Colorblind (14 page)

I grinned and reached for the baggie that housed my sandwich, then withdrew it and took a bite. As I chewed, I put it back into the bag, sealed it, and then laid back down, facing Chloe again. She studied me as we laid on our sides, and then asked, “Do you want to get into the water?”

I shook my head and responded truthfully. “Not really.”

“Well… are you hungry?” she asked. I shook my head again. “In the mood to tan? Or read?” Another head-shake. She laughed lightly. “Then what are we doing?”

I chewed on my lip and willed myself to stay out of my own head before I could even be sucked in by my thoughts in the first place. My head had failed me thus far. It was time to ignore it, and if I waited all day by the water with Chloe, I knew I wouldn’t be able to.

Chloe saw my gaze flicker to her lips, and something changed in the way she looked at me. Her lips parted, and I watched her glance down to mine. My heart began to beat heavily in my chest, pressed up against my ribcage. I looked into Chloe’s eyes, and then closed my own and moved in closer before I could overthink it.

The kiss wasn’t what I’d expected it to be. I’d never really kissed a girl before, or at least not in the way Chloe and I kissed then, and I’d expected pounding hearts and pure passion and roaming hands, like how it always was in modern movies. It wasn’t like that. It was, to describe it in a word, tender.

She reached out to cup my cheek with one hand, and we kissed slowly, gently, until I felt the warmth of her body pressing into mine. She shifted, half-leaning over top of me, and we broke apart as I pulled away to lay flat on my back. I stared up at her and held my breath. Her blue eyes were a darker shade as she leaned down to kiss me again.

My stomach churned in that uncomfortable way it had earlier, and I realized it had nothing to do with worrying about her and entirely to do with being a nervous girl on her first date. The realization made me kiss her back harder, and when her hand slid down my bare stomach and settled against my hip I thought I’d die. But then she pulled away again, held her face an inch from mine, and brushed her nose against my own. My eyes fluttered open and I saw her smiling.

“You okay?” she asked me, a certain giddy edge to her tone that made it hard to hold back a smile of my own. I nodded simply and kissed her again. She planted her hands on either side of my head and shifted onto me, and some gracious part of my brain compartmentalized every single one of my reservations and stored it somewhere I wouldn’t access until long after we’d parted. For a moment, I forgot about the heartache that came with loving Chloe, and when it finally did begin to come creeping back into the recesses of my mind later that night, when I was alone in my bed, I ignored it.

Some things were worth aching for.

Chapter Ten

My dad took the news well.

I told him over breakfast the next morning, and he arched an eyebrow and replied with, “Oh, really? I was waiting for an update on that. Nice.” He offered me a closed fist to bump, and I rolled my eyes at him.

“I don’t need Cool Dad; I need Normal Dad. He gives better advice.”

He moved his hand away immediately at that. “You need advice? What’s going on?” He paused, looking concerned for a moment, and then he sank down in his chair slightly, cringing. “You’re not…?” he began, and then sucked in a breath, “sexually acti-?”

“Oh my god, Dad, no,” I interrupted swiftly, my face reddening. “And even if I was, I would not want that kind of advice.
Never
that kind of advice.”

“Mhmm.” He refused to look at me, instead focusing intently on his breakfast. “So, this advice, then.”

“You have a girlfriend,” I reminded him somewhat awkwardly. “How do you… do things? Like, how do you interact? Is it the same as before you were dating? How do you make that transition beyond turning into a stupid giggly idiot? How do you… be?”

“How do I be. Hmm.” He paused to watch me press my palm to my forehead. “Uh, well, I’m not sure I can answer that. You do what feels natural. You also no longer have sleepovers with the door closed or when Dad isn’t home for the night.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” I decided.

“Probably not,” he agreed. “But I’m glad you felt like you wanted to tell me. Even if it was a lapse in judgment.” He paused again. “So that camping trip. I went on a double-date with my own daughter.”

“That was
not
a double-date,” I protested, cheeks aflame.

“You liked her.”

“It still doesn’t count.”

“If she liked you, too, maybe it should.” He shot me a curious look. “So… when do I meet her parents?”

* * *

“What is this recipe? My god, it’s delicious!”

I slid down in my seat slightly, embarrassed, as I watched my dad take a large bite of the meatloaf Chloe’s mom had made. Chloe, in the seat next to me, bumped my foot with hers. I heard her chuckle quietly.

Hayley grinned at my dad, pleased. “I’ll be sure to write it down for you after dinner.”

“Please do. Harper likes to mock my cooking, but if I master this, she’ll have no reason to complain.” He shot me a wink and I rolled my eyes at him.

Dad was a total dork throughout the dinner he’d forced me to set up, of course, but he got along well with Chloe’s parents. After dinner, they moved to the living room with glasses of wine, and Chloe and I managed to escape up to her bedroom for a few minutes, where she pressed me up against her door, eyes hooded, tangled her fingers in my hair, and took my breath away.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I breathed out between kisses, and that made her giggle against my lips, stilling our kissing for a second.

“Shut up, nerd,” she demanded, and reached down to hook her fingers through the loops of my jeans so she could gently tug me closer. I’d been laughing, but that stopped very quickly when I felt her hips press into mine. I could hardly think in that moment, but if I
had
been able to think, I’d have wondered how on earth I’d held out on dating her for so long. We’d only been together for a week now and things were already moving so quickly.

She stopped kissing me and started kissing my neck, and I squeezed my eyes shut and moved my hands to her hips, then slid them upward until I could feel skin instead of denim. She did something with her mouth and I dug my nails in.

Chloe made a strange sound against my neck and pulled away abruptly to look at me. “Whoa,” she mumbled, her gaze very blatantly on my lips. She inhaled sharply and then declared, “You should spend the night.”

I nodded, swallowing hard. “I can do that. If Dad says so.”

She nodded back and then abruptly pressed me to the door again, one hand on my cheek and the other on my side. We kissed again, slower this time. I expected our parents to come looking for us at any moment now.

I pulled away first and rested my forehead against Chloe’s as we just breathed together for a moment. As my head cleared, I realized, “There’s no way my dad will let me spend the night.”

Chloe was silent for a moment, and I imagined she was trying to make herself think clearly, too. “Yes,” she said at last. “That’s not happening. That sucks.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it does.”

“That’s okay. We’re teenagers. We’re experts at finding a way,” she decided, and I moved to press my forehead into her shoulder, muffling a somewhat pained laugh. “Like your car,” she added nonchalantly, as though that wasn’t one of two three-word phrases that could instantaneously make my face turn red and my heart beat out of my chest.

I wasn’t sure I was ready for the other yet, but I was certainly ready for this
one.

* * *

“Well, well. You’re glowing.” Robbie smirked at me as I slid into the passenger’s seat of his car. He’d just gotten off work, and we’d planned to go out for ice cream afterward.

“In like a sickly way?” I asked, and he shot me a knowing look.

“No. Do you feel sick?”

“This is the first day since we got together that I won’t have seen her,” I told him. “I guess I’m paranoid. I shouldn’t have waited, and now that we’re happy, I feel like it has to end any second. We aren’t allowed to be happy.”

“You and Chloe? Why not, for just a little while?”

“No, me and you,” I corrected. “Not knowing what we know about every single person we look at. Our little ‘gift’ alone gives me reason to believe something out there in the universe wanted us to suffer. So I have a hard time believing Chloe and I can- that we have a whole month of time, let alone even another week.”

“So make the most of it. Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do? Isn’t that the reason you let things get this far?”

“And how awful does that sound? I don’t want to rush our relationship just because she might not be around later. I mean, I
do
want to rush it, but I feel bad about wanting to, and I don’t even know if I’m even basing my feelings on a rushed timeline or if I’d want what I want regardless of how much time Chloe had left. And I don’t want anything we do to be tainted by that uncertainty… if that makes sense?”

“If Chloe knew what you knew, wouldn’t she want the same thing?” he asked. “Wouldn’t she want to rush?”

“I think she wants to rush
now
,” I laughed out. “But that’s kind of just who she is.”

“So do what feels right.” Robbie shrugged his shoulders as we turned into the parking lot of the very same theater I’d taken Chloe all those weeks ago to get ice cream. I smiled vaguely at the memory.

“Thanks, sensei,” I told Robbie, and he laughed at me.

“Shut up.”

* * *

Chloe and I took Baxter to the local dog park the following day. We sat near the other owners at a picnic table as we watched Baxter speed around the circular enclosure, Chloe’s fingers gently intertwined with mine. She leaned her head on my shoulder and I didn’t feel self-conscious. Not in San Francisco.

“God, I love it here,” she murmured to me, evidently on the same wavelength. “I could live here forever.” She paused to watch Baxter bowl over a dog half his size, and chuckled lightly. He’d grown a lot even in the short time since I’d first met Chloe.

“Do you want kids?” she asked me suddenly, and I tensed instinctively before I could stop myself. She raised her head and shot me a soft smile. “I just meant generally, not necessarily with me. Relax; I’m not crazy. I’m just curious.”

“I’ve never really thought about it,” I admitted. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t like kids?”

I just shrugged. Truthfully, I didn’t want to chance having a child with a low number. I couldn’t go through this a third time.

“I don’t feel the need to have kids,” Chloe told me, and went back to resting her head on my shoulder. “So that works out.”

I let out a laugh despite myself. “I thought we weren’t necessarily talking about me and you.”

“A compatibility test can’t hurt every now and then,” said Chloe, grinning. “Besides, I was neutral, so this was a safe question. I just wanted to get to know you. Start planning our future out early, you know?”

She was joking, I knew, but I had to work hard to hide my sadness. “I’d marry you, if we were together for long enough,” I told her at last, long after she’d fallen silent again. “I want you to know that.”

Chloe raised her head to look at me, a small smile on her lips, and then cupped my cheek in her hand and kissed me softly. “Me too,” she murmured against my lips, and my heart only sank further.

* * *

With Dad’s permission, Chloe was allowed to join me in my room that evening, as long as we kept the door open. I turned on a movie, cut the lights, and we kissed our way through at least the first quarter, until onscreen machine gun fire distracted us long enough to cool us off. I cuddled up next to Chloe, an arm on her stomach, and rested my hand against her heart, counting the beats until I fell asleep.

She was gone when I woke up the next morning. I went downstairs to have breakfast with my dad, who told me, “Deborah and I are going out to a movie tonight. You’re welcome to come along if you’d like. You could bring Chloe.”

I considered accepting, but then a better idea occurred to me, and I shook my head. “That’s okay. I’ll stay in. I need a chill night.”

“Chill night, huh?” he arched an eyebrow at me. “Alright, well, let me know if you change your mind.”

“I will.” I forced a smile as he moved to clear his plate off of the table. When I finished, myself, I went back upstairs and immediately texted Chloe: “
No dad at home tonight.”

I didn’t get a response immediately, so I took a shower while I waited, then examined myself in the mirror, self-conscious. My stomach was flat enough even if it could use some work; I’d worn a bikini in front of Chloe before and caught her staring. My breasts were around the same size as hers, so there was nothing to be self-conscious about there.

I turned around, looked down, and wrinkled my nose, reminding myself to buy those special shoes that supposedly made butts look better. I’d caught Chloe wearing a pair on a couple of occasions now.

I inhaled sharply at the reminder, and decided I just wouldn’t let her see my butt. And I’d take another shower that night, right before she came over. Just in case.

“I am so not ready for this,” I mumbled aloud to my reflection. “Get it together. She hasn’t done this before, either.” I paused. Had she? She’d never said she
hadn’t
, but I’d assumed it’d come up at some point if she’d had. What if she had tons of experience and I had none? What if she’d just kept it quiet so that I didn’t feel embarrassed?

My phone buzzed in my bedroom and I jumped, then closed my eyes and let out a sigh as my heartrate came back down. After a brief pause, I went to go check Chloe’s text.

“Should I come over?”

I hesitated, and not for the reasons I’d talked to Robbie about. I was surprised at myself, because when it came right down to it, my biggest reservations stemmed from my own insecurities about my body and lack of experience. Which were things entirely normal teenagers worried about.

That didn’t exactly make me feel any better, however.

“If you want,”
I sent back. This time I got a text back immediately.

“Do you?”

I stared at the phone for a few seconds. I imagined Chloe waiting with her phone on the other end. I wondered if she was anywhere near as nervous about this as I was.
“I think so,”
I started to type out, but then deleted it and sent instead:
“Yes.”

Her response was instantaneous.
“What time?”

* * *

I went on a run that day for much longer than I should’ve, and wound up with achy legs by the time I got back home in the afternoon. It felt silly, but I couldn’t help but spend the day nitpicking at every little thing I wanted to fix about myself. I plucked hairs, I moisturized, and I showered two more times instead of just once: another time after my run, and again about an hour before Chloe was due to show up. I wanted everything to go perfectly.

Dad and Deborah left just after nine o’clock, right on schedule, and I made myself not dress up or put a ton of makeup on. Chloe was too confident to do that, and I felt like I’d look lame if I did it and she didn’t.

When my doorbell rang ten minutes later than expected, I was surprised to see Chloe breathing hard and looking a little disheveled. She grinned at the sight of me and caught her breath enough to explain, “Your dad told my parents he’d be out for the night, so they wouldn’t let me come over. Had to sneak out.”