Page 41 of Midnight Curfew

“Yeah, I know.”

That’s why I’m talking to her, really. No expectations.

Sliding my hands into my pockets, I nudge a rock with my shoe. “What do you like about women?”

“Fuck off.”

She jumps down from the blocks, and I stand back up, grabbing her arm.

Her eyes widen and she looks down at my hand on her, and I half expect her to go feral.

Instead, she laughs. “I was raised with five brothers.” She looks at me like I’m stupid. “If you think you can handle me, come back with more guys.”

She yanks her arm away, but I speak before she can walk away. “I’m honestly asking you,” I say, softening my voice, sincere. “What do you like about them?”

Tell me, please. Maybe she can tell me what I’m not seeing.

She just shakes her head. “Everything,” she explains. “Their legs. Their hips. Their necks. Their mouths…”

A lump moves down her throat, and I think about her walking around at school and seeing people she wants but can’t have.

“Their softness,” she goes on. “Their gracefulness. Their smiles.” A little smile of her own drifts across her mouth. “The gloss on their lips—just enough to look sticky.”

The hair at the back of his head—just enough to fist.

“Her chin on her hand,” she muses.

His body under the sun…

“I’m just always looking at them,” she tells me.

I wish I could share something, too, and maybe if she asked me a question—like I had asked her—I might.

But not the thing I haven’t even said in my own head, though.

I fall back into the cinder blocks again, hands still in my pockets. “Clay’s making your life a living hell, isn’t she?”

She folds her arms over her chest, looking at me behind long black bangs with her hair in a ponytail.

We’re not friends. She has no reason to confide in me.

“I can call her off if you want,” I tell her.

“And why would you do that?”

Well, not because I’m a nice person.

I jerk my chin instead. “What are you doing this summer?”

We still have eight weeks of vacation before senior year. She’s probably working somewhere. Maybe the playhouse. Isn’t she interested in acting and theater?

“Why don’t you come with me for a while?” I ask her before she can respond. “No fucking around. We’ll just get out of here together.”

I don’t expect her to say yes.

At first.

I can convince her, though. The only thing that would hold her back is her rightfully placed distrust of the arrogant, entitled future president of the most misogynistic frat ever asking her to go with him and not only expect safety but no sex.