“But I haven’t even read you yet,” I pointed out.
“Can you?” he asked, as if he was doubting my abilities.
I’d never seen my gift as an ability before, or a skill. It had just always been something I could just do. But suddenly, I felt competitive about it, like I had to prove myself. Did he think he was better than me? Was he better than me?
I hadn’t read him yet because I’d been so focused on myself, and the physical part of him. To read someone, I usually just have to focus and get inside their minds. I knew it would be no different with him.
I inched closer to him. Any closer, and I would have been sitting on his lap. But he didn’t mind one bit. I gazed right into his eyes and lingered there for a long, quiet beat.
He liked me. He liked me a lot. He wanted to kiss me. He liked my mouth; my lips. And he was also fascinated by the curl brushing my right cheek.
I smiled wide. “I hate it,” I told him. “The rest of my hair behaves, like normal hair. And this one little strand does this stupid curly thing.”
It’s kind of adorable,he was thinking.
“Thank you. My mom thinks it’s adorable, too, but I hate it. I straighten it with my iron, but two seconds later, it curls up again. It drives me crazy.”
He bit his lip, and for a fraction of a second, I saw what he wanted; to taste my mouth. He tore his gaze from mine, so suddenly, it frightened me. His face pulled from mine, and I couldn’t read him anymore.
“You can’t do that,” I scoffed. “You’re cheating. I can’t read you if you won’t even look at me.”
He shook his head. “Sorry, you’re freaking me out… I’m not used to being on this side of it.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” I told him. “So okay, let’s just not look at each other, but we can still talk, can’t we.”
He turned to me briefly. “Sure.”
He lifted his hand then, and his fingers danced over the fire. The letters OK appeared over us, and warmed my skin.
“You’re pretty good at that.”
He did it again. This time, he drew a heart, and turned to me, a smirk on his face. What a flirt.
“How long have you been playing with fire?”
“Ever sense I was a kid.”
“Have you ever gotten in trouble?”
He laughed. “Yeah, a few times. My mom was not impressed when I set the backyard shed on fire.”
“You what?”
“I was a kid. I couldn’t quite handle my powers back then.”
“I can imagine.”
He drew a series of circles. I loved it – my own personal show.
“Three strikes and I was out. My mother told me when I was twelve that the next time she caught me playing with fire, she’s send me to juvie. I didn’t really know what juvie would be like but I was a small kid, and I guessed there’d be a lot of bigger kids there, and I didn’t like the prospect of getting the crap beaten out of me. So I was pretty good. I’d do it secretly, and was very careful.”
“Can you create fire? Or can you just control it?” I was fascinated, and this question had lingered at the back of my mind ever since I first saw him at the bonfire.
He turned to me. “Not really…” he said quietly. “I’ve only done that twice, in extreme anger.”
My eyes grew wide. “What?! What happened that made you so angry?”
He turned from me, and I couldn’t read him at all. “Maybe I’ll tell you someday,” he promised.
