And I don’t want her to cry for me.
I lift her chin with my fingers, and she closes her eyes, turns her head away. A single tear trickles down her cheek. I brush it away. I can’t help it. I feel like my touch is far too rough, but I try to be gentle.
“Don’t cry, sweetness. Please?”
“I can’t help it. I want to make everything better for you. I know I can’t fix you, that’s not what I mean. I just…I want…I want to be able to help. To—I don’t know, not take away your pain, but…help you deal with it somehow. I don’t know, Oz. I’m so mixed up. And you keep saying how you don’t want to taint me, but I don’t feel like you are. I want to be a part of…of your life. Even if it’s messy and dark and dirty and—and violent.” She looks up at me. “I was so scared, but then you appeared out of nowhere, and I knew I was safe. But then I was scared for you. But you—you won. And it was scary, but I know…I know I don’t have to afraid of you.”
I don’t know how to react. Do I tell her she shouldn’t want to help me? That she can’t? It’s a nice feeling, knowing she cares. I mean, I know Mom cares, but she has to. Kylie doesn’t. My head is spinning with crazy thoughts, my heart is pounding with emotions I don’t understand and can’t sort out and don’t know what to do with, and my body hurts, and I’m high, and Kylie is so beautiful and so tender and sweet and kind and good, too good for me. And I should keep pushing her away, but f**king goddammit, I don’t want to, and I’m not sure I can.
Then she reaches out, and I’m frozen. She sweeps my hat off my head. I feel strangely naked without my hat. I always wear the hat. As if that wasn’t overwhelming enough, she reaches for the black elastic band tying my hair back. Not even my mom sees me with my hair down, except rarely. But yet, for reasons I can’t decipher, I let her tug the band down, and off. I have to hold perfectly still, or I’ll bolt. My hair hangs just below my shoulders, thick and auburn, just like Mom’s. Kylie runs her fingers through it, gingerly and hesitantly, hands sliding past my ears and fluffing it away from my neck.
“Oz, I’m not scared of you. I’m not afraid of your life. Of getting dirty. So quit trying to protect me and let me make my own choices. Let me—”
I kiss her. Cut her off, my lips brushing hers and eating her words, my hand cupping her cheek. She shifts forward on her knees, closer to me, leans into me. I’m doing this consciously. I have control over my actions. I’m kissing her because I want to, because I’ve wanted to kiss her since the first moment I saw her. So I kiss her, and I try to make it good. Her hands slip through my hair and rest on my shoulders, and then curl around the back of my head, and one of her palms goes flat on my cheek, and now she’s almost in my lap, so close to me, leaning into me.
God…god, she tastes good. Faintly of cigarette smoke, and of something citrus. Sprite, maybe. And cherry lip balm. Her mouth is warm, and her lips are soft and damp and hungry. I tease the seam of her lips and she opens for me, and now her tongue slides into my mouth, taking over, searching, aggressive. She’s eager for this. She wants this. It feels right, like it means something. It’s not empty, not just a precursor to sex. It’s an exchange, an admission. It’s foreign to me, to feel this connected to another person. I don’t feel connected to my mom, and there’s never been anyone else. Just girls slumming it with me for a couple of hours. Kylie? Fuck, she’s kissing me like she could kiss me forever, like there’s never been anything in the whole world, in her whole life, so perfect as this kiss.
Our lips part, and she’s gazing into my eyes from an inch away, searching me. My hands don’t leave her face, her hair. I’ve tangled one fist in her long strawberry blonde locks, the other still cupping her face with a tenderness and a gentleness I’ve never showed to another human being in all my life.
“Oz.” She says my name, maybe just to say it. I don’t know. But then she brushes the corner of my mouth with her thumb, and my heart clenches, stops. “Don’t tell me that didn’t feel the same for you. Like it—”
“Meant something real?” I owe her the truth, at least.
“Yes!” she exclaims, a soft excited breath. She slides one thigh over mine, facing me, straddling me. “Like it meant something real. That’s exactly how it felt.”
“That your first kiss?”
She shakes her head. “No. I’ve kissed a couple guys. I mean, I kissed them back. Not…those two guys I told you about, the ones who kissed me. These were guys I kissed because I wanted to. But…it never felt like this. It was okay, but not…so intense.”
I allow myself the liberty of skating my palms over her back, down to her hips and back up. She shivers at my touch. “For what it’s worth, I’ve never had a kiss like that, either. Like you said, it was intense.”
“Why ‘for what it’s worth’?”
I roll my eyes and shrug. “I dunno.”
“You mean something to me, Oz. Everything about you means something to me. You make a difference to me.”
“Why?” I toy with a lock of her hair, spinning the ends in my fingers. “I don’t get it.”
“You’re different.” She sits on my legs, reaches out to put her palms on my chest, smoothing and touching. “So different. And I like that. There’s…something real about you. Everyone else I know seems like they’re…putting on a show.”
I blink at that. “I’m just me.”
She smiles at me. “Exactly. And that’s special. To me at least.”
Her T-shirt has hiked up a bit in the back, and when my hands make a circuit from shoulders to spine to lower back, I feel her warm, soft skin. It’s like a compulsion then, to slip my fingers under the cotton and find more flesh, just her back, the knobs of her spine, brushing the lower edge of her bra strap. No more, neither lower nor higher. I’m careful, hesitant. But temptation is a powerful thing, and I have to fight it, for her sake. I tear my hands away, curl my fingers into fists to keep from devouring her flesh with my palms and fingertips and lips. I’ve never felt such need before, never had to fight it so hard, never denied myself the luxury of touching if the girl was willing.
This girl? She’s different, and deserves better.
But Kylie has different ideas. “I liked that. It felt nice.” She arches her back. “Do it again.”