“You want some?” Owen asked, holding out the bowl and the lighter.
“Nah,” I said, all casual, though I felt anything but. I needed my head clear so I could be sure of what was going on. To know what this meant. What he was thinking. What he felt. What he wanted.
When he was done, he turned to me and it wasn’t any clearer.
But then he was kissing me, or I was kissing him, and his mouth tasted like a whole bunch of things (iced tea, smoke, a hint of eucalyptus soap, and something sweet past all that, which was maybe just how he tasted), and his hand that snaked up my shirt was still warm from the shower, warmer even than me.
Yet I became aware of something tugging at me, something in the shape of my sister, and her voice, or an exact impression of it, cutting into my thoughts saying, Get that boy off your bed, Chlo.
I turned my face and in my other ear she said, Haven’t I taught you anything! Don’t you dare let him—
And, fast, I turned my face again and this made her shut up.
Because then it was quiet. Then we were tangled together, and it was all so fast, all before I could think on what I was doing, and if I did would it even matter? Because hadn’t I been wanting this? Isn’t this what my sister did?
I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell my sister. We’d have to keep it secret. Owen couldn’t tell a soul. Unless he became my boyfriend, all official, in which case we’d go before Ruby and confess. But right now—his mouth moving down where in all my life there’d never been a mouth—she absolutely could not know.
I sat up only once and said, “You sure the door’s closed?”
And he said, “Shh, stop talking.”
I should have known that a closed door was no defense against Ruby. Walls and miles of road between us wouldn’t matter in the end. She’d find out. But I wasn’t thinking straight. I felt like I had no legs, like there was nothing beneath us, like we were floating somewhere without names or faces together, and I forgot about her because what I felt was everything. Absolutely everything.
All at once.
In a way Ruby never told me.
After, we got ourselves together and I walked him downstairs. He’d called a friend to pick him up and we waited on the front steps. We both watched the driveway, unsure of what to say, until his knee tapped against my knee and he said, “I swear I never thought that would happen.”
I admitted, “Me neither.”
“Because Ruby would’ve killed me.” He said that, and didn’t laugh.
“Not if it’s what I wanted, she wouldn’t,” I said.
“You so sure about that? Who’s to say she’s not going to jump out from behind that tree and slit my throat right now?”
We both eyed the tree, a large oak that could hide the lean, curvy body of my sister easily behind its trunk, shadowing her movements as she crept out under the dark leaves, legs gleaming bare, a sharp kitchen knife secured in her grip.
Even though I could picture it, and vividly, I said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Who do you think she is?”
He mumbled something under his breath that sounded like, “More like what she is,” but then he covered it up by raising his voice and going, “So if she wanted to kill me for—you know, upstairs—she’d have to ask you first?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We always ask before killing off each other’s boyfriends.” I quickly snapped my mouth closed after that last word, mortified, but he didn’t even chuckle and play it off like a joke. He stayed completely silent, for a long time.
Then he said, as if I wasn’t there to hear, “I don’t know what I did. Hooking up with Ruby’s sister. Damn.” He put his head in his hands and stared at the gravel at his feet.
What I needed was Ruby here to coach me, show me how to lure him in, and keep him dangling. Make him want to stay and let him think he can, then be the one to shove him out the door and say go. I had a feeling I’d maybe done things backward.
Owen cleared his throat. “Your sister . . .”