Seven Ways We Lie(86)

“Hey,” she whispers, and the tiny exhalation darts over my lips. “So . . . yeah? Are we . . .”

I lean forward, and the gap between us vanishes.

Her lips are ChapSticked and taste like lemon. She kisses me hungrily, her teeth pulling at my lip and her tongue flicking against mine, and I rest my hands on her waist, containing her, feeling her movement as we twist our way out of our backpacks between kisses. As they fall to the floor, I fit my hand into the small of her back and draw her close, my other hand curling around the nape of her neck, slipping up, tangling in her long hair. She’s so tight against me, I feel her every curve. Her chest presses against me as she breathes. My body pulses with heat.

Olivia knows what she’s doing to me; it’s more obvious every second. As I lift the hem of her T-shirt, thumbing the smooth skin of her hip, her lips move down to my jaw. I tilt my chin, letting her drop kisses on my Adam’s apple, letting her nip at every nerve ending I didn’t know I had. Her teeth tease the juncture between my jaw and my neck, and I let out a low, frustrated sound that struggles through the silence, and when she kisses me again, I feel her smiling.

I push gently, backing her up against the shelves, and my hand’s under her shirt now, sliding up from her hip to the rough lace of her bra, her breast full and heavy in my hand. My mind is a blank roar, filled with sensation. She kisses me harder, her hands wound into the back of my shirt as if she’s going to tear through it, and something boils urgently in my stomach, forming clouds of steam in my head, and my heart pounds as if it’s trying to kick its way through the front of my chest. The lemony taste of her is mixed with some intoxicating, bittersweet scent coming from the volumes of brown hair that fall over her shoulders. She’s holding on to me so tight, painfully tight, the way someone nervous might hold on to the edge of their seat, and as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I start catching glimpses of her in shadows and grays, her strongly bridged nose and her wet-kissed lips, and when I close my eyes again and kiss her hard, she makes this high, tiny sound into my mouth that gets me so turned on, I can barely move.

“Fuck,” I say, and I pull back. She says, “Thoughts?” and I say, “Thinking is sort of an issue right now,” and she says, “Take your time,” all casual, as if she didn’t just provide me with the most life-fulfillingly hot experience I’ve ever had, and I feel all blushing and virginal, and words fall out of my mouth in an incompetent blob: “Hey, so can we, like, be dating?”

She grins. “Sure, we can, like, be dating,” she says, “although that’s the most passive possible way to phrase that question,” and I say, “Okay. I want to be your boyfriend. I want you to be my girlfriend. I want you,” and she says, “Hmm. Do you really?” and through her coy, teasing tone I hear something real, some tiny kernel of fear that I want something other than just to be with her, as if that were even a glimmer in the eye of possibility.

“I promise,” I say. I want to say I would promise her the world, if I could make good on it. I want to tell her that nothing and no one before her could make me keep a promise, and now I never want to break one. For once, she’s quiet. I kiss her forehead, and her breath on my collarbones makes me shiver. “Promise,” I say. I kiss her nose, her cheeks, her lips. “Promise. Promise. Promise.”





FOCUS.

There’s silence backstage. Silence from the other actors, and silence in my head.

Everything is still except for Emily, who stands onstage, her voice brighter and more dynamic than it’s ever been. She’s a spot of color tracing her way through the monologue with gesture and heart, bravely carving out every second of intention.

“—and I’m tired of waiting,” she finishes, triumphant. I let the silence ring for a second, her voice reverberating over the opening-night audience. Good crowd tonight. They don’t laugh more than they need to. Always good, when ninety-nine percent of your show is as depressing as all hell.

I walk onstage. “You’re tired of waiting?” I say. Emily steps back, her face filling with shame. “You’re tired of waiting,” I repeat. “You, Natalya, who left me in this town?”

The lines feel different tonight. I’m not using them like weapons anymore, not using them like hammers of guilt to slam into Emily’s character. Tonight, something trembles in my voice and in my hands, and I feel like I’m pleading. “Look at me. Look at what I am now.”

“I am looking at you,” she says.

“Look harder.”

“I see a loving mother, a caring sister. I see—”

“You see nothing,” I insist. “I am nothing anymore except wasted potential. Nothing!”

I wait. Waiting, I realize, for her character to contradict me. But she doesn’t.

I step forward, and my hands come up of their own volition, cupped as if holding water. “You were supposed to be my teacher. You said I was brilliant—a prodigy, you said. You were supposed to take me away, teach me everything, but instead you ran the first chance you had!”

My voice peaks, cracking. My heart beats hard. I haven’t left myself backstage this time. Kat Scott is all here, every ugly fissure and scar laid bare by the stage lights. Every chunk of desperation and anger from the last two and a half years is here, bleeding out in front of the crowd. Every way I’ve ever felt abandoned is crashing out from me.