Page 32 of The Kiss Principle

Somehow, he was holding my hand again, and the corner of his mouth pulled into a smirk. He hadn’t shaved for a day or two, and his stubble was thick and dark, and he looked more like a man and less like a kid.

“That’s because I’m not a kid,” he said in a low voice, his hand tightening around mine, and something had changed in his face. “You need to remember that, Fernando.”

“You’re supposed to be on a hot date.”

“Why do you always think I’m going on dates?”

I was too smart to answer that.

He burst out laughing. “You’re so smart, huh?”

In fifth grade, we had done a report on an animal of our choosing, and I had picked a red-tailed hawk, and I remembered the pictures: the tawny body, and the bands at the ends of their tail-feathers, the reddish-orangish brown that gave them their name. And that final, darkest band of brown. And that was the color of his eyes.

He shushed me and said, “Fernando, please.” He swallowed. “Stop talking.”

I didn’t need to talk. It felt good enough to stand there, every inch of me loose, happy that he was here, enjoying the unfamiliar roughness of his hand around mine. A distant part of me was aware that I was still rattling off everything like I was reading from a teleprompter. Aware, too, of the distress growing in his face.

“I wasn’t going on a date,” he finally said, cutting across the flow of words. “I was—it doesn’t matter, I guess. I was doing something dumb. And then I thought about your back, and I decided you might be doing something dumb too. So.” He took a deep breath. “How’s your back?”

It hurt like a motherfucker, but I didn’t say that.

“Are you always like this?” he asked. “It’s like a truth serum.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that, but I could feel myself smiling—a big, loopy smile. Because Zé was here. Zé was home.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m home,” he said. He held up a towel and a small bottle, which I hadn’t noticed before, and said, “Take your shirt off and get on the bed.”

“You were having a night. You were having a nice night.”

“I wasn’t, actually. I’d like to have one now, but you’re making it harder than it needs to be.”

“You’re the nicest person I know. Why are you sad? You’re so nice, you should be happy. Assholes are the ones who shouldn’t be happy. Assholes don’t deserve to be happy.”

“Fernando, get on the bed, please.”

Having used it a time or two myself, I recognized the end-of-my-shit quality of his voice, and I shuffled over to the bed. After he spread out the towel, I lay down.

Zé rubbed his eyes.

“What? I did what you said.”

“For God’s sake,” he said under his breath. And then, with a definite tone: “Take your shirt off. And lie on your stomach.”

He had to help me sit up, and he turned me out of the shirt. Then, his hands warm on my shoulders, rolled me so that I lay facedown on the towel. It was a regular towel, one of the ones we’d had forever, and it had been washed a million times and was nice and soft. But right then, with every inch of my skin hypersensitive, I thought I could feel every single threadscratching pleasantly against me. Against my chest. Against my belly. Against my nipples.

“How in the world am I supposed to take you seriously the next time you yell at me,” Zé asked, “after listening to you go on and on about your nipples?”

I had an answer for that, but before I could dig it up, the mattress dipped under new weight as Zé sat. His hip bumped mine. Then the soft click of a lid opening broke the silence, and Zé touched my back.

I flinched.

He drew his hand back. “I think this will help your back, but are you okay with me touching you?”

“I’m okay with everything. I’m okay with everything you do. You’re the best, and everything you do is perfect.” And then, because it seemed like pertinent information, I added, “I’m ticklish.”

I thought I heard a soft, amused breath, but all he said was “You didn’t think I was so perfect when I made you eat those baby carrots for a snack.” But his hand moved in a long, slow stroke up my back. Then his hand lifted away, and I heard a liquid sound. “In fact, I’m pretty sure I saw your eye twitch when I told you I’d thrown away the potato chips.”

I opened my mouth to tell him I wasn’t a nut-rabbit and didn’t eat carrots, and I was already starting to giggle. Before I could get the words out, his hands returned to my back, warm and slick with oil. The pressure was light, and the strokes were slow and long, and the oil smelled like pine and sage. An earthy smell. And I thought about how he smelled, coconut wax and the driftwood earthiness—not quite the same, but blending pleasantly with the scent of the oil.

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