“How much time, Don?”
He pauses for so long, I’m afraid my cell will cut out before he gets to the point. “Yeager’s getting impatient. That’s all I know.”
The chance I’m falling back to sleep approaches zip.
34
Cat
So great, I told him where I live.
Semi-safe solitary life as wily fugitive versus life of mad kissing.
Score one for kissing.
There’s no point in changing out of a bad-looking outfit to promote the kissing, though. All I have are bad-looking outfits.
Reminders of reality.
The reality in which the safety of bad, brown outfits trumps romance. The one in which loneliness trumps good decisions, and bad impulses trump everything.
I could be packed and gone before he got here.
Race out the door.
Slip down the street.
Duck down alleys and through parking lots.
There are clumps of trees and huge flowering bushes that could shelter a motionless person until it was pitch-black outside.
I could be on a bus out of town with bronzed skin and pink-rimmed glasses in an hour. Less if I pushed it. Or if I hitched.
And then he’d look for me.
Great.
How romantic and deadly would that be? If he made noise about the missing girl with the bad wardrobe.
The noise he’s making is banging the knocker on my door.
I just about flatline. Press myself against the wall between the bed and the dinky refrigerator. Know this is bad. Do it anyway.
Unchain the chains. Unbolt the bolt. Pull the key out of the deadbolt.
“Are we expecting a crime wave?” He looks so much larger in my doorway than in his. “Hey, I brought you doughnut holes.”
He steps in over the threshold. Holding out a paper bag as if he gave it a great deal of thought and determined that the perfect gift for me is junk food that gives the sack it comes in grease spots.
What kind of normal girl is happy when a guy brings her this stuff?
“Really?” His face. I go, “No, J! I love this stuff.” Happy face. “This isn’t a comment on the size of my butt, right?”
“If I’m remembering correctly, I’ve never seen your butt.”
Perfect. I’ve introduced body parts into the conversation.
Cat’s so forward!
It wasn’t this awkward at his place. Then again, the bed was in another room at his place, and we weren’t sitting on the edge of it.
He picks up a doughnut hole and gazes at it. “Are these gross? Should I try again? I could run to Food 4 Less and get something else.”
“Doughnut hole. Now.”
He spreads a dishtowel on the bed and pours out the doughnut holes. Powdered sugar billows up around the mound of them. Three minutes later, when we’re both in the throes of a sugar rush, he leans across the dwindling doughnut hole mountain and aims for my sugarcoated mouth.
My hands are in his hair. I’m holding his face in my hands, prolonging this kiss. I am so suddenly aware of the several layers of cloth between my breasts and his chest. When he’s kissing me, when he’s going after every molecule of sweetness on my lips, there’s a total eclipse of reason. I want more than I can have.
Then he starts to lift my T-shirt over my head from the bottom like he means it.
“Don’t.” This might be the most conflicted syllable ever spoken by a girl on a bed.
Score one for impulse control.
I say, “No, because if we do, you know . . .”
All I want is for him to keep kissing me and stop undressing me.
“I know you better than you think.”
Which is unnerving. But it’s just master-of-the-universe boy crap. It’s not like I’ve never met a boy before.
Steve, explaining why I was supposed to keep my legs crossed, basically said I had something they wanted. If I didn’t give it to them, they’d follow me down the street like a pack of hungry dogs. Which proved more or less correct. (Leaving out the part where girls who hand out doggie treats have even bigger packs following them around. Which I guess he hoped I wouldn’t notice.) I can’t make out with this guy while I think about Steve trying to get me to behave.
I say, “Leave my clothes on me.” It comes out sharper than intended.
J pulls back. Holds up his hands like I’m arresting him.
Then I think, What kind of college girl keeps her shirt on? Either way I go, this blows south very fast. I say, “Religious zealots. Remember? In the trailer. Homeschool. Fire and brimstone.”
“I wouldn’t want you to burn in hell.” He might not be taking me that seriously.
“Next time you want to get it on with someone, try not to make fun of her.”
He’s sitting so he isn’t even touching me. “I understand the word no. Not that I’ve heard it before, but I get it.”
“You’re so full of yourself! Did anybody ever tell you that?”
“So we can assume the zealots beat the sense of humor out of you?”
The only thing in reach is a handful of doughnut holes. Which I throw at him.
He pretends he doesn’t like this and returns to kissing. Maybe just to distract me. I feel it in places I don’t want to be feeling.