It was so cold, Sara started to think she was an idiot. A boy comes by in the middle of the night to throw rocks at you window, you stay home. But Michael wasn't just any boy. Besides, if he'd walked out in the cold from his place to hers, couldn't she do him the courtesy to walk with him a while? She had a coat, unlike him, and had slipped inside some thick tights before she tiptoed her way out of the house.
He had his hands sunk deep in his pockets to shield them from the cold, but his shoulders didn't hunch, and he met the wind with his chin raised.
"So –" she started.
"Do you want something to eat?"
They walked from the glow of one streetlight to another. On the other side of the streets, closed diners, closed bars, closed shops. The only store that still looked open was a 24-hour supermarket. Honestly, her stomach was twisting and knotting so bad from excitement, she couldn't tell if she was hungry. But something in Michael's eyes told her this mattered to him.
Was he nervous? And did he keep his hands in his pockets because of the cold, or to keep them from shaking?
"Sure."
She followed him into the shop. At the checkout, a twenty-something boy was popping zits, and didn't interrupt himself for their benefit. Michael cruised between the shelves, and she tried to wrench her eyes away from him. Obviously, he had not taken a two-hour walk and thrown pebbles at her window in the middle of the night because he wanted to buy her a chocolate bar.
She'd never known Michael to have communication problems before. It was like that hidden boy language had never got into him. Buying a girl a hot meal, parading her around in his car and shoving his tongue in her mouth didn't mean a date, the way it would to Lincoln. Michael had never needed to use other things to say what he meant.
"Snickers?" he asked.
"Okay."
Her eyes narrowed on the gleaming plastic, like she could decrypt the whole absurdity of the situation if she looked hard enough.
The cold air slapped them on their way out and Sara clutched his hand without thinking when he tried to hand her the chocolate bar. "Michael," she said, "what are we doing here?"
His eyes shot toward the ground, and a boulder the size of a house dropped down her stomach. "I'm sorry," he said.
"Tell me. Please."
His face looked strange from the greenish glow of the store behind them. Sara wanted to move, to retreat to darkness of the night, but her feet seemed to have taken roots in the sidewalk.
"I was gonna tell you that I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking about you."
Sara's pulse rocketed. Her hand had balled into a fist before she realized she was squeezing the Snickers into mush.
"It's weird. I didn't think how selfish it was, that you'd be asleep, that you were grounded. It felt like I had to see you or I was going to go crazy. On the way to your house, I kept seeing this, us, thinking of what I'd tell you. If you asked me to rehearse Hamlet I'd say no, because I wanted you to be you. I didn't want us to play at being lovers. Then I got to your house and you came down and I –"
The words stopped. His mouth hung open, his eyes staring into the distance.
"And it's that same fear you told me about at school," she said. "The fear of losing me."
He met her eyes. "Yes." The muscles in his cheeks twitched.
"What does it feel like?"
"It hurts to look at you."
"You don't have to." But his gaze didn't waver. "Close your eyes," she said.
He obeyed, and for a second the disappearance of these blue abysses left her feeling gutted. She took a step forward. Then another.
She stood on tiptoe, angled her face upward and he bent down, just a little, not enough to bridge the distance. The warmth of his breath prickled her face and she closed her eyes, too. "Okay?" she said.
"Okay."
She kissed him. His lips were soft, like a girl's, so that but for the raspy feel of his face, the invisible stubble on his cheeks, it could have been like the time she'd let her girlfriends teach her how to kiss.
Except –
He opened his mouth. The taste of him sent jolts of adrenalin to her brain so fast the world would spin if she opened her eyes, and as if he sensed this, his hand shot around her waist to steady her and clamp her against him.
Before she could think her hands were on him and she felt the stiff tweed of his jacket, the hardness of his chest against hers. With her eyes closed, she saw the muscles rippling across his upper body at the swimming pool, could even smell the chlorine deep in her lungs. She craned her neck higher, her hands reaching for the back of his head. He was tall, even for her. A groan rose from his throat as he gripped her hips – gently – and lifted her so that his face was level with hers.
The move caused them to break apart and she watched him watch her behind long lashes, millimeters away.
"Does it still hurt?" The hoarseness in her own voice startled her. "To look at me?"
"No. Can I kiss you again?"
"Yes, please."
He did. Open-mouthed, but almost without tongue, and so tender Sara felt her heart melt like microwaved ice cream. This was a better world to disappear to, even, than Shakespeare.
…
Michael didn't know why it was that when he got to her house, a hole in the ground opened, swallowed up his confidence, and suddenly when he looked at her all he could see was the blood. His parents' blood, whose cooling stickiness still crawled on his skin when he woke from a nightmare, those rivers of blood streaming down the tarmac, everywhere, red, engulfing his whole world.
Her face bubbled with excitement until she took him in. He'd wanted to take her hand and fly away with her, cruise throughout the night and give free rein to the passion that'd kept him awake all night. He blinked, looked at her again, but it was no good. The blood was still there.
It was like looking at her through a red rain curtain.
The only people who ever loved me are dead.
Maybe Lincoln made the smart choice. Better to hate me. Better than the blood.
Until she kissed him, and every vision that ever haunted his mind was sucked out of his head. She tasted like minty toothpaste.
"Did you –" his words hushed, almost against her mouth. "Did you brush your teeth before you joined me outside?"
"Uh – yeah." If they were at school, she would have blushed. Now, she hardly look flustered – more annoyed than anything, that he would stop kissing her at all.
"That's cute. And weirdly sexy."
He kissed her again, took a step forward without thinking, and something squished under his foot.
"Hum," he said, and looked down. "That was your Snickers."
"Oh, no."
Her eyes shot behind him, and her face tautened. "What? Is the guy from the store looking at us?"
"It's not that. Gosh, Michael, the sky."
He put her down and looked up. Orangey shades of red bled through the lightening sky. It was almost dawn.
"We have to get back to your house," he said. "You're grounded."
She bent over and the flash of her red hair in the sunrise dazzled the speech out of him for a while. He blinked, and caught the gleam of her chocolate bar. "You don't have to eat that. I stepped on it."
She shrugged. "Is it stupid if I want to keep it?"
"Nothing about you is stupid."
They walked back side by side, without holding hand. Could he even touch her now without sparking the need to kiss her to life? They didn't speak, either. For the main part, Michael was too shaken for words. Once his eyes darted toward her face in the increasing morning light and he saw the same numbness, the same stun.
She's thinking about it, too. The kiss, he realized, and didn't wrench her from her thoughts. What they'd shared was theirs, but the way they revisited it now was private. Was it happening to her, too? Michael felt like a whole different boy from the one he had been the first seventeen years of his life. It was the same skin on his back, the same mind to process information, except –
Yes.
It was like a whole new limb had been grafted onto his skin, pulsing, red, burning at the touch, and he kept looking at it, fascinated, wondering if it was here to stay.
Is that what she means when she says she loves me?
Sara stopped. "Wait," she said.
"What?" Michael snapped into his senses and looked around. "Oh," he said, when he caught her meaning.
They'd missed her house by about five minutes' worth of walking.
A wonderful sound burst like brittle glass exploding in a thousand pieces. Michael felt it explode in his own chest as he turned to look at her. He'd never heard her laugh like that at school.
"God, it's like we're drunk!" she said. "Do you feel it?"
"I don't know. I've never been drunk."
She shook her head, and the gleam in her eyes made his heart squeeze, because it said she wanted to kiss him again.
"I really, really have to be home before my father gets up."
"Right."
They started back the way they'd come from, and Michael tried to push back against the tide of thoughts that threatened to spill into his head, so they wouldn't miss the house again.
She stopped him a couple of houses away, pressing a small palm against his chest. He shivered, and when their eyes met, he saw the tremor there, too.
"In case my dad's up," she said, "I'll be in less trouble if he sees me walk home alone."
"Okay. I, uh – I'll see you at school then?"
She groaned, like it was impossible they had a whole weekend to go through before they could see each other again. He felt it, too. But at least, he'd have ten hours at the 'Hive tomorrow to revisit that kiss in all its intricacies, its shades and nuances.
"I –" she opened her mouth.
He heard the haze in her voice and wanted to say, It's okay. You don't have to. I know.
But his reflexes were shot.
"Thanks for the Snickers?" she said.
"Thanks for the kiss."
Every muscle in his body cried out that he should stop her when she turned around. Press his lips to hers just one more time, or he would go crazy by Monday morning.
"Sara?"
She looked as relieved as he felt. "Yeah?"
"Tonight was – " He swallowed. In his mind, he tried the words, I love you, but even there they shook him from head to toe, like he'd released a curse.
Suddenly, he saw the blood again, wrapping her into a red shroud.
He wouldn't love her because the people he loved died.
"'Tis in my memory lock'd, and you yourself shall keep the key of it," he said.
It was one of her lines in Hamlet. She smiled, but a sharpness in her eyes told him she knew that he was running.
"Goodnight," she said, and this time he watched her walk away and slip into her house.
Goodnight, he thought, and wanted to laugh. He felt like he'd never sleep again for as long as he was alive.
…
End Notes: Hope the wait wasn't too long! Please share your thoughts in the comments. Take care!
