Eddie's lips trace everywhere across my skin.
Then his hands are in my hair and mine are in his.
I'm not leaned against the wall anymore, my back's on the floor instead.
The fuzzy thing is that, as he's dipping his fingertips into the wells of my shoulder blades, flinging all of my blood into the corners of my body, all of me is also right beneath his hands.
I'm in a strange place of being afraid, goose-bumped, and starved of pressing shapes.
That came out wrong.
I didn't mean it like that.
I'm not afraid. Eddie doesn't scare me or anything.
I just don't know how to handle this—this swerve in the balance of what I think should be happening and what my mind desperately wants to be true.
What should be happening is this: Me in the living room downstairs, being introduced to Eddie's obnoxiously punk girlfriend, who's probably called Kat, spelt with a definitive 'K'. That version of me is suppressing nausea when he sees Kat's spindly legs swing onto Eddie's lap and he suddenly has a million things to say to Mike Wheeler when the girl begins crawling her hands up Eddie's chest.
I'm trying to separate myself into what's really happening.
Eddie is kissing me. I say that in a way that means he just pressed his mouth to the point of my elbow and now he's kissing my collarbone.
It isn't lazy. He's making pointed movements.
"Getting to know you," he whispers in an exact echo of my thoughts.
Good to know that we've skipped to finishing each other's sentences, unspoken as they are.
I sit up suddenly.
This is way too fast and everyone's downstairs and I don't know how I'm supposed to act because I've always wanted this, but I'm not sure how I can have this without making my body uncomfortable. My mind feels uncomfortable.
What calms me is the window.
I can see the auburn trees shivering behind Eddie's shoulders.
The sky is hungry, devouring shadows in favour of dim blue evening.
"I'm going to stop," Eddie decides.
My eyes snap away from the glass and back towards him.
"No."
The word is out of my mouth before I can think.
"I don't want to push you," he adds resolutely.
I fidget, because the buzz on my skin is gone. It's incessant chatter was my white noise.
While he was kissing me, his hands caused a cacophony to lift out of me and I relied on it to keep me from the window.
"No, you aren't pushing," I claim.
And it's true.
I want this, him, seconds of cold death.
I want to die sometimes.
Nothing too deep.
It's just that sometimes I can't stand being alive and my body becomes the hardest thing about living and breathing.
My lungs can become trappings if I let them.
I want it all to end in the quietest way.
"No, you aren't pushing."
I say it again because saying it once wasn't enough to convince this half of me. The half that doesn't align. The part that always feels like the rest of me is a liar.
"Are you sure?" He asks.
"Yes."
I'm not lying anymore. Not if he makes me feel comfortable. If I trust him.
More importantly, if I trust myself.
Eddie wraps his hands around my waist, tugging up my sweater until his fingers press against skin.
I'm stiff beneath his touch. Even still.
"Steve..." he says, chin on my shoulder, mouth beside my ear.
I hum softly, a steady note.
He straightens up and looks me in the eyes, our faces matching.
"Steve."
My name becomes a statement, rather than a whisper.
I try not to wriggle out of his stare, and focus on words instead.
"I'm just nervous."
There's a low tremor that riddles across my voice.
I sound too weak.
Girly.
I bite down on the inside of my mouth.
I have to stop thinking in this way.
I don't think Eddie looks like something that he isn't, so he is looking at me in the right way too.
The window calls, but I ignore it and face him instead.
We sit in each other's arms, carefully holding and watching.
"I am going to be so very careful with you." Eddie breathes into me.
That's all I need.
