Burning (27 page)

I couldn’t just leave her out there, not without knowing that she was all right. Maybe she didn’t want to see me ever again. Maybe that was why she’d left. If that was the truth, okay, I’d deal with it. But without knowing that she was safe … I couldn’t just pretend that nothing had happened.

Outside, I stood on the front porch, shielded from the rain by the roof’s small overhang. The rain was torrential. Our little front yard was dotted with puddles, the ground too dry to gulp up so much water.

One of my favorite smells—the rain. Probably because I didn’t get to experience it very often. I breathed in deep now, filling my lungs with the damp, earthy air and ignoring the uncomfortable twinge in my ribs. I was a little dizzy, so I held on to the porch rail as I stood there. Our narrow street
was a slick ribbon of rain, the gutters overflowing. And as I watched it seemed that the rain started coming down even harder.

I couldn’t ride the motorcycle in this weather. Dad’s car was in the driveway, but the keys would be in his room. If I went in there to get them, he’d wake up. There was no way I could possibly skateboard all the way out to Lala’s, not in the rain.

I guess it was because I still felt so loopy that I just stood there, full of indecision, watching the rain fall. At last I left the porch and walked down the steps, through our yard, and onto the sidewalk.

No shoes. Damn. And it only took about thirty seconds before I was soaked through. The sky was as black as I’d ever seen it. More than half the houses on my street were vacant, and none of them were lit. Maybe my dizziness contributed to the feeling that I was terribly, horribly lost in the rain—usually I had a really good sense of direction, but tonight I didn’t even feel sure which way to turn to head out to the highway.

I was shivering; I heard my teeth chattering together. I don’t think I made a real conscious choice to do it, but I began running—Lala, Lala, Lala, her name in my head like the beat of a drum, thrumming out her name with each step, and I wondered if I would ever run again without hearing her name. I breathed deeply through my mouth, the rain streaming into my eyes. As I reached the corner I picked up speed, thinking maybe I could run to her, maybe I could find her out there in the rain.

And then there she was.

The rain was so heavy that I didn’t see her until she was practically under me, right around the corner from my own house. She reached out her hand and touched my arm, stopping me in my tracks. She was soaked through, too, and carrying a pack on her back. Her hair, straightened and flattened by the rain, was pushed back from her face, and her teeth flashed at me in a broad, almost triumphant-looking smile.

“Ben Stanley,” she said.

The pack slipped from her shoulder and she wound her arms up around my neck, and we stood there together, alone in the street, the falling rain our only music, and I held on to her tight as I could, as if I would fall down without her there to keep me on my feet, and her face tilted up to mine and we kissed, our mouths warm in spite of the cold rain, and I lifted her feet up off the ground to get her closer to me, the satisfying weight of her body in my arms pressed up against my chest making me suddenly, brilliantly happy.

After a while I lowered her back to the ground and picked up her pack. I wouldn’t let her go, though, and I wound my arm around her waist, leading her home.

We stood dripping wet and kissing just inside the door. I could see James’s feet; he was still sleeping on the family room floor.

“Come on,” I whispered to Lala, and I led her into the bathroom. There I switched on the light and cranked the shower to hot. She stood next to me in the narrow bathroom, her skirt heavy with water, a growing puddle at her feet.

“I’ll wait in the other room,” I offered, “while you shower. I’ll bring you some dry clothes.”

I turned to the door to leave, but Lala’s hand on my arm stopped me. “Stay,” she said. Her voice—it was clear and strong, like the rain outside.

Our bathroom was tiny, and it was already filling with steam. Slowly, gently, I closed the door and pressed the button to lock it.

In the light of the bathroom I looked carefully at Lala. She hadn’t been hit; her face was unmarked, beautiful as ever. But there was a difference to her, something I couldn’t quite name. She looked—lighter, I guess. Not skinnier—
lighter
, like she’d set something down, or let something go.

I wanted to ask her where she’d been, and what had happened with her family, and if she was all right.

But then she started taking off her clothes and I forgot all that.

Each thing she took off she dropped in a pile in a corner—first her sandals, then her shirt, and then her belt and her skirt, and then she reached behind her back to unhook her bra—a little hesitation here, as if for a second she considered leaving it on—but then the hook came free and the straps slipped from her shoulders and her chest was bare.

Her breasts were beautiful. Round and heavy, with dark pink nipples that stood up because of the wet and the cold. And then she pushed down her panties and stepped out of them.

I’d never been in the same room as a naked girl. She
stepped past me into the shower and pulled closed the curtain behind her.

It felt a little like déjà vu, like I was reliving our swim down at the pond. I wondered briefly if her family was going to storm in again like they had then, but I’d locked the front door when we came in, and anyway I don’t think they knew where I lived.

Shaking myself out of my soaking wet jeans wasn’t easy, but I managed and piled my wet clothes on top of Lala’s. I thought for a second that maybe this was another dream, like the one of me and Lala under the tree, and decided that if it was I wasn’t in a big hurry to wake up.

The shower was pretty small, but there was room enough for us both inside it. I pulled the curtain closed after I stepped in and then it was just the two of us in this little rectangular enclosure, not enough room for us
not
to touch, with warm water raining down on our heads.

Lala touched my chest with her fingertips, my shoulders, the line of my arm. I saw her looking down between my legs, but she didn’t touch me there. I lifted her hair, so heavy with the water, and kissed her gently on the cheek. Even wet like this she still smelled spicy and sweet all mixed together.

When we kissed again I was careful not to press up against her, though it was really hard not to—all my testosterone, I guess, urged me to push into her, but I didn’t. I touched her so gently, kissing her as softly as I could, trying to show her that I wasn’t going to make her do anything she didn’t want. Hell, I figured I was the luckiest guy alive to be standing
right there, under the hot waterfall, with her. If this was it, I’d have nothing to complain about.

Lala had come back to me. That was the best part of all of this. She wanted to be here, with me.

We kissed until the water started to lose its heat. Then, reluctantly, I turned the shower off. The first towel I wrapped around Lala, and I rubbed it against her skin—her arms, her back, her belly, drying her off. She laughed quietly and let me.

Then I grabbed another for myself. We tiptoed past my parents’ closed door to my bedroom. I could hear James breathing in the family room.

“Do you want a T-shirt or something?”

Lala stood with her back to me, looking at the boxes that lined the far wall. Her towel was looped loosely around her, falling low across her naked back. She had twisted her hair into a knot after the shower, baring to me the long expanse of her back, the gentle inward curve of her waist.

I waited for her to answer my question, wishing with everything I had that she might say no, she did not want a T-shirt.

“So many boxes,” she said. “A whole lifetime’s worth.”

“Yeah,” I answered. “I guess between the two of us, James and I managed to collect a bunch of stuff.”

“Everything I have is in that satchel by your door,” Lala said. She turned to me. “I do not want a T-shirt.”

And this time it was Lala who kissed me first, and she didn’t seem to mind when I pressed into her, the urge too strong to deny.

We made our way to my skinny single bed. She climbed in, dropping her towel on the floor. I slid in next to her and tucked the sheet around us both. Her skin was so warm and soft up against my body.

But as much as I wanted just to lose myself in her skin, I had to ask. “You can’t go home?”

Our mouths were only inches apart. “Never.”

I wanted to say something else, but I didn’t know what to say, and anyway Lala was kissing me again, exploring my body with her hands. Finally I pulled away just a little and said, “It’s my fault.”

“You are silly,” she said, propping herself up on one elbow. “You think you are handsome, and you are right.”

I felt myself blustering, not really sure what to say.

“Yes, you are handsome. Very handsome, that is true. But I know my own mind.”

“I shouldn’t have taken you to the mine.”

“You may have been driving,” Lala said, “but I was no passenger. I knew where that ride would lead—away from my family. It was no mistake. I think it has been coming for a long while, though I was not brave enough to look it in the face. Ben Stanley, you have done nothing wrong. I knew exactly what I was doing when I climbed onto your motorcycle.”

“You knew your family would react like that?”

Her forehead creased. “I feel badly that they hit you,” she said. “I did not imagine they would follow us. I assumed that once I left with you, I would be dead to them. It took slightly longer than I had thought, that is all.”

I shook my head. There was nothing I could do, nothing I could
imagine
doing, that would make my family throw me out. I told Lala this.

“And your brother, too?” she asked. “Is there anything he could do—anything he could
be
—that would cause you to no longer call him your brother?”

I thought of James, sitting up with me, bringing me Tylenol and making me a sandwich. And I felt it so strongly right then—my love for him, the entirety of it. “No.” My voice was firm. “James is my brother. He always will be. As long as he’ll have me.”

She sighed. “Then you and James are both fortunate. That is how it should be.” She kissed me again, this time feather light. When she spoke, her voice was different. Less certain. “Ben,” she said. “There is something I want to do with you.”

It wasn’t that I
didn’t
want to have sex with Lala; more than anything ever, I did. But I didn’t want to cause her any more trouble. I didn’t want to start something that I couldn’t do the right way.

I started to say this, but Lala stopped me with a finger to my lips. “Let me speak.”

So I listened.

“For my people much of a woman’s worth is bound up with her virginity,” she began. “Do you remember what I told you about the bride price—the money the groom’s family pays the bride’s?”

I nodded.

“If it is revealed after the wedding night that the girl had
not been a virgin, the groom’s family has the right to demand the return of the bride price. The girl and her family are shamed. Of course, no such equivalent punishment is meted out if the situation is reversed.”

“So you want to have sex to piss off your family?”

“No,” she said. “It is not that. I want to have sex—because I want to share this experience with
you
, Ben Stanley. And I want this to be
my
decision.
Ours
. No one else’s.”

I was kind of embarrassed to tell her what I said next. “But, you know, Lala … I’ve never done it before, either. I probably won’t be very good at it.”

Her laugh was husky and beautiful, but quiet, as if she was being careful not to wake my family. “Probably neither of us will be,” she said. “But we will learn together.” And then she said, her voice a little singsong, “Can a body meet a body, coming through the rye?”

I caressed the curve of her breast, and pressed my face into her neck, murmuring, “Can a body kiss a body—need the world know?”

And then we didn’t talk anymore.

I don’t know why people would ever want a bed any bigger than the one Lala and I shared that night. Lying on our sides, my body curved tight behind hers, my arm tucked under her head, there was just enough space for the two of us.

Her head was heavy on my arm as she slept, and the wild tangle of her curls tickled my face. But it was perfect. I could finally breathe in her spicy sweetness all I wanted. It seemed
almost to hover in a cloud, the smell of her skin, and I felt a little drunk on it.

Or maybe it was what we had done together. Or maybe it was the concussion.

Probably it was all of it, everything—but most of all having her here in my bed, in my arms, asleep and soft and wonderfully bare.

I guess I’d slept enough earlier, after Romeo and Marko had laid me out, because I wasn’t tired now. I was happy to lie awake and listen to the steady rhythm of her breaths, the quieting of the rain and finally the silence when it stopped, and remember again and again what we’d done together.

Around five a.m. I heard other people stirring in the house. I heard the bathroom door slam and remembered with a start that our wet clothes—Lala’s and mine—were still on the floor in there.

And a little later I heard James banging around in the hallway and my mom’s voice hissing at him, “Don’t go in there!”

I laughed a little into Lala’s hair. Even though I had no desire to unwind my body from hers, it seemed like I should probably get up and explain a little bit to my parents about whose clothes they’d found.

So I slid my arm out from under Lala’s head and untangled myself from the sheets. She rolled over, still sleeping, and I forced myself to tuck her in rather than stare at her naked body.

I felt better this morning for sure. My headache was just
a dull pounding and I wasn’t dizzy anymore. In some ways, I felt clearer—happier, definitely, and more hopeful—than I could remember feeling since I was a little kid.

My mother was sitting with a cup of coffee and the newspaper from Reno when I walked into the kitchen, running my hand across my hair.