“Jesus, Six. Simmer down.”
She looks down at me and frowns. “Sky, I’ve been worried about you for four years, thinking this would never happen. I would be fine if you were gay. I would be fine if you only liked skinny, short, geeky guys. I would even be fine if you were only attracted to really old, wrinkly men with even wrinklier penises. What I haven’t been fine with is the thought of you never being able to experience lust.” She falls back onto the bed, smiling. “Lust is the best of all the deadly sins.”
I laugh and shake my head. “I beg to differ. Lust sucks. I think you’ve played it up all these years. My vote is still with gluttony.” With that, I pull a piece of chocolate out of my pocket and pop it into my mouth.
“I need details,” she says.
I scoot up on the bed until my back meets the headboard. “I don’t know how to describe it. When I looked at him, I never wanted to stop. I could have stared at him all day. But then when he looked back at me, it freaked me out. He looked at me like he was pissed off that I even noticed him. Then when he followed me to my car and demanded to know my name, it was like he was mad at me for it. Like I was inconveniencing him. I went from wanting to lick his dimples to wanting to get the hell away from him.”
“He followed you? To your car?” she asks skeptically. I nod and give her every last detail of my trip to the grocery store, all the way up to the point where he smashed his fist into the car next to him.
“God, that’s so bizarre,” she says when I finish. She sits up and mirrors my position against her headboard. “Are you sure he wasn’t flirting with you? Trying to get your number? I mean, I’ve seen you with guys, Sky. You put on a good act, even if you don’t feel it with them. I know you know how to read guys, but I think maybe the fact that you were actually attracted to him might have muddied your intuition. You think?”
I shrug. She could be right. Maybe I just read him wrong and my own negative reaction prompted him to change his mind about asking me out. “Could be. But whatever it was, it was ruined just as fast. He’s a dropout, he’s moody, he’s got a temper and…he’s just…he’s hopeless. I don’t know what my type is, but I know I don’t want it to be Holder.”
Six grabs my cheeks, squeezing them together, and turns my face to hers. “Did you just say Holder?” she asks, her exquisitely groomed eyebrow arched in curiosity.
My lips are squished together due to her hold on my cheeks, so I just nod rather than give her a verbal response.
“Dean Holder? Messy brown hair? Smoldering blue eyes? A temper straight out of Fight Club?”
I shrug. “Dowds sike dim,” I say, my words barely audible thanks to the grip she still has on my face. She releases her hold and I repeat what I said. “Sounds like him.” I bring my hand to my face and massage my cheeks. “You know him?”
She stands up and throws her hands up in the air. “Why Sky? Of all the guys you could be attracted to, why the hell is it Dean Holder?”
She seems disappointed. Why does she seem so disappointed? I’ve never heard her mention Holder before, so it’s not like she’s ever dated him. Why the hell does it seem that this just went from sort of exciting…to very, very bad?
“I need details,” I say.
She rolls her head and swings her legs off the bed. She walks to her closet and grabs a pair of jeans out of a box, then pulls them up over her underwear. “He’s a jerk, Sky. He used to go to our school but he got sent to juvi right after school started last year. I don’t know him that well, but I know enough about him to know he’s not boyfriend material.”
Her description of Holder doesn’t surprise me. I wish I could say it didn’t disappoint me, but I can’t.
“Since when is anyone boyfriend material?” I don’t think Six has ever had a boyfriend for more than one night in her life.
She looks at me, then shrugs. “Touché.” She pulls a shirt on over her head and walks to her bathroom sink. She picks up a toothbrush and squeezes toothpaste onto it, then walks back into the bedroom brushing her teeth.
“Why was he sent to juvi?” I ask, not sure if I really want to know the answer.
Six pulls the toothbrush from her mouth. “They got him for a hate crime...beat up some gay kid from school. Pretty sure it was a strike three kind of thing.” She puts the toothbrush back into her mouth and walks to the sink to spit.
A hate crime? Really? My stomach does a flip, but not in the good way this time.
Six walks back into the bedroom after pulling her hair into a ponytail. “This sucks,” she says, perusing through her jewelry. “What if this is the one time you get horny for a guy and you never feel it again?”
Her choice of words makes me grimace. “I wasn’t horny for him, Six.”
She waves her hand in the air. “Horny. Attracted. It’s all the same,” she says flippantly, walking back to the bed. She places an earring in her lap and brings the other one up to her ear. “I guess we should be relieved to know that you aren’t completely broken.” Six narrows her eyes and leans over me. She pinches my chin, turning my face to the left. “What in the hell happened to your eye?”
I laugh and roll off the bed, out of harm’s way. “You happened.” I make my way toward the window. “I need to clear my head. I’m gonna go for a run. Wanna come?”
Six crinkles up her nose. “Yeah…no. You have fun with that.”
I have one leg over the windowsill when she calls back to me. “I want to know all about your first day at school later. And I have a present for you. I’m coming over tonight.”
My lungs are aching; my body went numb way back at Aspen Road. My breath has moved from controlled inhaling and exhaling to uncontrolled gasps and spurts. This is the point at which I usually love running the most. When every single ounce of my body is poured into propelling me forward, leaving me committedly focused on my next step and nothing else.