Page 5 of Just the tip
Ryan turned his head sharply, eyes raking over me, studying my expression keenly as if looking for a sign that I was screwing with him. Under that roving gaze, my body heated far beyond what the sun was capable of. His eyes burned right through me, and it seemed impossible he couldn’t see straight into my thoughts, where all my filthy desires clung to the dark corners.
After a while, he said, “What do you propose, then?”
I wanted to propose a lot of things, but instead I swallowed and said, “Being at least cordial to each other when they’re around. We should be able to do that until the end of summer.”
His mouth bunched up, but after some thought, he gave a tiny nod. “Fine. For their benefit. The rest of the time, you don’t exist to me.” I was already nodding when he opened his mouth again. “And you can say you’re sorry.”
I felt my mouth go sullen as my hackles rose. “For what?”
“For excessive dickishness over that goddamn paper.”
I sputtered a disbelieving laugh. “Didn’t you get an A?”
When Ryan didn’t answer, I rolled onto my side to face him fully. His eyes darted across my chest, but when he looked up at me, it was with a hooded, withdrawn expression. “Apologize,” he demanded again.
“No fucking way. I did exactly what you asked me to.Beggedme to. Come to think of it, you never thankedme. And you still owe me a favor.”
We locked eyes, a growing indignation in mine that was no match for the smoldering fury in his. I licked a droplet of sweat that formed over my upper lip, but I wasn’t going to back down.
Ryan pushed up onto his forearms, muscles popping into such sharp relief I would have instantly started aching to touch him if the look on his face wasn’t so menacing.
“Apologize.” He shifted his bulk, leaning closer, his shadow falling across my face. He could hurt me, I thought. He could pin me down under all that mass, choke me. It was a thought that sent both a thrill of pleasure and fear coursing through me. Icy finger of fear, hot flame of want. I half expected when I spoke again, steam would rise from my mouth.
“Apologize,” he insisted, “Or no deal and you can figure out how the fuck to explain it to our parents if they ask why I won’t speak to you.”
A droplet of sweat separated from the sheen painting his forehead and trickled down, guttering in the corner of his eye, sliding down the ridge of his cheek and following the curve of his jaw. My mouth watered. I wanted to taste it, taste him. He smelled of sunblock and sweat and testosterone, and I could hardly think straight, only knew I was carrying on this way to keep him this close, to keep him talking. The droplet fell, making a dark splash on the rock below. My attention snapped back to his eyes, which hadn’t moved. This was going to hurt like salt on a sunburn. “Fine. I apologize.” I rolled my eyes to make extra sure he knew it was a begrudging apology.
“For what?”
“For being a dick. For fuck’s sake, do you want me to chisel it into this stupid rock?”
Ryan glowered but eased back gradually. I didn’t get the benefit of a reply before he rolled onto his back and slid off the side of the rock into the cool water below.
The truce held,though Ryan still wouldn’t speak to me when our parents weren’t around and still wouldn’t ride to school with me (even though was nice to be on time again). As I passed through the kitchen one morning on the way out, I heard him tell my mom he’d started walking as, “A form of meditation. Keeps me on my game.”
I’d snorted at the ridiculousness of the comment, and he leaned back, meeting my eyes through the doorway and holding. For one brief second, I thought a smile twitched around his lips, and then a second later, both it and he disappeared.
In the hallways at school, we ghosted each other, and at any parties where our social circles happened to collide, we navigated around them, keeping constant distance.
“He really does fucking hate me,” I told Ophelia the night after we’d graduated. No one would know from pictures, though. We’d put our arms around each other earlier in our caps and gowns and smiled big for our parents.
Half the school was gathered in one of the large fields that bordered our town, set back from the street by a thick swathe of trees. The cops hadn’t gotten wind of it yet, like they had the other 2800 fields we’d haunted before.
Someone had gotten a bunch of kegs. Ophelia had scored a case of Natural Light from some old geezer who liked her smile. It was the dimples, she said. It was the massive tits, I replied. She had fantastic tits.
She flicked a long nail against the rim of her beer can, making a steady plonk-plink-plink sound. “Don’t you hate him anyway?”
I took a long swallow from my beer, already lukewarm from my hand, and choked it down. “I’d call it more a strong dislike at this point.” Which was true only in the vaguest of senses and really only because Ryan drove me crazy with wanting him.
“Hmmm.” Ophelia hummed an indecisive sound. “I dunno. He was talking about you the other day, and it wasn’t bad.”
I tried not to let my interest show. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She gazed out over the field where a bonfire spit out smoke and sparks and the music was loudest. “I mean, I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something like that you were all right.”
Not exactly high praise, but that he’d bothered to talk about me in the first place was interesting.
Ophelia snared the tab from her beer and flicked it at my face. “I’m going to go find someone and get laid. You should do the same. And hey,” she said, as I licked beer from my upper lip, “if we both fail miserably, I’ll leave the light on for you.” With a wink, she sauntered away.