Authors: Barry Lyga
I stuttered for the first time in my life. I just couldn't get the words out. But finally, eventually, tortuously, I told her about the dreams. I didn't tell her about the ones I had when I was awake, or at least, I didn't tell her that that's what they were. I told her about them and lied and said they happened when I was asleep.
"Oh, Josh..." she said, only it was more like a groan, like she'd been hurt somehow. I could hear her breathing,
panting,
like she was running a race or carrying some heavy, awful weight. She leaned closer to me, and I could smell strawberries and the wine on her breath. "Josh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry..."
I was trying to figure out what she was sorry about when she kissed me. Not on the cheek this time. Not for just a second. Her lips against my lips. My head exploded. My heart stopped and started again in triple time. I flickered
—hand running up—
and rallied back just as I felt something warmer and softer and stronger than her lips pressing against my lips. Her tongue
oh wow shouldn't that be gross someone's tongue but it isn't it is glorious
pressing against my lips, prying them open, and then her tongue inside my mouth like in the movies—I realized,
This is how they kiss in the movies
and sparks flew in my brain, ricocheting in my consciousness and igniting me all over.
I probed at her tongue with my own. Yow! It was like sticking a fork in a socket. My mind melted. Everything I was or would be boiled down to the tip of my tongue.
Our tongues danced around each other. I tasted the wine on hers. Could she taste the Coke on mine? She traced the edges of my teeth, slid around the confines of my mouth as if seeking out every last trace of taste from me.
I couldn't stand it. I had to—
I pushed forward the tiniest bit and forced her tongue out of my mouth ... following it back into her mouth with my own, our lips fused as if with glue.
I followed her lead, exploring the inside of her mouth, dueling with her tongue, rooting out the flavor of the white wine and the even sweeter taste of her own saliva. It should have been gross. I always imagined it would be gross. But it wasn't.
She leaned back a little, breaking contact. We were still so close that a movement from either of us would mean touching the other, but I froze. It was like an electrical field had come up between us and to disrupt it would mean ... I don't know. I was afraid to find out. I was dying to find out.
I was woozy. So was she. She was still panting, having trouble catching her breath.
"Was ... was ... was..." She gulped air and laughed. "Was that what you wanted?" Her voice was low, not a whisper, just
low.
"Was that what you wanted, Josh?"
I fought for breath, swaying back and forth.
"Don't pass out on me, Josh," she said, her voice still low, like it was for me and no one else in the universe. "Was that what you wanted?" There was a desperation in her tone.
"Yes," I managed to gasp.
She sighed like someone who's been given an unexpected gift.
I don't know where it came from, but it popped into my head and I said: "Let me guess: I can't tell my parents about that, either."
She collapsed against me. We held each other and laughed.
George was coming home early that day, so there was no time for further discussion. I wanted to stay, but Eve said that I had to go. We bundled up against the cold outside and she drove me home.
"Listen to me very carefully," she said on the way. "What we did was fine. We care about each other, and when people care about each other, they kiss. You know that, right?"
I was a little annoyed. I wasn't a baby. "Yes."
"But you know I could get in trouble for it, right? I mean, I could lose my job. I could go to jail." Her fingers strummed on the steering wheel.
"I know."
"So—and I know I've said this before—you can't tell anyone what we talked about or what we did. OK?"
"Uh-huh."
"Promise me, Josh. Promise me you'll never tell anyone."
I promised. Why would I tell anyone? If I told anyone, they would know what I had thought and seen. They would know I'd lusted after Eve, know that I'd spied on her while she slept, that I'd dreamed about her even while awake. I couldn't tell anyone.
"OK." We pulled into my driveway. The house was dark, the driveway bare. I started to open the door, but Eve stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. The dome light dimmed and we were in darkness.
She looked around for a second, then leaned toward me. I met her halfway and she kissed me again, a shorter but no less electric version of what we'd shared in the apartment.
"To keep you warm tonight." She giggled. I don't know why—I felt like I'd be warm forever.
I hugged her and said good night and went inside.
I thought for sure that something about me would scream "I kissed Eve!" to everyone in a twenty-foot radius, but Mom and Dad seemed oblivious when they got home. (I had checked myself in the bathroom mirror a hundred times, it seemed, before Mom got home, making sure that there was no lipstick on me anywhere.)
Mom made dinner, which I barely tasted. I went to my room to do my homework, and close to my bedtime, the phone rang. My door was open, so I heard Mom pick it up out in the kitchen.
"Hello? Yes, this—Oh! Mrs. Sherman! How nice to hear from you!"
What? I crept out of my bedroom like a ninja. What the hell was going on?
"Really?" Mom said.
Oh, God! She was going to tell Mom! She was going to tell Mom what I said, about the dreams ... I was
dead. Mrs. Mendel, your little perv of a son kissed me tonight...
"Well, that's so nice of you to check," Mom went on. "No, I got home just a little bit after six today, so he was only here for forty-five minutes or so."
I tried to imagine a way to get Mom off the phone. Maybe I could scream and pretend I hurt myself? But that wouldn't work unless I
really
hurt myself.
"Oh, of course you can. Just a minute." Mom put her hand over the phone and turned right to me. I stepped back into the hallway quickly so that she wouldn't see me.
"JOSH!" she yelled. "Josh! Telephone!"
My heart hammered in the darkness. How could she not hear it?
"OK!" I shouted back, forgetting that I was only standing about five feet away.
Mom poked her head around the corner. "What are you doing there?"
Busted! God, I was an idiot! My heart kept pounding. How could Mom not see the word
GUILTY!
emblazoned across my forehead?
"I was ... coming ... to get a ...
glassofwater!
" It came out of me in a rush of triumph, like a sliding stolen base. Lie completed! The runner is safe!
"Well, here." She thrust the phone at me. "Your teacher wants to talk to you."
I had the presence of mind to enhance my lie by saying, "Which teacher?" as if I couldn't possibly imagine
which
teacher would be calling me.
"Mrs. Sherman," Mom said, with a little eye roll, as if I were a bumbling idiot child, and in that moment, I was.
I took the phone. "Hi, Josh," Eve said. "Is your mom standing there?"
Mom had wandered back into the kitchen to empty the dishwasher, but she was still pretty close by. "Yes."
"OK. I just wanted to say good night to you."
"Oh." I felt warm again.
"I can't wait to see you tomorrow."
My head swam.
"Now say 'OK, Mrs. Sherman.'"
"OK, Mrs. Sherman." I was a robot, operating each line of code as it came to me.
"Say 'Thanks.'"
"Thanks."
"Are you looking forward to seeing me tomorrow?"
I flickered to her lips, her tongue, then reached out to steady myself against the wall.
"Yes," I whispered.
"Good. I'm glad." She sounded like a kid on her birthday. "If she asks, tell your mother that I called to let you know that you left a book here, but that I'll bring it in to school for you."
"OK."
"I'll see you tomorrow."
"OK."
"Good night."
"Good night."
She hung up and I went into the kitchen to put the phone in its cradle. "What did she want?" Mom asked.
"She, uh, I left a book at her apartment." Wow! Eve thought of
everything.
"She's bringing it to school for me."
Mom
tsk
ed. "Well, you're lucky she's looking out for you, Josh."
No kidding.
It took me a long time to fall asleep that night.
For the next couple of days, this is how it went: I would go home with Eve after school and we would spend an hour or so on the sofa, kissing. She taught me what she liked, training my lips and tongue, an education in when to thrust and be aggressive and when to tease, passive. Her hands roamed my upper body the whole time, tracing electric charges over my chest and stomach and back and shoulders. Everywhere she touched me felt supercharged. I put my arms around her, touching only her back, exulting in the glory of her body pressed tightly to mine.
After that hour, Eve would excuse herself to the bedroom while I sprawled on the sofa and played Xbox. It took a while, but eventually my erection would subside. My Xbox play suffered; I really sucked after a make-out session with Eve. I couldn't concentrate. I flickered like the images on the screen.
If George was working late, we would cook dinner together, like we were married or something, and have another brief make-out session on the sofa while dinner cooked, stopping with the buzz of the oven timer. Sometimes she unbuttoned my shirt or (if it was a pullover) pulled it out of my waistband and skipped her nails lightly across my chest, a sensation I can only describe as ... indescribable. (I tried running my own fin gernails along my chest at home, but it didn't feel remotely the same.) Then we would eat, clean up, and get into the car to take me home for the evening. We would stop up the road from my house out of range of the streetlights and nosy neighbors, for one last brief kiss. Then Eve would check me over for lipstick and general disarray and drop me off at my house.
I was getting home later now, but my parents didn't seem to mind. I lied to them and told them that I was doing my homework at Eve's, so they saw nothing amiss. Instead, I would set my alarm for early in the morning and do my homework then.
School was tough. I thought of Eve constantly, flickered regularly. It made it difficult to pay attention in class, and almost impossible in history, where Eve dressed down and acted like I was just another student. School had always been easy for me, almost intuitively so, and I was able to get by and keep the Streak going, but only barely.
Eve hated that there was no way for her to talk to me at home without raising my parents' suspicions. They had caller ID and also monitored my e-mail.
A couple of weeks before Christmas break, things changed again.
It was a Friday afternoon, and Eve seemed particularly aggressive, moaning deep in her throat as we kissed and clawing at my back through my shirt. The lights were off, the room lit by candles placed on the coffee table. As Eve pulled back from me, her face was a gorgeous painting, sections drenched in black, others lit in a flickery orange. She was gasping, and so was I. Her hand lingered on my belly, stroking gently back and forth. I waited for her to get up and go into the bedroom, like she usually did. Instead, she leaned in and nibbled on my ear (another thing I never would have imagined could feel good ... but did) and whispered, "You poor thing."
I liked the way her voice went husky and breathy when we were alone.
"What do you mean?"
"I think I've been torturing you. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to."
"What?" My head was spinning as her tongue found its way into the shell of my ear, flicking lightly, sending sparks down into my brain.
"It's so selfish of me," she whispered, and her hand moved farther south. When she touched my belt, I hitched up a breath and jerked involuntarily. "Shh! Shh!" she said. "It's OK."
"I'm sorr—" I started to say, but then her hand went lower, touching me through my jeans. Oh, God! She knew! She knew I had an erection! I wanted to melt away from embarrassment then and there.
"Don't be sorry. What are you sorry for?" It had to be a rhetorical question, because she shoved her tongue into my mouth just then and I was helpless as she found my zipper and pulled it down.
If I'd thought that the feel of her tongue on my ear or her nails on my naked chest were phenomenal, then I had absolutely no idea what to expect and no way to be prepared when her hand slipped into my fly. There was nothing tentative about it—her fingers didn't brush against me gently, they sought me out and
grabbed.
I groaned into Eve's mouth, was greeted with a groan in return.
It only took a few seconds for her to navigate the fly of my boxers and then her fingers were on me directly. I saw explosions of light against my eyelids as my eyes squeezed tightly shut. Before I knew it, she had me out in the open and broke our kiss.