Free Flagged Victor by Keith Hollihan Page B

I could pursue my line of thought.
    I was taken aback, did not know whether this was criticism or invitation, and I tried to recover with something cool and confrontational.
    How do you know I don’t?
    She looked at me strangely. You’re sitting with me like this for one thing.
    I had no answer for that. Even if I had a girlfriend, the situation seemed innocent or at least plausibly defensible (which was the same thing in my moral universe). Were my intentions so obvious?
    How about you? I asked. Why no boyfriend?
    She took a shard of rock and threw it into the water.
    You don’t ask a girl something like that.
    And I thought, Jesus, which way am I supposed to turn here?
    We sat silently. And then I did something I’d never done before while sober, and rarely since. I moved toward her. She didnot move away. We leaned into each other. Our foreheads met and rested one against the other. Her mouth opened slightly. Her warm breath smelled like blueberries. I could see the lashes of her eyes. This is it, I thought, this is the one I will always be with. I had the sense that I knew her, that I always had, and though our spirits did not jostle easily, they were already entangled and always would be. We complicated each other. We were puzzles and accusations both. All of this in the time it takes to remember to breathe. My lips touched her lips and her tongue bumped quickly into mine, like a fish darting through water, and I felt a peculiar emotion, part anxiety and part ease, about the depths I knew I could never fully explore.
    We’ve been gone a long time, she whispered, after mere minutes of this.
    She made me feel, in that moment, as though we’d been cheating. My hand was on her chest, just above her breast, my thumb was edging her nipple, my fingers clinging to her collarbone. Her hand gripped my other wrist tightly, as if holding onto me for balance or keeping me from reaching down into her bikini bottoms.
    I waited. I did not dare to speak.
    She put a finger on my chin and pushed until I looked up.
    You, she said, are strange and dark inside. I think you’re trouble. And I think you’re very smart.
    I did not know what to say, or how to express my astonishment at this oracular pronouncement. What did it even mean? She’s only sixteen, I reminded myself, as if to dilute the message. But I felt as though she knew me better than anyone had ever known me before.
    Such soft skin, such a warm mouth. I felt tenderly toward her, like a killer does. I moved in again, this time with more hunger.
    Take me back, you big brute, she said, and gave me the kind of smile you cannot argue against, so bright and sudden it made me realize all her smiles before had been guarded. Perhaps it was the only kind of smile that could break the spell and allow me to release her. So I raised myself from the rock and hopped to the ground with longing lodged painfully in my throat, and I gallantly offered to lift her down as though she were a figure skater in the air. I felt her full weight in my arms, and I placed her neatly before me. She laughed and gave me a quick and furtive hug around the waist.
    Come on, you, she said.
    We’d walked a fair ways, and she seemed to have more trouble with the pine needles and sharp sticks on the way back. As we neared the pier, I heard a strange squeak, and an odd laugh, and I feared we might be interrupting something. But Susan either didn’t hear those noises at all or was too focused on her footing to understand what they meant. It was only when we came to the clearing that we saw what was happening.
    They were stretched out along the length of the pier and half-wrapped in a towel, but it was impossible not to know what they were doing. I saw his legs and bare back, and her knees and arched feet locked around his hips, and the long, smooth skin of her extended throat and, I swear, the animal flaring of her nostrils. A rude growl came from her. It seemed to start in her belly and uncoil through her torso