Page 10

Chapter Ten

Roth’kar

I have no idea what I’m doing, unfortunately, but the alcohol has made me bold enough to attempt it. My mouth is on hers, and nothing is happening while I stare at her and she stares back at me. It’s not as repulsive as I expected, but nothing pleasurable, either.

Suddenly, Amara giggles against my mouth.

“Close your eyes,” she whispers, sliding closer to me on the bench. Our mouths are still mostly touching.

Obediently, I close my eyes. Then Amara’s lips travel over mine, as if she’s exploring me, and I try not to move so she can complete her circuit.

She laughs again. “Roth’kar. A kiss is a two-way street.

” I don’t know what she means by this, but I get the sense she wants me to reciprocate in some way.

So I imitate her motion, trying to get a sense of the shape of her mouth using mine.

Her lips are giving, molding around me, pressing back occasionally before letting me continue.

I sense that this is a sort of dance, too, but an intimate kind. Amara grows bolder, this time sucking my lower lip in between hers, and my body unexpectedly jolts. That felt… good. Strangely good.

Amara lets out a hmm sound, then repeats the motion with my upper lip. I have never considered my mouth to be an erogenous zone, but my culans lift, fueled by our act.

Then her tongue comes out. It licks briefly along my lip, surprising me, but I’m careful not to pull away.

I did not realize our tongues would be involved with this, too. That was not in the image the translator provided me.

The swipe of that wet appendage a second time makes my culans engorge even further, and I shove my hand down against them to keep them from sprouting upright.

Immediately I imagine Amara running that tongue over their sensitive ridges the way she’s doing with my lips, and my mouth parts, my own tongue responding.

“Mmm,” Amara says against me as we meet in the middle.

I didn’t intend to do it, but she instantly melts against me, her lips sinking deeper into mine.

Now the tips of our tongues are greeting, twining as we remain fully joined.

When I thrust my tongue into her mouth, I expect a reproach, but instead Amara moans in a way that’s distinctly erotic.

Her hand tangles in my hair as she pulls me even closer, and I tumble into this kissing .

I think I understand it now. It is a dance, yes, but also a tease. It is intimacy and touch, it is closeness and affection, just as much as it is a hint at lust. It is so many things, and gross is not even at the top of my list.

Finally, I find myself struggling for breath, so I pull away. Amara is staring at me with huge, dark eyes, her lips parted as she also tries to bring in air.

That is when the bus rumbles along. Unsteadily I get to my feet, then help Amara up, too. She presents the driver with our tickets, and we stumble to the back as the bus starts moving again.

“Wow,” she says into my ear as I sit next to her. “You’re good at that.”

I’m shocked, given it was my first time.

“Did you like it?” I ask, finding that I want even more of her praise, to know if I pleased her and met her expectations.

“Oh, I did.” She winds our fingers together in her lap. “I definitely did.”

The ride home is a blur. All I remember is our hands linked together and Amara’s voice as she narrates where we’re going, what landmarks we’re passing.

Then we get off at our stop. I stray away from her, to what I think is our way home, and she grabs my arm, laughing. “Not that way. There are no streetlights that way.”

I blink up at the lights overhead.

“They keep us safe at night,” she says. “Don’t wander off down dark alleys.”

I take note of that, wondering what might lurk on the streets where there are no lights. Perhaps squirrels. Or worse, dogs . I can’t have Amara getting bitten by an animal on my watch.

When we reach a corner, she tries to step out into the street while the light is red. I grab her by the arm and hold her back.

“It is not time.” I point at the orange hand sign.

Amara obediently stops beside me. “Of course, Dad,” she says with a giggle. I don’t know what this means, as I am not her father, but she is also drunk.

It is… adorable.

When the walking man appears, I lead her across the street to make sure she doesn’t trip, and she holds onto me all the way home.

Back in the apartment, Amara convinces me to drink two whole glasses of water, then bids me goodnight and toddles off to her room alone, muttering something to herself. Now I know what getting wasted entails.

I am tempted to follow her. Not because I intend anything lewd, but because I worry about her well-being. If I were next to her, I could keep an eye on her. But she did not invite me and so I go back to my own room with the futon .

I don’t mind sleeping here, but as my vision swims, I think it might be pleasant if I weren’t by myself. I spent all night at Amara’s side, watching as her makeup smudged and her smile grew wider, and I want to keep watching. I wonder what she looks like as she sleeps.

When I close my eyes, the world is still tilting and swaying in the blackness, but I’m so exhausted that I’m swept away.

“Roth’kar!” The sound of my name being called out worms its way into my consciousness.

I sit up, bleary-eyed, on the too-small bed. A steady, low thrumming in my head makes every vibration hurt, including the knock on the door to my room.

“Coffee?” Amara asks quietly.

I squint. “Co—what?”

The door opens as I rub my painful head, and Amara slips inside. She has a mug full of something steaming hot, and a tangy but pleasant smell fills the air.

“Coffee,” she repeats. “It’s a drink that will help with your hangover.”

“Hangover?” I reach for the hot mug and Amara gently places it in my hands, patting my arm. I sniff the dark liquid, and the scent is foreign but delicious.

“That nasty feeling you have in your head and your stomach right now.” She gives me a pitying look. “It’s called a hangover. I’m not doing much better. That’s how I know.”

I bring the drink to my lips and sip. I’m taken aback at how bitter it is, and I push the mug away.

“Disgusting,” I say, running my tongue over my teeth to clear away the flavor. Amara laughs.

“You’ll change your mind.” She takes my hand in hers and tugs. “Eating something will help you feel better. Come on, there’s bacon cooking.”

I don’t know what this bacon is, but as I reluctantly leave my room, I smell it: something fatty and salty and smoky. My mouth waters.

“It’s almost done.” Amara scurries to the kitchen, flipping food over in a pan. “Plus eggs and some orange juice. The perfect hangover cure.”

While I sit at the table, she plates the meal, then carries it over and sets it down in front of me, followed by a cup of some kind of… sure enough, orange-colored juice.

“How literal,” I remark as I take a sip. This is much more acceptable than the coffee .

Amara giggles, and I’m surprised by how upbeat she is, given neither of us are feeling our best. She looks happy, even though there are bags under her eyes.

I dive into the food, and I discover bacon is a revelation. It’s salty—a flavor we had very little of on New Dro’thar II —and fatty in the most sublime way. I’ve never had anything like it, and I feel healed by it. I moan as I obliterate the four pieces she’s put on my plate, and Amara giggles.

“You like it?”

“I do not think that’s a strong enough word,” I say, chewing.

Though the bacon is delicious, I am wary of the white substance with the yellow center.

“Chicken egg,” Amara explains. “It’s pure protein. Make sure you eat it all, and it’ll help.”

I bite into the egg, and though the texture is strange, I don’t mind the flavor. When my food is gone, and Amara has finished hers, she spreads out on her chair, nearly melting to the floor.

“That’s all I had in me,” she moans.

“Don’t worry. I’ll clean.” This time, Amara doesn’t object as I take care of the plates, rinsing and loading them into the dish-cleaning machine I saw her use last time.

After scrubbing the pans, I return to find Amara has migrated to the couch, sprawling across it.

She lifts her legs to make room for me, and then when I’m seated, sets them back down on my lap.

It is casual in its intimacy, and a warmth spreads across my body.

She turns on a movie, which is a struggle for me to follow, but it’s simply enjoyable to lie here and let my food digest. As she predicted, I do feel better by the middle of the day, but make sure to drink more of that orange juice.

I don’t realize when I fall asleep.

The sun is down by the time I open my eyes, and Amara is gone.

I sit up, suddenly panicked by her absence. She was here earlier, but…

The front door opens, and Amara steps inside with a plastic bag hanging from her arm. She grins when she sees me.

“Oh, good. You’re up. Feel better?” She sets the bag down on the table. “I got us takeout.”

The flavors are unusual, the smells alluring. She explains that it’s “Chinese food,” and though I try to use the chopsticks that come with it, I find it too impossible in my half-asleep state. After gorging on the food, we find our way back to the couch.

This time, when I sit on it, she sits close to me. I think of our kissing last night at the bus stop, and wonder if she is, too. She leans against me, and so I put two of my arms around her, bringing her in tighter to my chest.

We sit like that for some time as the television prattles on, but I’m not paying attention to it.

Amara smells different today now that all the artificial scents she put on last night have worn off.

I like her natural musk—it reminds me of something familiar.

Perhaps it’s a little like my mother before she died.

Amara’s hand traces up my shoulder to my neck, where she plays with the short strands of my hair.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks.

“My mother.”

The words just come out, honest and true. I think my headache has eliminated my filter.

“Your mother? Is she back on the ship you came from?” Amara cocks her head. “I haven’t asked you about your family.”

“I have none.”

Her hand freezes. “None at all?”

“My mother and father both died in my young adulthood. I have no siblings. I have two aunts and an uncle, but we don’t speak much.

” One of my aunts worked her way up to a slightly better job on the second rung of the ship, cleaning quarters for wealthier people, so I never saw her.

The rest of us were too consumed with simply trying to get by in the Hole to spend much time together, and we live in vastly different places.

New Dro’thar II is the larger of the two ships that hold our entire civilization, and getting from one side of the Hole to the other is a long journey.

“Oh. I’m so sorry.” Her hand resumes playing with my hair, and Amara is gazing at me now with soft eyes. “That sounds difficult.”

“It is what I know.”

“You have a new family now, though.” She smiles at me, snuggling in closer. “You have me.”

Something gnaws at my insides at these words. Family . She truly feels that way about me?

I know this sensation in my gut—guilt. Guilt that I only came here to escape that life, not thinking of who I would meet on the other end. I am lucky it was she. But I should have come here as eager to be her companion as she was eager to have me.

“What about you?” I ask her, trying to change the course of my thoughts. “Will I meet your parents?”

“Eventually. Well, just my mom. My dad died when RVS hit.”

Right. The plague that decimated the male population of Earth.

“I’m sorry.” I rub her shoulder.

She shrugs. “It’s okay. I was really little. Mom’s somewhere in the Caribbean right now. I told her I was applying to the Matching Program, but I’m not sure if she heard me over the music.” Amara rolls her eyes. “She’s always on a cruise of some kind. I haven’t seen her in probably two years.”

It sounds like Amara does not have much of a family, either. Sympathetic, I pull her in closer.

“Then I will be your family, too,” I say. Maybe I cannot undo how I entered this relationship, but I can certainly decide how I continue it.

Tipping up Amara’s chin with my hand, I kiss her.