Girl Out of Water(57)

I scan the yard to make sure my cousins are still occupied and safe. When I respond, the words sound louder than they should. “Okay, sure.”

? ? ?

We scavenge through dusty boxes that fill most of the two-car garage, finding an elbow pad here and a kneepad there, all of which are too small for me. My heart jolts every time I see a box with worn-out tape, and I wonder if something of my mom’s is inside. But nothing ever is.

Eventually I give up, exhaustion hitting me hard and fast after the past twenty-four hours. I sit down on the small flight of stairs that leads into the house. After digging through a few more boxes and coming up empty, Lincoln walks over and joins me.

His shoulder touches mine. I wonder if he’s thinking about my shoulder touching his.

He breaks the silence. “This place is wild.”

“What place?”

“This garage. There’s so much stuff. Years and years and years of stuff.”

“Aren’t most garages like that? Mine sure as hell is.” I think of the generations of beach gear, decades and decades piled on top of each other.

“I guess we move around too much to collect many things.” His arm rests behind my back. And though he’s not touching me, I can almost feel his fingers, close to the exposed skin below my tank top.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like moving around all the time like you guys did. I’ve lived in the same place my entire life.”

Lincoln laughs. “Yeah, it shows.”

I look at him, narrowing my eyes. “It does?”

“That first day I met you the park. It was so obvious that you were out of place.” He shoots me a goofy grin. “A literal fish out of water.”

He lifts his arm, scratching his neck, then lowers it again, I swear this time even closer to my back. “That’s why I like skateboarding so much. Before I developed my spectacular social skills, it was really hard to make new friends. But once I started skating, I realized wherever we moved, I could always find some kind of skate park, some kind of community.”

I try to imagine what life must have been like for Lincoln. Moving so many times. Always having to make new friends. It must have been doubly hard since he looks different. But his personality—okay, and his looks—are infectious. It’s impossible not to gravitate to him.

I think that’s what I like the most about him. His confidence in his own skin. Like he carries his home with him.

The silence stretches between us for a few long moments. “Lincoln?” I say.

“What?” he asks.

“I’m going to kiss you now.”

“You’re going to wh—”

I answer by leaning forward and pressing my lips to his.

He responds immediately. And then my body starts working two steps ahead of my thoughts. I wrap my arms around him, pulling him closer, letting my hands explore the top of his strong back. As he presses against me, I nip the bottom of his lip. He inhales sharply, pumping my body with more adrenaline than any wave or skate bowl out there.

Kissing Lincoln makes me wonder why I’ve never kissed Lincoln before.

For the last month, I’ve been searching for some relief from this taxing summer, and here it was, right in front of me—a pair of soft and skilled lips.

My hands wander down the hard muscle of his back and up again, his heat escaping through the thin cotton of his shirt. As my hands continue to wander, I brush against his nub.

I startle and break away. “Crap, sorry.” His eyes stay shut for a long second.

Dread washes through me. Why did I freak out like that?

He opens his eyes and meets my gaze. “Anise.” His voice is soft, yet solid. “I only have one arm. You know that, right?”

“Umm, yes,” I say, voice meek.

“And the other side—it’s just the beginning of an arm, mostly shoulder really.” He pauses and reaches for my hand, holding it in his. “Does this weird you out?”

His touch does the opposite; it calms the ebb of dread, restores my pulse to stasis.

“No.”

“Okay, so this shouldn’t either.” He takes my hand and raises it to that rounded end below his shoulder. “It’s just another part of me.”

The skin is soft, warm. I trail my hand along it slowly and then up to his collarbone, his neck, and then his cheek, and then brush my fingers across his lips for just a second, his eyes flicking quickly to mine when I do.

I blush. “Sorry. I just…umm…got distracted.”

Lincoln grins. “I’ve been told I can be quite distracting.”

In that moment I realize I’m probably not the first person to kiss Lincoln. And more likely, not even close to first. There’s probably a connect-the-dots line of people all over the country who have kissed Lincoln. And that sparks my competitive nature.

“Anise?” Lincoln narrows his eyes. “Why do you have that look on your—”

Before he can finish speaking, I move (okay, lunge) toward him because the thing is, if I can’t be the only person to kiss Lincoln Puk, I’m sure as hell going to be the best.

? ? ?

Everyone heads home (or to cooler parties with alcohol) around eleven o’clock, so then it’s my cousins, Austin, Lincoln, and me sitting together at the bottom of the empty pool. It’s a cool night, and as I lie on my back against rough cement, pressed close to Lincoln, the breeze ruffles over me, tickling my skin in an oddly comforting way, like if I closed my eyes I could smell the sharp salt of the ocean breeze.