Have for a while, actually.
Probably always will.
But when her lips met mine, I felt her freeze, and all that tightness in my chest came back. The kind that has nothing to do with Matty and everything to do with falling for someone who’s so far above you in the stratosphere you’d choke on the lack of oxygen while you tried to get to them.
The entire flight, I stare out the window, thumb pressed to the corner of my mouth—forever changed because Ren Jacobs accidentally touched her lips to mine.
I make lists about her. All the things I like. The way she talks faster and faster when the conversation turns to dinosaurs and fossils. How she leans forward and speeds up even more when she’s talking about the ones she likes best—the birdfossil and raptors. How she really is constantly leaving her shit everywhere. Her purse is a mess, it takes her forever to dig something out of there, and she’s always apologizing but I really, really don’t mind waiting. The way her hair spills perfectly down her back, right between her shoulder blades.
The things I wish she knew about herself. She’s at her best when she’s exactly who she is—silly and goofy and sunlight spilling into every room she enters. She could do anything if she wanted. Take over the whole world the way she took over mine.
The list of things I want to do with her? Wake her up every morning the way she woke me up and make her coffee and put on her heels before she leaves for work, so she’s not inconvenienced for a single second of the rest of her life. Use all the stupid money I have and buy her an aquarium or her own museum that she could fill with whatever the fuck she wants. Build her a house like the one she built in me. Retire early and raise kids that look like her so she can chase dinosaurs through the Badlands or whatever she wants to do. Be good to them, the way my mom wasn’t good to me and her dad wasn’t good to her. Hope they get everything from her and nothing from me. Except, maybe, something that’s part of Matty. I’d love a kid like him.
The things I want to do to her? Endless, inappropriate things that have me shifting in my seat, pinching my eyes closed, and trying to breathe through the thought of her touching me and me touching her.
And when we land, and that tiny, little corner of my mouth still feels like her, I realize I’m entirely fucked.
Ren
“I kissed Miller,” I whisper to my best friend, but I’m staring resolutely at the metal armatures supporting a towering saurolophus femur.
“What?!” Imani shrieks, whipping around, brandishing an empty Riker mount.
“Well, it was an accident. Just the corners of our mouths. And he seemed ... he thought I was trying to hug him.” I chew on my bottom lip, finally looking away from the display. “Do you think he was ... I don’t know, repulsed by me?”
Her fingers curl around the edges of the mount, and her mouth turns down in assessment, chocolate eyes squinting at me from behind glasses. “If I liked kissing people I wasn’t in love with, I’d probably like kissing you.”
“Oh, great, thanks.” I throw my hands in the air. “What a ringing endorsement.”
“It is, actually.” She gives me a pointed look, setting the mount on a cart full of random paraphernalia the exhibit designers use. “When was the last time you kissed someone, anyway?”
“A long time ago.” I frown, considering. “One ... no, two years ago. Remember, my therapist said I should try dating again? And they were all—”
“Self-important Bay Street douchebags?” Imani finishes for me.
“Yes. Every single one. So, uhm, a long time ago.”
“Were any of those”—she leans forward, dropping her voice to a whisper—“good kisses?”
I snort. “Seeing as I barely remember them, I’m going to say no.”
She waggles her brows. “And what about your accidental corner kiss with Miller?”
My throat dries out, all that air leaves my lungs again, the floor shifts beneath me, and that corner of my mouth starts to burn. “It was—”
“You’re blushing!” The cadence of her voice rises before she remembers we’re standing in the middle of a half-assembled exhibit and anyone—Dev or Graham or god forbid Scott—could come along. Her tone turns accusatory. “You do have a crush on him. Iknewit.”
“No, I don’t,” I sputter.
But last night his full lips met mine, even in the loosest definition of the wordkiss, and I do think something crushed me.
Another asteroid—shaped like a man with unruly hair, a sideways grin that you feel all the way down to your bones, eyes that might be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, and a brain he doesn’t seem to appreciate enough but you think is wonderful.
“Oh my god, I’m pathetic!” I slap a hand to my mouth, and I feel like slumping down into the fake ferns and sprawling out, waiting for the extinction asteroid to come back and get me. “A man touches half my mouth and I’m, what? Thirteen again?”
Imani cocks her head. “What’s wrong with that? Were you ever ... thirteen?”
“Of course I was thirteen!” I shriek, waving up and down my body. “I’ve aged well past that, actually.”
