Eighteen

Shaking Hands With The Devil

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was just before Christmas. The snow had just started sticking to the ground. There was joy in the air and lights on the trees. And everyone was a little bit less miserable.

To celebrate the holidays and the first day of break, I took a bottle of liquor from beneath my kitchen sink. So while the rest of the world was frozen, the whisky was boiling our skin to a fever.

"It was definitely purple." Julian whispered as he pulled his lips from mine.

"That makes no sense. I hate grapes." His mouth tasted sweet.

Our time together never saw daylight. We knew movies in the dark. Whispered conversation. Bottles of whatever we could get our hands on. But not the sun. And always after his parents were asleep.

In a way, I guess it made things easier. No pressure. Just us and the shadows.

"Well, that's how I remember it. You got the purple popsicles, and I had the blue."

He moved his hands to my waist. I didn't think my skin could handle any more heat, but blood rushed to the surface anyway.

"If you say so," I removed all space between us. Our bodies felt magnetic, pulling us as close together as we could manage.

"Isn't this just—insane?" Sometimes, it was hard to convince myself that all of this was real. That lying on the couch, in the glow of the living room TV, with the boy from my childhood wasn't just mania.

"Yeah. I know." His fingers caressed the skin above my underwear. The rhythm of my heart changed. "It's not—bad, though."

"I never said that it was." My head felt the right kind of fuzzy, and every part of me was liquid beneath his touch. I was just asking for trouble.

"One more for good luck?" I sat up, untangling myself from him, as I reached for the bottle.

"What if I already feel lucky?" He sat up beside me.

"It couldn't hurt," I argued as I twisted the cap off and put the rim on my lips.

"It might hurt later."

"That's later; you gotta live in the now." The fire in my throat was debilitating. I squeezed my eyes shut and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

Despite his hesitation, Julian had more too. I fell back onto the couch and let the intoxication grow, the ceiling fan swaying at the same tempo as my breaths.

"Look at all those stars!" Julian joked, pointing at the white ceiling above us as if we were surrounded by an ocean of constellations.

"There's a shooting star!" I kept the game going.

We both laughed. Being with him was like finding pieces of myself I didn't even know I was missing. It made me feel fragile. I couldn't call it love, even if that's how it felt. Neither of us had ever reached for that word.

But whatever it was, it plunged itself so deeply into my chest that its removal would leave me completely incapacitated.

"You better make a wish." He pressed his lips gently against the skin on my neck.

"Are you gonna make a wish?" I didn't know what else to ask for. I just wanted this. In this lifetime and every lifetime after. "I already did."

I rolled onto my side. "What'd you wish for?" I knew the answer I was hoping for wasn't fair. I didn't have the courage to cross the line we tiptoed over. And neither did he.

"You know I can't tell you that; it won't come true."

"Well, do you wanna know what I wished for?" His hand cupped my face while his thumb stroked my cheek.

"I mean, you can. But you know what that means."

I said nothing. I couldn't afford to play with fate like that. It was such a confusing experience to share part of your life with someone but feel like that person existed in another universe entirely.

"Can I ask you something?"

I was gone, but not too far gone to not recognize the weight those words held. "I guess." I kept my composure. But slowly, my heart was moving into the pit of my stomach.

"Well," Julian paused. "We've been doing this for a little while now. I guess I just wanna know—What is this?" He said, "Like, what are we doing?"

The anxiety that was surfacing quickly flattened out my fuzzy thoughts. There was only one right answer to his question, and I couldn't be certain that mine was it. "I don't know; you tell me."

His hand left my face, my cheek was still warmed by his touch. "I mean, I was thinking we could keep things—casual."

I could feel a large lump swelling in the base of my throat, making it impossible to swallow.

The light from the TV screen changed shapes across his face; he looked like an angel. But what he asked from me couldn't have been anything further from benevolent.

"Obviously, we wouldn't see other people." He reassured me. "We would just keep this—a secret."

The intoxication left me. I was here in one piece again, searching for the right thing to say. "Yeah," I lied. "Causal."

It felt like shaking hands with the devil, agreeing to let him love me in secret. I could have him, but I couldn't have him completely. We would never cross that line we always found ourselves tiptoeing over.

And the worst part was that, to him, none of this was cruel. He brushed away the hairs that were sticking to my temples. I tried to force a smile onto my mouth, but the muscles in my face were stiff.

My chest grew heavy, like I was now physically carrying the weight of our agreement with me. It made my bones ache. It suffocated my ribs. I should've said no, and I wanted to.

But I thought about my missing pieces and if I even remembered who I was without them. I wanted it to be love so badly, even if that love meant lying to everyone around me.

Eighteen © Wordstothewise ™ 2024