I shook my head and Lucas removed a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, pulling one out and lighting it. He took a long drag and breathed it out before looking at my feet.
“You should take your socks off.”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“I mean, you should take your socks off sometime. You never do.”
I blushed and pulled my knees into my chest. “I like wearing socks,” I said.
Grimacing, he said, “Come on, now, tell the truth.”
“Why should I?”
He took another drag off his cigarette and narrowed his eyes when the smoke got into them. “Lying’s bad for you,” he said.
“Have you ever seen a ballerina’s feet? The feet of a person who’s done nothing but dance for fifteen years straight?” As he shook his head, I informed him, “Well, they’re ugly.”
“Let me get this straight: You won’t take your socks off because your feet are ugly?”
“Exactly.”
“They can’t be that ugly. Let me see them.”
“No!”
“Please?”
“No!”
He took a last drag from his cigarette and dropped the butt in his can of cola. He looked sly, like he was planning something, and before I could react, he leapt at me and I shouted. I wrestled against him and he pinned me to the ground, and at one point I kicked him in the stomach by accident, and he pretended to bite my leg in response. Soon he was raising his arms, victorious. My socks were in his hand, and I was trying to hide my feet, but he grabbed my ankle in both hands and pulled me toward him.
“Oh, come on!” he shouted. “They’re fine.”
“They’re hideous.”
“What about mine? You can’t exactly call them appetizing. They’re hairy all over. They look like they belong to a hobbit.”
Even once he’d gotten what he wanted, he didn’t let me go, and the slight, warm pressure of his hands felt like a caress. Then he lay on his back and looked up into the sky, my foot resting on his chest. I tried to retract it, but he wouldn’t let it go, and I just had to settle for the fact that a guy I barely knew was there stroking a part of my body that I hated.
Still, I enjoyed the intimacy of that moment. The kindness of that gesture, the strength of his hands, and their delicacy.
“Did you know, if you could travel at the speed of light, supposedly it would take you forty-six billion years to cross the universe? It’s full of galaxies and solar systems, planets and satellites, asteroids and comets, and stars,” he said.
“I had no idea.”
“It’s so immense, and you and I are just two microscopic points inside it. It’s a little frightening,” he responded meditatively.
I looked up, too. “It scares you?”
“No, it just makes me ask myself if there’s some other planet millions of light years away where there are two other little points that are drunk and talking bullshit.”
I giggled. “Maybe it’s us, but in an alternative reality.”
“I like that idea.”
“I read somewhere that a star shines brightest just before it’s about to die.”
Lucas grunted. “Remind me not to ask you to cheer me up if I’m ever feeling down.”
