Reese
All of a sudden, he changes. His shoulders slouch, he cracks a smile. The tautness of his face disappears just like that.
Like magic.
He laughs.
“I’m just fucking with you. You know that, right? I’m not really gonna hurt you,” Daniel says, his voice all of a sudden different
too, and I believe him.
The smell of weed carries through the air. Up close, I see in his eyes that he’s stoned, not like super, super stoned, but
he’s definitely been toking a joint.
He says, “If I move my hand, promise you won’t scream?”
I nod, not sure how to feel. Humiliated, mad, maybe scared.
But mostly I’m just happy and in disbelief that he’s here, that he came. That I’m out in the woods, alone with some hot guy
in the middle of the night. Nobody would believe it if I told them. He stands close. Tears of relief well behind my eyes,
though I hold them back, tension leaving my body and getting replaced with something else, something I can’t name, but that
makes my skin flush and my heart beat hard.
“You’re a feisty one,” he says, grinning as he moves his hand. “I like that.”
“I thought you said to meet on the pier,” I say, trying to catch my breath.
He shrugs, says all nonchalant, “I changed my mind. I got tired of waiting.”
It took me longer than expected to get out of the cottage. I think of Daniel, waiting all that time for me, wondering if I
was ever going to show or if I was ghosting him. He would have known where to look because he knows which cottage is ours,
because he heard Emily and me the other day on the porch. He would have known where to find me. It doesn’t cross my mind to
be weirded out by it. Instead, I’m actually flattered and ecstatic. He came looking for me because he wanted to see me. That
never happens.
“Sorry it took so long.”
“It’s alright. I would have stayed out here all night if I had to. Anything to see you.”
Anything to see you.
He steps even closer, standing so close now that I feel his shirt against mine, his breath on my skin as he breathes. There
is an urgency to this, which makes me think of when Nolan puts lighter fluid on the grill, how it accelerates the fire, makes
the flame flare up and makes everything happen faster. Bigger. This is what that feels like. Like someone has doused us with
lighter fluid and struck a match. He reaches out, runs the back of a finger down my cheek. There is an actual gleam in his
eye, which makes me simultaneously crush hard and wonder if he’s done this before, if he’s hit on other girls at the resort
before and taken them to see whatever it is he wants me to see.
I wonder if it matters.
I wonder if I care.
“How long are you here for?” he asks, and when I tell him, he says, “That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Then we have to make the most of it.”
Around us, crickets chirp. A breeze blows through the trees, moving the leaves.
He leans in and asks, “Where are you from, Reese like the candy?”
He smiles and I melt in it, dissolving completely.
“Chicago.”
“You have a boyfriend back home in Chicago?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“No one thinks of me like that.”
He makes a sound under his breath. “I doubt that.”
“No, it’s true. I haven’t had a boyfriend since like fourth grade.”
I want to die. I can’t believe I just said that. I feel stupid, but before I can take it back—say it’s a lie or that I’m kidding
or something, tell him I do have a boyfriend after all—he says, “Then either those guys are intimidated by you because you’re so beautiful, or they’re
a bunch of idiots.”
He touches the ends of my hair and my heart actually stops. No one’s ever called me beautiful before, except for maybe Emily
saying something like how I could be so beautiful, if only I dressed different or wore my hair different or didn’t hide myself under so much makeup.
“What did you want to show me?” I ask, because I don’t know how to respond to that, because I don’t know what I’m supposed
to say now that he’s said I’m beautiful.
Thanks seems lame. No, I’m not is even more pathetic and self-deprecating than everything I’ve already told him, and I don’t have the nerve to tell him he’s beautiful too, though he is, he’s fucking hot.
Like Timothée Chalamet hot. Guys as hot as him don’t ever talk to me unless I’m in their way and they need me to move.
Most guys don’t like me, not normal guys anyway, only the weird gamer and cosplay ones, because I’m niceish to them when no one else is.
Unlike everyone else, I don’t tell them to fuck off or to kill themselves.
He lets go of my hair, lowers his hand to his side. “I’m sorry if I’m making you uncomfortable.”
“You’re not,” I say, wishing he would touch me again, wondering if I’m massively screwing this all up, if I’m doing everything
wrong, if I’m saying the wrong things.
“I’m not?” he asks. “Your face is red,” he says, grinning, and I know it is—I can feel heat fill it, I can feel my whole body
flood with warmth—I’m just surprised he can see it in the dark.
I swallow, my saliva thick and difficult to get down. It takes effort, conscious thought. I don’t look him in the eye as I
admit, “I’m just not used to people saying things like that I’m beautiful.”
He puts a finger under my chin, lifts my face so I look at him. “Well, you are,” he says. “You are beautiful.” He stares hard
and then he asks, teasing, the moonlight slipping out from behind a cloud just then, flickering off his eyes and making them
glow, “You have kissed a boy, haven’t you? Or is that not since fourth grade too?”
“Yeah,” I say, breathless. “I have.”
“When?” he asks, like he doesn’t believe me.
And I could tell him it was exactly three weeks ago yesterday, though the guy was so bombed out of his mind there’s no way
he remembers and probably wouldn’t have kissed me if he was sober, but instead I take a page out of Skylar’s playbook and
say, “It’s not nice to kiss and tell. Besides, it’s none of your business,” which he likes because he grins.
He says, “Well played, Reese like the candy. Well played. I like you.”
All I hear is I like you, which I overthink. Does he like me-like me, like actually like me, or is he not serious? Is he kidding? Is it just something you say?
He says, “You know, we could just kiss and get it over with,” and my knees go weak. My heart almost explodes out of my chest.
And I want to say yes. Let’s kiss. Because it’s all I’ve been thinking about since the first time I laid eyes on him yesterday
afternoon: what he would taste like and what his tongue would feel like in my mouth. I’ve imagined it again and again in my
mind, trying to manifest it, to make it happen, trying not to think about how many other girls like me he’s kissed out here
in these woods.
“Why do you think I want to kiss you?” I ask, because Skylar always says to play hard to get, because it makes them want you
more.
“You don’t?” he asks, looking hurt.
“No. I don’t,” I say. “At least not until you show me what I came to see.”
“Are you scared?”
“Of kissing you?”
“Of what I’m going to show you.”
“Should I be?”
“No,” he says. “I’ll protect you.”
“Protect me from what?” I ask.
What is he going to protect me from?
Is there something I should be afraid of out there in the woods?
“You’ll see.”
We turn, following the path through the trees, which narrows with every step. I lose track of time until, eventually, I’m
not so sure we’re even on a trail anymore. The brush gets taller. It comes to my ankles first and then my knees, making me
wonder what lives in there, though I try not to think about those things, but to think about something else instead, like the soft stroke of his shirt against my arm
as we walk or his deep voice saying, You know, we could just kiss and get it over with.
I play it back in my mind a thousand times, fantasizing about how it will happen, about if it will happen.
If it will be gentle, his soft lips grazing mine, my face cradled in his hands, or if it will be fast, frantic, urgent, our hearts wild, our breathing heavy, hands drifting.
Or if it won’t happen at all.
If he’ll decide at some point that he doesn’t want to kiss me, that he doesn’t even like me.
Branches scrape against me as we walk. Twigs pull at my hair. The sound of crickets is rhythmic, throbbing. I feel it in my
chest. Daniel reaches for my hand, his warm despite the cool night. He pulls me closer to him, steering me through the trees
and over fallen logs and exposed tree roots as if he’s got night vision, as if he can somehow see in the dark. I hear him
say it again in my mind, You know, we could just kiss and get it over with. And this time I fantasize about him stopping us where we are, about him turning and pressing me into a tree, feeling the
knobby bark against my back as he leans in and kisses me.
“How do you know where you’re going?” I ask.
“I just do,” he says, and then he asks, “Do your parents always fight like that?” and though they’re the last people in the
world I want to talk about, it’s easier than talking about things like boyfriends and kissing.
“Yup. Pretty much.”
Except it’s not true. It wasn’t always this way. There was a time they got along, and I don’t know if that makes things better
or worse. Emily and Nolan were never the PDA type, but they used to like each other, I think—either that or they had the willpower
to fight where we couldn’t see or hear, which is unfortunate for Mae because they don’t give a crap what she sees or hears
now. Sucks being the third kid.