“Yes, it’s fine,” I say out loud. She looks up at me and smiles, and my heart does that pitter-patter thing it’s been doing since I got here, only it’s getting worse.
I almost worry that she can hear it. But then again, I don’t care if she can. I want her to know how much she affects me. I want her to know how much I like her, how much I respect her, and I also want her to know how much I want her.
Because I do.
Lark
We’re thirty minutes into the movie when I turn my head toward Ryan’s shoulder and scream into his shirt, which is balled in my tight-fisted grip. He chuckles and takes the remote switch from me to turn the lights up. Then he pauses the movie.
With tender fingers, he pries my hands loose. His shirt was squeezed so tightly that it looks like I wrung it out with my fingernails. I brush it down, trying to make it flat again.
“Why did you turn the lights on?” I ask.
“I wanted to ask if you’re all right,” he says, “but I couldn’t see your hands in the dark.” He smiles at me.
“Why aren’t you afraid?”
He shrugs. “It’s not scary.”
“What?” I shriek with my hands, making my gestures big as I exaggerate. “There was scary music, and then he offs her with a screwdriver with almost no warning.”
His brow furrows. “There was scary music?”
I cover my gasp with my hand. He can’t hear the scary music. Why didn’t I think of that? I’m the worst date ever. “You can’t hear the dum-dum-dum-dum-dum music. The music that says something is lurking around the corner and it’s going to eat you.” I make a grab like I’m going for his face.
He laughs, grabs me, and rolls me beneath him on the couch. He’s reclining on his side, shoved in amongst the cushions, halfway hovering over me. He’s laughing so hard his chest is shaking. When he finally calms down, he says, “I can’t hear dum dum dum dum.” He shrugs. “I don’t think I’m missing much. I knew he was in the closet.”
“How’d you know he was in the closet?”
“There was a trail of blood leading to it.”
“There was?”
He laughs again. “Yes, there was.”
I know how I missed it. I was thinking about how nice it was sitting next to Ryan in the dark, right up until the minute the scary music started. “You want to turn it off?”
“Why?” He looks down at me, his eyes touching every part of my face like he’s memorizing my features. My heart starts to pound.
“Because you can’t hear the music and it’s not scary to you.”
He points to his chest. “You think I’m going to give up an opportunity to have you squealing in my arms? My mother didn’t raise a fool.” He shakes his head. “Let’s finish it.”
He leans over me and grabs the remote, but we don’t sit up. He dims the lights and I roll to face the TV. Ryan props his head in his palm and puts one hand on my hip.
He growls a little as he brushes my hair down between us. Then his lips touch the tender skin of my shoulder where my t-shirt has slipped. He makes a breathy little moan as he inhales deeply.
“You smell good,” he says out loud. He’s really hard to understand, and if he wasn’t still sniffing me, I’d have no clue at all what he said. But I think I get it. He presses a button and the movie starts again. His hand draws a little circle on my hip as we watch. It suddenly doesn’t seem quite as scary. What’s much more scary is how his fingers are playing along the hip of my yoga pants.
I draw in a quick breath when his fingers slip beneath the edge of my shirt to tickle my waist. His fingers stop moving. I cover his hand with mine and give it a squeeze. Don’t stop. It feels really good, I plead in my head. But the lights are low and he can’t hear or see me. He kisses my shoulder again and snuggles in closer as his fingers resume their gentle swirls.