Page 9 of One Little Change
3. Our Latest Mistake and Other Nightmares
o be fair, Lydia was always a nightmare. Nothing new there.
Luke
Ryan was next to me, shirtless, and we were wrapped in each other’s arms. Maybe our bodies were on a bed, but I couldn’t say for sure. It was weird that I couldn’t tell where we were. “Focus on me, Luke,” Ryan instructed. His voice was warm and he looked like the same Ryan he always was, just shirtless and sort of hazy in the middle.
I pulled Ryan closer to me. “Good plan, we don’t want to screw this up again.”
“Again? This is our first time.” What, that couldn’t be right. I just… What? Whatever it was slipped away like smoke as Ryan became more solid. His pale chest with annoyingly more chest hair than me filling in, and then there was a dark trail of hair starting just above his hips and leading down that I filled in from memory. Or no, I hadn’t seen it before. I filled it in from vision.
This was our first time. That was such great news. “I had the most horrible dream,” I started to explain but then immediately decided he didn’t need to know. Why talk about that when we could kiss instead? We could do more than kiss…
I leaned into him, but he pulled back. “You had a dream where things didn’t go well, it ruined our relationship, and everybody laughed at you while you were naked and your hair was on fire?”
“Uh, no, not all of that.” I shuddered. “That sounds awful.”
Ryan looked at me with pity. He was farther away from me now. When had Ryan moved? “You aren’t going to like this next part.” Was the sex about to start? Wait, why would I think that? Why wouldn’t I like that?
I didn’t know where I was and then I was in school, wearing nothing in the middle of the crowded hallway, with laughter roaring in my ears. Ryan was gone and there were jeering jocks from the football team front and center.
“God, Chambers,” one of the football d-bags said. “The only thing worse than being gay is being so bad at being gay.”
“I’m bi,” I told them dumbly and everyone laughed harder. Then there was a shrill ringing sound and the sprinklers went off. What? Oh, shit! My hair was on fire!
I was naked and wet, the bottom half of me shivering while the top part roasted, water pouring down and yet still not extinguishing the fire on my head. No one else seemed to care that there was a fire, they were all still there watching and laughing instead of exiting the premises in an orderly fashion, and I didn’t have enough room to stop, drop, and roll. The ringing of the fire alarm continued, and I swatted at my head to put out the flames and—
Ow, son of a bitch. The part of my head I hit ached dully as I was pulled from sleep, alarm buzzing insistently. Shit. I reached over blindly and stopped my alarm, keeping my eyes shut firmly, both to block out the dream and because I wasn’t ready for the day yet.
The sun wasn’t even up but I had to be. Waking up sucked but was worth it to get stuff done in the cooler, weak light before the hot rays of the sun made everything a million times more annoying. Not that it really mattered. Just about everything was annoying to me right now.
I pouted uselessly in my bed, not quite ready to get up yet but I couldn’t go back to sleep either, both because then I’d be late and because I didn’t want another bad experience of me and Ryan whether real or not.
I thought back to the night before at Joey’s.
Things hadn’t been working and it was so stupid, because I’ve met my boyfriend before. Obviously. I was prepared for Ryan making it weird and not being coordinated, or I’d thought so, but I’m usually already a step or two behind Ryan and then I was exhausted, so I was like giant leaps behind him instead.
It wasn’t going great and we had enough foresight to know adding Ryan’s mouth to the mix wouldn’t be a good idea, because he’d be under pressure and his teeth would need to behave, so that meant we added my mouth.
My mouth never had a chance. It had no experience and also hadn’t even thought the task set before it would ever be something it had to do until recently. Ryan’s mouth didn’t have experience either but his at least knew this was a possibility, and I just felt like my mouth didn’t get a fair shot. The odds were stacked against it, and there was, like, a lot to try and fit in there.
There was a knock on my door. It totally didn’t scare me. Even if normally no one was up as early as me.
“No,” I told whoever was there without getting up or moving.
There was another knock.
“No,” I said again, louder. I grabbed my pillow and turned over, pressing the pillow over my head. Déjà vu. Oh god. I’m proud of me for not smothering myself with the pillow.
The door opened. “Luke,” Lydia said. Ugh. I heard her sneak out when I was going to bed. Last night would have been her only time to get the scoop from Ryan face to face. She could find me anytime as we lived in the same house. Only I didn’t need her thoughts—or more like her ridicule—on the matter.
Also, it was super unfair that she could sneak out. I always got caught whenever I tried!
“I said no,” I told her. The words were muffled by the pillow.
“And I thought about listening before deciding against it.” I could pretend the pillow between us was the reason she didn’t take me seriously, but Lydia wouldn’t have listened to me anyway. She did what she wanted even when it was dumb, like how she still insisted on wearing black all through the summer.
I removed the pillow from my face to glare at her. “You’re not my real sister.” I had two; Rose was the oldest and Lily the youngest with me in the middle. Lydia had Rose’s room now. Guess it was Lydia and me in the middle now.
