I looked down at the ground unsure of how to explain why I hadn’t gone to see her. The truth was, I was scared. That little girl I left behind had meant so much to me. The thought of her and memories of the conversations during our basketball games got me through many difficult nights. I didn’t want to find out that she had changed or worse, that she would be disappointed in how I turned out. I knew seeing her again would be inevitable, but each day, I put it off.
“I promise you. I was going to come by soon.”
She started to shiver and didn’t have a jacket. I took off my hoodie and put it around her arms.
“Thanks,” she said.
Several quiet seconds passed. “Let me walk you home.”
“I should call Angie.”
She walked a few feet away so I couldn’t hear the conversation then returned to the spot where I was standing.
“She said Cody is taking her home.”
“Is that the tall dude?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“That guy sounds like he swallowed his own balls.”
When she burst out laughing, my tense body finally relaxed. The sweet sound of her familiar laugh made me smile. For the first time tonight, it had felt like old times.
“What about your girlfriend? You just left her there.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I was quick to say. “Ava is a girl I just met at school this week. She asked me to go to the party with her, and I said yes, but I really didn’t want to come.”
“You left the door cracked open upstairs. From what I saw, it looked like you really wanted to come tonight.”
Well, shit. There was the wise mouth I remembered. But now that she was older, it was dirty, too. And that intrigued me. But I wished she hadn’t seen me making out with Ava because it really didn’t mean anything.
“Yeah, well…it was a mistake.” I took out my phone. “Hang on.” I texted Ava that I wasn’t coming back to the party. She’d whine about it and demand an explanation, but I had no interest in continuing what we had started. “I just told her something came up. Now, let me walk you home.” I took my jacket off her shoulders and opened it. “Here. Slip your arms through.”
She did, and I zipped it up slowly, careful not to catch her hair. My fingers brushed lightly against her br**sts on the way up.
Well, those were new.
“Thanks,” she said, looking up at me.
My hand was still on the zipper, and I squelched the urge to pull her toward me right before I let go.
Her tiny frame was swimming in my hoodie, and that made me smile. “Let’s go.”
We walked side-by-side at a slow pace, and I chuckled at the fact that she was a good foot shorter than me.
She was the first to speak when she asked me the question I knew was coming. “So, what have you been up to the past five years, Mitch?” It came out sarcastically casual because we both knew that question was the elephant in the room.
“I’m sorry I never contacted you.”
The tone in her voice tugged at something deep inside me when she said, “I just wanted to know you were okay.”
“I know. I—”
She interrupted me. “I mean, I would see your grandmother and ask about you. She would always say you were fine, but I wanted to hear it from you, because I knew you didn’t share your true feelings with her like you had with me. So, I never knew whether what she would tell me was really the truth.”
“Listen…I’m not even going to make an excuse for not calling or writing you. I was a dumb 11-year-old. The situation got really bad after I got home. Things with my parents were way worse than I imagined, and I didn’t want to talk to anyone, not even you. I was ashamed of certain things. But you need to know something.”
“What?”
“Everything you told me back then stuck with me: that it would get better, that it wasn’t my fault. I kept replaying everything we’d talked about and reminded myself that I wasn’t alone…that you had been through the same thing and survived. It was the only way I got through it. So, I really need to thank you, Skylar.”
The rest of the walk home, she listened as I told her things I hadn’t ever told anyone. I explained that shortly after I left my grandmother’s, I found out the real reason my parents were getting divorced: my father had a secret girlfriend and had gotten her pregnant. I now had a four-year-old half-sister whom I barely saw because my father eventually took off to live in Pennsylvania with his new family. When I was twelve, my mother had gotten so depressed that she had to be hospitalized, and I had to go to live with my uncle temporarily.
Over the past couple of years, things had finally gotten better. We were getting used to the new normal with my father gone from the picture. When Mom lost her job, the shit hit the fan again, and that’s how we ended up here. My mother and I were now back in her childhood home trying to start over.
By the time we got to Skylar’s door, I was mentally exhausted from rehashing everything, but it was a relief to have finally let it all out. How ironic that the only two times in my life I had really opened up to someone, it was to her. What was it about Skylar that made me want to pour my heart out?
“Thanks for being open about everything,” she said as she stood on her front steps facing me. “I’m sorry for freaking out and running earlier.”
I nudged her with my shoulder. “It was fun chasing you again. And thank you for listening. You know…” I looked down at my feet and shook my head. “Never mind.”
“What?”
“This is gonna sound kind of corny, but I always knew I’d see you again, that I’d be back here somehow and that we would still be friends.”
She smiled. “To be continued…”
I didn’t get it at first but then realized she was referencing the comic I made her when I was eleven. I had forgotten about that. “You still have that book?”
“Of course, I do. It’s not everyday you get a starring role in a story about S&M.”
I bent my head back in laughter. “Holy shit. When I realized the meaning a few years back, I nearly died. Clueless little kid.”
“Well, I better go inside. My mother thought I was at the mall, which closed a half hour ago.”
“Oh, yeah…you’d better,” I said, backing away. “See you around then?” I pointed across the street. “In case you didn’t know, I’m right over there, so…”
She surprised me when she took a step forward and hugged me. “I’m glad you’re here.”
I closed my eyes, relishing the brief contact of her warm body and the feminine smell of her hair. “Me, too.” I never wanted to let go.
She pulled back. “Good night, Mitch.”
“Good night.”
When I walked into the house, my mother was watching television. “Hey, honey, how was your night?” she asked as she sipped her tea on the couch.
“Unexpectedly good, Mom.” I said without further explanation on the way to my room.
Thoughts of her kept me up that night. It felt good to have reconnected, but what was screwing with me were all of the things I wasn’t expecting to feel, how attracted I was to her.
She hadn’t given me back my hoodie. I thought about her wearing it and how much I loved the thought of her delicate little body in my clothes. I thought about what it would be like to taste her plump, red lips. I imagined burying my nose in her long, silky hair and kissing the nape of her neck.
Sucking on her neck.
It troubled me that I was having these thoughts about Skylar…little Skylar. Not so little anymore.
I was hard. And I was fucked.
She was someone I could see myself really falling for. But there was one thing I knew for sure: I would not let things go any further than friends, fall in love with a girl like Skylar and hurt her.
I remembered how in love my parents seemed when I was small. They were always all over each other, and it grossed me out. My Dad had told my mother how much he loved her all the time, only to leave her years later for a younger woman. My mother almost died from a broken heart. In my experience, love doesn’t last forever, and someone always gets hurt.
That wasn’t going to be me, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Skylar. So, when it came to her, I would keep my dick in my pants if it killed me.
Someone should start planning my funeral.
CHAPTER 5
SKYLAR
Angie sat on my bed cleaning her camera lens. “I can’t believe it doesn’t bother you that Mitch dates other girls.”
A lump formed in my throat. “He’s not my boyfriend, so why should it matter?
Angie took my picture. “Uh-huh.”
“What was that for?” I snapped.
“I want you to see what your face looks like when you’re lying through your teeth.”
I rolled my eyes. “He’s like a brother to me, Ang.”
“Then, that’s just gross because he clearly wants you. I don’t understand why you’re not together.”
“Who says Mitch wants me?”
“Have you seen the way he looks at you? I have about a hundred pictures to prove it.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
I knew exactly what she meant.
Over the past six months since he moved here, Mitch and I had not only picked up where we left off as kids, but we grew closer. We saw each other almost every weekday after school, hung out in our rooms, did homework together and ate dinner at each other’s houses. My mother, Tish, and his mother, Janis, also became close and even hung out without us once in a while. Sometimes, the four of us ate together or watched a movie.
To someone looking in from the outside, it would have looked like Mitch and I were brother and sister, part of one big happy family with two lesbian moms. The reality was, the moms were lonely ex-wives of men who abandoned them. And brother and sister secretly wanted to have sex with each other. I would say that’s the epitome of dysfunctional.
While Mitch and I were inseparable during the week, on weekends, he would sometimes go out with girls from his school. He was gorgeous with a great body and therefore popular. Despite my pretending not to care, the reality was, his dating hurt like a motherfucker.
He would always tell me where he was going and even who he was going with, but there was a silent understanding that we never talked details, and that was fine with me.
Everyone who knew me would agree that I spoke my mind. If my mother asked me if a dress made her look fat, I’d tell her it did. When Angie said she overheard someone saying her boyfriend, Cody, sounded like a girl, she asked for my opinion. I told her I thought he sounded like Mickey Mouse on helium, but that she shouldn’t give a crap what anybody said because she was crazy about that dude.
So, for the most part, I didn’t mince words and was an open book—except when it came to my true feelings for Mitch. That was my one sore spot. But I was sick of lying to Angie. I needed to let it out, or I was going to explode.
I plopped down on the bed. “Okay. You’re right. It does bother me when he goes out with other girls.”
“I knew it! How could it not?”
I took a deep breath because it was the first time I would admit this out loud. “I have feelings for him, okay? But see…I know Mitch better than anyone. We talk a lot. His parents’ divorce really screwed him up. He’s worried he’s going to turn out like his father, and he’s seen his mother really hurt by things his father did.”
“But what does that have to do with you?”
“We’re only fifteen and sixteen. I know he cares about me and wants us to always be in each other’s lives. He’s afraid to screw it up, and honestly, I kind of am, too. I can sense that he’s sexually attracted to me, but I don’t think he’ll ever cross the line. The problem is…sometimes I wish he would.” I exhaled.
“So, you both want each other, care about each other but won’t ever find out whether that could lead to more? Meanwhile, he just dates a bunch of bimbos, and where does that leave you?”
I gave the only honest answer. “Screwed.”
***
Mitch worked three days a week at the gourmet coffee shop in the mall food court to help his mother pay the bills. He had to attend this intensive training so that he could learn how to operate the fancy equipment. He was now an expert milk frother and made my vanilla latte exactly the way I liked it: extra hot and foamy.
One Thursday afternoon, Angie, Cody and I decided to pay Mitch a visit at work. While my friends usually took their drinks to go and walked around the mall, I loved to stay and watch him in action in his red apron as he juggled the different orders, flipping cups, pushing buttons, steaming milk.
Strands of his wavy brown hair curled under the red cap he wore. Mitch had the shiniest, thickest, chestnut hair with a hint of copper when the sun hit it. Part of his uniform was a fitted, black polo shirt that hugged his toned chest. I loved the focused expression on his face as he drizzled the caramel just right or carefully poured hot milk into a cup. His tongue always moved slowly across his bottom lip when he was concentrating.
When he placed drinks on the counter, he’d look customers in the eye and flash his gorgeous smile. It was no wonder why the lines were always endless. Girls lined up in droves to visit the brawny, blue-eyed barista. Watching Mitch was a downright turn on.
The thing I loved the most, though, was the moment when he’d first notice me. The genuine smile reserved for me was warmer than the one he’d give the customers, and his eyes always lingered on mine like they were telling me a secret. Then, he’d go back to doing his work, stealing glances at me. He’d smile whenever he caught me watching him.