James Games (18 page)

A drop of wetness hits me. At first I’m afraid a bird pooped on me a little bit, but then another drop hits my arm, and then my foot. I look up. The clouds have darkened and gathered.

“It’s raining!” I scream, leaping up and latching on to him with my legs and arms. “We did it!”

As if to make its enthusiasm match mine, the sky opens in the sudden way that rain comes in warm places, like a bucket overturned. In three seconds, it’s pouring. The water pounds down and bounces off the concrete in a million crazed zigzags, creating a white haze. It soaks my clothes and glues my hair to my back. When I laugh, it gets in my mouse.

“Shit, come on!” I laugh, racing for the door. James gets there before me, his longer legs taking him faster. He tries the handle and freezes.

“It’s locked,” he says.

“Oh, God. We’re locked onto the roof in a rainstorm?”

He jiggles the handle once more, then sighs and lets go. “Might as well make the most of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“May I have this dance?” He extends a hand to me. Rain-drenched, his eyes matching the sky, hair dark with water, chest rising and falling a little faster from the mad dash across the roof—he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

I let him pull me back into a waltz. The rain seeps between us at first, but gradually we get closer until our bodies are sealed together. The rain makes a little pond in the cove between our chests.

“It’s interesting, doing this in silence,” he says. “Usually you do it in time to the music.

“It’s not silence. Listen.”

We dance to the sweeping rush of the rain, to our own breathing, to our own heartbeats.

We dance to the clouds overhead, to the cracked ground below swelling again with life.

We dance to each other’s bodies, to the way we fit together.

Eventually he stills, just holding me in his arms. I look up and his eyes are closed.

“James?”

“Shhh,” he says. “I’m trying to memorize this forever.”

We stay like that for a long time, part of the rain, under a thunderbolt splits the sky and a roll of thunder booms out almost immediately.

I flinch into him. “What is it they tell you in first grade? Not to stand on rooftops during thunderstorms?”

“Come on,” he tells me.

“But the door’s locked…”

But this time, when he tries the handle, the door’s not locked.

“Sorry,” he says, pulling me into the dark hallway where the noise outside vanishes and our inside dripping is suddenly deafening. He smiles. “I couldn’t stand to go inside just yet.”

As I look at him, I don’t just see the smile.

I see his walls crumbling, bit by bit.

And my heart pulses harder than the rain outside.

~16~

“So it was like…a weird pulsing feeling, sort of hot. It was the same sort of feeling as not being able to breathe, but I was breathing just fine. I felt it right here…” I touch the center of my chest, the wax paper crinkling underneath me as the nurse nods.

“Would you describe it as painful?”

“Kind of? It hurt, but it wasn’t like any hurt I’ve felt before. It was…it almost felt good.”

“And does this feeling happen at any time in particular? How many times?”

I concentrate. The haunted house a few days ago was when I really noticed it, but if I think about it, I’ve had it a couple times since then. Like when James called me in the middle of the night to tell me the moon was beautiful and that I should go outside to look at it. And when I saw him walking into the Philosophy classroom the other day, this distracted look on his face and eyes a little heavy-lidded from sleep, but then he looked at me and it was like he was waking up to the early morning sun—

“No. I mean, yes. Well, it usually happens when this friend of mine is around. But I’m sure that’s a coincidence.”

The nurse lays down her clipboard. Her face is gentle. “Is this friend a boy?”

I fidget. “Maybe.”

“I remember,” she says cautiously, “when I was young, the first time I felt something similar, I was a little scared too. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever experienced before. Because love is—”

I jump up. “Thanks a lot, Doc, but whaddaya know, I’m suddenly feeling all better! You are so gosh darn talented. Med school really paid off, huh? I’ll be on my way now.”

Before she can try to play the wise old mother figure again, I grab my bag and flee. Damn doctors. A few years at Harvard and a piece of paper and they think they know everything.

But something tells me it wasn’t a medical problem we were talking about.

Which is a completely unwanted thought, so I hoist my bag higher on my shoulders, set my jaw, and leave that thought behind. It’s early but not too early, so that most students are asleep and the ones who aren’t are in their morning classes. I don’t have to worry about anyone staring at me.

James has to worry about getting stared at wherever he goes. I only have to worry about it on campus. It drives me crazy, and I
love
attention. I can’t imagine how it must affect a private, complicated person like him. No wonder he wears that icy demeanor like armor.

Nothing makes you feel alone like having everyone looking at you.

That feeling slices my heart again. I stop dead under a palm tree, waiting for it to swell and fade like it always does. Except instead it settles deep inside me, making a nest for itself and refusing to leave, sending James’s name into my heart in soft little puffs of air.

I slap myself. Stop it, Fiona.

But I don’t know if I can stop.

And that’s terrifying.

Iris will know what to do. She’ll probably have some voodoo curse that’ll force my heart to behave again. I swipe my card key to get into the building and take the stairs instead of the elevator, hoping my pumping blood will wash the feeling right out of me.

When I get to the apartment, she’s laid out on her bed, groaning into her pillow.

“Iris?” I flatten myself beside her, injecting some pep into my voice. If she’s having a crisis, there’s no time for mine. “You okay? Did you fail your exams? Because I actually got a B- on my Cryptology exam, thanks to James—”

“No, you idiot, get off my bed. It’s this.” She thrusts her phone at me. I inspect the screen.

“That’s a nasty crack. Did you sit on it? You do have a rather pointy butt—”

“No, the crack is from our first week of college, when you got so excited about that naked guy calendar you found at Wal-Mart that you started jumping around and knocked it off the table. I’m talking about the email.”

I squint. Iris has her backlight so low that it takes me a minute.

“Beach party tonight at Mission Beach. Swimsuit competition! Wear your cutest bikini for a chance to win a date with James Reid,” I read. “What the hell? I didn’t get this email.”

“Check the sender.”

It’s from Sigrid. I groan and chuck her phone on her bed. Iris dives to save it. “Watch it! You already cracked my screen, you maniac!”

“I don’t care about your screen. Sigrid’s trying to exclude me from Phi Delta Chi parties. Also, this is nowhere near enough time to find a suitably hideous bikini. She’s sabotaging me. Also, what are you groaning about?”

“I hate beach parties.” She sits up and shoves me off her bed. I bounce onto the floor. “But you just made me feel all better. Because I have the perfect bathing suit for you. Saw it in the vintage shop down the road the other day. Fingers crossed it’s still there.”

Iris takes me to a tiny shop called Sadie’s Eccentricities, which is a warning sign right there. The inside smells like grandmothers and hamster cages. It’s a nightmare of frilly collars, long dresses, bone buttons, and lace the color of pee. Naturally, Iris looks like the world’s creepiest kid on the world’s crappiest Christmas morning.

As it turns out, the bathing suit is still there.

“I am not wearing that,” I say, staring at the monstrosity on the hanger.

“You want to lose the bathing suit contest? You’re wearing it.”

I shake my head. “This is worse than the chicken costume. That is Satan’s bathing suit.”

“We’ll take it,” Iris tells the ten-million-year-old woman behind the counter.

I hate my roommate.

“As long as James doesn’t come,” I tell her on the way to Mission Beach that night, after she’s picked out a sexy black lacy bikini for herself that looks more like lingerie than something meant to be worn in the ocean. “I can do this as long as James doesn’t come.”

“You didn’t care about him seeing you in the chicken costume.”

“Well, now I—” I stop.

“Well now you what?” She pulls up to a red light and uses the opportunity to give me the kind of glare used by the people who interrogate terrorists.

“Now that I have gotten to know and respect him more as a person, I don’t think he should be subjected to the sight of that bathing suit,” I say primly.

Iris sighs. “You’re just worried he won’t want to bang you again.”

“I am not—”

“Which would be perfect, because you shouldn’t be banging him in the first place.” She shoots me another evil eye.

“We don’t have to worry about that if he sees me in this bathing suit. This is the antithesis to desirability. The opposite of sexiness. The Kryptonite to Superbangableman. I cannot let him see me in this bathing suit, because if he does, his cock will shrivel up and fall off.”

“I thought your whole thing was ‘I’m sexy no matter what I wear.’” Iris imitates a voice that does not at all sound like mine, a high falsetto.

I shudder. “That was before I laid eyes on this bathing suit.”

When we reach the parking lot, she picks the darkest, furthest corner spot, leaps out, and holds my door closed as I attempt to follow her. “You change before you come out. I’ll keep watch.”

“Iris,” I moan, mushing my face into the side of the window. “Have mercy.”

“Mercy is for people who have not slept with James Reid.”

I grumble my way into the bathing suit. It’s sort of like trying to fit myself inside an evil, deformed squid. When I’m done, I wrap myself in the towel and knock twice on the window to be let out.

“Put the towel down,” Iris demands. “I need to see what it looks like.”

“You are sadistic, you know that?” I let the towel drop.

She laughs so hard that she collapses onto the parking lot and rolls around on the pavement, howling. I stand there and sigh increasingly large, dramatic sighs until she gets control of herself and stands up.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps. “You look like a manatee had sex with a candy cane and sent its baby to clown school.”

“That is uncalled for.”

“It’s pretty called for. Here.” She snaps a picture with her phone, flash on, and hands it to me. “Proof.”

I don’t recognize the girl in the photo. Her face is mine, but there’s no way my body could have such an utter lack of sex appeal. The bathing suit is a black hole for sex appeal. The bottom half is candy-striped spandex that goes all the way to my ankles, with a yellow-and-green polka-dotted skirty thing that seems meant to hide the butt, but mostly just makes it look like I replaced my butt with two pit bulls fighting in a potato sack. The top is similar in almost every aspect to a past-its-prime banana peel, dark yellow and discolored, saggy and dry.

“You forgot the cap,” Iris announces, stuffing my poor hair into a swimming cap apparently made from dinosaur skin.

“I forgot…my liver. Back in the room. I have to go back for it, I need that thing.” I try to dive back into the car, but she grabs my arms and frog-marches me down to the beach.

There’s already a campfire going, spitting sparks into the sky. Near it, two guys are showing off their wilderness skills by arguing about whether or not to add more wood. It’s dark, but the moon is full, and everyone looks prettier in the soft silver light. Everyone except me.

Bikinis. Girls in bikinis everywhere. White bikinis, bikinis with tassels, string bikinis, strapless bikinis. Girls in bikinis stretched out by the fire, making sand castles, splashing in the waves, chasing each other to make sure their boobs bounce as much as possible in their stupid cute bikinis.

I am the only one here not in a bikini.

I try to hide from Iris, but she propels me into the light of the fire. First one person notices what I’m wearing. Then two. I edge closer to the fire, preparing to throw myself into it, but then some drunk guy starts clapping.

A few other people join in. It’s not long before there’s a solid wave of applause going. “Nice one, Fiona!” someone laughs. “You always know how to keep things interesting.”

I pop my hip and jut my chin. “Right. I picked out this bathing suit totally independently and wore it of my own free will because I didn’t want anyone to be bored. That’s exactly right. Thank you for noticing.”

Iris rolls her eyes and snatches a beer from the cooler.

I spot Sigrid, lounging by the fire with her long tan legs stretched out. Her bikini is bright red, has strategic cutouts, and elevates her boobs to space-station heights. She sees me at the same time that I see her, her face cycling through disappointment that I managed to find out about the party anyway to elation that I showed up in a prehistoric swimsuit.

“Fiona!” she calls, feigning delight. “Come over here a minute.”

“If I haven’t come back in five, call the authorities,” I mutter to Iris, who ignores me. I gird my loins and march over to the ice princess.

“You know what I love about you?” Sigrid smiles at me as I stand over her, digging my toes into the sand. “You always manage to pick out the one piece of clothing that suits you exactly right.”

“You too,” I nod at her. “Red, from the depths of hell. Does it remind you where you came from?”

Her smile freezes. “You know what would be great? If James came by. I don’t think he knew about this party. I’ll have to give him a call.”

“No, don’t—” I splutter.

“Why do you care? Do you have some reason why you wouldn’t want him to see you in your cute new bathing suit?” Her eyes narrow, and I backtrack.