“Make sure the lights are off and the doors are all locked,” Coach Sheen said quietly, and held the door open for Bailey to wheel through. Then the heavy door swung shut and Fern and Ambrose were alone.
Ambrose took a long draw from a bottle of water, his throat working as he swallowed greedily. He splashed a little on his face and head and wiped it off with his towel, but still made no move to get up. He pulled his wet shirt over his head, grabbing the back of the neck with one hand and yanking it over his head the way guys always do and girls never do. He didn't pause to let her look at him, though her eyes raced over his skin, trying to soak in every detail. Showing off wasn't his intent, and a clean blue T-shirt replaced his soiled gray one almost instantly. He slipped his running shoes on and laced them up, but still he sat, his arms looped around his knees, his head bent against the glare of the fluorescent lights overhead.
“Will you turn off the light, Fern?” His voice was so soft she wasn't sure she heard him right, but she turned and walked toward the door and the light switches that were lined up to the right of it, expecting him to follow her.
“Are you coming?” she asked, her hand poised on the switch.
“Just . . . turn it off.”
Fern did as he asked, and the wrestling room vanished before her eyes, disappearing in the darkness. Fern paused uncertainly, wondering if he wanted her to leave him there in the dark. But why then had he said he would take her home?
“Do you want me to go? I can walk . . . it's not that far.”
“Stay. Please.”
The door thumped shut and Fern stood next to it, wondering how she was going to find her way back to him. He was acting so strange, so forlorn and aloof. But he wanted her to stay. That was enough for Fern. She walked toward the middle of the room, carefully placing one foot in front of the other.
“Fern?” Just a little to the left. Fern sank to her hands and knees and crawled toward the sound of his voice.
“Fern?” He must have heard her coming, because his voice was soft, more welcome than question. She stopped and reaching out, felt her fingers graze his upraised knee. He clasped her fingers immediately and then slid his hand up her arm, pulling her into him and then down to the mat, where he stretched out beside her, his length creating a wall of heat on her left side.
It was a strange sensation, feeling his touch in the dark. The wrestling room had no windows, and the darkness was absolute. Her senses were heightened by her lack of sight, the sound of his breathing both erotic and chaste–erotic because she didn't know what would come next, chaste because he was simply breathing, in and out, a flutter of warmth against her cheek. Then his mouth descended and the warmth became heat that singed her parted lips. And the heat became pressure as his mouth sank into hers.
He kissed Fern like he was drowning, like she was air, like she was land beneath his feet, and maybe that was simply how he kissed, how he had always kissed, whenever he kissed whomever he kissed. Maybe that was the way he had kissed Rita. But Fern had only been kissed by Ambrose and had nothing to compare it to, no informed analysis of what was good or bad, skilled or unschooled. All she knew was that when Ambrose kissed her, he made her feel like she was going to implode, implode like one of those controlled demolitions where the building simply collapses into a neat pile of rubble, disturbing nothing and no one around it.
Nothing around Fern would collapse. The room would not burst into flame, the mats would not melt beneath her, but when Ambrose was done with her, she would be a smoldering pile of what used to be Fern Taylor all the same, and there was no way she could go back. She would be unalterably changed, ruined for anyone else. And she knew it as surely as if she'd been kissed by a thousand men.
She moaned into his mouth, the sigh wrenched from the hungry little beast inside her that longed to tear at his clothing and sink her tiny claws into him just to make sure she wouldn't be hungry for long, just to make sure he was absolutely real and absolutely hers, even if it was just for this moment. She pressed herself against him, breathing in the clean sweat that tangled with the scent of the freshly laundered cotton of his clean shirt. She licked and kissed at the salt on his skin, the ripples of his scarred cheek a contrast to the sandpapery line of his jaw. And then, just like that, a thought slid into her fevered brain, a venomous sliver of self-doubt wrapped in a moment of truth.
“Why do you only kiss me in the dark?” she whispered, her lips hovering above his.
Ambrose's hands moved restlessly, circling her hips, sliding up the slim curve of her waist and brushing by the places he most wanted to explore, and Fern trembled, straddling the need to continue and the need to be reassured.
“Are you afraid someone will see us?” she breathed, her head falling to his chest, her hair tickling his mouth and neck and wrapping around his arms.
His silence felt like ice dribbled down her back, and Fern pulled herself from him, moving away in the darkness.
“Fern?” He sounded lost.
“Why do you only kiss me in the dark?” Fern repeated, her voice small and tight, as if she were trying to prevent her feelings from leaking out around the words. “Are you ashamed to be seen with me?”
“I don't only kiss you in the dark . . . do I?”
“Yes . . . you do.” Silence again. Fern could hear Ambrose breathing, hear him thinking. “So does it? Embarrass you . . . I mean.”
“No, Fern. I'm not ashamed to be seen with you. I'm ashamed to be seen,” Ambrose choked, and his hands found her in the dark once more.
“Why?” She knew why . . . but she didn't. Not really. His hand found her jaw and his fingers traced her cheekbone lightly, moving along her face, finding her features, stopping at her mouth. She pulled away so she wouldn't pull him in.
“Not even me?” she repeated. “You don't even want me to see you?
“I don't want you to think about how I look when I kiss you.”