Page 28 of Your Kiss Is On My List

He’s looking at me as if he doesn’t believe me. Smart man.

“Want me to prove it?” I ask.

“No—I mean, what the hell, Dani? We’re friends and we have something special. We don’t want to ruin it on some crazy whim.”

“Crazy whim? So having.. sex with me would be a crazy whim?” His eyes go wide and then laser into the most intense dark pools I’ve ever seen, making me shiver with anticipation. I lean close and take in a deep breath of his soap and aftershave or whatever that heavenly male scent is stirring my insides and scrambling my brain. Because he’s right about our friendship being special. It’s a big risk I’m taking. Maybe.

“Not crazy.” His raspy voice scrapes against something raw inside me, making me squirm and pulse with life and wild lust like I’ve never felt except in my dreams. Not even porn has ever made me feel so on edge, so ready to explode with wanting.

“Then what?” I whisper.

“Risky.” The air vibrates and I swear I see a spark arcing between us.

“What if it’s worth the risk?” I say, not knowing the answer, chest tight and heaving with the struggle to breathe, my brain struggling to function.

Then the earth cracks wide open and the universe changes like we’ve been thrown into a new dimension. There’s no other way to describe how I feel, the disorientation of Trey’s restraint breaking apart and the passion flooding our world.

“If you think it’s worth the risk.” His gravelly voice rocks me. He wraps one arm around me and caresses my face with the other as he kisses me, plunging his tongue inside my waiting mouth and pushing me back onto the pillows. Whirls of passion pulse through my body and when he moves his hand from my face, tracing his fingertips down my throat over my collarbone to my breast, he cups it and brushes his thumb across my nipple. I whimper like a dying animal being saved from a fate worse than death.

He moves his lips to kiss my temple and I franticly run my hands over the hot bare skin of his sculpted shoulders and hard chest.

“Oh my god, Trey, you have no idea how much I want you, how long I’ve waited. How I’ve saved myself for this very minute…” I murmur as I kiss his jaw. And then he freezes. His hands stop and he lifts himself above me to stare at me.

“What did you say?” I don’t know what I said and I squeeze my brows together to think, which is nearly impossible because I’m jumping out of my skin with need for him, to be completed by him. All instinct and no thought, I move my hand to the waistband of his pants and push under it against his hot skin and the trail of hair that leads to—

“Dani, did you say you saved yourself?” He grabs my wrist before I reach the big D prize and I want to cry because I was so damn close. I’m not sure what he’s asking me, only that I want him more than anything in my life in this very moment and I’ll do or say anything to get him.

“Yes.” I nod. Yes to whatever he’s asking because I want him. Except he pushes away from me, his face cloudy and thunderstruck and I’m not sure why until I force my mind to get back into gear and go back to what he said.

Oh shoot me now. I told him. I told the truth, the fucking truth.

“I can explain,” I say, desperate. “It’s not what it seems, I mean I’ve had orgasms. I watch porn and I know all about the birds and bees. I’m not innocent, not really—”

“Dani, stop. You’re a virgin?” he asks, his eyes dark with passion and sparking with something close to anger, but not that. Disappointment? Disbelief? I let out a breath, long and resigned. I nod because how can a girl lie about a thing like that? Well at least this girl can’t. And I wish I could.

“Technically,” I say, “but—” He gets off the bed and I see the prominent tent in his pants and the clearly gigantic size of his manhood and I literally feel faint, the dizziness of desire making me close my eyes. But it’s too late because the picture of his wild passion and what could have been is permanently etched in my brain and will forever mock me because it’s more than I could have known, real and so close so almost touchable.

“Fuck.” He turns away and grabs a shirt from the floor, putting it on. but it does nothing to diminish the awesomeness of his body, the beauty of his protective soul or the neediness swelling in my core.

“Trey, don’t. I mean it’s not a big deal. Everyone was a virgin once, right? Please…” I don’t know what I’m asking for. Forgiveness for being a virgin? No. Pleading for him to take my virginity? Yes.

“It is a big deal, Dani. I… I’m sorry. I know better than to go there, to take advantage. I don’t know what I was thinking… how I… Fuck, Dani. I’m sorry I got out of hand. This is the problem I was talking about between you and me. It was a bad idea for me to invite you over, but I swear I thought you—”

“Don’t.” I sit up and straighten my sweater, still seething with lusty desire, but a flash of anger rushes through me because I’m not a kid and I want more respect from him than this. “Don’t pretend you were taking advantage of me because we both know I initiated … whatever it was.” He snorts.

“You can’t even say it. We were about to fuck, Dani. And you’re too innocent to call it what it is.” My face gets so hot I feel like a bonfire of shame.

“It’s not … fucking when you have feelings, Trey. Or are you too afraid to call it what it could have been? Lovemaking.” He looks like I’ve slapped him in the face and all at once my capacity for humiliation is over. I stand and grab my coat and reach for the door, not able to look at him again, to see that shock hit his face and drain his life. I haven’t seen him look like that since that day so long ago when they brought him off the ice, white-faced and disoriented after that accident. Shit, I can’t let myself think about that now. I need to get out of here while I can still walk, before I collapse under the weight of my unrealized dreams.

“Dani, wait…”

I don’t wait. I pull the door closed behind me and run down the back stairs. But I’m still pathetically hopeful enough to listen for his door, for his footsteps, as I crash outside into the starry night and look up, automatically searching for the Big Dipper as I run across the grass. He doesn’t come after me and I let out the sob from deep under my heart, from inside my soul, and let the tears have their way. I stumble-run down the middle of the street cursing the Big Dipper and wishing that I never met Trey Eagleton, never kissed him, never loved him because I do. And there’s nothing I—or the Big Dipper—can do about it now… now that he knows.

* * *

There’s one thing the light of day—and a message from her mother—does for a girl. It brings reality full circle and forces her to deal with it. So I rise and shine and renew my original, perennial plan to become an independent woman. No man—not my dad and not even Trey Eagleton—will own me or my heart. Or what’s left of it.

Hurrying to class, because I’m always hurrying and it’s my policy to get to class early and sit in the front row, I check my phone messages, my heart pinching for a second before I shut down the disappointment. Of course he hasn’t sent me a text. I walked out on him, shut the door—slammed it. The well of sadness rises in me, threatening to choke me with emotion before I lock Trey into the theoretical dungeon of my soul where I kept—should still keep—my dad. It’s the place where people are concepts, nice memories, a safe place where they can’t hurt me, where my expectations are managed because they’re no longer about real people.