Page 37 of I Hope This Doesn't Find
Neither of us speaks, and I’m mortified to find myself breathing hard. The harsh, uneven sound fills the room.
“Damn.” Someone whistles. “Didn’t know she had it in her . . .”
On a regular day, this alone would make me curl into a ball and die on the spot. But my attention is pinned on Julius.
“Excuse me,” he murmurs, clearing his throat. He won’t meet my eyes. “I’m going to go outside for—” He makes a vague gesture to the door without finishing his sentence, and then he’s striding out, his footsteps quick and urgent, his shoulders tensed.
I don’t even want to imagine how red my face is right now.
“I’m also, um—I need to grab a drink,” I say. My voice sounds odd, choked. “I-I’ve already done my dare.”
Nobody tries to stop me.
•••
The night air wraps around me when I step outside.
It’s warmer than it’s been for months, and I can find the early hints of spring in our backyard. The budding roses, the sweet scent of fresh green grass, the birds rustling in the trees. A breeze snakes through my hair, ruffles my skirt. The sky is a deep, starless black, but the fairy lights twinkle over the back porch, glowing pink and blue and yellow, as if the stars have fallen down to earth instead.
Julius is looking up at the sky too, the outline of his frame lit with gold. His arms rest over the railing, and when I step closer, I notice him digging his nails into his palms.
My feet slow over the wooden planks. I pull at my sleeves, self-conscious all of a sudden. I don’t know how to act, what to say. I don’t even know why I followed him out here.
Then Julius spins around, and so many emotions flash over his face that I can’t begin to decipher them all before they’re wiped clean again, leaving just one: anger. “Why did you have to do that?”
The venom in his voice makes me freeze. “What?” I say, confused. “What do you mean? I— It was a dare. They asked me to.”
“You would kiss someone you loathe just because of a childish dare? Just because other people wanted you to?” Contempt laces his tone. Each word is an arrow, and his aim lands true every time. “Do their opinions really mean that much to you?”
This is so unreasonable, so deeply insulting, I’m rendered speechless. I can’t believe I’d kissed him bare minutes ago. I can’t believe I’d let him pull me close like that—run his fingers over my skin like that—
Something blazes over his face, as though he’s remembering it too.
“What’swrongwith you?” I finally choke out. “If you didn’t want to kiss me, you could have just refused.”
“You think I had a chance to? You grabbed me—”
“You stood up too,” I cut in, my voice trembling with fury. “You kissed me back—”
“It was a natural reflex,” he says. “Not that I expect you to know, but—”
“Who’s to say I wouldn’t know?”
That shuts him up.
He stares at me. Through the brick walls, the noise from the party—the pounding of music, the rattle of bottles, the hum of conversation punctuated by muffled shrieks of laughter—feels a hundred miles away. Like it belongs to another world, another time, another place. “That . . . wasn’t your first time kissing someone,” he says. A half question.
“Of course not.” It was only my second kiss, but I’m enjoying this, proving his assumptions wrong. And I don’t want to give him any reason to think that what happened just now was special, that it meant something when it didn’t. It shouldn’t.
“Who?” he asks. A full question now.
I lean over the railing, my head turned away from him. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” he says heatedly. “But I want to know.”
“Well, I don’t want to tell you,” I say, just to be difficult. Just to deprive him of something too, after he stripped me of my pride.
“Does he go to our school?” he presses, then corrects himself. “No, that isn’t possible. I’m sure I would have heard rumors about it.”
