“Friends…Ransom,” and she kissed me back like she couldn’t control herself, like someone else was making her lips work against mine. And then, just like that, Aly stopped, pulling away from me, her scarf shaking with the effort of her breathing. “Ah…modi…poupou.”
“Aly…”
She shook her head like she wouldn’t listen, like something else needed to be said and she didn’t want me interrupting. “I’m going to tell you something and don’t you damn well laugh at me.” She moved her eyes, catching my nod of agreement. “This…this whatever it is, I chalk it up to being alone for…well, a while.”
“How long is a while?”
She sliced her gaze back to me and I didn’t press.
“You’ve been without…” she sat back, her breathing slowing. “We’ve both been alone. That’s what I’m saying.” Aly turned her body, taking my hand, though she hesitated, like she wasn’t sure she should touch me at all. “I want to be your friend. I won’t deny that I…well,” one shift of her gaze and she kept her chin down, but I still caught her grin. “Your mouth makes me think the worst…best…filthy things.”
Aly treated me to that elusive smile again when my laugh broke the tension in the car. “Right back at you.”
After a moment, Aly’s face returned to normal—mouth relaxed, but unsmiling. “When I’m around you, things can be…” she shook her head as though she hoped closing her eyes would somehow bring the right word forward.
“Overwhelming?” I asked, realizing I understood where she was coming from.
“Me zanmi, wi. Overwhelming. It’s…it has to be the dance, right? I mean, the Kizomba, the flirting and us being lonely and being around your family, hell, the sexual chemistry coming off your parents alone would make anyone…” She laughed when I wrinkled my nose. “Sorry,” she said, that laughter dimming. “I just mean that this isn’t anything something you or…I…I really want to explore. I know you’re busy and with happened to you before…”
I waited for her to mention Emily. I waited for her to somehow explain what she thought my problem was. Girls did that sometimes when I asked them not to touch me, when I touched them and they couldn’t understand why I didn’t want anything more from them. I waited to see what diagnosis Aly had for me, but she only inhaled, like she needed extra breath to organize her thoughts.
“It’s all chemical. Endorphins and serotonin that our brains produce when the right stimulus is introduced to our environment.” My eyebrows came up and I blinked, astounded by her theory. “What?” she said. “I watch ‘Forensic Files’ and ‘Bones’.”
This time when I laughed, Aly joined in immediately, a little sheepish, but that smile was wide, it was beautiful and my humor faded when that damn strange déjà-vu sensation hit me again. I knew I’d seen that smile before but damn if I could place it.
“Anyway, I just…”
“I get what you’re saying.”
“You do?”
She let me take her hand, didn’t raise that guard of hers. “No kissing?”
Aly hesitated, squeezing my fingers. There was something in her expression that I couldn’t place. It seemed like doubt, indecision and disappointment, but then what the hell did I know? “I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t like it. But we can’t…”
“No, right… I get it,” I said, sighing, resigned, when I pulled my hand away. “We’ll just stick with being friends. That’s what you want. Right?”
There was something in her eyes then, a weird flick that told me she was keeping something from me and part of me wanted to know what that was. The more sensible part, though, won out for once and I let her keep her secrets.
“Exactly,” she said finally. Then the weirdest thing happened. When the noise of my teammates entering the parking lot sounded behind my car and Aly looked in the rear view mirror to watch them, that easy, relaxed expression on her face suddenly vanished. Someone had spooked her, had her turning from me, fumbling with the door latch and mumbling something about needing to catch the bus. She muttered “See you later” and fled before I even had the chance to offer her a ride.
“Ransom!” Trent shouted, banging once on the roof of my Mustang. “Was that the same hottie that was here with your kid brother?” he asked, edging his body to the side so he could watch Aly as she disappeared from the parking lot. “You hooking up?”
“No, man,” I said, pushing his arm off my door. “She’s just a…a friend.” As soon as I said the words, I could taste something rotten coiling up my throat.
I meant to go after her, to ask her what about my teammates had her running off like a scared rabbit, but then my cell chirped with a text and I picked it up, waving Trent off, nodding to several of the guys as they ambled to their cars. Timber had the news I’d been waiting to hear.
Saturday night, after the game, you’re getting your dance.
I’d waited weeks for that message, had amped myself up with visions of that masked dancer as she moved around me, like some pathetic kid casing Playboy to help him along the first time he jacked off. I should have been excited. I should have been stoked, but all I felt still was disappointment that Aly had stopped kissing me, and acute curiosity about why she’d taken off.
I remembered everything about being with her, in excruciating detail. She made sure of it.
No one had ever had a hold on me like Emily. I’d loved her something fierce, right at a time when my parents had married and began the job of extending our family, when I thought I’d never stop smiling, never stop feeling like the world was mine to take. Sixteen and I believed I knew everything there was to know. I believed my heart could not grow fuller. I’d fought for her and won her. Then I’d chased her, dared her to defy her father, promised I’d make myself worth the rebellion.
And though I had no idea why, she eagerly broke the rules that were set to protect her. I promised her everything my sixteen year old hands could deliver, and in return I got that smile, that beautiful, wild smile that always had me guessing what she’d been thinking. I never could guess, I never had a clue. Not once. That should have been a warning.
I remembered it all—the small scar in the center of her palm and the tiny freckle directly over her heart that was the darkest among the faint browns and beige spots that covered the rest of her body. The quick breath of air that would morph into the sweetest groan when I kissed her on the back of the neck. They were all still so real to me, sacred images that I would not let leave my mind.
Until now.
That wasn’t true. Not completely.
I wasn’t truly asleep, despite the late hour. That place that keeps you from honest sleep is where I’d stayed that night. I was still aware of what was going on around me. Tossing my blankets back, shuffling my pillow under my chin while beyond my door hearing the quiet laughter and clink of ice sliding around in glasses. Trent with three girls from Tri Sig, all seniors who didn’t care whose bed they ended up in or when they got there.
They were, at least, not loud. It wasn’t the faint, sultry laughter that kept me from my dreams.
Like always, it was the guilt and, of course, that voice.
You forgot me, it said, pushing past the recall of Emily’s hair tangled between my fingers. I huddled down deeper into my pillow, blindingly grabbing for another one to blot out her words.