Chapter 26: Years

Shock first. Clean and total. The crying stopped like someone had shut a valve. He pulled back, and I stared at him with my mouth still half open and my face still wet and no language attached to any of it.

I started to say something. I do not know what. He leaned forward and kissed me again.

I was not crying anymore. I was still in shock. The shock had just changed temperature.

“You should not kiss me,” I said. “My mouth is disgus—”

I did not finish it. He kissed me again.

I did not know what to do. I did not know what to say. What I wanted, suddenly and without dignity, was the affection. The attention. The feeling of being held like I was not a problem to be reported to Sue. I threw myself into the kiss because throwing myself was the only move I had that was not more talking, and he answered it. His good hand in my hair. My hands on his shoulders, then his chest, then the back of his neck where his hair was still damp from the hose. We touched each other like we were trying to prove the last two minutes had actually happened. Rubbing. Pulling. The small, desperate inventory of two people who had run out of the safer options.

I got control of myself the way you get control of a car that has already gone through a stop sign. I pulled back. I put air between us. I disengaged because someone in me was still trying to be the girl who did not do this in a bathroom that smelled like what I had done.

“Okay,” I said. “You do not need to do this.”