I shrug my untouched shoulder.
He sighs and looks across the sparsely covered coffee table. Aunt Amy’s coffee table is set with a vase of silk flowers, a stack of coasters, and two books she doesn’t like on the shelf. She says they’re specially meant for the coffee table. One is pictures of sculptures and the other is a sports almanac. Neither one of us ever looks at the almanac. I don’t think it’s been opened in years.
Asher’s coffee table is scuffed and scratched and has nothing on it but the ashtray. I decide I like it best.
“Look, I know how it is,” he says quietly. “When somebody close to you dies. It can make you not the person you were. Or make you want to be a person you shouldn’t.” He pauses, runs a thoughtful finger over the scruff on his cheek. “I lost my brother. Older brother. When I was a kid. He was, um…trampled by a horse.”
My elbow tightens around his. I caress his hand with mine for comfort.
“At first, he was paralyzed. His spine. He could talk and see and everything. Then he kept getting these headaches…” He pauses for a few seconds. I feel his head turn to me. “That kind of stuff, it can change you, you know?”
I think I know what he’s getting at. I think. I slip my fingers through his. I can’t believe he’s just told me something so personal. It doesn’t match him on the outside.
I can’t believe what’s just happened in the last day. A day of firsts for me. Ferris wheel, kettle corn, and a kiss with tongue. I don’t know if he should know. It probably wasn’t hard to tell.
I lean forward to put my lips on the corner of his. I try to lean my head against his, but my glasses get in the way, bump his cheek, and I take them off.
His hand tightens against mine. “I don’t want you to think I expect things.”
I nuzzle my face in his neck, kiss him there.
For a few minutes, we stay that way. I feel the throb of his pulse against my nose, and there’s the faint scent of the orangey spice. I get a second of disbelief. Like here he is alive and breathing, this evolved organism. This man on the balcony. This specimen I watched from afar, and I can’t believe this is real. I can’t believe I get to sit here this close to him. I can’t believe he hasn’t told me to get lost yet, and so I pull my face away from his neck like a jolt. I put my glasses back on and let go of his hand and scoot over a tad. I know what I should expect.
I lie back on his sofa and consider asking him for a beer. I might be pushing my luck, but he takes the hand I just took away, plays with my fingers. I realize it was the hand that held his last night. I touched him with it. His face. His neck.
“Did you like it?” I blurt out.
He nods.
“It was okay?”
He nods again. Looks me in my face. “Did you?”
I smile. Feel my cheeks get warm.
His expression is serious, though. He doesn’t smile back.
“I don’t have a brother,” I say gently. “I’ve never had one. But I can imagine it would hurt to lose one.”
He lies back on the sofa beside me. I lay my head against his, until he turns, his lips brushing mine, and I’m eager, opening my mouth to taste his kiss. I didn’t think it would be any better than last night. I didn’t think it would feel different, but it does. The way he slows it, and it’s just his lips, kissing my top lip, my bottom lip, and I think I may never catch my breath.
And that’s fine. Fine.
Let me drown in him, in his very essence. Let me sink into the depths with him, pinned under his kiss, and what a way to go. Tell my family I’ll miss them. Except my father. Tell my aunt I love her.
And tell the world I died happy.
It’s almost dinner time, but I don’t want to go back to my aunt’s yet.
He stops kissing me, though, and it’s like someone has woken me from one of the best dreams of my life. He pulls me up from the sofa. He brushes his thumb across my cheek. “You hungry, pal?”
I sort of shrug and nod. “I guess so.”
“Wanna go somewhere?”
“Okay.” I try not to sound disappointed. Sometimes I don’t like sharing my treasures with the world.
We get on his bike and he takes us to a burger joint in town. It’s not that busy and the waitress behind the counter smiles and winks at him each time she refills his soda, which doesn’t even get close to half-empty. She breezes right on past me. A part of me is proud, another part of me is fascinated, but the part that envies is the loudest of all.
