Riva’s head rested in the crook of Daisy’s
neck. With just a slight adjustment, Daisy was able to rest her
chin on Riva, feeling the crackle of hair products giving way. The
point of her chin sank past the glossy veneer and dipped into the
coarse softness beneath.
“Whatever you two want to do is okay,” Benton
murmured.
On the surface, that sounded like a
reassuring statement, but it struck Daisy as an impatient prompt.
Benton wanted the show to get started, and he was letting his
girlfriend and Daisy know.
Daisy bit back an irritable demand that he
cool it. Her chest ached. She could have spent hours with her arm
around Riva, a cherished dream already realized, savoring every
second, balanced on the edge of wanting more, yet never wanting
this particular moment to end.
Riva obviously felt more obligation to
respond to her boyfriend’s implied wish. She stirred against Daisy
and moved her head, forcing Daisy to pull her chin away from Riva’s
hair.
Tilting her head back, Riva looked into
Daisy’s eyes. Again, this wasn’t the face of the girl who had
almost kissed Daisy at the mall the night before. That girl had
been confident, caught in the inevitability of her own desires.
Tonight, Riva looked like a girl in a music video, lips parted just
so, eyes slightly out of focus. Daisy cleared her throat
uncertainly.
“Do you want to kiss me?” Riva whispered.
Above them, the bed creaked as Benton shifted
his body.
Daisy swallowed a moment of revulsion and
focused on Riva. “Yes,” she said. She had wanted to kiss Riva so
much, for so long. She told herself the circumstances didn’t
matter.
Riva waited. Daisy felt confused. Last night,
Riva had seemed so ready to kiss
her
—she’d nearly done it
twice. Now, she seemed to expect to be on the receiving end.
Daisy’s inexperience weighed heavily. She wanted to kiss Riva so
well, she forgot about Benton hovering above them like a circling
vulture. She wished her mouth could bring back the girl she’d been
getting to know. She also wanted to kiss Riva so well that Benton
burned with jealousy. She wished the power of her lips could shut
him out of the room.
She covered her uncertainty with her hand,
tracing Riva’s lower lip with the pad of her thumb. Riva wore a
sticky, sugary lip gloss that Daisy hadn’t seen before. It stained
her thumb and left her wondering where to surreptitiously wipe it
away.
One breath passed, then another. It seemed
that no one in the room was going to do anything until Daisy did.
Feeling awkward, Daisy put her hand on the back of her friend’s
head, holding her sticky thumb away from Riva’s hair. She looked
like a hitchhiker who wasn’t sure which way was up.
Daisy took a deep breath and dropped a gentle
peck on Riva’s lips. That was a terrible first kiss, she thought—it
barely counted as a kiss at all. No matter how pathetic it was,
though, it made her pulse jump to a speed she was pretty sure it
had never attempted before.
She kissed Riva again, cringing at the
awkward smacking noise she was making with her lips. Daisy wished
this whole thing was different. She wished the kiss had happened
more naturally, instead of being rushed by the circumstances and
Riva’s boyfriend’s impatience.
Then Riva moved into Daisy’s lap, the shift
graceful and knowing and feeling like everything Daisy had wanted
without realizing it. Riva felt so warm in her arms, and, despite
everything, so
right
. Daisy let out a surprised sound and
lifted her head to check Riva’s expression. She needed that
touchstone, needed to know what Riva thought about all this.
When Daisy tipped her head back, though,
Riva’s face was right there, so close that her breath brushed
Daisy’s upper lip. Now Daisy knew why she had a hand on the back of
Riva’s head. She needed it to pull her the rest of that short
distance.
Daisy still didn’t know what she was doing.
She cracked her teeth against Riva’s, making them both jerk and
pull back. But they came together again, more certain the second
time, and Daisy began to learn the taste of Riva’s mouth.
“Beautiful, girls,” Benton said.
Daisy gasped and let go of Riva. She’d
managed to forget he was there, and she didn’t like the reminder.
He’d moved closer while she’d been kissing Riva, and he knelt on
the floor beside them. He pulled Riva into a deep kiss that made
Daisy think of tentacled sea creatures. She tried to get out of the
way and leave them to it, but before she could slip out from under
Riva, Benton reached out and grabbed her arm, holding her in
place.
Every bad thing Jo had warned her about came
crashing into Daisy’s mind. She tugged firmly against Benton’s
hand, but that only made him come up from Riva’s mouth and turn his
attention to her.
“Hey,” Benton said. “Relax. Relax, baby, it’s
okay. You’re doing great.”
His face approached her, like he thought he
had permission to kiss her, too. Daisy shoved both him and Riva
away and jumped to her feet, her head spinning.
“No,” she said. “I can’t do this.”
“Daisy, sit back down. I’m sorry. Maybe you
weren’t thinking past what you and Riva were going to do, but we
should talk about this.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. Despite
all the trouble she’d had coming out to people she cared about, the
truth about her sexual orientation spilled easily from her lips
now. “No. Hell, no. I don’t like boys. There’s nothing to talk
about.”
Riva stood beside Daisy. “Benton, hang on. I
thought you just wanted to watch Daisy and me.”
Her boyfriend sprawled on the floor. Somehow,
his posture wasn’t awkward—the span of his legs emphasized that
this was
his
room,
his
scenario. The tilt of Daisy’s
body felt unnatural to her, as if even the ground beneath her might
betray her and dump her into his lap.
“You two should both calm down. I just came
over to give Riva a kiss. It’s cool. I’ll go back to my spot over
there. Nothing to worry about.”
Riva glanced from Benton to Daisy, then back
again. She shrugged and raised an eyebrow at Daisy, reaching for
her hand as if to pull her into her arms again.
Daisy shook her head and took a big step
back. She wasn’t buying Benton’s act. She didn’t like the way he
was trying to tell her what she ought to do and feel, and she
didn’t like that he was acting like it was no big deal for him to
touch her. Riva might fall for this sort of thing, but Daisy wasn’t
about to.
“Nope,” Daisy said. “I just figured out that
I shouldn’t be here.”
Benton started getting to his feet, and
Daisy’s pulse found an entirely new reason to shift into high gear.
She grabbed her purse and dashed for the door.
Probably
, he
wouldn’t try to force her to stay, but probably wasn’t good enough
for her just then.
She grabbed the doorknob and took way too
long figuring out that he’d used the chain and deadbolt to shut
them in. Behind her, Riva and Benton were yelling. Daisy’s
heartbeat thudded so loudly in her ears that she couldn’t make out
what they were saying.
Clawing at the door as if she’d forgotten how
to use her hands, she got a splinter under one fingernail. Daisy
bit the inside of her cheek and concentrated as best she could. By
the time the door finally submitted to her will and opened, she was
ready to start praying out loud.
She didn’t bother to shut it behind her—she
just started running to her car. Flinging her body against the
comforting bulk of rusting metal, Daisy searched frantically for
her keys.
“Hurry up,” a voice said urgently.
Daisy jumped so hard her purse fell out of
her hands. She dropped to her knees and felt for it on the dim,
dirty concrete. “Riva? What are you doing out here?”
“Just find your keys, okay?”
Daisy glanced up and saw Benton coming toward
them. She didn’t want to know what he planned to say or do. She
dragged herself and her purse up and closed her hand around her
keys at last. She let herself and Riva into the car even faster
than she had the day they cut school, jammed the key into the
ignition, and peeled out of the motel parking lot to the
accompaniment of the actual sound and smell of burning rubber.
* * * *
“Good thing you’ve got practice doing that,”
Riva said. Her throat was mostly closed, and her chest and legs
hurt from exertion. She’d twisted an ankle running in sandals she
hadn’t bothered to strap on all the way. She’d kicked the shoes off
and left them in front of the door to Benton’s room, and she’d torn
the bottom of her left foot on the asphalt and stepped in something
gross and unidentified with her right foot.
“Practice doing what? Telling people no?”
Daisy’s voice sounded hard and unfamiliar.
Heat rose to Riva’s face.
She
had done
this. She had gotten Daisy into this bad situation.
“I, um…I meant practice driving fast. But I
guess it’s good to have practice at the other thing, too.”
“It is.” The sharp, pointed words hit Riva in
the chest.
Everything looked different on this side of
her kiss with Daisy—far clearer than the world had been before. She
had tried and tried to tell Benton that this wasn’t a good idea,
and he hadn’t listened to her at all. Now she had this mess on her
hands—strong feelings for someone besides the person she was
dating, a sense of loyalty to the friend she’d put in an awkward
situation, uncertain anger at her boyfriend, and an inconvenient
desire to find out why she was falling for a girl. It was her
fault, sort of, for failing to stand up for herself. On the other
hand, Benton had pushed her into this, and whenever she’d tried to
speak up for herself, he’d confused and manipulated her.
“I’m sorry,” Riva said. “You shouldn’t have
been there tonight.”
“Well…” Daisy bit her lower lip. Recognition
shocked Riva. She had kissed that mouth. It made her shiver. She
didn’t know what it meant. “I knew I shouldn’t be there,” Daisy
said. “It’s not exactly your fault.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t worry about whose fault
it is,” Riva ventured.
Daisy shot her a look. “You and I were
stupid. That’s our fault. But Benton wasn’t just being stupid. It
was more, you know?”
Riva opened and closed her mouth. The habit
of defending her boyfriend was strong enough that objections came
to her tongue before she had a chance to think them through.
Daisy was right, though. Benton hadn’t just
been stupid. He’d been
pushy
. That was the fair reason to be
mad at him. But there were unfair reasons to be mad at him, too.
Riva remembered the fiery stab in her gut when it had looked like
he’d been about to kiss Daisy. It wouldn’t have bothered her too
much if she’d been angry about her boyfriend paying attention to
another girl, but she had to admit that her jealousy had actually
gone in the other direction. She hadn’t liked the idea of him
touching Daisy.
She didn’t know what that meant, either.
Riva sighed. “When we get far enough away, do
you mind pulling over?”
“Yeah, I can do that. Do you want to find a
place where we can get a milkshake or something?”
“No. Definitely not.” Riva shook her head
firmly. She didn’t want to be seen right now. Everything about her
felt unfinished and unstable. She didn’t know who she was anymore
or what she wanted out of life. She’d been clinging to her love for
Benton since before her mom had moved them to Florida. That was who
she was, what her future was supposed to be about. Riva felt as if
all that would show on her face, as if the workers at a late-night
restaurant would see her as a set of blurry, messy, half-erased
lines.
Daisy tapped her fingers on the steering
wheel, then abruptly pulled the car to the side of the road.
“What’s up?”
So much
. Riva didn’t have words for
any of it. Instead, she reached across the car and cupped Daisy’s
cheek. “Can we try this now? When he’s not watching?”
Riva felt stupid the moment she said it. What
made her think Daisy still wanted to kiss her? Daisy didn’t seem to
think it was stupid, though. She smiled softly, her face seeming to
glow from within. Even though it was dusk, Riva could see every
detail of her clearly. She looked perfect to Riva, strong and
beautiful at the same time, her cheeks round, her jaw slim and
pointed, her smile wide and confident, unchanged by what had
happened in Benton’s motel room. It was hard to breathe when Daisy
was so close.
Then her face dipped forward into another of
her tentative kisses, and Riva’s heart stopped along with her
lungs. It was scary how much she felt when Daisy did this. Riva
closed her eyes. She remembered how sure Benton had been when
they’d kissed for the first time. He’d acted like he was initiating
her in a secret he’d possessed since birth. Any awkwardness or lack
of enjoyment had been Riva’s fault, obviously. She’d learned to
kiss to his specifications.
Daisy, on the other hand, was taking nothing
for granted. Riva could feel how uncertain she was, and she wished
she could tell Daisy how much she liked that. She tried to
communicate her feelings by stroking Daisy’s cheek with her thumb,
but she was sure that small movement didn’t say enough.
For the first time, Riva had time to feel a
kiss out for herself. It was a living thing being brought into
existence by the two of them together. There was a push and pull
between them as she and Daisy sought a point of agreement that Riva
had never tried to find before.
Benton kissed with his lips on the outside of
Riva’s, and she’d never thought about that before. Now, with Daisy,
Riva wasn’t sure whose lips should be on the outside, whose tongue
should slip into whose mouth, or who should press forward and who
fall back. But all these uneasy, undecided things went to Riva’s
head. It was different, and
fun
, and she felt part of this
kiss in a new way. It was sad to think she’d been a bystander in
her own kisses before this.