Careful y, I run the tip of my tongue across her lower lip and she gasps, opening wider, receptive. Permission to enter granted, and God knows she doesn’t have to indicate that twice. Sweeping my tongue across hers, I pul her in tight and hard when she responds perfectly and in kind. I suck her lower lip into my mouth and she mimics this the moment I release it, adding the slightest graze of her teeth.
Her hands are on my back, kneading and stroking while I’m doing the same to her. And then she makes this sound—a cross between a sigh and a moan, like a soft, subtle, wordless yes, and it’s al I can do not to come undone.
I can’t say if this is the best kiss ever. I’ve kissed a lot of girls. But I can say that I don’t remember another girl or another kiss in this moment. I can’t remember my own name in this moment. And I don’t want to stop kissing her.
Ever. And then my hands shift under her shirt at her waist, fingers brushing over the soft, warm skin of her lower back, and she tears her mouth from mine. Shit. Too far, too fast.
The warning hits my brain too late.
“Stop, stop,” she says, gasping. Her eyes are glazed over and I can’t hear anything beyond our mingled, panting breaths and her muted words. “Oh my gosh.” I’m waiting for her to shove me away but her eyes are closed now and she’s stil holding onto me so I’m not moving. I want to kiss her again and I’m exerting every ounce of self-control to stand here, unmoving, and watch her come back to earth. Shit, she is going to be so pissed in about three seconds.
Make that one second.
Her hands fal from my sides abruptly, like she’s just realized where they were. I loosen my hold on her gradual y, as though I can keep her from remembering where my hands were and what they were doing if I move slowly enough. I shouldn’t have put my hands under her shirt. I had no intention of going anywhere with that, I just wanted my hands on her skin, a tactile connection, like grounding wires, while our mouths fed the current between us.
Now her eyes are wide open and she’s staring at me, but I can’t read her expression. This is something new, something more than alarm or anger or exasperation. I don’t know what she’s thinking, and I don’t dare ask. She’s shutting down, like shades lowering, and then she’s ducking under my arm and I can’t do anything but lean against the wal , pound it once, hard, with my fist. “Fuck.” She whirls around. “Why do you have to use that word?” Ah, the almighty F-word. “It’s just a word, Dori.”
“Wel , I don’t want to hear it.”
I turn to face her, the judgment in her tone, which I can’t even begin to reconcile with the girl who was just kissing me like she was drowning in me. Like she wanted to. “So when I say f**k, it real y bothers you.” I’m not even saying it at her, but I swear to God, she flinches before she nods.
“Why? It’s just a word.”
Refusing to meet my eyes, she bites her lower lip (which only makes me want to kiss her again) while I stand here watching her, equal y silent. When she speaks, her voice is barely audible. “Because it takes something sacred and makes it into something ugly and insignificant. That’s what bothers me.”
“So you consider fu—sex as something sacred?” I can’t wrap my head around this. “Sex isn’t sacred—not under usual circumstances and probably not ever, between mental y balanced people. It’s just a physical need, like eating or breathing.”
She looks up at me, her eyes bright, though she’s not crying, thank God. “I understand that it’s physical, something we’re biological y driven to.” (Now there’s an unanticipated and annoyingly hot viewpoint for her to have.)
“But when people love each other, it’s different. It’s like—
like eating for pleasure, not just gorging yourself on whatever c-crap comes along.”
She can’t even say ‘crap’ without stumbling over it, and her argument is absurd. Eating for pleasure—Jesus, I could make al kinds of comebacks to that. She turns and runs from the room, the front door opening and closing quietly behind her a moment later. Because of course she isn’t going to make a scene leaving the house.
*** *** ***
Dori
I’m driving home shaking. I’m angry, yes. At myself. But I’m not shaking from anger. I’m shaking from something else altogether.
Something
that
somehow,
inexplicably,
generates a similar physical response. And yet not.
Reid thinks he knows who I am, because he’s made the same assumptions everyone else makes about me. That I’m a proper, straitlaced good girl. That I always have been.
But you know what they say about assumptions.
I met Colin Dyer during my first week of high school.
His family attended our sister church—the one with the architectural y impressive sanctuary located in a better neighborhood, with parishioners to whom giving back only ever means opening a wal et. Our church is their charity project, their contributions providing enough additional funds to pay for building repairs and help support our neighborhood programs.
Colin’s mother was my school counselor, and I was her office aide during fourth period. Getting an aide job as a freshman was unheard of, unless you had connections, and freshman was unheard of, unless you had connections, and thanks to Dad, I did. Being selected as Dr. Dyer’s aide was a highly coveted privilege. She was easygoing, and her office was quiet and comfortable. Her aides had firsthand knowledge of which students were troubled or in trouble, so not just anyone could work the front desk. She needed someone trustworthy and caring. I was both.