He says nothing because that’s exactly the first time he thought it.
“News flash: Not all straight chicks like to wear skirts and not all lesbians wear cargo pants.” Asshole.
And he knows it. He’s fucking crushed. He slumps, eyes big and wet, mouth quivering. Jesus! Thought I’d be done with crushing boys when I was done with Art.
“I’m sorry,” I say, even though he was the jerk.
“You’ve never talked like that to me before.”
“I was upset.”
“I thought I was done with the drama when I broke up with Abigail,” he says. If he thinks he’s laying his fake jealous righteousness on me, well.
“Fuck you.”
* * *
We stand there, in the parking lot, in silence. I’m thinking this is it. Cam and I had one date, three kisses, and that’s all.
* * *
Then he says, “Can I say something weird?”
“Sure.” Whatever.
“I’m really turned on right now.”
Holy fuck, drama turns him on. No wonder he and Abigail lasted so long. Guess what, Cam? I’m as turned off as I get. But saying that really would have ended it. So I try to fake being turned on and say, “Oh, yeah?” And I even glance toward his crotch. So lame.
But it works, I guess, because he lunges back into me and we’re making out again. I go with it because I want to be with him, eventually, even if right this second I’d rather be doing just about anything else.
Then he stops and says, “Think Michael will care if I come to your place to watch TV?”
I’m not gonna touch the Michael subject with him, but I guess this means Cam wants to hook up. This is cooler than him not finding me attractive. But maybe it would be cool if he wanted to take things slow?
So I state it straight: “I’m actually pretty tired. Can we do a rain check?”
“Yeah, yeah, totally.” Then he kisses me again and he’s doing these little grunts, which is code for Please don’t leave me hanging, but I’m definitely leaving him hanging, so I say, “Tonight was awesome,” then kiss him on the cheek and get into my truck before he can try again.
* * *
As I’m driving away from Cam, I think of going home to Art and the thought releases every tension inside me. I suddenly can’t wait to see him. I’m more excited to see him at our stupid motel room than I was to keep kissing Cam. So I text him:
ME
On my way home with leftover pizza,
platonic husband.
But he doesn’t text back.
And when I get back to the motel, the room is dark, his stuff is gone, and so is he.
art
Have I established I’m hilarious?
Good. Just wanted to make sure.
ZEE
I sit on the motel bed and look at my phone again. Still no response from Art. Would he really have just left without telling me? I text him again Where are you? but the kid who always texts back in three seconds doesn’t text back at all.
Art … I should have …
Known?
Known what?
I don’t know. As I’m sitting on the motel bed in the dark, trying to know what I don’t know, I hear this dripping sound. Drip. Drip. Drip.
The bathroom. Creepy. But okay.
So I start moving toward the door, and the drip starts getting louder, which doesn’t make sense.
Drip.
Drip.
DRIP.
And fuck, no more horror movies if I’m going to be on my own. I turn on all the lights, which helps a little. But I still hear the drip from behind the closed bathroom door—and it’s getting faster, drip-drip-drip-drip—and now I have to turn off this faucet even though that’s exactly what the dumb chick in a movie would do. So I open the door, flip on the bathroom lights and—
It’s not the sink faucet.
It’s the fucking shower faucet. DRIP-DRIP-DRIP-DRIP-DRIP and I’m thinking I should just get the hell out of there but Don’t Be a Pussy, Zee! and I throw back the curtain and—
He yells, “AAAAAAAAAH!” with that pretty grin of his.
And I fly backward, screaming something, stumble out of the bathroom hard to the motel carpet, and he’s already laughing.
“ASSHOLE!” I yell as Art leaps from the tub (where he and all his crap were) and onto the ground.
He’s trying to hug me as a sort of apology but he also can’t stop laughing. Which is annoying. But I guess I start laughing even though I think I had a heart attack.
“How long were you hiding in there?!” I’m yelling and laughing at the same time.
“Since you texted me I was your platonic husband.”
“A good platonic husband wouldn’t scare the living crap out of his platonic wife!”
“Maybe, but a great platonic husband would because he would never let their platonic marriage go stale.”
Then I stop laughing and he does too, and I’m going to cry, aren’t I? Yep.
“What happened?” Art asks.
art
Cam was a jerk to her! She hates him now! The grand love story of Zee and Art can finally take flight! Yay!
But then—
oh,
Zee says, “He kissed me. Abigail and him broke up and he kissed me.” And then she sobs! So not only did the one girl I could ever love just tell me she kissed another boy, but she’s crying, so I can’t even be sad! Or mad! Or anything but the nicest, most understanding person ever.
Sooo, I pull her against me, let her cry her maybe-happy, maybe-crazy tears on my chest, and say, “That’s what you always wanted, right? Why are you crying if that’s what you always wanted?”
“I don’t know!” Zee kind of yells and then kind of laughs.
“You’re being very … interesting right now,” I say.
“That’s Art’s way of saying I’m being insane.”
“Maybe.” I kiss her on the top of the head to let her know that it’s okay that she’s become an irrational disaster.
Then, after a bit of just letting me hold her, her sobs slow, quiet, and then she says, “Can you hold me tighter?”
My wiser, more mature self says I should lock myself in the bathroom until morning, but instead …
ZEE
Art slides his arm under my neck and pulls me onto his chest. My nose is pressed into his neck, which is so fucking soft because of that lotion. My body wants to be closer, so I wrap my leg around his leg, wrap my left arm around his waist, and pull him tight against me. Then the words—these fucking words—start rising from this deep, deep, deep place in me and they’re building speed as they rise and I can’t stop them even though I should. Even if they’re true, I should stop these goddamn words, but I can’t and so they just leave me and come alive and can never be unsaid again. “I love you, Art.”
art
Oh-my-god, now I start crying, and have to say, have to know, “Really?”
“Yeah,” she says.
Really really?
“Yeah,” she says again.
“Like as a friend?”
She hesitates. “I don’t know.”
“As your platonic husband?”
She smiles.
“Or as the one person meant to travel with you through all time and space?”
“I don’t know, Art…” And she just stares into me. “… but will you kiss me again even if I don’t know?”
Yes! But, “What about Cam?”
“I don’t know.”
Oh. “I need you to know.”
“I feel so confused, Art, I may never know.”
“I’m not confused at all.”
But this doesn’t make her feel better. It might have made things worse. Oh-my-god, I can’t believe I’m thinking what I’m thinking even as I’m asking, “So … you want to kiss me tonight?”
“Yes.”
“But tomorrow you may kiss Cam again?”
She doesn’t say yes. She doesn’t say no.
&nb
sp; “Okay.” Okay?! This is the worst idea ever!
“You’re sure?”
I lift her chin up and I look into her and I can see it. The love. It’s literally in her eyes like it’s literally in mine and, yes, I know she’s going to break my heart! But I want her more than I want a whole heart. So I say, “Okay, I’m going to kiss you again, so you should probably prepare yourself.”
“Okay,” she says, smiling through her fading tears. I lean toward her, but she’s nervous, which I like, so I say, “Close your eyes.”
“Okay,” she says again, and then I close mine and—
ZEE
Art’s kiss, if I was a girly girl who fantasized about shit like that, would be the type of kiss I’d imagine my knight in shining armor would give me when he rescued me. I never fantasize about that stuff and, yet, him kissing me makes me feel like a princess. Which I like. Fuck you. But I do. I feel so safe with him. I’ve never cared about feeling safe because I never thought it would be something I should care about. But now, after my mom and Michael and Arshad and even Cam—Jesus, feeling safe feels like the most important thing in the world.
* * *
We make out for a long time on the motel room floor. We smile, we laugh a little, but mostly we just kiss. Him always in control. Me always safe. Him my gentle, soft, beautiful knight. Me the princess I never planned to be.
And
then
I decide it’s time. So I say, “Want to get into bed?”
Art knows what I mean by this even if I didn’t exactly know when I said it. So he says, “Yes, but is it okay if we only kiss tonight?”
“Oh, yeah.” Aches ache. But I say, “Yeah, of course.”
* * *
He goes and does his twenty-minute before-bed bathroom thing. I get into bed like yesterday, except this time I take off my pants. It was hot last night, I tell myself, but this is bullshit and I know it.
He takes longer than last night, so I get up and turn off the lights. Then I just stare at the door waiting for him to come out. Then he exits, and in this light, and on this night, and listen, I have to say it: “You’re fucking beautiful.” He blushes and slides under the covers with me. We kiss. Entangle our bodies. His bare leg is against mine and I think I have more hair on mine than he does on his because it’s a pain in the ass to shave your legs all the fucking time. He doesn’t say anything, so I guess he doesn’t mind.
But then he says, “You took off your pants.”
“It was hot last night,” I lie.
“I like it.”
“Sorry I didn’t shave.”
“I like how they feel.”
He kisses me again and I say, “I love you,” again. Maybe I’m ready not to feel safe. So I press myself into him.
art
Zee wants to have sex. Oh-my-god, she wants to have sex. I know this because I know everything but I also know this because her kissing is getting more aggressive by the second and I can, through her underwear, feel her, um … wetness?… oh-my-god, I said that, or thought it. She’s pressing herself against my bare leg so it’s impossible for me not to feel it. She wants me to feel it because she wants me to know she wants to have sex, doesn’t she? But I told her I only wanted to kiss and having sex feels like trying to fly through space when I’m just learning how to walk and god, I love my metaphors, but mostly, I want her to read my mind and tell me it’s okay that we just kiss tonight. But her lips start to nibble, which means her lips want to devour and …
“Zee…”
“Yeah?”
“You want to have sex, don’t you?” I say everything, but I can’t believe I just said that.
“No,” she says, pulls away. She’s five inches from me but it feels like a mile. “Maybe…” She thinks. “No, I don’t … maybe I do, maybe I would, but no, it’s not that.…”
“You can tell me anything.”
She laughs. “I know, that’s why you’re my platonic husband.…”
“We’re not being very platonic right now.”
“I guess we’re not.” She gets serious, sure of herself, and it’s mesmerizing when she gets still and intense and internal. “I love how you kiss me.”
“That’s because I’m the greatest kisser ever.” Tension must be handled with humor!
“You probably are.… Listen … you’re that good … but I want to see if you love how I kiss you.”
“I do.”
“No, you love how much I love how you kiss me.”
“We’re kissing each other—it’s about how we kiss each other.…”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t think so. I think one person is always doing the kissing and the other person is the one being kissed. And it can switch back and forth every five seconds, but I think one person is always the lead.”
“Um…” I start and, um again, and, “I’m sorry, I actually have to pause and think about what you just said because you might have just stated a revolutionary new theory and I thought I knew everything.”
She laughs because I’m funny even when I’m sincere.
“Zee … yes … maybe … oh-my-god, yes … mmmh…” I have to think more, don’t I? I do. I never have to think before I talk! But I do. I do and then I know what I have to say. “And you like to kiss aggressively.”
“Maybe, I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t know how I liked to kiss someone until you, but now I want to try.”
“And I kind of stop you every time you try to kiss me aggressively, don’t I?”
“You don’t ‘kind of’ stop me, you do stop me. Which is fine, Art. God, I don’t want to be the creepy dude here trying to get in your pants. I just want you to know I love how you kiss me, but you have to tell me straight up if you don’t love how I kiss you.”
“I…” But I stop because I have to think again before I talk. Exploring new worlds tonight! Ha. Okay, yes, I know. “… I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?”
“I don’t know if I like how you kiss me because I get super nervous every time you start taking control.”
She doesn’t know what to say.
So I try, “What if … what if … I let you take control, I let you be the lead kisser … but we have to keep our underwear on.”
She laughs.
“I didn’t want you to laugh this time! This is a great plan and tell me you love it or I’ll die!”
“I’m sorry, you said the same thing in the shower, which I thought was cute … but, yes, that sounds awesome. I love your idea. I love your ‘Keep Our Underwear On’ rule.”
“Okay, thank you,” I say, and I kiss her and she kisses me and then I roll onto my back and she gets on top of me and I say the scariest thing I’ve ever said, “I’m yours.” She laughs because that was a bit cheesy of me, but I can’t laugh because I’m pretty sure she’s about to eat me alive.
ZEE
Art shrinks under my lips, like he’s making himself small enough for me to eat. That doesn’t make sense. But whatever is happening, it feels good. It feels like I’m devouring him and devouring him only makes me hungrier, which makes me want to devour him more. He raises his chin, like a willing victim to a vampire. Does that make me the vampire? I hate feeling like a vampire. I kiss, lick, bite … lips, cheeks, ears, neck. Maybe I love feeling like a vampire.
I’m straddling him, our underwear on, but I’ve been staying high, on his stomach. I lift and lower myself down on him. He’s excited. His penis is excited. Does this mean he likes how I’m kissing him? I wish he would tell me. And then I stop wishing and remember I’m in control and say, “Do you like this?”
He nods, gasping, vulnerable. Despite our underwear and because of the wetness, I can slide against him. I start slow. This isn’t sex. But it isn’t just kissing.
“This okay?”
He nods again, but manages the words “This is so intense.”
“Too intense?”
“No…” Then a mesmerized smile. “Maybe, but I think I love
it.”
art
Her wetness has enveloped me. From her mouth to my face. From between her legs to everywhere else. I know we’re not naked, but I feel like we’re naked anyway. It feels like she has seeped into all my openings and is now touching me from the inside out. As if the only way she’s going to get out from inside me is if I explode. And, oh-my-god, this metaphor is about me—
ZEE
He cries out in six, seven, eight high-pitched moans as he orgasms beneath me. I’ll admit to myself what I’d never tell him or anyone else: He sounds like a girl when he comes. A girl crying out in extended, surprised, almost reluctant pleasure.
The other thing I’d never admit?
That’s what did it for me.
His feminine moans.
That’s what made me come.
* * *
My first orgasm with a boy happened when the boy cried out like a girl.
art
I’m mortified those sounds just came out of my mouth. Oh-my-god, I sounded like such a girl! Zee must be so disgusted by me, but when I open my eyes, she’s smiling down at me, that love still in her eyes—
“How do you feel?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, the embarrassment not subsiding despite her care.
“You didn’t like it?”
I can barely look at her but I manage to say, “I liked it more than I was ready for.”
“Art—”
“Yeah?”
“Kiss me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You kiss me.”
Oh. I twist so she falls to the bed beside me, then I prop myself on my elbow, and I lean in over her, pull her face in toward mine with my hand and kiss her, inhale her, sweetly, through my lips, and Zee says, “I’m yours,” because she’s my mythical creature and I’m hers.
ZEE
I fall asleep on Art’s chest, and we wake up in the same position. That’s two nights in a row we both haven’t moved the entire night. I would think something was wrong if they didn’t feel like the best nights of sleep in my life.
The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy Page 16
