The funny thing is, I learn this more from conversation than from his fractals.
When I actually do touch him, his fractal is better than it once was. Lighter, brighter, happier. The thing that I’ve always found so daunting about my visions is that I can’t change the past. But maybe I underestimate how much people can change their own futures. Josh still looks like a popular kid on the outside, but just by being himself with Charlotte, something is changing on the inside.
Meanwhile, my outsides and my insides are equally a disaster.
I lean my head onto the desk and close my eyes. What makes everything worse is that I had pretty much gotten used to my isolation. Before, I mean. My family, Charlotte, and a couple of acquaintances who could loosely be categorized as friends were enough for me before I met Zenn. But now I don’t know if I can go back to pretending I don’t need connection or intimacy or deep and sometimes complicated feelings. I don’t know if I can go back to being that lonely, that flat.
My phone buzzes and I peek at it halfheartedly. After four days of waiting for a text from Zenn, I’m trying not to get my hopes up. My parents took the kids to see the newest Disney movie and it’s probably my mom reminding me to put the leftovers away, as if any of us will want to eat them again. But when I glance at the screen, I see it is from Zenn.
Zenn: Hey
Me: Hey
Zenn: I’m outside. Are you alone?
Me: Yes
Zenn: Can we talk?
Me: Yes
My replies are probably too quick and eager, but I don’t care at this point. I glance at myself in the computer-screen reflection and figure it will have to do. I hop up and run to the front door.
He’s standing there, hands in his pockets. My stomach feels like it’s filled with helium.
“Hi,” I squeak. My voice sounds helium-filled, too. I invite him to come in.
He studies his hands for a minute, rubbing his palms together. When he finally looks at me, I see in his eyes that something has changed. I open my mouth to ask him what he’s decided but I probably should just let him speak first. I close my mouth again.
He reaches out and puts his hand on the back of my neck and pulls me closer. He dips his head down toward mine until our foreheads touch. I feel his desperation, his sadness, his need, so similar to mine. We stay that way for a long, intense moment. When he opens his eyes again, I can’t help myself. I rise up on my tiptoes and kiss him.
He hesitates a moment and I start to pull away, thinking I’ve misread him. Maybe he was gearing up to say goodbye. But then he pulls me closer and kisses me back, almost apologetically, and then a little urgently, like we’re making up from a fight. It tells me he has missed me. It tells me that he’s willing to try to make this work.
My whole body sighs with relief.
I have a choice here: a choice to take what I want and maybe even deserve, after living most of my life in relative isolation. My mom’s resentment is not my problem. His parents’ guilt is not his problem. We can’t control many things in life, but I can choose this. With him.
I know the couch is right behind me so I step backward until my legs hit it and I sit, pulling him down by the front of his shirt. There is no grace, no smooth moves. We are a frenzy of hungry mouths and tugging fingers. He leans me back against the couch so that he’s half on top of me, and I press my whole body up toward his, as if I’m trying to meld us into one.
His mouth moves to my ear, to my neck, to my collarbone. I take off my glasses and toss them on the coffee table.
“I thought you wanted to talk,” I tease him quietly. The helium is gone and now my voice is throaty.
He stops abruptly.
“Kidding,” I say. “Totally kidding. We don’t have to talk.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid Eva. Shut your big fat mouth! I pull him down to kiss me again, but he resists.
“Sorry,” he says, his voice apologetic. “Maybe we should talk.” It seems like he’s embarrassed or regretful for kissing me instead of using words, as if he’s been rude. But I’m the one who started it. And if he knew that I’ve been waiting my whole teenage life for a boy to kiss me like this, he’d know he doesn’t have to apologize for anything.
I shake my head a tiny bit, my voice more serious now. “We don’t have to. Not … right this minute. Or maybe … ever.” Nothing else really matters now. Just this.
So he kisses me again and then somehow I’m sliding my hands all over his torso until his shirt is just a barrier to my exploration. I’d like to slide my hands under it, but I’ve barely touched another human in six years. I can’t imagine just putting my hands wherever I want, skin on skin. And it feels too personal, too presumptuous, like maybe I should ask first. Do normal people ask before they touch each other’s bare skin?
“Can I ...” I start, not knowing exactly how I’m going to finish.
“Mmmm hmmm,” Zenn breathes in my ear.
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask,” I whisper back, mimicking him.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says, mimicking me.
I don’t say anything for a moment and Zenn nudges my ear. “What?”
“I was just going to ask if I can … like … feel your skin.”
He pulls away to look at me, amused.
I cover my face with one hand. “God, that’s weird, right? That I asked?”
Zenn pries my hand off my face and places it under the hem of his T-shirt and there it is: his smooth, hot, incredible skin and the taut muscle underneath, like a cotton sheet fresh from the dryer stretched over granite. I slide my fingertips up just an inch or two but I’m too timid and embarrassed to go much farther. Plus, Zenn is watching me, serious now.
Self-conscious, I lift my hand but he immediately places his hand on top of mine, pressing it back against his body.
“Sorry,” he says quietly. “I forget about your … that you can’t ...” His voice trails off.
He forgets that I’ve been living in a self-made bubble, that I’ve never touched a boy’s bare skin before. At least not the skin of a torso, a back, the intimate slopes of muscle and bone that have piqued my curiosity since I hit puberty.
He doesn’t finish his sentence. He just kisses me again and I allow my hand to slide up, over his shoulder blade, down the valley of his spine. I feel myself blush when my fingers touch the waistband of his underwear poking slightly out of the back of his jeans. He doesn’t seem to notice, or to care.