Pretty Thing (Naughty Things 1)

“Oh, shit,” she says as I hike her up on my back. Just the feeling of her legs wrapped around me gets me hard.

And I think to myself, Aiden, what the fuck is wrong with you? Her brother has been dead four days and you’re already planning to eat the forbidden fruit.

Sure, I agree that makes me a Grade-A douchebag. But I don’t care.

You’re not here, ha!

I just bend down next to her shoes and say, “Grab ‘em,” and then stand back up once she’s got them in her hand. “Should we run?” I ask her.

“No.” She laughs.

But I’m already running. And she’s bouncing on my back, laughing, and it’s a hot summer night with no wind, so the wind I make feels cool, and good, and soothing.

She starts to slip and I know this whole break in the sadness has a lifetime limit of maybe ten more seconds, but I make the most of those ten seconds by heading towards a large green lawn along the side of a big old house that is actually a real estate office, and fall into the grass with her, rolling around until Kali’s on her back and I’m propped up over top of her, looking down into her eyes.

She smiles. No teeth. Like she’s waiting. Like maybe she’s been waiting her whole life for this moment.

I lean down. Slow enough that she has time to make a decision. But fast enough that I don’t lose my nerve. And I kiss her on the lips.

Kali and Aiden’s first kiss. Walking home from Kyle’s funeral.

I pull back immediately and she lets out a long breath of air. Fingertips touching her lips like she can’t believe I just did that.

“Sorry,” I say. “I just couldn’t stop myself.”

She nods at me, silent. The moon is out now. Shining down into her eyes. Then she says, “OK.”

“Yeah?” I ask, knowing full well she wasn’t giving me permission. Just agreeing with my statement about not being able to stop. So I’m leading her on here, but I don’t care.

“Sure,” she says, going down the path to hell with me. Willingly.

I put my hand on her thigh and slide it up her leg before I come to my senses and stop.

She tilts her head at me, questioning.

“You should stay the night at my place. Get drunk with me. Talk about old times and shit like that.”

Shit like that meaning… All those times I wanted to jump your bones and never could, but now I can, so I’m using this as an excuse to take you home, and put you in my bed, then fuck your brains out because I’m sad. And you’re sad. And there’s no one here to stop us now because he’s the reason we’re sad.

“OK,” she says again.

And again, I respond, “Yeah?”

And she nods.

Yes.

I roll off her and get to my feet, extending my hand down to her. She takes it and I pull her up in one smooth motion. She’s small compared to me. Only about five foot six, maybe. And pulling her up, she is light too. Like a feather.

We stand there on the side lawn between the real estate office house and Mrs. Cranston’s driveway, under the glow of a single yellow streetlight, and look for something in each other’s eyes.

I’m looking for solace and I think she is too.

So I say, “Come on. We can cut through the back yard.” And then we are eight years old again. I’m leading her through Mrs. Cranston’s back yard, half expecting her to open her window and yell at us to stop cutting through her yard because we’re making a path in her grass.

But Mrs. Cranston doesn’t live here anymore. She lives up the hill now. One of Kyle’s new neighbors. Plus it’s night. Jack and Marie Lesser, who live here now, are probably over at Kyle and Kali’s parents’ house for the reception.

And we are not eight, anyway. We are both just a couple of sad, thirty-somethings who used to be someone else. And we’d give anything to be those kids again, but of course, that’s impossible.

But maybe for one night we can pretend.

CHAPTER FOUR – KALI

He leads me through Mrs. Cranston’s yard and for some stupid, inexplicable reason I feel like I’m being bad. I tell myself that it’s because we’re not supposed to do this. Cut through her yard. She hates it. And if she saw us, she’d open a window, and shake her fist, and complain that the neighborhood is going to hell.

I laugh out loud.

“What’s funny?” Aiden asks, swiping a stray branch from the old apple tree aside so I can slip through the low hedge that surrounds the back edge of the property and leads to the back alley behind the Jeep shop.

Safely on the other side I feel a wave of relief. Some leftover emotion from twenty-five years ago. “Mrs. Cranston would kill us if she caught us.”