Being Invisible (7 page)

“How did I let you talk me into
this?” We were in front of Colin’s apartment, and Liz was less than enthused.
But I could tell, like me, she couldn’t resist her curiosity.

“Colin said he wanted us to know
the truth. If we don’t like his ‘truth’ we can just leave, okay?”

Liz took a deep breath, then
answered. “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”

As soon as I knocked on the door,
Colin answered. He seemed relieved to see us. “Thanks for coming.”

Drew jumped from the couch as soon
as he saw us, and pulled Liz to him, taking her back with him to the couch. Liz
started to pull away, but Drew seemed determined to keep her close. Liz didn’t
try very hard either. Despite her anger, I could tell she was happy to see him.

Colin pulled up a chair for
himself, then motioned for me to sit on the couch before taking his seat.

“First of all, Liz, I owe you an
apology. Drew wasn’t at the bar. He just said he was, because he was protecting
me. He thought it was a really stupid idea.”

Liz looked at me then at Drew
unsure of what to do.

“Secondly...” Colin took a deep
breath before he continued. “I went to the bar.”

 
I rolled my eyes, starting to say
something, but he interrupted.

“I know it was stupid. I wish I
had a better excuse, but… I was jealous. I just wanted to see for myself that
you were there to, you know, meet guys.”

“So it’s true?” I asked, just as
frustrated as when we arrived. “You don’t want me, but you don’t want anyone
else to have me either?”

“No! I don’t want anyone else to
have you, because I want you.” He trailed off, worried about how I would handle
his admission.

“If that’s true, then why didn’t
you call me for our date? Why didn’t you try to kiss me again? You knew I liked
you. I wasn’t subtle.”

“Because I was trying to get
myself together. I didn’t know how to tell you. I knew you wouldn’t believe me,
I could barely believe it myself.”

“What?” I asked, incredulous. I
felt like I was trying to solve a riddle without half of the clues.

“It’s cool, man, tell her.” Drew
urged him on, while pulling Liz into him, happy to have her close.

“Okay.“ Colin took a deep breath,
clearly nervous, which was making me nervous. “So you know Drew’s major is
chemistry, right?” Liz and I nodded, waiting.

“Well, he had an experiment he was
doing for a project. We were heading out afterwards to a party, so I went with
him. He was working, but I was goofing off. Juggling anything that looked like
a ball, stacking anything that looked like it could be stacked. What can I say?
I get bored easily. Just when Drew told me to knock it off, I dropped
something, knocking over a bunch of chemicals. As soon as they hit me, I knew I
had screwed up. Drew tried to rinse it off, but it was too late.” He paused, and
I could tell whatever he wanted to say was going to be difficult. “I had a cut
on my arm. The chemicals spilled on me and got into my cut. When that happened
I...disappeared.”

I guess his long pause was so that
we could soak this revelation in, but what Colin didn’t understand was that
wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

    
“What the hell?” Liz
voiced my thoughts. “You brought us here to tell us
this
? How stupid do you think we are?” She got up to leave, with me
close behind. Before we could actually get out of the door, we stopped in our
tracks.

     
Colin, who was
right in front of us... actually did...disappear.

“What the hell just happened?” I
asked to no one in particular, mostly because no one in particular was in front
of me anymore.

“He’s obviously telling the
truth.” Drew said, breaking our silence. “And he was just as freaked out when
it happened as you guys are now. That’s why he didn’t want to tell you.”

I walked back over to the couch,
the need to sit down overriding any other thought.

Suddenly, Colin was next to me,
making me jump practically off the couch.

“Sorry, Lucy. I didn’t mean to
startle you. I forgot for a second that you couldn’t see me.”

“When?” I managed to ask. “When
did this happen? Before you met me, or?” I looked at Colin hoping to make some
kind of sense of what he told us.

“Before. When I told you about the
old lady? That was true. The only part I left out was that I was trying to use
my invisibility to help her. Before that, all I wanted to do was get rid of it.
Believe me, Drew and I tried. We didn’t know which chemicals mixed together, we
couldn’t duplicate the solution, couldn’t make it go away.” Colin stood up and
started pacing.

”That day was the first time that
I thought that I might be able to use it to help people. I became invisible, and
then jumped him. Drew helped me pull him down, but the guy still got away.
That’s when I realized that my superpowers were useless if I couldn’t back it
up. I wanted to become the kind of guy who deserved to be invisible. Someone
who was strong, who could think on his feet, someone who was fast. ”

“So you started running." I
thought back to the day that I met him.

 
Colin nodded. “Shows you what kind of
superhero I am. I did a better job of knocking you down than I did the purse-
snatcher.
 
And I wasn’t even
invisible then. I just wasn’t watching where I was going.”

Up until that point Liz had hung
back toward the door, ready to bolt at any second. Colin’s story must have
pulled on her heartstrings, because she grabbed Drew’s hand and pulled him
toward the door. “We’ll be back in one hour.” Liz warned. “Don’t piss her off
while we’re gone.”

“I’ll try my best.” Colin said, obviously
unsure of where I was at with the whole disappearing act story.

After they closed the door, my rapid-fire
questions started.

“Can you disappear whenever you
want to?”

“I can now. It took a while to get
the hang of it.”

“Besides the bar, have you ever
been near me while invisible?”

“No. Never. I wouldn’t do that to
you… I mean other than that one time.”

"Your clothes obviously
disappeared too. Can you make anything disappear?"

“I figured out my clothes, a few
small objects. Nothing big yet. I have to concentrate pretty hard. And only
when I’m invisible too.”

“Why couldn’t you take me on a
date? By then you already knew you had the power so why didn’t you call? Text
me? Anything?”

“Something was wrong. I was sick,
and it stopped working. I randomly disappeared and reappeared. Something about
having a virus caused it not to work. I guess I have to be careful and try not
to get sick again. I didn’t know what to tell you. Then it seemed like it had
been too long. When you texted me, my mom was at my door. Drew was trying to
give her excuses not to come in. My mom would flip her shit if she knew. She’s
a worrier.”

I laughed, thinking about how my
own mom might react.

“In the meantime, I was hiding in
my bathroom, playing a zombie game on my cell phone, while flipping like a
light switch, disappearing, reappearing, all this time trying not to cough to
give away that I was there.”

I laughed at the image.

“She kept telling Drew that she
didn’t mind waiting for me, despite the fact that he told her I would be gone
most of the day. Finally, Drew said that he had a girl in his bedroom to get
her to leave. She was appalled. He was mortified, and I never heard the end of
it from either of them.”

“So what you’re saying is that it
really wasn’t a good time?” I laughed, most of my anger gone. I couldn’t
imagine what it must have been like for him.

“You could say that.”
 
Colin laughed too, relieved that I was
listening to him.

“I was afraid that I would never
be able to go outside again. Drew kept trying to figure out how to help me. We
were about to give up and ask someone for help. But then, my virus went away,
and everything went back to normal. Or as normal as a guy who turns invisible
can be. When I saw you at the gym, I...”

“Wait.” I interrupted. Were you
invisible at the gym?”

“Not at first. But then I heard
something. I, like you, wasn’t expecting anyone. I wanted to have the element
of surprise against my attacker. As soon as I saw it was you, I made myself
appear, just in time for you to freak out and trip over me.
 
I was so happy to see you. I thought
about you all the time. But I knew there was no way I could explain not
contacting you. I didn’t want to keep making excuses to not see you, so I just
didn’t do anything.”

“Wow. This is...a lot to take in.”
I answered honestly. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to know. I wish I
could have told you sooner. It’s just...it’s a lot.”

“Yeah.” We sat on the couch
together, silent, for a long time, when something occurred to me, and the
stress of everything finally got to me. I started laughing. And I couldn’t
stop.

“What?” Colin asked, concerned
with my breakdown.

“I’m sorry. It’s really not funny.
I don’t even know why I’m laughing. It’s just that now I get why you put The
Greatest American Hero on your mp3. You were trying to be like him.” I said
through tears. I knew that he didn’t really do it, but he had put me through
enough. It was his turn.

“That wasn’t me! It was Drew!” That
just made me laugh more.

 
“It’s true. The greatest love of all
really
is
inside yourself.”

For some reason he didn’t think it
was as funny as I did. “That’s it. You’re done.” Then he grabbed me, flipped me
on my back and tickled me. “Might as well give you a real reason to laugh.”

I was done for. I couldn’t breathe
I was laughing so hard. And just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, he
leaned down and kissed me. And I shut up.

That’s the kiss I remember.

Up until that point, I wasn’t
fully aware of the perks of Colin getting into superhero shape. Sure, I knew he
could save people and all, but the benefit of his superhero six pack was a new
finding.

 
After pulling away from the kiss, Colin
lifted me up easily, another talent I hadn’t taken into consideration:
Ability to carry me to a more conducive
environment for making-out.

 
He walked into his bedroom, and
practically threw me down on the bed. I drew him in, not wanting his lips off
of mine. He pulled his shirt off in one quick motion before returning to me and
putting his hands on my back underneath my shirt.

“Hi honey, we’re home!” Drew
yelled from the front of Colin’s apartment.

“Where do you think they are?” Liz
played along.

Colin shook his head and stood up,
pulling me up at the same time. He threw his shirt on and fixed mine for me
before heading out to the kitchen.

“Did she ask you to be invisible
for it? Make it easier for her?” Liz giggled at Drew’s teasing.

“No. But it would be nice if the
two of you disappeared.”
 
Colin
smacked Drew on the head.

While the two of them bickered,
Liz and I decided to make spaghetti for everyone and hang out. The four of us spent
dinner
 
discussing Colin’s status as
a superhero, with Liz insisting on using her patented list-making skills to
come up with superhero names. Drew’s favorite was Waldo, because then everyone
would say ‘Where’s Waldo?’ when he disappeared. Colin didn’t think the list was
as hilarious as we did.

 
After dinner, the guys decided to “lay
down the law.”
 
Drew told Liz that
she should tell every guy she knew that she had a boyfriend, and Colin insisted
that I call Jeff that night to tell him that I was no longer in the market for
dating.

When I woke up that morning, I had
no idea that my day would end the way it did.

That night when I went to bed I
was the girlfriend of a superhero.

Since I was no longer otherwise
engaged on my birthday, Colin made plans for just the two of us. He said that
the weekend could be for our friends, but Friday was his.

He took me to Shades, my favorite
restaurant growing up, which he only knew because he talked to my mom to find
out.

Afterwards, we snuck into my
favorite park that I went to as a child. It was technically after dusk, and
therefore off limits by park ranger standards. But with Colin’s new martial art
skills, we were able to trespass without a sound. That, and the fact that the
park ranger was in his seventies, mostly blind, and completely deaf.

 
I actually tripped over a stump at one
point and yelled “son-of-a…” before Colin shushed me, and no one noticed, so
really Colin’s cunning was more for show.

After taking a walk through the
woods, Colin took me to the swings, which he also knew were my favorite. After
pushing me on my swing, he grabbed his own. We swung for a while, relaxing and
enjoying the quiet.

“Let’s have a contest to see who
can jump the farthest,” Colin broke the silence with his challenge.

 
He motioned for me to jump. I swung a
couple times before jumping, making pretty good distance. I looked around to
see where he had landed, but he was nowhere to be found. Before I had a chance
to figure out where he was, I heard his voice in my ear.

 
“Try to find me,” he murmured. I turned
to where I heard his voice but saw nothing.

“That’s not fair. How do you find
something that you can’t see?” I asked in frustration.

“Head in the direction of my
voice,” he laughed. He was enjoying this way too much.

I did as he said, doing my best
detective from
Law and Order
impression. “I know what you are doing. As soon as I get close to you, all you
have to do is move.”

“I guess you are going to have to
feel for me then.” He was directly behind me, his arms pulled around my waist.
I tried to turn around so that I could grab him before he got away, but he
pulled his arms tighter around me. Next, I felt a light tug on my ear from his
teeth, followed by my neck. He turned my head to him and kissed me. I could only
follow his lead, since I didn’t know where he was.

Just when the kiss started turning
passionate, he was gone.

“Come on, Luce. I’m not that hard
to find, am I?” He teased.

 
That time I ran toward his voice, so that
I could get to him before he moved. I was able to catch part of his arm, but he
got away.

Finally after about twenty minutes
of trying, I was able to get him and tackle him to the ground. Even though I
couldn’t see him, I heard his laughter.

“Okay. You got me. Let me help you
up. He must have stood up, because his hand grabbed mine from above and pulled
me to standing.

“Even with your superpowers, I
still got you.” I teased.
  

Before I realized what he was
doing, Colin grabbed me, and picked me up. Next thing I knew, he had carried me
to the bridge of the jungle gym. After gently placing me on the bridge, I felt
him hovering over me. “We are going to play a game.” He said in between kisses.

“Okay?” I had no idea where he was
going with his game, but I trusted him, so I leaned against the bridge, waiting
for him to make a move.

“I am going to touch you with
something. Guess what it is.” Immediately, I felt my shirt move and something
tickling my stomach.

 
“A feather?” I laughed. I was ticklish,
so I tried to wiggle away, but he had me trapped beneath his hands.

“Good job, baby.” Colin explored
my body with the feather, sliding my shirt up and moving my skirt to find all
of my ticklish spots… no doubt making a note of all the places he could torture
me later.
 

“Let’s try something else.”

I realized that I had closed my
eyes, which was kind of silly considering I couldn’t see him or whatever he was
holding.

A second later I felt something
cold down my neck. Like really freaking cold. “Shit, Colin, that’s ice.”

“I’m sorry. Was that
too
cold, Luce?” He wasn’t sorry at all.
“Let me warm you up then.” I felt his warm breath on my neck, followed by
gentle kisses where the ice had been.

“Better, baby?”

I tried for a yes, but all I could
muster was something that sounded a little like ‘ummhmm’ followed by a moan. He
continued to glide the ice on my skin, followed by his warm breath, finishing
with kisses to the spot.

He returned to my neck where he
licked, bit and kissed me a little longer, eventually landing on my lips. After
kissing me for a few seconds, he pulled away briefly. When he kissed me again,
I was surprised to feel something on my lips, and in my mouth.

Before I could tell him that it
was whipped cream, I felt something else against my lips. It took a few seconds
before I recognized it as a strawberry. I opened my mouth a little further to
take a bite.

“Let me guess, a grape?” I teased
him, after taking a couple more bites.

“Oh, too bad you got that one
wrong,” Colin laughed before pulling up my shirt just enough to bite the skin
just below the belly button.

“Ow.” I whined.

“Sorry, sweetie. You got it wrong.
You had to be punished.” Colin kissed the spot where he bit me. “Would more
strawberries make it better?”

I nodded.

He kissed me again, this time with
the flavor of chocolate on his lips. He pulled away and fed me a strawberry.

He repeated this several times,
kissing me, and feeding me. After the last strawberry, I tasted wine as it spilled
into my mouth with his kiss.

Suddenly I felt something sticky
on my neck. “Ugh. Colin, I hope that’s not something disgusting.”

“Would I do that to you?” Colin
teased, licking the stickiness off my neck.

“Is that… honey?”

“That’s right. You’re good at this
game.” Colin rubbed his tongue back down my throat, giving me chills and making
a huge mess at the same time.

“If my hair gets caught in this, I
am not going to be happy.” I started to laugh but it turned into a sigh when I
felt Colin’s hot breath against my throat. It was a very sticky yet sweet
tasting kiss. Some of the honey ended up on his hands, and everywhere he
touched became sticky too. I didn’t care.

We kissed for several minutes,
before the feeling of something vibrating near my inner thigh startled me. “Uh,
Colin what’s that?”

He laughed before making it
visible so I could see it.

“Your cell phone? Am I going to be
punished for not guessing it right?”

Colin started laughing. He
appeared, still on top of me. “That wasn’t part of the game. It was in my
pocket. I had it on vibrate so we wouldn’t be interrupted.”

“Oh! I was going to say cell phone
anyway.”

“Right.” Colin smiled, and pulled
me up to sitting.

Because we were having so much
fun, I forgot that I was lying on a child’s bridge- a very uncomfortable, very
chilly bridge.

 
I made a sound indicating I was in pain,
and Colin laughed again. He stood up, then grabbed my hand and pulled me up
next to him.

 
He gathered the items he had used, and
threw them into a small cooler that had been hiding on a step.

“Where did that come from?” I
asked.

“Drew and Liz brought it by while
we were eating dinner.”

I smiled at how much thought he
had put into the evening, and pulled him into a hug.

After rinsing off with bottles of
water and paper towels, we spent the rest of the evening playing on the jungle
gym. When it started to get too dark to see anything, invisible or otherwise,
we headed out. Colin stopped to get me a cupcake-carrot cake, my favorite. He
put a candle in it and sang his best off-key version of “Happy Birthday” to me.

Before kissing me goodnight, he
handed me a small box. Inside was necklace with a beautiful heart locket.

 
“I love it. It’s amazing.” I leaned in
and kissed him.

“You will have to thank Liz too. I
wanted something you could put a picture in. I don’t know shit about jewelry though.
So I dragged her to about six different places to find what I was looking for.
As soon as I saw that one, I just knew that I wanted to give it you.” He paused
a moment before adding, “Look on the back.”

I turned the necklace over where
it was inscribed with the words “fate will find a way.”

Before I had a chance to respond,
Colin spoke again. “I chose that quote because I feel like we got the fate
thing going on. Whenever I least expect it, you come along and knock me off my
feet. Even though I was the one who knocked you off yours.”

I hugged him… partly because I
wanted him to know how much it meant to me, but also because I wanted to cry a
little from his sentimental speech, and I wasn’t ready for him to see me
getting so emotional. I wore that necklace that night and every night after,
the picture he took with his cell phone of the two of us at the park inside.

Over the next several months,
Colin and I became even closer. Since Liz and I knew about Colin’s
invisibility, we did everything we could to help him. That meant keeping it a
secret from everyone. Unfortunately, that included Annie. Luckily, she was in
her last year of college for architecture and she was so busy, she barely slept
at our place anyway.

In the meantime, Colin and I ran
almost every morning, stopping at Harvest Moon most days after we were
done.
 

He had a pretty solid routine of
running, going to school, working out and spending time with me. Liz and Drew
got in on the act too.

Drew started to work out with
Colin every time he went.
 
Drew also
swore that playing Medal of Honor on his Xbox would help Colin’s reflexes and
hand-eye coordination. Apparently he needed a lot of help with that, since they
played practically every day. Liz helped by yelling at the guys every time they
did something wrong. You know, to motivate them. I think she was trying to
toughen them up. They usually ended up throwing something at her.

Of course I had to give Colin a playlist
of songs fit for a superhero. I didn’t want to name it anything that might give
away his ability, so I called the mix “It’s in the Stars,” reminding him that
he had fate on his side.

By the time spring quarter came
around, Colin was as fast as lightning, as strong as an ox, as nimble as Jack,
and as- whatever cliché that works, he was it.

It was one thing to
be
all those things though. It was
entirely another to put those things into practice. And Colin knew this. He was
chomping at the bit to actually get the chance to
be
the hero. He wanted to know that when it came down to it, he
could be the superhero he was meant to be.

I didn’t tell him, but I was
anxious too. He definitely had the superhero skill set. I had no doubt about
that. But nothing was cut and dry in violent situations. How do you play a game
when you have no idea what the rules are?

What neither of us realized is that
we wouldn’t have to wait much longer to find out.