“You’ve gone all quiet. That’s the only way I could tell you were mad before, so I assume I’ve done something to tick you off.”
“You’re the one who went all quiet. I thought you were mad at me for—” I stopped short. I didn’t know if I was supposed to mention the church or not.
Luke sighed and made a vague gesture. “This is all just unfamiliar territory for me.”
“What is?”
“You.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know what to do.”
“About what?”
“You.”
“About what happened in the ch—”
Luke interrupted hastily. “No. Just about you. You, yourself. I keep waiting for you to tell me to leave you alone. To tell me I’m creepy.”
I pointed at him. “That’s why I haven’t told you to leave me alone.”
“What—why?”
“Because you keep telling me how weird you are. Truly sketchy people don’t tell you how sketchy they are.”
“I also forced myself on you, in an alleyway. That’s sketchy.”
So that’s what this was about. The kiss. It was sort of charming that he was worried about it. I laughed. “You didn’t force yourself on me. And it wasn’t even an alley.”
“I didn’t ask.”
I wasn’t up on the rules of dating, but I didn’t think anyone ever asked permission to kiss a girl. Maybe in the movies. “I kissed back.”
He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes. “I don’t want to go too far—do the wrong thing—and get myself in trouble.”
Crap, that sounded familiar. “Luke, I’m not mad at you. And …” I had to look away when I said it, and I blushed, too. “You’re not going to get yourself in trouble. Or—maybe I’d like the sort of trouble you’d get yourself into.” Afterward, I thought maybe I shouldn’t have said it. Maybe he’d think I was a slut. Maybe he would go too far. Maybe he wouldn’t know what I meant. Maybe—
Luke gave me a half-way smile, somewhere short of humor, and reached across the car to brush my chin with his hand. I wanted to close my eyes and lean into his touch, to forget about everything that made me Deirdre.
“You’re a baby. You don’t know how much trouble I can get into.”
I bristled, pulling my face away. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I didn’t mean it like—aw, see, now you’re pissed at me again.”
I regarded him frostily. “No, really? You called me a baby.”
Luke thumped back in his seat, voice frustrated. “It was a compliment, really.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because you make me forget how young you are.” He struggled to explain, looking away from my glare. “You’re just—you’re just so like me. You know—you take everything in like you’ve done it a hundred times before. The way your eyes look when you’re playing music—I just forget you’re only sixteen.”
“Aren’t you supposed to add ‘incredibly beautiful’ and ‘dazzlingly intelligent’ while you’re pouring on the unreasonable compliments?” It would have been nice to believe him—but my mind couldn’t reconcile stunningly invisible with stunningly desirable.
“I’m being serious. You are incredibly beautiful, though.” His voice was earnest.
I shook my head. “Eleanor is incredibly beautiful. I know what I am, and beautiful I am not. I’m fine with that, too.”
A weird look crossed his face at the mention of Eleanor. “No, Eleanor’s something else. You’re beautiful. Especially when you’re staring at me with that boy he’s a condescending ass**le expression—yeah. Beautiful.”
I studied my hands; the lights from the radio cast a weird colored glow over them, like I was lit from within. Softly, I said, “You could say it again.”
But he didn’t. Instead, he said, “You’re different.”
His voice sounded like it was the best compliment in the world to be called different—“different” like a brand-new species of butterfly, not like a cardigan-wearing girl in a sea of tank tops.
I heard Luke shift in his seat to gaze out the windshield into the darkness. “You’re like me. We’re watchers of this world, aren’t we? Not players.”
But I wasn’t a watcher of this world, the little planet inside the confines of his car. In this world, scented with Luke’s summer-smell, I was an irreplaceable player. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cry or bust out the biggest smile in the universe.
“Dee,” Luke said softly. “Where are you?”
I looked at him. “Right here.”
He shook his head.
I smiled self-consciously. “I was imagining my life as a little planet all its own.”
Luke ran a finger in a circle along the steering wheel: a shape without end. “With very attractive aliens.” He reached over and carefully drew the same circle lightly on the back of my hand, raising goose bumps along my arm. His soft, level voice was completely devoid of emotion when he asked, “Are you still pissed at me?”
I half-closed my eyes as he traced the finger up my arm toward my shoulder, his touch as light as a feather. It tickled in a way that made my gut clench and my breath stop. He leaned across the console and kissed my lips, just as softly. I closed my eyes and let him kiss me again, one of his hands cupping the side of my neck, the other hand braced against the dash. Headlights flashed against my closed eyelids as a solitary car drove by on the highway.
“Do you want me to stop?” Luke whispered.
I shook my head. He kissed me again, biting my lower lip gently. It drove me crazy in ways I hadn’t even thought of. Irrationally, I suddenly thought, So this is making out. I didn’t even know if I was doing it right. Was I drooling too much? Did he like it? What the hell was I supposed to do with my tongue?
But a part of me was immune from self-doubt, and it was begging me to touch him and be touched. I felt as if I was sitting in the back seat, watching Luke and me kiss. I saw the way the dash light lit up the side of my face as I tipped my chin for his mouth to touch mine. I saw how his tongue carefully traced where my lips parted. From outside of my body, I watched while I leaned into his hand as it pressed down my side, fingers ironing out the wrinkles in my shirt. I heard my breath grow unsteady, saw his eyes close, felt his fingers on my thigh, asking for me to go further, to places I hadn’t yet explored.