Wild Awake - By Hilary T. Smith Page 0,52
intervention.”
He pours me a big mug of coffee to drink, then goes back to the fridge and takes out arugula, goat cheese, wild mushrooms, and fresh herbs. While he’s cooking, a fat orange cat comes out of the living room and slinks around my legs, meowing plaintively.
“That’s Gingerly,” says Skunk. “Don’t feed her, she’s a mooch.”
Skunk reaches into a cupboard, takes out sea salt, and shakes some into the omelet. I’m so hungry I squirm in my chair. “Is that food almost ready?”
“Good things take time.”
“The smell’s driving me crazy.”
“You’re already crazy.”
“Oh no, I’m not. Not yet. Okay, now I am.”
And for the last three minutes before the omelet’s ready I’m fluttering around the kitchen in my socks, light as a moth and practically translucent with hunger, saying, “When-when-when-when-when?” and spinning around with the affronted cat in my arms. Skunk lifts the cast-iron pan off the stove with an oven mitt, and when he puts it down on a hot pad on the kitchen table, I rush up with the cat in my arms and almost kiss him I’m so hungry, but stop just short and stand there, panting slightly, my head dizzy from spinning, our faces just inches apart.
I’m conscious of Skunk’s height, of his bigness. He’s like a brontosaurus or a bison or a bulldozer, some strong, solid word. He still smells like something that’s been out grazing in the sun, even though it’s been raining since last night. There’s a fleck of rosemary stuck to his forehead. A smudge of bicycle grease on his wrist. I feel a flutter of fear, then a wingbeat of certainty.
“I want to kiss you,” I say, “but I seem to be holding this cat.”
Skunk lifts his hand and touches it to the side of my face. His fingers are warm from carrying the hot skillet to the table. He regards me very seriously, and for a moment I wonder if he’s about to tell me we should Focus on Bicycle Repair. Instead he just looks at me for a very long time.
“You’re beautiful,” says Skunk, “and completely batshit.”
Then, cat be damned, I do kiss him. I’m either swooning or having a hypoglycemic meltdown, take your pick, because I’m starving and in love with Skunk and because nobody’s ever said anything like that to me before. Halfway through the kiss, the cat twists out of my arms, drops to its feet on the floor, and streaks away. I step in and close the space between our bodies and we kiss, Skunk and I, like all the bicycles in the world are gliding down a long, steep, swooping, tree-mad hill.
Somehow we eat our afternoon breakfast and get the dishes done and put away. We wipe down the counters, push in our chairs, and turn off the lights. Every time a car passes, we shoot each other panicked looks and bolt toward the stairs. Suddenly, it’s a game: How long can I stay until we get caught? How much of this can we get away with?
We scamper downstairs and kiss until our lips are swollen and our cheeks are pink and Skunk’s shape, his vast lovely architecture, has become as familiar to me as the rooms of my own house. We drag the black-and-green quilt off Skunk’s bed, lay it on the floor, and roll in it like snow, hands tangled up in one another’s hair. Bicycle Boy, my brontosaurus of love, my love-bison. I cling to his sweater like a cat, pawing at his heart with my little hooked claws, mewling, memorizing his scent. Every so often my mind flits back to my house, the piano, the thirsty azaleas and the mailbox stuffed with flyers. I finally open my fist and let go of these worries, and like a bunch of helium balloons they float up and up and up until they’re tiny specks in the corner of the big blue sky.
At six o’clock, we hear Skunk’s aunt coming home from work. We freeze on the rug, listening to her footsteps on the kitchen floor. A few minutes later, Skunk’s uncle gets home too. They talk—a low rumbly voice and a sharp medium-high one—and there’s the beep of a microwave and the sudden bright loudness of a TV commercial. I snuggle into Skunk.
“I should go home now, right? Right?”
Before I can say anything else, the door at the top of the stairs squeaks open, letting in a bar of yellow light.
“Philippe?” calls Skunk’s aunt. “T’es en bas?”
Our bodies go rigid like lizards playing