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He glances over his shoulder, looking out the store windows. “You wanna hang out here for a sec?”
Coldness creeps under my skin. “With or without you?”
“With.” His eyes lower onto mine again, and warmth spreads.
“What about Xander?” I ask since we were on our way to see my brother. We’re going to try and talk to him together. Donnelly heard my brother planned to venture to Arcadia Galactica, and he’s supposed to go on-duty to protect him. I imagine Xander will run straight for the X-Men version ofStreets of Rage.We all loved playing the cooperative battle arcade game when Uncle Garrison and Aunt Willow took us to the mall.
“We’ll still make it to your brother. Just taking a pit stop.” He watches me tuck the chilled energy drink under my armpit. I grab a wider can off the shelf. A Four Loko. It contains alcohol, but he says nothing about it or how I’m not twenty-one just yet.
His presence is starting to feel less bodyguard-ish and more friend-ish.
“Have you seen those paparazzi before?” I wonder, shutting the fridge. “It kinda seemed like you knew them.”
“They’ve been around.” He scans a nearby shelf and pulls packaged jerky sticks off the hook. “They mostly follow Xander. I’ve been calling ‘em Boom Box. One is always louder, more annoying. The other is heavier set and more aggressive.”
I like his nickname better than Thin One and Bulky One. “Boom Box haven’t left, have they?” I grab a big bag of Fritos.
“Nah, they’re gonna hang around until we leave.” He returns to the fridge behind me, taking a can of the original flavor of Lightning Bolt! “You don’t need to worry about them though.”
“I’m not that worried,” I say softly as we head into another aisle, empty of people. He’s peeling the plastic off the jerky stick while I crouch to the box of Fruit Roll-Ups. I imagine we have nowhere to be, me and him, and we’re really dating.
Even if being someone’s girlfriend is terrifying, I’m more scared of never having the opportunity. Anxieties around me start to shrink in my make-believe world, and I sing a song under my breath off-key and shimmy my shoulders to the beat. I shift my knees too, still squatting.
I grab two tropical tie-dye Fruit Roll-Ups, and I look over and up at Donnelly. His chestnut hair is pushed out of his face, a silver hoop in his pierced ear today, and as his gaze slips down me, his lips rise like I’m the prettiest, weirdest sight he’s ever seen.
He bites his jerky stick and hums a few bars with me. It’s a song he knows. One we danced to in Scotland: The Who’s “Baba O’Riley.”
When I rise, my arms are full of snacks and drinks, but Donnelly walks two of his fingers up my neck and cheek, until he’s touching my head. Our eyes only detach as he spins me in a slow circle—really, I turn myself with the movement of his fingers on my head, as though I’m a music box he’s winding.
My smile expands, and his grin brightens the dimmest pieces of me. Dizziness whirls my brain, my breath short, and when I come to a heady stop in front of him, our gazes are entrenched inside one another. Desire is a beast we’ve let crawl inside our hearts, writhing and screaming and needing to be uncaged.
I want him to kiss me.
If it’s wrong, then I want to do the worst, wrong things with Donnelly.
He looks just as dizzy, just as overwhelmed, and then the moment breaks with thedingof the door. His head whips to the entrance, but he relaxes at the sight of an old man. Not Boom Box.
Juggling my snacks, I use the moment to open my Fritos bag. Sure, we haven’t paid yet, but we plan to and the cashier hasn’t said anything.
Donnelly takes another bite of jerky. “How come you ditched Frog?” He’s not accusatory like Ian. He just sounds curious.
I crunch on a corn chip. “Because the purple people eaters told me to.”
“Hate those purple-people-eating bastards.”
I nod. “They’re nosy too. Snuck into my bedroom in the middle of the night and mentally transferred their histories to me.”
“Yeah, no one sneaks into your bedroom but me,” he says, hushed.
I begin to smile, but reality hurts knowing he can’t really sneak into my room anymore—not as anything more than a friend.
Tension stretches. He tries to break it with another question. “What do they have against frogs anyway?”
“Everything.After all the purple people were eaten, their world was cratered with darkness. Legend says, Jar Til, leader of the purple people eaters, was poisoned by amphibians. Frogs are the heroes of the story.” I hold out my Fritos.
I’d usually lose most people at this point.
They’d uncomfortably laugh and think the story I made up on the spot is bizarre. Life doesn’t have to be thatserious all the time, and sometimes it’s fun to pretend other species exist. Like you.
