Page 90 of Wrecked

He got past the part he had messed up, and I couldn’t help but clap, causing him to spin around, his back hitting the mirror.

I danced my way in and laughed as he covered his face with two hands. His bright red cheeks shone behind his fingers. Not having any of this embarrassment, I grabbed his hands and pulled them from his face. He tilted his head in shyness, but he had a broad smile on his face.

The music was still playing, the chorus coming up. And, now, it was my turn to embarrass myself.

“There she goes with the bom, bom, bom,” I sang as I did the steps to my dance routine. “Her hips, they sway with the bom, bom, bom.”

Brad’s brows rose.

We’d just started dating, and he hadn’t come to my last dance competition to know what we had been working on.

“It’s guerrilla warfare with her bom, bom, bom!” I hopped up on the bed, and instead of doing the routine, I busted out with some freestyle dance moves. “Get nasty! I get loose! I get crazy! She’s so loose! It’s Master Craze, and the girl’s in a daze. I just can’t help myself.”

Brad’s face lit up in amazement. His embarrassment was long gone. In its place was elation. He climbed up on the bed and started jumping and dancing with me.

“She’s freaky! She’s so fine! I want to make her all mine! With that sleek red hair and a devilish stare, I’m about to lose myself.”

We crashed onto the bed, and Brad mercilessly tickled me. His fingers moved up and down my sides, igniting laughter from me. I curled in to protect myself from his roaming fingers, laughing and trying to catch my breath. He wouldn’t let me up, so I did the only thing I knew that would make him stop.

I kissed him.

It wasn’t our first kiss. That had been after school in the park behind the building. It had been quick and awkward, but it was my first, so it was special. He had just asked me to be his girlfriend, and the kiss was some sort of commemorative marking of the occasion.

Not this kiss. This time, I caught him by surprise. When my lips brushed his, his fingers stopped. His eyes were wide open. So were mine. We stared at each other for a moment.

I had never been alone with a boy on a bed, and I was pretty sure it was his first time, too. I didn’t know if he was as scared as I was, but I was so nervous that my body went completely stiff.

A small breath escaped his lips as he leaned further in. My body melted into the mattress as he deepened that kiss. It was my first true kiss, and it was beautiful.

“I’m going to draw you.” He looked down at me, his eyes roving over my face.

I raised my brows. Brad was an excellent artist. I knew from seeing the drawings all over his binder.

“I’m going to draw you every day until I get it right.”

“Get what right?” I asked.

“How pretty your face looks right now. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to erase it from my memory.”

“Then, don’t.”

I open my mouth to breathe in the burn radiating in my throat. My jaw trembles, and my mouth curves down in a frown. My foot pushes on the gas, and I pull away from the curb.

“You are not going to eat that?”

My jaw hung low in mock horror.

Brad leaned forward and took the last slice of pizza, held it in the air with the tip of the triangle pointing down, and bit the end.

I groaned in disgust. We’d ordered a whole pie, and I’d only eaten one slice. He was now devouring his seventh.

“You are such a boy!” I took the long white paper that had been removed from my straw earlier, rolled it up, and threw it at him.

He grinned with a mouthful of cheese. “Lucky for you.”

I rolled my eyes and put my feet up next to him on the plastic booth.

I watched as he ate, that cropped black hair cut close to his head. He had these perfectly arched eyebrows that highlighted his blue eyes. He was a genetic anomaly—the kind of guy I had taped on my walls. And he was mine.