Page 28 of Such Sharp Teeth

I want to climb onto his lap, burrow into him. I’ve never wanted to surrender myself to someone, to just let them hold me and not think twice. My eyes are closed, and I can hear “Monster Mash” playing in the distance. My breath smells like cinnamon; we both reek of bourbon.

The first time he told me that he liked me, we were loitering outside the movie theater, waiting to get picked up. Scarlett and Rich were making out, so Ian and I sat on the curb eating the candy we hadn’t finished during the movie. I forget what movie, but I remember the candy. Sour Straws and Peanut M&Ms.

“Blue raspberry,” I’d said, sucking on one of the straws. “A superior flavor.”

“I don’t like anything that changes the color of my tongue,” he told me. “Freaks me out.”

“What?”

“When I was younger, I had some blue candy, and it turned my tongue blue, and I looked in the mirror and lost it. I thought it would be like that forever.”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this,” I said. “But you were a really stupid kid.”

He laughed. Then he said, “You know I like you, right?”

“I know,” I said. I remember being mad at him for ruining the moment, for telling me something I already knew but didn’t want to be held accountable for knowing. “I’m just really busy.”

He nodded. We didn’t say anything for a while; then he tipped the bag of M&Ms in my direction. I opened my palm to receive the candy. He looked at me, and I stuck out my tongue.

“You don’t have to add insult to injury,” he said.

“Is it blue? From the straws?”

He shook his head.

We never talked about it again. When he started dating Kelly Iwanowski in eleventh grade, Scarlett asked me if I was jealous, and I answered honestly that I wasn’t. I remember thinking they’d break up eventually and he’d still like me. He liked me first. He liked me best.

“You still like me?” I ask him now, swiping the cold tip of my nose across his forehead.

“No,” he says. “Not at all. Over it.”

“Hey.”

He leans down, holds my chin in his hand, and tilts my face so our eyes are lined up exactly.

“You know the answer to that question. You’ve always known. Don’t make me say it just to hear me say it.”

He’s being honest with me again, like he was on the curb outside of the movie theater. The kind of honest I can’t skate around.

“I can’t make you do anything,” I say, stepping away from him. “You’re much bigger than I am.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got weapons,” he says as I pick up my bow and arrow.

“Damn right,” I say, crossing the yard back to the party, butterflies eating me alive from the inside.

I can’t believe I just kissed a guy on a swing set. I can’t believe I just kissed Ian Pedretti.

I need to find Scarlett.

As soon as I step into the house, my post-kiss giddiness is demolished by the song that’s playing.

“There you are,” Scarlett says, removing her hood. “I got stuck talking to these rubes. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say as Warren Zevon howls over a jaunty tune. I start to laugh in spite of myself. “This song.”

Of all things. Honestly.

“You don’t like ‘Werewolves of London’? This is the first good song that’s come on in, like, an hour,” Scarlett says.