I remind myself to breathe. ‘Accident.’
She touches another spot on my back carefully. ‘Here?’
A different scar – she must feel me stiffen.
I pause. ‘Dad.’
I don’t know what made me admit that.
My heart thuds at irregular intervals. I wait for her to say something sympathetic or brusque, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t seem to react at all. Maybe this quiet beat is her reaction. I’m grateful for it.
Then she clears her throat quietly. ‘A belt buckle, was it?’
‘Yeah.’
Each of our pauses and hesitant words feel weighted, thick. My brain is firing slowly. Other parts of me catch alight faster. She touches me again, traces lines on my shoulder blade. My blood turns to golden syrup.
‘Amie, what are you doing?’ I try to say it casually.
Her voice sounds quiet and close. ‘I’m looking at your tattoo.’
I don’t know what else to say, and when her fingers slide gently down, over my ribs, I don’t think I can say anything. All my skin feels stretched and sensitive, like the surface of a drum. My jeans are still damp. Grass tickles my face, my chest. The air around us seems to be heating up.
Her fingers reach the tender skin at my waist. Trickle, with infinite lightness, over the curves and whorls of the snake there. I can’t pretend anymore. I press my mouth into the grass to muffle my gasp.
We are in a hot golden bubble. Amie leans closer and I smell her: below the smell of sun-warmed river, the scent of jasmine. Her fingertips have reached the waistband of my jeans, the lowest visible point of my tattoo.
‘Show me where it goes,’ she whispers.
I open my eyes. Amie is leaning over me. Her lips are parted, and there’s a deep rosy flush on both her cheeks. She looks beautiful, with her serious heavy-lidded gaze, and glossy black hair falling forward. She’s staring at me like she’s hypnotised.
I am going to do this. Even before I move I feel it, like I felt before about swimming here. This sense of inevitability, of falling headlong into something already decided, already meant to be.
Amie watches as I move my hand from above my head, where I’ve been clutching at my hair, and drag it down to my stomach. Lower.
My body is angled now, facing her side-on. When I undo the button on my jeans I see her stop breathing, just for a moment, and the pleasure of it is like a zap of electricity.I did that.I hook my thumb into the waistband of my jeans and jocks, and ease them down.
Now my entire left side is exposed, almost to the curls at my groin, and she can see where my tattoo ends: where the snake curls fluidly over my lower back before twisting around my waist, to flick into a sharp supple tail that arrows down and lies flat in the inner valley of my hip.
Amie is motionless. Then she reaches out, and her finger traces the path. Her hand is shaking. My skin is on fire. When she arrives at the tip of the snake’s tail, nestled in its soft private place, she turns her hand. Lays the back of it against me. I make a low noise, shuddering.
Her touch travels on from the hollow of my hip, up my stomach to my chest. She feathers the short soft hairs at my breastbone. Runs her whole palm further to my neck, curling around my nape.
I can’t hold still anymore: I chase the length of her arm with my hand, plunge my fingers into her hair. Draw her closer. Look right into her eyes.
‘Harris –’ she breathes.
‘Are you sure?’ My voice is so husky and deep it doesn’t sound like mine. ‘Because if I kiss you, that’s it. I don’t think I can –’
‘I’m sure,’ she gasps.
I surge up and pull her to me, lip to lip.
Once, in science class, I saw magnesium burn. It went up so fast and white it was like watching a solar flare at close range.
I feel like that now. I’ve dreamt of kissing this girl, I thought I was ready for this –
I had no idea.
