“You’re not going to be like him,” I said.
“And you know this how, Dr. Fitzgerald?”
“Instinct. I’ve looked into the face of ugliness. I know it too well now.”
“I bet. Well, sorry to have laid all that on you, especially you. You certainly don’t need someone like me around. You’ve got enough on your plate to stuff any hungry masochist.”
Finally, I could laugh.
He smiled, too. “Here we are, gazing at the indifferent universe, the two of us, the psychologically wounded.”
“But not beaten,” I said. What happened then came to me like a gust of desire. I leaned in to do what I had fled from before and kissed him very gently, very quickly, on the lips.
“Am I still a frog?” he asked.
“Not to me.”
He leaned toward me to kiss me again. Neither of us showed the least resistance. It can be different, I thought. With him especiall
y, it can be different.
“You’re the first girl I’ve kissed like that since the eighth grade, and when I did it then, the static electricity frightened us both so we didn’t do it again.”
I laughed. “Shocking,” I said.
He reached out to touch my lips. “You’re so beautiful, Kaylee. You’re going to be fine.”
“So are you.”
“I never thought so until I met you,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “I don’t want to, but I think we’d better head back.”
“Okay, but we’re not heading back, Troy. We’re moving forward,” I said.
He liked that very much, and so did I.
We kissed one more time before he started the engine and turned around to drive back to Littlefield. This time, neither of us let a second of silence come between us. It was as if a dam had broken. He rattled off social plans we would follow after the Thanksgiving break. And then he asked me if I thought I might be up to going to his house on Friday night. After what he had told me, the thought of meeting his parents, especially his father, made me very nervous. He knew immediately why I was hesitating.
“Oh, my father’s not going to be there, and as it turns out, my mother has an event to attend as well. My father’s in New York City for a convention.”
“Just us, then?”
“Yes. My sister doesn’t come home until next Wednesday. The maids will be around but out of sight, I’m sure. I’ll order in some salads and pizza for us. It won’t be as good as Mario’s, but it will be fine.”
I was still hesitating.
“Am I moving too fast?”
“No,” I said, turning to him and smiling. “I’m moving too slowly.”
“Well, we’re a work in progress. No worries,” he said.
He drove to my dorm parking lot. After he stopped, I reached for his hand again.
“Thanks for trusting me, Troy. I wish I’d had the courage to trust you after we went out the first time.”
“It would have made me even more ashamed of deceiving you,” he said. He got out to open my door and then walked me to the dorm entrance. “I imagine your girlfriends are going to be slightly confused.”
“Their natural state,” I said.