Gale
Ozrik Devereaux was kissing me.
It couldn’t be real. I’d been struck by a flying branch.
I’d gotten sucked up in an unexpected tornado and wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
Maybe I’d been hit by lightning, or the Jeep had flipped, and I’d knocked my head.
I was unconscious, dying, drifting in timeless space, in a coma, stuck in dreamland where nothing was real, and fantasies came to life.
Where colors were brighter, sounds were crisper, and his rainstorm, electric scent was all I could smell.
Zap, zap, zap.
Ozrik broke from my mouth. His ragged breathing matched my own, fanning my kiss-bruised lips and sending shivers up my spine. My body thrummed and ached.
His eyes crinkled with a smile. “Hey.”
I was supposed to respond, but couldn’t.
If this was real, it was a bittersweet nightmare.
I was back in the seminary. People would find out.
It was happening again. I knew better. Guys like Ozrik didn’t look twice at guys like me unless it was to torture and torment them.
This was a sick game. A joke. He’d noticed my unfortunate erection and ran with it.
He would tell everyone.
At this rate, Dad would have every right to be concerned for my well-being because, come tomorrow, my secret would be all over Elk City, and I would want nothing more than to crawl into a hole and die.
“Gale?” Ozrik brushed a thumb over my lips. His smile had faded. “Say something.”
A thousand and one comments roller-coastered around my brain, looping and swirling. Colliding. One minute, I was overcome by crippling fear. Next, I yearned to pull him back against my mouth and savor one last taste of the storm. Of his lightning-worthy destruction.
A tsunami of concerns hit me from all sides. I didn’t know how to do this. I didn’t know how to be this person. Exist in this reality. Live this life. Act like it was normal, nothing, and no big deal.
I thought about Dad and Olivia learning the truth. About the hell I’d endured at school and the endless lies I’d told. The taunts and torments. About the unfairness of it all, because I never asked for this.
Why couldn’t I be normal?
Ozrik watched me expectantly. Waiting. So, I said the first thing that came to mind. “I thought you had a crush on Olivia.”
“What?” His face contorted in confusion. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you always… I thought… In the car… Never mind.”
What did it matter?
“Can you please move?” I didn’t want to be this close. He might see the cracks in my skin. The slow eruption in my chest.
Ozrik’s face fell, and for a second, he seemed truly disappointed, but it was my imagination. Disappointment would imply he wanted this, me, but that wasn’t possible.
Ozrik didn’t argue and moved to the other side of the Jeep.
Without him looming over me, I felt shamefully exposed.
Naked. Raw. The clear impression of my arousal was not hidden under my jeans, and tugging my shirt lower to hide it made no difference.
Ozrik knew what his kiss had done. He’d seen it.
He’d felt it. In fact, he’d probably kissed me on purpose so he could tease me again.
Humiliation burned me inside out.
I still tasted him on my lips, felt him under my skin, crawling through my veins. Desperate for escape, I fumbled with the door handle and tried to push it open. The wind and gravity pressed back, fighting me tooth and nail.
But the storm was calming, and my determination was such that I fought back, refusing to be bested by a stupid door.
“What are you doing?” Alarm rose in Ozrik’s voice.
I didn’t respond. Shoving with all my might, I managed to open it enough to slip through. The rain continued, but no longer fell in sheets. Thunder rumbled, now miles away.
I crawled up the muddy embankment, slipping more than once, until I reached the road. Soaked and covered in muck, I headed in the direction of the supposed downed tree and power lines. I would find a way around or get electrocuted trying. I didn’t care.
I would walk back to Newton if I had to. Or Elk City.
Farther.
I would walk to the ends of the earth and keep going.
To a place where no one knew me.
“Gale!” Ozrik ran up beside me and grabbed my arm, wrenching me to face him. “Where are you going?”
Rain spattered his face. His hair hung limp, warm brown eyes bleeding concern, but that was probably my imagination too.
“Away.”
“Away? Where?”
“Far away.” I tugged my arm from his grasp.
He let me go but kept pace, walking beside me as I continued down the road. “Is this because I kissed you?”
I couldn’t look at him. My entire body had gone numb. Except my lips. They tingled with memory, my taste buds dancing and alive. I focused on a spot in the distance and didn’t speak, putting one foot in front of the other.
“Gale, stop.” He grabbed my arm again. “I thought… I thought you wouldn’t mind. I thought, maybe, you wanted me to kiss you because…”
Because he’d sat on my lap. Because he’d felt my erection and guessed my secret. Because he knew.
He knew he knew he knew.
And no one was supposed to know.
“I won’t tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about. I promise.”
I didn’t acknowledge him and waited for him to let go of my arm. When he did, I continued down the road. Every step was a struggle. My legs quivered and refused to cooperate. I felt drunk. Uncoordinated. Inside out.
Ozrik didn’t follow.
I walked half a mile before flashing lights in the distance caught my attention. The power company must have arrived to deal with the hazard. I squinted at a barrier they had set up with bright orange cones.
Instead of continuing straight—I couldn’t be around people—I veered off-road, passed through a flooded ditch toward a swamped farmer’s field.
A wooden fence marked the property line.
I sat in the mud and leaned against one of the support posts.
Burying my face in my arms, I did all I could to hold myself together as the past and the present collided.
It took three hours for the road to reopen.
Three hours of obsessive thinking. Three hours reliving Ozrik’s kiss over and over and over again. Three hours of praying and crying and tormenting myself with what was to come. Three hours of rain that soaked into my soul and made me shiver. Three hours of flashbacks.
Three hours until my sister found me, tugged me to my feet, and wrapped me in her arms. Olivia didn’t let go until I was ready, and maybe that took three hours too, but I’d lost track of time by then. Olivia didn’t ask what was wrong or why I’d left the Jeep and was sitting in the rain.
If she knew, she gave no indication.
Without a word, she took me by the hand and walked me to the Jeep. It was parked on the road. A tow truck had come and gone. There was no sign of Ozrik.
She handed me the keys, and I stared at them with incomprehension. I’d left them in the ignition.
“Ozrik said he put your camera and backpack in the footwell of the back seat so it wasn’t in sight.”
I stiffened. She’d talked to Ozrik. My backpack. Did he go through it? Did he find the pictures?
“He also said he’s sorry. What does that mean? Why is he sorry?”
I dodged the question and asked one of my own. “How much do I owe you for the tow?”
“Nothing. CineVision’s covering it.”
I nodded robotically and aimed for the Jeep.
Olivia snagged my arm before I got far. “Gale.”
I stopped but refused to face her.
“What happened with Ozrik?”
Every muscle in my body tensed. My lips hummed and buzzed with the memory of his kiss. “Nothing.”
Could she see it on my face? Was I projecting all that had happened? Would our twin link allow her access to my mind?
“Gale.”
“I have to go.”
I managed five paces before she asked, “Are you heading home?”
Home. Dad.
“I don’t know.”
“We… We need to compile videos and do a follow-up so I can send stuff to Charles.”
I didn’t care about the stupid show, and she knew it. “Have fun.”
Olivia sighed, perhaps sensing her timing was bad. “Just… Go home, Gale. Dad hasn’t seen you in a week. He’s worried. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I got in the Jeep without answering.
Against every instinct, I went home. The drive did nothing to clear my head. My thoughts spun and spun. Around the shared kiss. Around Ozrik’s teasing remark. Around the reality of keeping such a profound secret when the town’s biggest hotshot had the ammunition to ruin me.
Say… Ozrik makes my dick hard.
I moaned at the memory. How long of a reprieve would I get before my world crumbled? The first time this happened, the disaster had been contained to the school. But did that teach me anything? No, apparently not. I was weak and hormonal, and now I would pay for it.
I had yet to check inside the backpack to see if the pictures were still there. Upon remembering my private journal—also in the bag—and all I’d written, I whimpered.
It was seven in the evening when I got home.
The storms had missed Elk City, and the night was dry and warm.
Clouds blocked the stars and the moon, making it especially dark.
The house was empty, and it would have been too easy to slip downstairs to the basement and lock myself in my bedroom, but I couldn’t do that to Dad.
I’d been gone the better part of a week without contact, and he worried.
I tossed my backpack on the kitchen table, braced for the worst, and unzipped one section after another, emptying it.
I found a stack of dirty camping clothes tucked inside a plastic bag, the clean clothes I had yet to wear, my novel, journal, and toiletries.
Thumbing through the journal, I saw no sign it had been tampered with, but there was no way of knowing if he’d read it.
The photographs of Ozrik were in a separate compartment and slightly battered from having been taken out so many times. Dread filled my belly. If he’d seen them, if he’d read my journal and learned the truth… But why leave them behind? He could have taken both as proof and shown them to anyone.
Satisfied they hadn’t vanished but no less settled, I repacked the bag.