, Art.… I’m sorry.…”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m just inexperienced.…”

  “Inexperienced? You’re like the best fucking kisser ever.” I get serious. Why’d I get serious?

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “Nothing…”

  “Zee?”

  “Nothing…”

  “Zee…” He leans and kisses me just once, but it’s so patient and tender that it’s like a truth serum.

  “I just never would have thought me and you would work.”

  “I knew the second I saw you.”

  “But you’re nuts.” I laugh.

  “I’m a genius.”

  “Maybe you are.”

  “I fell in love with you the second I saw you.”

  He just told me he loves me. I knew he did. Or I knew he thought it. But now, after our kiss, I believe him. So I should tell him I love him too. I do, right? I do. I think. I don’t know.

  “Zee … this is where you tell me, ‘I love you too.’ Or, and this would be even more romantic and amazing, you could say, ‘I fell in love with you just now.’ That line should be in the movie made about our lives, so you should use it.”

  And he’s waiting for me to say it back to him. Anything. He just needs to hear something. But is what I’m feeling love? I don’t know. I’ve never loved anyone but my mom.

  And Cam.

  Cam.

  Cam.

  “Zee?” he says. Every second I don’t say anything crushes him.

  So I say what he wants to hear even if I’m not sure it’s what I want to say. “I fell in love with you just now.”

  “I know,” he says, and nudges me with his elbow. “But the actress we hire to play you in the movie will say it with more flair.”

  “You’re funny,” I say even though I’m not smiling.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “The water’s getting cold.”

  art

  Zee doesn’t love me.

  I don’t cry. Okay, maybe I tear up a tiny, tiny bit. Wouldn’t you cry if you just shared the kiss-to-end-all-kisses, which made you fall deeper in love with the girl you already loved more than you thought possible, and then she didn’t fall in love with you even a little bit? Oh-my-god, I’m numb. My body is numb from the pain of a broken heart and—

  “Art?”

  “Yes?”

  “The water is really getting cold. Come on.” She turns the shower off.

  Now it’s quiet and now the water isn’t going to hide my tiny tears, so I say, fast and casual like my insides aren’t withering, “Let me go first, you take your time drying off. The steam will keep the bathroom warm for hours. I’ll bring you back some clothes in two minutes.”

  “Okay. Great,” Zee says, and doesn’t suspect a thing. Maybe I should move to Hollywood and be the best actor ever.

  * * *

  I grab a towel, run across the hall to my room, and I’m even colder now than I was before the shower. I put on my brother’s old cargo pants.… Ha, I would never wear cargo pants in front of another breathing person. Seriously, I put on my nice pair of jeans but they’re jeans so they don’t look like I’m trying to look nice and then I put on a white thermal henley because even I look like I have muscles in it. I know Zee would be fine wearing some of my clothes—probably more than fine—but I’m feeling like making her uncomfortable because she’s made me uncomfortable in my unloved soul so I steal a black jean skirt and an orange halter top from Abigail’s room, knock on the bathroom door, and say, “This is all I could find in Abigail’s,” and close the door before she can respond.

  I go back to my room and wish I never kissed Zee at the same time I wish I never stopped kissing her and that’s when I hear the familiar sound of a Nissan Rogue pull into the driveway.

  It’s Abigail … and Cam.

  ZEE

  Art knows I was lying about loving him too. Of course he fucking knows.

  He fakes like he believes me but the kid is a worse actor than me and then he races out of the shower the first second he can. CRAP. I take the towel he gave me and pull it over my head and—

  What. The. Hell. Was. I. Doing. Kissing. Him?

  Jesus.

  I fucked up bad and I hate myself and I kind of hate him, just like I knew I would. Even if it was the best kiss of my life it was also the dumbest kiss of my life. I’ve fucked things up with the only friend I have by sexualizing something that wasn’t meant to be sexualized. SO FUCKING STUPID, ZEE.

  Then he knocks, and I stop suffocating myself with the towel, wrap it like a normal person, and open the door. He’s there and he’s crushed—but he looks gorgeous and why can’t I love gorgeous boys instead of grizzly ones?—and he hands me clothes, closes the door, and runs off. No idea how I can fix this. Maybe I can’t. Maybe I shouldn’t. Then I look at the clothes and the asshole gave me a skirt. Asshole. I laugh, sort of. No chance I’m putting this on. But he knows that. So when he knocks, I’m assuming he has clothes I could actually wear, except—

  He’s panicked, saying, “They’re here.”

  “Who?” I say, but already know and let him grab my hand and lead me fast across the hall back to his room. I’m still in the towel, I got the skirt but not my clothes. Art’s a step ahead of me:

  “Your clothes—I’ll be right back—”

  art

  OH-MY-GOD, Abigail and Cam are already walking up the stairs by the time I’m back in the bathroom. They’re arguing. These days this is like saying they’re breathing.

  “You wanted to have sex with my sister’s friend, baby, just admit it and I’ll forgive you. JUST ADMIT IT!”

  “You’re acting crazy, Abigail. I should go home.”

  “Yes, go home. Or go back to my sister’s place and have sex with that girl. Kelly. She’s so sexy. Her tits are fake, but whatever, you’ll probably like them.”

  As they reach the second floor, I pile all of Zee’s stuff—even her sweaty underwear, which I don’t even mind touching—into another towel, fold the towel over it so it looks like it’s just a towel and not like I was just almost naked with Zee in a shower—oh-my-god, that really happened—and I turn and they’re right there. Stopped. Even their argument.

  “What are you doing?” Abigail asks.

  “I took a shower.”

  “You never take a shower at night.” My sister is clueless about just about everything except she’s like a genius detective when anything is off even by four point two mini-millimeters.

  Cam saves me, says, “Let Art shower whenever he wants. You’re always trying to control people, Abigail.”

  “I’M NOT TRYING TO CONTROL YOU, CAM! I’M JUST TRYING TO LET YOU KNOW IT’S OKAY THAT YOU WANTED TO SLEEP WITH FAKE TITS AS LONG AS YOU ADMIT YOU WANTED TO SLEEP WITH HER!” Oh, Abigail, no, not tonight. You can be the least appealing girlfriend every other moment of your life, just not tonight.

  I duck around them, open my door a sliver so I can slip inside, and I regret it because if Abigail saw me walk inside like that she would know something was wrong.

  And th
en—

  Oh no, and then …

  —I see Zee and she’s put herself in Abigail’s skirt and halter top, except she’s four inches taller than Abigail, so everything is tighter and shorter than it should be. She’s mortified and terrified and doesn’t know how to stand like a normal person in those clothes, but, god, she also looks so sexy. Not sexy, sexual. Is there a difference? I don’t know. I hate it. I think. But Cam is standing on the other side of my bedroom door, and if he were to see her look like this—like a taller, smarter, saner version of my sister—he’d fall in love with her instantly. Or lust with her. But he doesn’t know the difference and neither would Zee.

  I know I said the universe would end if Cam and Zee got together, but now, after kissing her, I’m sure it would be even worse than that.

  So I whisper, mouth even, “I’ll get you real clothes.”

  And she mouths, Thank you, and is so relieved she starts breathing again except Abigail is a witch with evil powers and she screams from the hall,

  “WHY ARE YOU ACTING SO WEIRD, ART?”

  And I didn’t lock the door—why didn’t I lock the door?—and I lunge toward it, but she swings it open with such violence it slams against the wall and knocks down my kitten poster, where the glass frame shatters on the floor.

  ZEE

  Abigail’s fury freezes on her face at the sight of me. She tries to find words, but her mouth just opens and closes like a fish out of water. Cam emerges from the hall shadows into the light of Art’s room. This is the first time I’ve seen him since the funeral. Over three months. The longest I’ve gone without seeing him since we met in sixth grade.

  He looks … the same. Wide shoulders on a big frame, a tiny stubble, my Cubs hat on backward. He’s a man. Not a boy. He’s handsome. Not beautiful. I would never wonder who was masculine or feminine with him. I’d know my role. That’s what I want. He’s what I’ve wanted since before I even knew boys were something I should want.

  “Zee?” he manages to say. The look on his face. The look on his face. He knows. Knows I just made out with Art in the shower. Knows I hooked up with his girlfriend’s kid brother. That marks me forever as someone he could never consider seriously. And I want him more than ever right now. Probably because my gut is finally admitting I’ll never get him.