Court peeks through the branches. “I think it’s safe.”
My palms begin to sweat. “I need to focus on something. Will you promise not t-to,” I stammer, “not to move?”
“Okay. What are you going to do?”
“Smell you.”
FIFTEEN
“DO THEY LOOK LIKE THEY’RE ABOUT TO VOMIT?
THEY’RE IN LOVE.”
—Reseda, Aromateur, 1724
“AREN’T YOU ALREADYsmelling me?” Court asks around a smile. “I just played an hour of soccer with twenty-five third graders.” He leans in as if telling me a secret, and my pulse spikes at the warmth of his breath caressing my forehead. “Girls won. And anyway, I thought you already knew how I smelled.”
His throaty purr nearly liquefies me. Just like someone fixed by an elixir, my feelings for Court multiply like bacteria with each succeeding exposure to him.
I affect a business tone. “You have a bunch of smaller notes that aren’t obvious. One of those you share with your mom. I haven’t sourced it yet, but if I could get a better smell of it, I might be able to.”
“Okay. Smell away.” He spreads his arms, and if I were any other teenage girl, I would jump right into them.
I wrestle down my nervousness over what I’m about to do.Analyze the scents,comes Mother’s voice in my head,don’t give them the upper hand.I am a professional. A love professional. “I have to warn you not to touch me.”
His eyebrows lift in a question.
“I don’t want to infect you.” I already sprayed him once, after the bee sting, which should have been enough to last a lifetime. But why take chances? Especially when I’ve never hugged a boy before.
“Are you sick?”
“Not exactly.” I lick my lips. “But you could get, er, sick if you touch me.”
“What do you mean, sick?”
Wonderful. Now he’s going to think I have some transmittable disease, which isn’t far from the truth. “Lovesick.”
The corners of his mouth tuck back even more in amusement. “Lovesick?” he asks.
“Yeah, crazy, I know.” I try to keep a casual tone but I feel the flush.
My skin has gone clammy. What’s wrong with me? I’ve never felt so nervous in my life. He’s just a boy, human being like me, Homo sapiens. I lean in so that my nose is only an inch away from him and sniff.
Unlayering the mood notes, I find his scentprint. The nutmeg and cinnamon are especially strong and enticing.
I sniff again, and though his scentprint plays like a chord to my nose, I can still barely make out the miso.
I laugh nervously. “Don’t mind me.”
Hesitantly, I slip my arms around his slim waist and press my cheek against his chest. He takes in a short gasp of air and his chest clutches. The perfume of honeysuckle, heady and narcoleptic, escapes from him, the note of desire. Then again, we’re so close, it could be coming from me. Court doesn’t shrink away, but I feel him fidget as I hold him. His fists clench at his sides and his face is a tight mask. The two-step of his heartbeat chases after mine. I close my mind to the confusingly hard yet comfortable pillow under my cheek, and hone in on the miso note.
The scents are there, playing for you.Listen to them.
The miso note creeps, rather than sails into my nose, and I open my mind to its character, its essence. The saltiness doesn’t have a lick of bitter, unlike table salt, and reminds me of seashells. It has to be a marine plant or a plant found near the ocean. I shut down thoughts of Court, shirtless and surfing, almost as soon as they crop up, and refocus. There’s a buttery roundness to the scent, like it’s used to sunshine. I inhale one more time.
Five years old, the beach. The fog sits on the ocean thick as cotton batting. Mother is wearing a floppy hat and sorting through a shiny black plant with floats that resemble lightbulbs. I close my fist around the clam and trudge over to a little girl about my age with daisies on her bathing suit.
I hold my clam out to the girl. “It smells like sea grass.”
