Page 64 of Seven Days in June

“Go ahead, laugh,” she said. “I look funny.”

“No,you’refunny,” he said. “Look, you could have hair down to the floor. You could be bald. I could be blind. You’d still be pretty, Genevieve.”

He said it like his opinion was fact. Her skin flushed fever-hot, and her palms went humid.

Shane backed up and leaned against the doorway. Genevieve turned around to face him.

“You pronounced my name right,” she said.

“Been practicing.”

“Say it again.”

“John-vee-ev,” he said with a smile. “It sounds like it tastes good.”

“How can a word taste good?”

“Synesthesia. It’s when you’re overstimulated and your senses get confused. You see music. Hear colors. Taste words.”

“Oh.” Her mouth went dry. She blinked, and he was in front of her. The sink pressed against the small of her back. She held her breath. Gently, Shane cupped his good hand behind her neck, his gaze traveling from her eyes to her mouth. Then, for the first time, he kissed her—a lingering, pillowy peck. Innocent. He deepened it then, slanting his casted arm across her back and pinning her to him.

“You do taste good,” he said, drawing back a little.

“So much…thank you.” Flustered, she said the words out of order.

Shane’s eyes flickered, and he seemed both smug and charmed. Then he dipped down to kiss her some more.

She remembered her mom calling on and off for a good two days. She never answered, but she kept the bulky Nokia phone on the charger, just in case (in case of what, she wasn’t sure). On the third day, she moved it into the kitchen downstairs so she wouldn’t hear the buzzing.

She remembered her first non-self-administered orgasm. They were lying out in the grass by the pool in their underwear, roasting in the swampy DC heat. Shane was listening to her ramble about howCarrieandThe Exorcistrepresented the male fear of female puberty.

“I secretly wanna get a period. Just once,” he said as he popped aWHOREpill on his tongue and tenderly kissed it into her mouth. “What’s up with you and horror?”

“It’s an escape.”

He trailed kisses along her jawline, down her neck. Pausing at her jugular, he murmured against her skin, “Keep talking.”

“It’s a safe way to…to feel…”

“Feel what?”

“Intensity,” she breathed. “A thrill, without being in actual danger.”

He sucked the skin above her collarbone into his mouth. Then he bit her. Hot, wet, hard. Electricity bolted through her, and she let out a quivery cry. Shane’s eyes flickered. Lightly, he cupped her throat with his hand. Ghosting his lips over hers, he said, “There is no safe thrill.”

He squeezed her throat, and she went boneless.Christ.She didn’t know this was something to need. His mouth traveled, restless, over her skin, down to where she was drenched. Then he sucked her till she shattered, tearing fistfuls of grass from the earth.

She remembered walking in Adams Morgan at sunset. When it started to rain, Shane broke into a parked Chevy Nova (using that mysterious ATM card) to wait it out. He was behind the wheel, Genevieve was shotgun, and they snorted lines ofPARTYpowder off Shane’s paperback copy of Paul Beatty’sWhite Boy Shuffle.

Something had been weighing on her mind, and she didn’t know how to bring it up. She’d tried and failed several times. But now, feeling electric with coke confidence, she dove right in.

“Gotta ask you something,” she started.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“You a virgin?”

“Virginity is a social construct,” he said proudly.

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