I raised my eyebrows. “I assume you have a plan to convince her of that.”
“Of course,” she said easily.
I shook my head. “All right,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender. “In absence of another, better plan, I guess we can give it a try. But we’re going to need to stop for Swiss cake rolls.”
She laughed.
I got up, keeping my head down to avoid the roof, and climbed into the driver’s seat. She followed and settled herself on the passenger side.
“I also wanted to say that I…I’m sorry about earlier,” she said quietly, clicking her seat belt into place as I started the van and cranked up the AC.
I frowned. “What are you talking about?” I asked, backing out of the parking place.
She stared down at her hands, folding them and unfolding them in her lap. “I woke up and you were there, looking so worried about me…my contacts. It was nice. You caring. And I was just…I was just glad.” She grimaced.
Oh. She’d had so few people care about her that she felt she had to apologize for responding to affection? She’d kissed me; I’d wanted her to. End of story, as far as I was concerned. But evidently not for Ariane. And I thought my life was messed up.
“Nothing to apologize for,” I said, doing my best to keep my tone even. I didn’t want to make her self-conscious. “Anytime you want to be glad like that again, just let me know.” I grinned at her.
She nodded without looking at me, color creeping into her cheeks again.
I shifted into drive and headed for the parking lot exit.
“Is that, um, something you’d want?” she asked after a few seconds of silence. “I mean, not what we did, but what we could do.…”
I glanced over at her sharply. Sex. Was she asking about sex? My mouth worked without words coming out. I didn’t know how to answer that.
“I guess what I’m asking is”—she squirmed in her seat—“it doesn’t bother you, what I am? Some people wouldn’t even want to share a straw with me, if they knew.…”
Ah, now I was getting it. But that didn’t really help me with an answer. She was worried about being pushed away, now or sometime in the near future, whether there was some invisible line that I wouldn’t cross with her because of who or what she was. I could address that, but I didn’t want to inadvertently add pressure to an already crazy situation.
“You know I’m not expecting anything like that, right?” I asked carefully.
“That wasn’t my question,” she said.
“No, it doesn’t bother me. Obviously.” I jerked my head toward the sleeping bag.
She nodded, but she didn’t seem reassured. “But you have. Before, I mean.”
I shifted uncomfortably. I hadn’t planned on this conversation. If things had gotten this intense and so quickly under normal circumstances, then yeah, I’d have been expecting it. But this was a bizarre moment of reality intruding on a pretty surreal landscape. But then again, Ariane, in addition to being a half-alien soldier/spy/whatever, was just somebody trying to figure out how to navigate the world, just like the rest of us. “Yeah,” I admitted.
“Who?”
I sighed. She wasn’t going to like this answer. “You wouldn’t know her. She was a senior when we were freshman.”
Caught by surprise, Ariane actually looked at me. “Really?”
I let out a slow breath, trying to figure out how to word this. “It was complicated. She wanted Quinn, but he was…occupied.” Not that I’d known that at the time. I was stupid and half drunk at my first high school party; I’d taken Tara’s interest at face value. A senior cheerleader asking me if I wanted to go somewhere where we could “talk”? Uh, hell, yeah.
It was only afterward, stumbling out of a darkened bedroom at her stepfather’s house, when I heard her taunting Quinn about it, that I’d figured it out. I wasn’t sure whether she’d done it to get back at him for choosing someone else or to just make him jealous. Either way, fail.
Quinn had glanced from her to me and back again and got pissed. Just not in the way Tara had intended.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he demanded of her. “He’s not even fifteen. That’s messed up.”
Before I could protest that I’d participated voluntarily, Tara lost her shit and starting screaming at Quinn and punching his shoulder.
By then, we were attracting a crowd with our little drama: Tara, red-faced and shrieking; my brother looking disgusted, shaking the beer off his hand where Tara had caused it to slop out of his cup; and me, a foot taller but years younger than everyone else, standing there awkwardly, like a complete tool.
Eventually, Tara’s friends showed up and dragged her off, holding her arms down and whispering to her in the tone used by sane people coaxing a jumper off a ledge.
Yeah, that was the girl who’d slept with me.
And then Quinn, who normally ignored me at parties, at school, hell, even at home when he could, frowned at me, concerned. “You okay?”
Somehow that made it all the worse. Bad enough to be used as a revenge fuck, but to be pitied for it by the emotional target of said revenge fuck, who also happened to be my perfect, universally loved, older brother? God.
Pinned by the stares of those lingering to just gawk, I’d forced myself to nod. “Yeah, whatever.” I’d been terrified that my brother was going to keep talking about it when all I wanted to do was die or become invisible.
But he didn’t. Quinn had just nodded, almost absentmindedly as the incident was already fading from his mind. “All right.” Then he’d turned away from me to face the crowd. “What are all you pussies looking at? Let’s get our drink on!”
They’d followed him to the kitchen, leaving me alone. And I’d found the first door out and sneaked away. It was all anybody would talk about at school the next Monday, but among most of my friends, it became about “bagging a senior chick” instead of blinding stupidity and degradation. A small favor, I guess.
Remembering it even now, after almost two years of better experiences, still made my stomach churn and my face hot.
Ariane touched my arm. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said fiercely. Clearly, she’d picked up on at least some of my thoughts about that night.
I tried to smile. “Thanks.” I flipped the signal on to indicate our turn from the mall parking lot onto the main road. “So, in answer to your question, do I want to with you? Yeah.” I made sure to look at her so she knew I wasn’t just telling her what she wanted to hear. “But it should mean something, you know?” I shifted a little in my seat, feeling as though I were straying from the agreed-upon code of sex anytime, anywhere is good. But she’d asked, so I was answering honestly. I’d learned that lesson the hard way the first time, and I had no desire to revisit it. “And right now, we’re a little busy with just trying to stay alive,” I said.
Ariane nodded, a hint of a frown crossing her face.
“So there’s no rush,” I said firmly, as much to myself as to her. I wasn’t the type to push. Not my style. But I already felt more for her than I had for anyone else. Ever. That made it a lot harder to keep moments like the one a few minutes ago from spinning out of control.
“So, as long as you’re comfortable with everything so far…” I paused, a new thought occurring to me. I tapped my fingers nervously on the steering wheel. “Uh, I mean, assuming everything works the same way.”
She laughed, a bright, unexpected sound. “As far as I know, yeah.”
I let out an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Okay, good. Because if there’s something special about your elbow or whatever, you need to tell me.”
She cocked her head to one side with a frown. “Wait, so the elbow isn’t special? What’s third base, then?”