I eyed him warily. This was new and a little intimidating. “I’m hungry. Do you want a snack?”
“Do you have snacks?”
Of course not. We never did. It was a wonder I grew so much with the lack of food available when I was at home. Then again, I got free lunch at school and had dinner at Gram’s more often than not.
“No,” I said, sorry I’d asked. But I was hungry.
“You should let me give you money for food,” he added, his tone careful and blank.
This was a very old and very sore subject. And he knew it.
I glared at him. “I won’t take any more of your charity. It’s bad enough your Gram buys me clothes for school and feeds me dinner almost every night.”
His jaw set stubbornly, and I was pissed and bummed. If we got into a fight, it would ruin the rest of the day.
But then he sighed and looked away, breaking the tension.
Sometimes when we locked eyes, it was like predators having a standoff. One wrong move and—blood.
On the flip side, if one backed down then—peace.
He’d backed down for this one, thank God, because I never could have.
He paused the movie.
“Well, I need food,” he said. “Is it all right if I order myself a pizza?”
“All right.”
“I can’t eat a whole one myself. I’ll only order it if you promise to eat some, too.”
That was a compromise I could live with, and he knew it. It didn’t feel so much like charity if he was feeding himself and I was just sharing.
I grabbed the phone and brought it to him. While he dialed, I sat down carefully between his thighs.
We’d never done this before. Usually he just put his arm around me and we’d progress through varying degrees of touching each other tentatively. I’d lay my head on his chest, sometimes, if he was extra bold, he’d rub my knee with his hand.
Once we’d even spooned, my back to his front both of us turned to the TV. That had happened two weeks ago and it’d been the most exciting moment of my life.
But sitting between his thighs felt like a decidedly bigger step.
Tentatively I leaned back into his chest while he dialed up the pizza place.
“Any toppings you prefer?” he asked me
I was having a hard time finding my breath. “Whatever. You pick. You’re paying.”
I always said this and never meant it. We got the same thing every time. It was my favorite. I couldn’t even have said if Dante particularly liked it, but he always got it.
“Yeah,” he said into the phone, his free arm moving to drape over my shoulder. “I’ll take a large pie, thin crust with jalapeños, chicken, and sausage. Extra sauce.”
When he hung up I pushed play on the movie again.
We sat stiffly like that for a few minutes before I felt him put pressure on my shoulders, pulling me back more firmly against him.
“Relax,” he said into my hair. “I won’t bite. Just lay on me.”
I tried, but it was impossible to relax like that. He wasn’t relaxed either though, to be fair. I could feel the tension coiled in him like a spring about to bust.
I wiggled my hips, pushing closer to him. He jerked like I’d hurt him, and I stopped. And that’s when I felt it, that hardness poking into me from behind, through our clothes.
I swallowed and spoke, my voice like a croak, “Is this comfortable? Should I move?”
He didn’t answer, but he was breathing hard into my ear.
I laid back, putting the weight of my shoulders more firmly to his chest. I wasn’t any more relaxed, but I didn’t really care. This felt better than relaxed, like something important was happening, and I didn’t want it to stop.
His arm around me moved suddenly, went up, gripping the top of the sofa above us, his knuckles white with the pressure of it.
I started to sit up to look at him, but he stopped me with a touch from his free hand to my belly.
I stilled, my eyes glued to that hand and the way it kept moving, stroking my stomach, pushing me harder into him.
I didn’t stop him, and he just kept rubbing. I started to move my hips, rubbing against that foreign hardness at my back. He didn’t stop me.
This went on for some time. Not progressing, but not stopping, which seemed like enough for a while.
Until it wasn’t. Eventually I craved more contact. I wasn’t sure what. It was a tangible desire for something intangible.
Feeling drugged, my body heavy and aching, I started to turn.
I pushed my chest to his. His eyes were on mine as we breathed each other’s air, our lips less than an inch away.
I don’t even know how it happened, but he was suddenly sitting up and I was straddling him, my fingers in his hair, his hands on my hips.
He was panting into my mouth, and I didn’t know what to do with myself I loved it so much.
He’s finally going to kiss me, I thought in wonder.
I’d been waiting for this for what felt like my whole life. And, at last, it was going to happen.
I didn’t move to him. I wanted him to make the move. I held perfectly still as he leaned that last inch toward me.
The doorbell rang, breaking the spell.
I scrambled off him, cursing in my head. My first kiss ruined by the fucking pizza man.
I was sullen as I grabbed the two cleanest plates I could find and laid them out on the coffee table.
We ate in silence, the movie playing on. I had two slices, Dante the rest. There wasn’t so much as a crumb left by the time he was done. He always ate like that, and it was no surprise with the way he was growing.
He got up, threw the box away, and joined me again on the couch, throwing his arm over my shoulder.
I shrugged it off. I felt my temper suddenly brewing. It felt separate from me at times like this, a storm out of my control. I couldn’t have calmed it if I’d wanted to. I only seemed to know how to fuel it. Every bitter pill I’d ever swallowed was lodged somewhere inside of me, just waiting for these moments.
“So that girl you’re going to marry,” I ground out, voice tight and angry. “Is she nice?” I turned my head to watch his reaction.
He shot me a genuinely baffled look. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Tiffany. Fanny. Your mom told me all about her.”
“What? Who?”
“Tiffany Vanderkamp. Ring a bell?”
He looked no less confused as he said, “That’s the daughter of my mom’s best friend. I barely know her. What on earth does she have to do with anything?”
My eyes narrowed on him, looking for any signs of deceit. “Your mom told me you were going to marry her after you graduate from college.”
His mouth twisted, and he glared back at me, his own temper coming out to play.
It seemed to instantly quiet my own. I acknowledged to myself that some perverse part of me loved to rile him.
“You know my mom is crazy. She was fucking with your head. It’s what she does. I can’t believe you let her get to you. You’re smarter than that.”
My head cleared like I’d been lost in a fog and I was suddenly out of it. He was right. His mother was nuts, and this was just the kind of thing she’d pull whether there was truth to it or not.
“So you know this means she’s going to try to get you to marry that girl,” I pointed out to him.
He rolled his eyes. “Good fucking luck to her. She tries every day to get me to do things. Ask me how often she succeeds.”
I didn’t have to ask. I knew. Seldom, and only when he wanted to go along with whatever it was.
“You really thought I was planning to marry that girl?” he asked. There was a world of reproach in his voice.
I shrugged. “It’s not my business.” I turned my face away.
With a hand on my chin he turned it back. “It is your business.”