Summer Sweat (Spruce Texas)

How to express what that desperate, hungry kiss felt like …

“I—I don’t know,” I blurt, slowly pacing over to the foot of the bed, then sitting on it. “Guess I’m just … tryin’ to figure out how I feel about everything, too.”

Harrison squints at me. “How you feel about everything …?”

Do I tell him about Toby? About our shameful secret moment in the bathroom? About the kiss? “Yeah. How I feel. I’ve … got a lot of feelings about this, too, y’know.”

He crosses his arms, studying me. After a moment, he says, “What exactly are you saying here, Hoyt?”

“I don’t know.”

His eyes narrow with frustration. “You don’t know?”

“I said I don’t know,” I snap. “Feelings. I’ve got feelings, too. About all of this. About what happened.”

“What kind of feelings?”

“I said I don’t know!”

Harrison pushes away from the desk. “Are they good feelings? Bad feelings? How can you not know what feelings you got? We’re both on the edge of losing our shit here, and if you got something on your mind, you’d better—”

Then it comes flying right out: “It wasn’t the first time I kissed a guy, alright?”

Harrison stops in his tracks.

A look of surprise slowly overtakes his face.

I say the rest to the floor. “I kissed Toby. Kinda the same way you kissed me, except in a bathroom at school. Last fall. Somethin’ just sorta … came over me. And I kissed him.” I shrug. “It wasn’t … It wasn’t exactly a welcomed kiss. He was kinda mad about it.”

Harrison drops into the desk chair right next to him. He can’t seem to believe what he’s hearing.

“You wanna talk about embarrassing?” I let out a laugh. “How about this tasty tidbit: I had just pissed my pants in front of my whole dang classroom, thanks to Toby. That’s the reason I was in the bathroom. But that’s a … whole other story, and I ain’t gonna put you through it. Only thing you need to know is: I kissed Toby. And I’ve got feelings about it. Good and bad.”

There’s only silence after I speak. I dare to sneak a glance over at Harrison. He’s got his bewildered eyes glued to the floorboards, unblinking, probably still in shock.

I take in the sight of Harrison. His vulnerability as he just sits there in that small desk chair, at a loss. The edge of panic across his face. The watery, deep look in his eyes—which in this moment makes him look excruciatingly beautiful, like some kind of lost god of boundless beauty and strength, stranded from his throne in Mount Olympus, tortured by his unfamiliar human emotions …

And he’s being kept company by a mere mortal.

By me, similarly tortured by emotions.

Thinking about that kiss. His lips on mine. My back to the scorching hot metal of his truck.

A thought enters my mind. A daring thought. My heart races as the thought swells into images and deeper feelings—his lips, his eyes, his hands against my body.

“Uh … Harrison …?”

He doesn’t answer. He just closes his lips and swallows, his overwrought eyes still pasted to the floor.

I just go for it. “Maybe we should, like … I don’t know … do it again …?”

His thick, pensive eyebrows pull together. He slowly lifts his gaze off the floor and stares at me in disbelief.

I shrug. “Just to see.”

“Just to see what?”

“How it feels or whatever. But … maybe this time, we can do it less … forcefully. Less in the heat of the moment. More ‘cause we just want to … y’know … see.”

“We’ve seen enough,” says Harrison, moving his dazed eyes back to the floor. “Besides, you’re young enough to be my son.”

That makes me snort. “Not really. Unless you happen to know a lot of eleven-year-old dads.”

“We’re not kissing again, Hoyt.”

“Why not? Just to try it. To figure out how we feel about it.”

“No.”

I rise and cross the room, bringing myself in front of him. “It’s just a kiss, Harrison. You don’t gotta make a huge deal out of it.”

He rises, too, putting his face in front of mine. “And I said no.”

And then he grabs hold of my face and kisses me.

My hands fly to his wrists for some reason, holding on, as the pair of us scuffle over to the wall, where my back presses.

His lips attach to mine like they were made for them, plump and soft, then growing firm as the kiss intensifies.

Everything inside me unravels like a fucking ball of yarn—the ball rolling freely across the floorboards, drawing bright, colorful lines anywhere it wants, happy and excited and scared and lost.

Kissing him feels so fucking good.

And a little terrifying.

He lets go of me at once and backs away. “Damn it, Hoyt.”

The second the kiss ends, I want more. “Hey, now. Don’t tell me you didn’t feel anything there.”

“You gotta go,” says Harrison, turning away.