“Oh, come on. If Janie can do it, you can, too.”
His mouth curves into a half grin. “I didn’t say I couldn’t do it.” He edges past me, out onto the bridge. His first steps are careful, but then he acclimates to the way the bridge swings and becomes uninhibited, candidly happy, so different from his usual vigilance.
“Come on,” he says, reaching for me.
I take his hand and stagger onto the swaying bridge, bumping his hip with mine as we’re jostled side to side. He’s laughing and I am, too, and the last hour seems distant, likenothingcompared with the silliness that is this moment.
If Mom and Audrey could see us now.
The bridge rocks sideways, rattling on its chains, and I totter forward. Mati hooks an arm around my waist, saving me from a fall into the moat (or whatever) like a knight in shining armor. The bridge stills because we have, but his arm stays looped around me, and I surrender a breath to surprise.
“Is this okay?” he says.
This ismorethan okay. It’s new, therefore thrilling, but tender and reassuring, too. My hands land on his chest and rest there like it’s their rightful place. His heart strum-strum-strums through the soft cotton of his shirt, trapped beneath the corral of his rib cage. He’s looking at me like he can’t believe I’m here, he’s here,we’rehere. He’s looking at me like he adores me.
Is this okay?
I nod.
“I was disappointed tonight,” he says, “because of the way your sister-in-law treated me. But do you know what was more disappointing?”
My whisper is raw and eager: “What?”
“Being interrupted. You stopped kissing me, and that kiss… that kiss was everything.”
“I wasn’t sure. I mean, it was for me, too, but…”
“But?”
“But you’re not supposed to be kissing girls.”
He leans forward, and I do, too. There’s that tug again, invisible filaments stretching from my heart to his, reaching out to meet him, capture him, claim him. He’s a breath away when he says, “I am only kissingyou.”
He threads his fingers into my hair and dips to press his mouth to mine. I expect tentativeness, but there is none. There’s heat, and there’s hunger, and there’s me, yielding, reaching up to circle my arms around his neck, pressing closer, and closer, and closer, until the bridge is swinging and Mati’s pulling back, smiling.
“Where were we headed when we stepped onto this bridge?”
“That way,” I say, pointing to the playground’s tallest turret.
“Lead the way,shaahazadi.”
elise
“You have to tell me what it means,” I say, nudging him with my elbow.
“I will, when you pronounce it correctly.”
I try again, though I fear I’m a lost cause. “Shaahazadi.”
Butchered.
He grins, shaking his head. We’re leaning against the wall of the turret, shielded from the cool night air, in a cocoon of privacy. We’re side by side, aligned knee-hip-shoulder as we gaze through the turret’s glassless windows. The sky is blue-black and dotted with crystalline stars, not so different from the pair on my ceiling.
“You’ll get it,” Mati says. “Eventually.”
“What if I ask really nicely? Then will you tell me what it means?”
“What would ‘really nicely’ sound like?”
