Page 121 of Bad Boy Blues (St. Mary's Rebels 0.50)
I spin around and find him almost right behind me. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
He takes a step toward me and I press against the edge of the island. “Blue.”
“What?”
“I call it Blue.”
Zach’s crowding me now. His big, tall body is bent to the shape of mine. I feel his thighs pressed up against my slightly open ones and I hear my own pulse in my ears. Racing, racing and roaring.
“You call your bike Blue?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But it’s black.”
“So?”
“I…” I frown and for some reason, he finds it funny. He finds it a reason to bend down and kiss my blue hair softly.
My eyes fall shut on a sigh.
“Speechless, finally,” he whispers to my hair. “And all it took was one simple fact.”
Narrowing my eyes, I put a hand on his stomach – the stomach that I was kind of riding yesterday – and give him a push.
He leans back and I say, “Very funny. Why do you call your bike by a name that you call me? And while we’re on the subject, let’s talk about why do you call me Blue?”
Zach throws a look at my hair and shrugs. “Yeah, that is a mystery.”
“I didn’t get blue hair until the eighth grade. You’ve been calling me Blue since day one.”
“Your point?”
“Why don’t you ever call me Cleo?” I burst out with a question that I didn’t even know I had.
I’ve had it forever, inside me.
Suddenly, I have this great, great urge for him to say my name. It’s not that I don’t like the name he gave me. I love it. I’ve always loved it even when I never accepted it.
But I want to hear how my name will sound on his tongue.
I want to know what goes through his mind when he calls me by his special name for me. Why did he name his bike after me?
I want to know everything about him. Every little thing.
“But that’s not your name, either.”
“What?”
Zach leans over and whispers on my lips, “Cleopatra. That’s your name, right?”
I swallow against the onslaught of emotions. I feel the savage flapping of the butterflies in my stomach and I press my belly against him to make him feel it too. Make him feel all these crazy, intense emotions inside of me.
“But hardly anyone calls me that.”
