There’s Been A Gas Leak #2
At some point I start tracing idle, mindless patterns on her knees—which were in skin coloured tights and draped over my lap—not even taking my eyes off the screen. Okay, I do look at her a couple times, but only to gauge her reactions to be sure I’m not making her uncomfortable or anything.
The one time our eyes finally meet, she gives me a soft smile, her face illuminated by the television. I take it as my go ahead that this is permitted.
I have this strange feeling about her. That there’s something she’s keeping inside herself, that she’s holding back. I don’t even have an inkling of what it could be, it just feels like it’s there, huge and invisible between us.
She’s allowed to be hesitant without some big reason, I remind myself. However amazing she is at kissing doesn’t mean she isn’t totally inexperienced. I’ve never asked—should I ask?
Now’s not the time. Besides, I’m not trying to throw shapes into her on my Ma’s good furniture. Just a steamy shifting session like the one we had at the bakery. That was nice, and I’d love whatever sequel she’s willing to give me.
It’s not long before her lips are on mine, and we’re shifting more comfortably on the cushions. Her hands keep shifting from my back to my biceps, and I make sure to move very slowly so as to not alarm her or anything.
Eventually, we’re horizontal, still kissing. I release her lips with a wet sound, trailing down her jaw and trying a few spots on her neck to see what she likes best.
One second, she’s sighing softly into my mouth as my lips reach hers again.
The next, she’s frozen.
My head is still doing its spinning thing, butterflies feeling like they’ve exploded in my lower stomach and flying all around us.
So maybe that’s why I don’t notice right away, but once I do realize her lips aren’t moving back against mine, that the sounds she’s making are now sharp breaths in, I pull back.
Her eyes are blown wide and very clearly panic stricken, her whole face frozen in... fear? Her chest is heaving between us, like she can’t get enough air in.
“Molly?” My voice cracks with concern. She looks the way Finn always does when he’s having an asthma attack, except I don’t have an inhaler to quell this panic.
What did I do? What did I do?
“Mols?” I say again when she doesn’t answer. I try to scramble off her, to put more distance between us, and I have to pry her white-knuckled fingers off my shirt. “Molly, I’m sorry. Here, here, sit up, love. Breathe, you need to breathe.”
She’s crying now, avoiding eye contact as she sits up on the couch, still breathing fast and uneven. She pulls her stockinged knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. I sit next to her—not too close—and wait, unsure of what to do or say?
Did I move too fast? Did I scare her? Was she just not into it and didn’t know how to say stop? Did I push her?
My mind is scrambling, my heart hammering away against my rib cage as I watch Molly curl into herself and cry silently. I feel sick, and my hands are shaking like I’ve done something wrong.
I have to have done something wrong.
“I’m sorry,” she finally whispers after a suspended silence. “I’m sorry.”
“No, Molly, I’m sorry.” I want to touch her shoulder, or squeeze her hand, or pull her into a hug, but I don’t know if she’d recoil. “Was I going too fast for you? Because if you felt like you had to do something just because...”
She shakes her head. “No, no, I just... I just panicked. That’s all.”
That’s all?
“Do you need me to get you anything? Water?”
Molly shakes her head again.”No, I’m—I’m fine.”
She’s not fine. She’s very clearly NOT fine, and I don’t know what to do.
“Do you want me to drive you home?” I offer, because maybe she just wants out of this situation, out of my house. I wouldn’t blame her—I’d hate me too if I made someone panic like that.
Molly wipes at her cheeks, looking down at her lap, eyes fixed on the navy fabric of her skirt. “You want me to leave?”
“No,” I say quickly. “No, I just—I don’t want you to feel like you have to stay.”
She’s quiet again, for a long time, but when she finally looks up at me I sort of wish she hadn’t.
Those pretty blue eyes—the ones I love so much, the ones that I had filled with fear and panic only seconds ago—were red-rimmed and wet with tears.
The only solace is that she looks overall calmer now and is breathing normal.
“I... I don’t... I didn’t mean to—I mean, for a second my mind just—” the words come out jumbled together, and none of them make sense to me. I’m not even sure they’re making sense to her. She shakes her head, clearing her mind. “Maybe I do want some water.”
“Okay,” I say, glad to have a task, something to keep myself busy with something other than wracking my brain. “Water. Stay here.”
My knees are weak, but I manage to make it to the kitchen and fill a water glass without collapsing. But I’ve barely made it back to the sitting room when the front door bangs open.
At first I think Molly has left in a rush, but then I realize it’s Claire coming in. She tries to slam the door shut behind her, but someone’s hand—JJ—catches the wood at the last second and he shoves his way inside.
I pause outside the doorway to the sitting room, wondering if I huffed some paint this afternoon, because everything feels so impossibly strange right now.
I hurt Molly.
Now Claire and JJ are yelling at each other?
Claire and JJ never yell or fight with anyone, but especially not each other. Ignoring one another is one thing but this—?
What is even happening right now?
“For fuck’s sake, Claire! Will you just listen to me for one bleeding second!”
Claire’s face is flushed a deep red, and she whirls around at the bottom of the stairs she had been about to mount. “No! I won’t! You’re acting like an absolute—” she stops dead when she sees me standing there with the glass of water. JJ’s eyes flick over to me too, noticing me for the first time.
I glance over my shoulder when the both of them do, seeing Molly—who still looks a bit dishelveled—standing just beside me. She looks as confused by what I’m seeing as me.
Maybe there’s been a gas leak?
I look back at Claire in time to see her bottom lip wobbling, her brown eyes welling up with tears. “You forgot me.”
“What?”
“You were supposed to pick me up at half-five, Niall!” she shouts, her voice trembling. “I reminded you like twenty times and you said you would be there! I tried to call you but you didn’t answer!”
I think about my phone, in the pocket of my bag I’d thrown on the dining room chair earlier. The clock in the hall tells me it’s 5:58 now.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. “Claire... Jesus, oh, I’m so sorry. I lost track of the time and it slipped my mind—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, and I watch as one of the tears slips down her cheek but she pays it no mind. Brushing it off, like it doesn’t exist at all. “It’s fine. Stephen gave me a ride home.”
Please don’t mean Stephen Rafferty—
“Are ya hearing this, Niall?” JJ finally speaks again, reminding me he’s here. His voice is strained. “She got into a car with that prick!”
Move, brain, work. “How did Stephen Rafferty drive you? He’s only in third year, same as you. He isn’t even eligible to take his theory test.”
I say as if I didn’t start driving my Escort at fifteen. But this is different. This is my baby sister and some lad who shoved her on the ground and made her flash her knickers to the whole school a few weeks ago. Accident or not—I don’t care.
Then again, you weren’t there to pick her up either.
I might as well have not said anything at all, because all my sister does is scream at JJ. Actually screams.
“He was apologizing, Jonathan! He said he felt like a scumbag for what happened in the canteen and he wanted to make things right. He was being nice. Maybe read a book on it sometime—oh, wait, I don’t think you can focus on one thing that long, can you?”
I glance at Molly, whose mouth is gaping open.
What is happening, I mouth to her. She shrugs, wide eyed.
“Stephen Rafferty is not ‘nice,’ Claire! He’s a bottom-feeding waste of space who thinks he can put his hands on whoever he wants,” JJ bellows. “You do NOT get in a car with a lad like that. Ever!”
“Oh, like you’re one to talk about being nice lately?” Claire shouts, her voice reaching a fever pitch. “You act like a total prick yourself, and now you’re going to lecture me? Go fuck yourself, JJ!”
The feeling of my jaw hitting the floor is actually painful. I’d never heard my sweet sister speak to anybody like this in my entire life. I’ve seen her at sunshine, and I’ve even seen her sad and cloudy.
But this?
“What has gotten into you?” is all I can think to say.
“You can shut up, too! You’re not my father, Niall, so don’t even try telling me what to do.
And you, Jonathan Jarlath, are definitely not my boyfriend.
Neither of you gets to tell me who I can talk to or whose car I can get into when I’m stranded in the rain!
So why can’t you both go back to leaving me the fuck alone, because you’ve both been really good at that lately. ”
Without waiting for a response, she turns and stomps up the stairs, her door slamming moments later.
“I-I’ll go talk to her,” Molly stammers, moving past me toward the stairs.
I want to reach out for her, to make sure she’s okay, to make her talk about what happened back there on the couch the way she got me to talk about leaning on alcohol.
But instead I just watch her bound up the stairs to go talk to my sister, who underwent a personality transplant somewhere between now and this morning when she kissed me on the cheek and told me she loved me when we parted ways in the hall.
Yeah. There’s definitely been a gas leak.