I stare. She cannot possibly be serious. She had been supposed to be the one making out with Drew! Why is she doing this to me? To herself?
Her eyes meet mine with a strange intensity, then she straightens and clears her throat.
“Right, Drew and Max. If that isn’t a match made in heaven.” People laugh at the pun. My head spins. “Friends, if you would be so kind to follow Theo? He will be your guard, ensuring that the two of you do not leave the closet for the seven minutes and that you do not turn on your phone flashlights. Meanwhile, we’re going to stay here, anxiously awaiting your report.”
“Gentlemen,” Theo says, grinning. Gesturing for us to follow, he leaves the room, heading up the stairs.
On the way out of the living room, I meet Drew’s eyes. He seems relaxed, even winking at me before he walks out into the corridor and up the stairs. Theo leads the way to his room, where a large closet awaits us. Without stopping to wait for us, he throws open the closet doors and starts emptying the bottom of the center section. It seems to be generally reserved for coats, but he uses the floor for all sorts of sports equipment that would make standing, or moving, for that matter, even more difficult than the space does already. It’ll be a tight fit, I notice, and my stomach jumps.
Drew waits patiently for Theo to finish with the closet, while I fidget anxiously.
“You know, I think they’re supposed to put the names of boys and girls in different bowls?” Theo says, voice muffled by the coats hanging in his face. “So we’re probably going to change the rules soon enough. But y’alls fate is sealed.”
Yeah, good job. Rub it in.
“To be fair,” he adds, pulling his head out of the closet long enough to smirk at me, “If you wanted, you could easily join either team, so I would say it’s a good enough fit.”
It’s weird to hear him say that without meaning any offense by it. I’m sure, somehow, that he doesn’t.
“Leave him alone,” Drew says. “Not his fault.”
I catch his gaze and give him a look. He frowns in turn, but doesn’t say anything more.
Theo puts on some low music to ensure our privacy even as he waits in the door to his room, then it is time for us to get in. Drew is first, gently pushing the coats aside and pressing himself against the side of the section. I follow, and even as I get in, I already know this is going to be awkward as hell. There’s barely an inch between us, even if I press against the coats to keep my distance.
“Do either of you two have claustrophobia or can I lock the door?” Theo asks as he’s about to close the closet door.
Drew gives me a questioning look. His face is so close it’s hard to focus. “Uh, I don’t mind if you lock it,” I say meekly.
“Cool. If something happens, just shout, I’m there.”
The door closes and Drew and I are caught in darkness. I feel his breath against my face. I feel his presence against my body, even though we do not touch. Sinéad’s words echo in my mind.
What stands between us?
A thousand unspoken words
And still not an inch.
My own writing comes to my mind. Not so separate now, huh?
“So…” Drew starts but trails off.
“What?” My mouth is made of parchment.
“We going to start kissing now?”
My heart stalls. He sounds so completely serious. Could he really be? But he’s in love with Sinéad!
“You want to?”
“It’s the point of the enterprise, isn’t it?” Still, no laughter in his inflection. Not even the slightest quiver.
I should bring up Sinéad. I should bring up first kisses, I should bring up that we’re both men, that it’s weird, anything at all, but I cannot make myself. My breath comes in irregular huffs. Butterflies form a tornado in my chest cavity.
“How do I do this?” I ask, my voice cracking slightly.
In the dark, his hands find mine. “Here, let me put your hands where they should go.” The skin of his fingers is rough and warm against mine. It sends ripples through my skin.
Gently, he lifts my hands, puts one against his shoulder and the other against the side of his neck so that my thumb nestles into the crevasse underneath his ear. As if we were getting into position to dance.
“You hold them like this,” he says, putting his right hand against the side of my neck, just like mine, tangling the other in my hair, “and once they tell you that you can, you kiss them.”
My lips move on their own. “You can,” I breathe, standing as tall as I can without compromising my balance.
Because my hands are on his body, I feel the movement. I expect the touch of his lips, and still, it sends my body into a frenzy. This is not the calm wind that glides across the lake at night. This is a storm, a hurricane that rages on the open sea. In his arms, I come undone. I lose what it means to be Max, I strip off all facades I tried to bravely put up between us to protect myself. When I kiss him back, only the truest core of me remains. I am only Mia. I lean into him, breathe the air he exhales, feel the muscles in his shoulders shift as he tangles his fingers deeper and deeper in my hair, pulling until the sensation is just short of painful. The world around us stops existing, all that remains is the points where we connect. Lips, hands, shoulders, occasionally our bodies when one of us shifts further into the other.
By the time Theo announces “It’s time, love birds!” loudly, I have lost all track of time. It could’ve been an eternity for all I know. Fortunately, he waits a few seconds before unlocking the door, allowing us to step apart and put ourselves at least somewhat right. The light blinds me as he throws the door open and I have to narrow my eyes so the pain isn’t too great.
“Had fun?” he asks, but Drew only wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.
“Right, I suppose, it’s none of my business, eh?” Theo leads us back downstairs, walking far enough ahead that he doesn’t hear when Drew leans over to me. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
“Wow. Didn’t know you’d be such a good kisser. Are you sure you have no prior experience?” he whispers.
I shake my head numbly. I really don’t. “Please don’t… tell the others?” It comes out a question more than a request. Now that it’s over, now that I’m aware of what just happened, I’m mortified
His eyes laugh. “’Course I won’t. I don’t kiss and tell.”
The others await us eagerly in the living room.
“So?” Lindsey asks with a devious grin. “Is Drew as good a kisser as reputation would suggest and are Max’s kisses as sweet as his looks?”
Drew draws an invisible zipper past his lips. “My lips are sealed, ladies. You’ll have to kiss us yourselves to find out.”
“Where do we queue?” somebody shouts, earning laughter.
“Seeing how these two are pretty tight-lipped, how about we draw the next two names and see where that leaves us?” She turns to Drew. “By the way, I realized I was supposed to split the boys and girls up into two separate pots? So the two of you can reenter, if you want the chance to snog a girl.” She gives me an intent look at that and for a moment I think she means to say that he already kissed a girl, because he kissed me, but then I realize that she still wants to wingman me a prom date.
“How could I ever say no to that?” Drew drawls from where he’s sat down next to Jacy.
As she adds his note to the boys’ bowl, the barest smirk moves the corner of her mouth.
“And you, Max?”
“Uuh sure.” I really do not feel like doing anything right now. My head is still spinning, the storm in my chest still hasn’t at all settled. But I also want to appreciate her offer. I sit on the floor, at the foot of another couch, as Sinéad sends off Tina and Emmet. Around me, the party continues. People are still playing beer pong, talking, laughing, dancing. It feels strange that they don’t even notice how different I feel.
“Hey, Max!” a voice says as the person sits down next to me. It’s a girl with a round face, amber eyes, and a small nose. Her name is Lena, she’s one of Sinéad’s many friends. I never really talked to her much, but she was in some of the groups I’ve been hanging around at parties recently. She has a habit of scrunching her nose when she’s happy.
“Hey,” I say, a little dubiously. She has her dark-blonde hair in pigtails tonight, wearing shorts and a loose white T-shirt with a colorful bouquet of flowers printed on the front.
“How’re you liking tonight?” she asks, her voice bright.
I give a slow nod. “It’s… fun. The garden is really beautiful.”
“It is?” She cocks her head. “I just noticed I wasn’t ever outside, here.”
“There’s a pond in the back of the garden,” I say, glad to have something to talk about. “I’m sure you must’ve already seen it?”
She shrugs innocently. “Must’ve not been paying attention.” Her eyes widen. “You should show me!”
“Aren’t we supposed to, like, stick around for the game?”
“We’ve still got another five minutes until Emmet and Tina get back, and anyway, they can just get us if we’re needed.” She leans forward eagerly. “So?”
“Sure.” We get up and make our way to the terrace door.
“Just catching a quick breath of fresh air,” I tell Drew when he gives me a questioning look as we walk past.
Barely an hour must have passed since Sinéad and I came back inside from our conversation on the bench, but the air has cooled considerably. Not to a level where it feels actually cold, but definitely cool. A pleasant change from the sticky heat of the living room. …And the closet. Butterflies stir in my stomach at the thought.
“You know what’s weird?” Lena says as I lead her outside of the light falling through the floor-to-ceiling windows. “I barely know anything about you!”
“Is that strange? We haven’t really talked much, have we?”
She laughs. “I don’t talk to Jacy either, and I still know his exact work-out regimen, his favorite food, and the cup-size of his last girlfriend.”
I can’t help but snort. “What do you want to know?”
Cicadas chirp among the flowers around the pond. There’s even the croaking of a frog.
“Oh, it’s really beautiful,” Lena whispers, then considers me with an expression I cannot quite interpret. “What things do you like to do besides studying excessively?”
“That’s kind of boring.”
Not at all swayed, she indicates the bench. “Try me.”
So I sit at the far end of the bench, and she sits next to me, at the center. “I have a porch roof right outside my window?” I say hesitantly. “I really like sitting out there if the weather is good. There’s a tree between our houses, and Drew uses it to climb over all the time. Sometimes, he even wakes me up by knocking on my window. But yeah, I spend a lot of time on the porch roof, with him and on my own, watching the sunset, doing homework, reading, journaling…” I can’t tell her that I write poetry, but journaling is close enough? So many of my classmates have already seen me writing in my notebook.
“Oh, Drew taught me that. When we were, like, six.”
She giggles. “And you journal?”
“Yeah. You know, write down my thoughts to put my thoughts to get them in order, that kind of stuff.” To move on to a different topic, I add, “I also like to swim, and Drew and I used to explore the woods around my place a lot, when we were younger. Got a little back into it recently, I honestly wish we’d do it more.”
Something shifts in her expression, but it stays unreadable. “Are you and Drew going to attend the same college?”
“I wish.” A lie. Unless… “You know, he’s the whole reason why I have any friends. College would be easy with him around.”
“Oh,” she says, her voice croaky, then clears her throat. “He’s really cool, huh?”
The strange feeling that I did something wrong overcomes me, but before I can say anything more, the terrace door opens and Sinéad leans out. “It’s your turn, girlypops!”
I jolt upright. Did we really spend this long outside, or did Sinéad just not want to wait?
“Which of us?” I ask, only for Sinéad to smirk.
“Both!”
I glance at Lena, who’s staring intently at her feet as we head back into the house.
Sinéad gives me a thumbs up as we walk past and wiggles her eyebrows suggestively. Good luck! she mouths as Theo once again leads me upstairs.
“Welcome back aboard seven minutes in heaven airline,” he says with a bow, holding open the closet door. “We hope you enjoy your ride!”
I’m first to get in this time around and stand back against the wall of the closet as Lena follows. She meets my eyes for a split-second, but then looks away. She presses herself stiffly against the far wall as Theo closes the door behind us and turns on the music.
This is what Sinéad was working towards, right? The whole reason why we did this. Lena is one of the girls who called me cute, and this is meant to give me a chance to ask her out, so we can go to prom together.
“So…” I hear myself say hesitantly, “Should we kiss now?” But all I can think of is the sound of Drew’s voice as he said something similar earlier. All I feel is the afterimage of his lips on mine, all I breathe is the smell of his skin. A shudder runs through me.
“Do you want to?” Her voice is surprisingly small, like she expects me to say no.
“Yes,” I say.
“Okay…” She takes a deep breath, then her hands find my shoulders. As her left comes to rest against the side of my face, Drew leans in once again. I feel his stubble against my upper lip, a little scratchy but in a nice way.
Lena kisses me. Her kisses are softer than Drew’s, more reserved. We’re almost the same height, so neither of us has to lean down like Drew did for me. She smells nice – like aloe vera and a conversation held late at night in a dark room. Comforting, gentle.
There is not so much as a breeze in my chest.
I kiss her back, tangle the fingers of my left hand in her hair, try to mimic Drew, but all I can think of is his lips on mine and the way he’s going to kiss Sinéad soon.
It’s for the better, I try to remind myself, but that doesn’t help the sinking feeling in my stomach.
Lena pulls away and my heart stutters with guilt. “Sorry, did I do something wrong?”
“No, it’s… You don’t have to do this. I know you don’t return my feelings. I’m sorry I got you into this uncomfortable situation.”
Fuck. “No, I’m sorry…” But what do I say from here? That I want to love her, because it would make everything so much easier? That I want to kiss her and take her to prom anyway, even if I don’t feel anything for her? That wouldn’t be fair.
“He’s really something, isn’t he?” she says after another moment. There’s rustling as she slides down the closet wall, sitting.
I can’t make myself deny it. It’s like I owe this to her. “Yeah,” I say in a low voice. “He really is.” I sit as well. The closet is deep enough that we can both sit without our knees being squashed up against each other.
“Since when have you had feelings for him?”
The wind picks up. “I don’t really know. Only realized recently, still feels kinda weird to think, honestly.” Feels especially weird to say.
“Does that mean you’re gay?”
“Something like that,” I say noncommittally. “Could you please… keep this to yourself?”
“Of course.”
We don’t really talk after that; the mood has died. When I’m back outside of the closet, I text Amy that I would like to be picked up. Drew told me that we would leave whenever I wanted, especially if I started feeling uncomfortable or overwhelmed, and I need to get the hell away from here. She arrives twenty minutes later, and I have to go looking for Drew.
“Do you know where Drew is?” I ask Lindsey in the living room. She giggles, then jabs her thumb at the back of the garden. Through the reflection in the window, I cannot make them out, but as soon as I open the terrace door, I see them: Drew and Sinéad on the bench by the pond, passionately making out.