Page 74 of The One Month Boyfriend (Wildwood Society)

I hoist her the last inch from the ground and spin her, still laughing, and I get an undignified squeak as she pulls her arms tighter around my neck.

“Told you,” I say in her ear, putting her back on her feet. “Nothing to—”

Kat grabs my face and kisses me. It almost surprises me out of kissing her back—I wasn’t expecting this, somehow didn’t think that after Friday night she’d want to be seen again with her mouth on mine—but then I do, both of us breathing hard, her teeth hitting my lip as her fingers curl through my hair and I turn my head to get my sore nose out of the way, our lips sliding against each other, wet hot friction on a summer night.

It has the allure of danger, of a rope bridge over a gorge: safest to keep your feet, but who doesn’t want to fly?

Her dress is still under my hands, still on her waist, and I hold on tighter and flick my tongue along her lip, but I don’t bunch the fabric in my hands to draw the hem up the backs of her thighs. Stay on the bridge, don’t jump. There are rules, goddammit, and I know the rules even as she stands on her toes and presses even harder against me, as her tongue brushes against mine and I let my fingers skim her jaw. She sighs. My lip is between her teeth and everything feels white.

“Y’all still want this?” a voice says. Kat jolts away from me like she was stung.

The guy who ran the game is standing there, still looking bored, the Jigglypuff aloft in one hand and it’s all I can do to collect the shreds of my mind, remember what I was doing here, and nod.

“Thanks,” I say as he hands it over, expression never changing.

Jigglypuff is monstrous, even bigger up close: a pale pink circle three feet in diameter, with a permanent slight smile and massive blue eyes staring into the distance as if it’s seeing untold horrors, but its face only has one expression.

It’s creepy. I feel like it can see my thoughts. I wonder if it can hear the blood pound through my veins, feel the tiny indentations her teeth left on my lip as I run my tongue over them.

Kat pushes up her glasses with one knuckle and pulls her braid back over her shoulder, looking everywhere but at me until we’ve turned away from the booth. She clears her throat.

“Sorry,” she says, then clears her throat again. “I, uh. Got carried away. Thought maybe I saw Evan.”

I can still feel her skin under my fingertips.

“That’s all right,” I say, adjusting the stuffed animal under my arm. “I think you convinced the guy at the booth, at least.”

“Does he count as the wider community?”

“Sure.”

I hope Meckler’s here. I hope he saw Kat leap onto me with wild abandon. I hope he watched her kiss me and I hope it hurt, because he deserves to hurt.

I thought, for a while, that I’d been to enough therapy to stop being angry with him. I thought I’d done the work and found the forgiveness, had come to the understanding that everyone has their own pain to deal with and sometimes they do it in ways I hate, but then Kat showed up and the anger came roaring back. I can forgive my own shit, but I can’t forgive hers.

I don’t want to. I want her to stay angry, to get her slow, subtle revenge, because Kat is all sharp edges and shimmering heat, and it’s beautiful. I know she’ll draw blood, and I know it’ll be mine, but I don’t care. I’ve been wounded before. What’s a little more wreckage?

It’s not a way I ever thought I’d feel, and I do my best to ignore that. I also ignore the small sliver of worry that asks, why does she want him to beg her to take him back?

“So, babe,” Kat says, still meandering. “Uh. Did you want to go home, or are you up for something else, or…?”

I can feel the vibration of her nerves from here, like someone’s plucked a high-tension wire.

“I thought we were going on the Ferris wheel, babe,” I say, and smile over at her, like a boyfriend so besotted he won her a Pokémon. “Don’t tell me you’re going to back down now.”

“Me?” she asks, and gives me an indignant look. “You’re the one who—oh, fuck off,” she mutters, and something loosens in my chest, and I start laughing.