Something Wicked - By Lesley Anne Cowan Page 0,23

I were honest, I’d say I sleep with him because of all this. But it doesn’t feel that way when we’re together. It doesn’t feel icky, though most of the time I’m high. It just feels, well … like sex. A climax. A shudder. An absence from my life. And then a beautiful, beautiful stillness.

It’s ironic that the one person I love, the greatest love of my life, won’t have sex with me. Michael said it wasn’t right. That we’d wait until I was eighteen, when he’d marry me. But we did mostly everything else, which was confusing at first, because I didn’t see a difference. But the longer we went without having sex, the more I realized just how amazing sex was. How much I longed for him to be inside me. Not in a sex way, but in a love way.

Now I know there’s nothing more beautiful than sex between two people who are truly in love. That’s real sex. And the longer you wait, the more sure you are, the act becomes something so much bigger than any physical sensation. And I think even if Michael had changed his mind, even if he wanted to, I’d have said to wait until we were married. I think I loved him that much.

With Michael, I didn’t see love happening. It’s like one day, out of the blue, he kissed me, or rather we kissed each other. I don’t think it was premeditated in any way. It simply happened. At work, by the sterilizing machine. When we were both bending down to check if the surgical utensils were ready.

“Wow,” I reflected like an idiot after it happened.

“Yeah. Wow.” Was he making fun of me?

“What was that?” I asked, still bewildered.

“I think it was a kiss.” Now he sounded like the idiot.

Then we did it again. More. I pushed my face onto his, opened my mouth. My whole body was on fire. I fell in love, right then. It felt so right.

“How did you learn to kiss like that?” he said, pulling away and simultaneously wiping his mouth.

“Do I kiss by the book?”

“What?”

“Am I good?” I paraphrase, smiling proudly.

“Too good for eighteen.”

“I’m sixteen.”

“Shut up,” he said, putting his finger over my lips.

I opened my mouth and took his whole finger inside, sucking.

“Ughh!” He pulled away his finger and made a face like I was the Devil.

I’d done something wrong. “Sorry.” I was embarrassed. Was it childish? Normally a guy would have liked it. They always do.

“It’s okay.” He opened the door of the sterilizer and pulled out the tray. The room instantly smelled sanitized.

“I’m not a virgin, you know,” I said, following him down the hall to the operating table, where poor Dexter the daschund was spread-legged on his back, ready to be snipped.

He laughed, stopped, and looked at me. “It was just a kiss.”

“I know.”

But it wasn’t just a kiss. We avoided each other for the entire next week, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him. It wasn’t like I was thinking about his body or kissing or anything like that. I went over every conversation we’d ever had. I imagined living with him. Making him dinner. I imagined marrying him. Having his children. Growing old together. Dying together, and then being buried side by side in the same cemetery. It was going to be perfect. Like it all made sense now, as if everything in my life had been leading up to us getting together.

The next time we kissed was when he gave me a lift home in his hatchback Volkswagen that stinks ’cause its diesel. We talked the whole way about music and work.

Finally we pulled up to my apartment building. “It’s ugly,” I remarked apologetically.

“It’s just a building,” he said. “Everybody has the same four walls. It’s what’s inside that matters.”

“Yeah. Well. The inside is pretty much the same. Thanks for the lift,” I said, pulling my knapsack onto my lap. I looked directly at him, waiting for him to kiss me.

“You’re welcome.” His hands remained fixed on the steering wheel.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

He laughed. “I wasn’t thinking about it.”

“Liar.”

I waited, but he didn’t move, so I leaned over and kissed him. He kissed back. And we kissed for a long time. The sloppy wet sounds were unavoidably awkward until he reached out and turned up the radio. We kissed some more. Then he stopped, like he was suddenly aware of something, and started to look around outside the car.

I pulled back. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” He