Kissing, too, had become a rite of passage. Something to be checked off a list. There was not one boy at school I wanted to kiss.
The only lips I wanted to feel against mine were Nicholai’s.
I flipped through the pages of Atonement, but the words kept slipping, as if falling from the pages. I was surprised there wasn’t a pile of letters at my feet. It was hopeless. Trying to concentrate on anything that wasn’t him.
And then . . . bliss. Nicholai’s body filled the doorframe in my periphery. Holey shoes, jeans ripped in all the wrong places, and a faded shirt, frayed at the edges. Each year he sharpened into something more beautiful.
I pretended not to notice him.
“Sup.” An unlit cigarette butt was tucked in the corner of his mouth. I pondered what the great Beatrice Roth would think about the fact I wanted to kiss a boy who shoved used cigarettes from the street into his mouth. Probably not much, to be honest. As long as I didn’t bring a disease into the house, she wouldn’t have minded if I sawed my own limbs off as a fashion statement.
I looked up. “Oh. Hey, Nicky.”
His beauty struck me like lightning. He hadn’t been so handsome two years ago. Each summer, his features were honed into something more male. His jaw became sharper, the slash between his eyebrows deeper, his lips redder. His eyes were his best feature, though. The exact, astonishing color of blue topaz. He was tall, smooth, and lithe, and above all, he had that quality that couldn’t be named. The badassness of a kid who knew how to fend for himself. How to fight for his survival. It made me nauseous to think some kids had him two semesters a year. To ogle, to admire, to enjoy.
“You good?” He pushed off the doorframe, waltzing over to me. I noticed that his scrawny arms had filled out over the past year. Veins ran through the muscles. He didn’t stop until our toes touched, and he plucked the book from between my fingers and flipped through it nonchalantly.
He tucked the cigarette behind his ear, his eyebrows knitting together.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello.” He looked up, flashing me a grin, then returned his attention to the book. I couldn’t wait to see him in swimming trunks this summer.
“Have you read it?” I wheezed out the question, my face blazing hot.
He shook his head. “Heard some of it is pretty raunchy, though.”
“Yeah. But, like, that’s not the point of the book.”
“Making out is always the point of everything.” His eyes lifted to meet mine, and he let loose a rakish smirk. He handed me back my book. “Maybe I’ll give it a try one day, if Mr. Van stops giving me Penthouse hand-me-downs.”
This was my in to tell him what I’d thought about the entire year. What I dreamed about at night.
“Congratulations, you officially became gross.”
He laughed. “I missed you.”
“Yeah. Me too.” I twisted a piece of hair over my index finger, feeling so strange in my body, like it didn’t belong to me. “I’m thinking of taking theater class, now that I’m going to high school.”
I absolutely wasn’t, but I needed a solid background story.
“Cool.” He was already roaming the room, opening drawers, looking for new, shiny things to explore. My house was like a theme park for Nicholai. He liked to use my dad’s lighters, to cross his ankles on the mahogany desks, to pretend to take important calls on the vintage Toscano office phone.
“I thought maybe we could reenact part of the book. You know, as practice, for my audition in September.”
“Reenact what?”
“One of the raunchy scenes. In the book. I need to do something risqué for my audition.”
“Risqué?” he murmured, pulling drawers open, sticking his hands in them.
“Yes. They’re not gonna let me in if I give them something mild.”
What the hell was I talking about? Even I had no clue.
“How raunchy are we talking?” He was too distracted, on his hunt for something to steal.
I grabbed the book and flipped through it before stopping at page 126 and handing it over to him. He stopped rummaging through drawers. His eyes dropped to the text. I held my breath as he read it. When he finished, he passed it back to me, and I tucked it in the library behind me.
“You’re kidding, right?”
I shook my head, my pulse nearly jumping out of my skin.
Nicholai froze. His gaze flew from one of the desk’s drawers to mine, disbelief touching his topaz eyes. There was knowledge in them. Irreverence and annoyance too. I wanted to recreate that scene at the library, where Robbie pins Cecilia against the shelves and kisses her like the world is ending. Because to him, it is.
Every hair on my arms stood on end. I didn’t want to throw up on my own shoes. At the same time, it seemed like I was about to do just that.