After I had draped and slumped to his satisfaction, he started lecturing the girl playing Mina, the same Indian girl who had started a less-than-literary analysis of the Kama Sutra a few weeks ago. But even he wasn’t enough to make her follow his direction or the script and run frantically over the stage.
“Lucy, Lucy.” Her call sounded less than terrified as she strolled toward me, especially with the stifled laughter coming from backstage. My lips twitched.
Thankfully, they had left all my clothes where they were supposed to be instead of pulling them down to show a lot more than I thought a vampire really needed since this was only a run-through, but Ben’s breath was hot and wet on my neck and his clammy fingers still brushed my skin as he moved my hair out of the way.
“Lucy.”
His fingers paused, cold and damp, just as I remembered the giant purpling hickey that was the reason my ponytail had been on the side in the first place. The guy probably didn’t know what it was, except for a massive, multihued bruise along the curve of my neck. His footsteps moved awkwardly away as the girl slowly strolled closer.
My hand moved more than slowly to pull my hair back over the offending spot, but from her laughter I could tell she had seen it. I was kind of embarrassed. Mostly, though, I was a little bit proud.
“Are you okay?”
“All right!” My drama teacher came down the aisle in awkward, stilted strides. “All right.”
I could see spit spray the front of the stage and I bit my lip to contain my laughter.
“Mina.” I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic either, but I was supposed to be drugged. Or bloodsucked. Whatever. At least I attempted surprise.
“Let’s get you inside.” She awkwardly reached for my shoulder. Her hands hovered over my skin as we both walked to the other wing, very carefully not touching me. Maybe she’d mistaken the hickey for a contagious skin disease. Then again, I had a feeling she knew exactly what the little bruises were.
But she wasn’t the only one who was going to feign confusion.
“I thought Ben wasn’t supposed to actually bite her.” Little Redhead had her hands on her hips and was standing way too close to Dev. Bitch. Her barely-there eyebrows were raised, wrinkling her freckled forehead, and a smile made the stage lights reflect off twisted lips. “But there’s something on her neck.”
Was she seriously going to do this? I tried not to laugh. It was more embarrassing than intimidating.
The Indian girl froze and stepped away from me, giggling. Dev was getting high-fives and back slaps from the senior guys again. One of them pushed Red further into the stage lights with his broad shoulders.
Our teacher frowned and pushed his glasses to the top of his head. “Benjamin?”
“It was there when I leaned down.” Benjamin was on the other side of the stage, hands folded behind his back, toes out in what looked strangely like first position.
“Oh well.” The teacher looked relieved now, ready to give the high school drama back to us and save his energy for his next fabulous adaptation. He had confided to us a few days before that he was going to use the break to begin his adaption of
Moby Dick: A Comedy
. Seriously. It was going to be the spring play. “Move along, we have a lot to do, lots to do. Ladies, we should run through this scene again. I need the palpable anxiety, the passion…”
He was clutching one hand to his chest, and I mentally noted that our Automatic External Defibrillator scavenger hunt during Orientation had revealed one in the theatre lobby. I think he was acting, but with him I was never quite sure. We were certainly enough to give anyone chest palpitations.
“Mina” and I got off stage as fast as we could. She was very careful not to look at me or touch me in any way. Bitch. I’m pretty sure, however, that we were united in our desire for him to forget to make us do the scene again. Time for someone else to be on the spot. Drama had only continued to reinforce the childhood conviction that acting was not for me.
Red had her arms crossed and looked irritated. Dev hugged me as soon as I stepped backstage, looking much too pleased with himself. I debating telling him he looked like a toddler who had just peed standing up for the first time, but this wasn’t the place. Red glared. The guys behind us laughed. Dev pressed his lips to the hickey.
“Oops.”
After school was an organized tangle of limbs embracing and real clothes and denim that didn’t fit the way it had before we’d eaten all of that ramen. Scott and Nicky left with her parents before the rest of us ordered dinner. We got a free calzone because Cleo practically flashed the delivery guy. She asked what we would do without her. Dev assured her that I could get free food just as well and I hit him. Amie called him names and Alec pushed both of us into the snow. They were getting along better now. Amie had been making out the last few nights with one of the lacrosse guys.
We went behind Math-Sci to eat and I sat in Dev’s lap to stay warm. Amie sat in Cleo’s lap and Alec was just cold. He was also eating ice cream in the snow so I laughed at him and then stole some.
Dev shivered when I pressed my cold lips to his neck. I barely had enough time to shriek before I was on my back, in the snow.
“I’m from LA.” He was pouting again. “We’re sensitive to cold.”
My hands froze as I dug them into the snow and melted snow dripped around my fingers. They were probably blue in seconds, but the look on Dev’s face when I hit him in the back with a snowball was worth it. He grabbed for me and then my back was freezing even though my front was warm because Dev had pinned me in the snow. He was kissing me so I didn’t really mind. It tasted like mint ice cream and tomato sauce. It should have been gross and cold and wet in all the wrong ways. I had to pull away because we were all laughing too hard.
“You look like you have dandruff.” Dev moved his hand from my jaw up to my hair, brushing snow off. Most of it just stuck and melted.
“You just pushed me into the snow, asshole.” I craned my neck up and kissed his shoulder.
“Don’t let him get any,” Amie advised. She was also holding his calzone hostage.
“But then what will she do?” From the tone of her voice, I knew Cleo probably had an eyebrow up and that Cheshire smile. I’d told her about Charlie’s.
“Find my other boyfrEEK.” Dev was tickling my sides and even though it was probably counterproductive, I wrapped my legs around his waist.
In that weird moment of hot and cold and laughing and kissing and the almost-pain of being tickled, I realized I was going to miss him. Really, actually miss him. The need for body heat was only part of the reason I clung to him. In twenty-four hours, we were both going to be home. While I may have been within driving distance, he was in LA and as much as I trusted him, I wasn’t sure I loved the idea of him being surrounded by skinny wannabe models in bikinis. There were always emails and messages from
sexystarlet69
and
yelloPokeADotbikini
when I was on his computer. It was only slightly more discomforting than the gaggle of freshman groupies. It really wasn’t that I didn’t trust him or that I really thought he’d get smashed and make dumb decisions. But this was too weird, too perfect, to last and I really didn’t want it to end. For now, though, his cold fingers under my jacket made me shriek and dump snow down his shirt and stop worrying about later.
We finally made it out of the snow, but we didn’t let go for the rest of the night. And it wasn’t just me. I was still trying to be not too available, but he would reach for my hand or rest his arm over my shoulders or wrap his arms around my waist, his chin on my shoulder. At some point in the last few weeks, this had stopped being just my maybe.
Our separation was sort of an excuse for leaving everybody to go find a corner. That and the rest of our friends commenting one too many times that Dev should always wrap it before he tapped it, even as I pulled him away through snowdrifts that trickled down the back of my shoes. It was much warmer with my back to the concrete, sheltered from the wind in an alcove off the History building, watching flakes fall behind Dev’s shoulders before I closed my eyes and stopped worrying about the stupid snow.
I wondered if this was the part where I was supposed to give him something to remember me by. But we were outside and I had no idea what I’d give him anyway that would be more impressive than what polka-dot-bikini girl could offer. Maybe he’d remember this as well as I did. It was a study in opposites: hot and cold, concrete and yielding, lazy and frantic, comforting and terrifying. We’d been back to right fielding since Charlie’s, but it was one of those things you can’t really forget about: sometimes I-can’t-believe-I-did-that, sometimes I-can’t-believe-I-haven’t-done-it-again. Sometimes I didn’t know what the hell to think except that he had been naked and I had been naked and it had been sweaty and everyone probably knew about it.
Part of me was definitely pissed that it was too damn cold and public to have round two. Even if boarding school had cultivated a growing disregard for privacy by the rest of the world’s definition, I still had some standards. Beds were nice, although that I was less picky about. I just didn’t want to be in one of the crazy cautionary tales about people sneaking into dorm rooms, under shrubbery and, somehow, on top of projector carts.
You can get used to just about anything, but eventually even Cleo had a line. I think. And impatience could be outvoted. Sort of.
My knees were shaking and my ears had gone completely numb. I didn’t care enough to move away. Besides, my hands were warm underneath his jacket and his hands were warm on my stomach so I could ignore the body parts dropping off my nervous system.
He pressed his forehead to mine. The slow, steady up and down of his chest and the matching rush of hot air hitting my face took over my focus and I closed my eyes. Screw relationships: I didn’t want this right here, right now, this magical snow globe, happily-ever-after-for-now moment to stop.
“’M gonna miss you.” And his lips moved just millimeters from mine and I could feel the air moving as he formed badly enunciated words.
“I’m gonna miss you too.” My hands closed around his shirt, a childish attempt to stop everything right here. I thought of something that might also have been childish, and I had to say it anyway. “Dev?”
“Mm?”
This close, even in the dark, I could see every little flaw. The stray hairs that grew past the hollow of his eye and under the curve of his brow. The handful of acne scars along the left side of his face. The freckles on his chin, three tiny brown dots among the stray hairs of stubble. The peeling skin on his lips, chapped and probably my fault.
The fact that he could see that I hadn’t plucked my eyebrows in a week, there was foundation covering the zit on my nose and my hand shook this morning tracing dark brown liner around my left eye should have made me nervous. It did kind of make me wish I had the compact of bronze powder currently in my room, especially since none of us had gone outside willingly for the last month. But even though I noted his features and wished he would pluck his eyebrows just a little, I wanted to be around to ensure that I was the one telling him to pull the stupid hairs out because he looked dumb. So maybe it was the same for him. After all, he had seen it all and he was still here.
“Bizza?” His lips pressed against my nose.
I smiled. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m extremely distracting.”
Maybe not all flaws were cosmetic either. He got my hand between our faces for that, and then we were laughing as he tried to fight his way to my lips. I didn’t put up too much resistance.
“I just wanted you to know.” My eyes flicked down to the collar of his shirt and then back to the freckles on his chin. “That if something happens over break. If you get drunk or do something stupid. I’d rather know about it than be lied to. It doesn’t mean that I’d dump you, people make mistakes, I just want to know.”
“Hey.” His chest shook with something that was almost a laugh. “Not happening, Biz.”
“But if it does.”
“Not going to.” The corner of his mouth quirked up, typical Dev, and I kissed it. “Don’t worry.”
Didn’t mean I wasn’t going to. Being the last person to find out that my boyfriend had cheated would definitely count as an end. A messy, humiliating, ice cream and bad angry alternative bands end.
“Okay. But seriously.”
“Biz.” He laughed. “Don’t be stupid. There is a reason I’ve been sticking around so long.”
I wished I could raise one eyebrow like Cleo, but I had to settle for two. “Really?” The sarcasm dripped from my voice, thick and syrupy and ultimately sweet as he kissed my nose.
“Really. I kinda sorta like you.” And he smiled again, that stupid smile that drove me crazy, that I had noticed from the first day was just arrogant enough to reassure you that he knew exactly how awesome he was. But more and more, I realized that there was also, in that smile, an acknowledgment of my own awesomeness. And not just because he graced me with his presence on a fairly regular basis.
Instead of our foreheads touching, our noses were bumping and squishing against the other’s cheekbones. Our mouths were tangled and our arms were twisted and unwrapping was going to be a pain in the ass. I kind of liked that.
* * *
Cleo and I decided it was necessary to have one last shower party before break, if only to defrost my bare knees and freezing toes after standing in that alcove with Dev much longer than I should have. Her computer blasted music in the otherwise empty room filled with shower curtains and mold. At first, my feet couldn’t feel the drops I knew were hitting my skin. Soon, though, they were burning with the tingling pain of defrosting, pins and needles driven in by water at industrial pressure.
Cleo was belting the words to a Britney Spears song off-key. It was probably accompanied with dance moves behind her shower curtain. I started laughing and laughed even harder when the R.D. came in to tell us to quiet down because there were people trying to sleep.
If there was anyone trying to sleep at eleven fifteen, the night before a break, I had never met them.