Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,62

but now was not the time. “Why not,” I said.

Gunner snapped his fingers in a tight boogie. “Drinking with my homie,” he sang, even though we were not actually drinking together.

A vee of footballers went lumbering by, and Gunner called out to them:

“Sss my homie Sunny!”

The jocks instinctively heard this call, noted Gunner’s hierarchical supremacy, and drew close in order of rank. Normally Gunner would’ve had his henchmen pin me to a wall of lockers and pull my limbs off while his sidekick snapped selfies, but instead they began spontaneously supplicating.

“What’s up, Sunny.”

“I heard you rock the house.”

“Yo, tell your girl Cirrus she knows how to throw a party.”

“Sunny Dae.”

They formed a ring and walked me back to the house, the Secret Service escort to my new presidency. Surrounding revelers witnessed our procession, recognized the shift in the social order, and adjusted their psychological models of the world.

Out of all the onlookers, no one looked more amazed than three specific people:

Milo, Jamal, and Oggy the sidekick.

Together they stood in unlikely audience. I shrugged at them. Milo gave a little blank wave. Jamal’s face was frozen with disgusted admiration. Oggy folded tight little arms and whipped a dandelion to bits with his tail.

At the house, Gunner led his squad through the obediently parting crowd to the drink table. I hung back to swing an arm out and steal Cirrus away from Artemis and four other girls, all of whom eyed me with this strange new cartoon-like desire.

“What is happening?” I said once we were alone.

Cirrus looked around her with amazement. “The party is running itself,” she breathed.

“You did it,” I said.

“We did it,” said Cirrus. “I just made friends. I didn’t even have to try.”

We pressed ourselves together as more people arrived to flood the doorway.

“Can you come see something?” I said. My chest pistoned with mischief and desire. “There was an incident.”

Cirrus grimaced. “Oh god, what happened?”

“Just hurry,” I said.

I hustled her upstairs. Past the master bedroom—still empty—down the hall, and into her bare bedroom. I pressed the door shut behind us.

“Sun, is everything okay?” said Cirrus, right before I kissed her.

Instantly, her hands were in my shirt, searching for my heart. They found it. They gripped me hard enough for both of us to lose balance and fall just short of the bed with a glancing blow. Her elbow landed between my anterior ribs number four and number five.

“Ow,” I said, and slammed her face down onto mine for another kiss.

“Arr,” growled Cirrus. She held my head with vise-like hands to taste my tongue with hers. “Harr.”

Our nostrils whistled with exertion and our teeth clacked as we feverishly ate each other up with bottomless appetite. I could do this all day and it would never be enough. At the same time, it was more than I could have ever imagined. How could that possibly be?

I gasped. “I belong to you, Cirrus Soh. Okay?”

Cirrus glowed with dark wondrous light. It was as if she’d been waiting for me to say those words for a long time. “I belong to you, too, Sunny Dae.”

We kissed again—slower—to permanently etch this mark in time.

A deep thud from below gave us pause. There was a cloud of laughter as the party resumed.

“Your house is gonna get trashed,” I said.

“You can’t trash an empty house,” said Cirrus.

“Should we head back down?” I said.

“Do we have to?” said Cirrus, and kissed me again. I found my lips traveling across her cheek, down under her hair to reach the nape of her neck, then circumnavigating her torso so that I could reach the rippled plains of her shoulder blade and back. I paused to breathe. I opened my eyes.

I had tugged the scoop neck of her shirt down to reveal what to the untrained eye might seem like a very small, very symmetrical circular maze.

“You have a little tattoo,” I said.

“Oh my god, that,” said Cirrus, suddenly bashful. “I got it a long time ago, ha.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said, in awe.

Cirrus laughed against the back of her hand. “Take one guess as to what it is.”

I could’ve said I don’t know. But I did know. I knew exactly.

It was the labyrinth set into the floor of the Chartres Cathedral, in France. I knew about it from an adventure module I ran with Milo and Jamal back in our youth, titled the Curse of the Minotaur Gothique. The entire campaign dungeon was in the form of this ornate symbol; I had spent many hours mapping its every turn