As long as we're not kissing each other...
Novel Excerpt
Content Warning: This piece contains a brief allusion to self-harming behavior.
Those who are sensitive to this subject matter, may not wish to read it.
He rolled up to sitting and scooted beside me with his back to his mattress, which was just on the floor. He didn’t have an actual bed. He had a small desk, which was covered in papers drenched in various Sharpie colors. A bed table with a travel sized alarm clock and a lamp. He was in the middle of reading Little Women, or he wanted me to think he was, because there was a copy on the bed table with a bookmark about halfway through.
The floor was carpeted, green. And he had a few posters on his walls. Mostly landscapes with winding roads and sunsets. And one of the ocean on a stormy day. There was a door next to a short dresser at the far end of the room that was closed. I assumed it was a closet, full of long-sleeved shirts. And the whole place smelled like peppermint. So far, the familiar scent was the strongest in his room.
I liked the way it smelled. Simple.
It wasn’t fake like Drake’s gag worthy cologne. It was Merrick. It was just… him.
“Can I use your bathroom?” I asked. It was the only room I hadn’t been able to spy in since I got there.
“Yeah, it’s to the right of the twins’ room.”
I saw him reach for the copy of Little Women out of the corner of my eye as I left his room and headed down the hall. Maybe he really was reading it.
I only had to open the bathroom door to know I had discovered the source of Merrick’s fragrance. I stepped in and closed the door behind me. I inhaled deeply and giggled. What was he using in there that smelled like that? I spied a plastic bottle on the sink with a blue and white label. “Dr. Bronner’s Magic Peppermint Soap.” Aha. The source.
I nosed around the bathroom and discovered a larger bottle of the same soap in the shower. In fact, it was the only thing in the shower. I was spending too much time looking in Merrick’s shower.
I used the bathroom for its intended purpose and then did my best to ignore my face in the mirror as I washed my hands with Merrick’s secret soap. I took the bottle back with me to his room, so I could ask him lots of questions about it. It was very intriguing.
He was lying on his bed when I re-entered the room, which made the back of my neck tingle mysteriously.
“What is this stuff?” I asked, holding up the bottle I’d stolen from the bathroom.
“My magic soap,” he said.
“Is it really magic?”
“Yes.” He widened his eyes, reverently. Like a wizard.
I laughed. “Shut up. It’s all over your bathroom. What’s the story? Does it do something for you? Other than make you smell really good.”
He smiled and my cheeks flushed.
“It reminds me of my mom,” he said.
“Oh.” I suddenly felt like I was prying.
“She uses it on everything. Like, literally, everything. Laundry, dishes, her teeth.”
“She used soap on her teeth?” I grimaced.
“It’s not like regular soap. You can use it for a lot of things. Look how ridiculous the label is?”
I ran my eyes over the blue and white sticker and found it covered with rambling quotes, instructions, and anecdotes. “Weird.”
“I like it,” he said.
“Do you brush your teeth with it?” I asked.
“No.” He giggled. “I’m not as hard core as my mom is. I use it on my hands and my hair and… the rest of me.”
My neck tingles returned with a vengeance.
“You can take that home with you if you want,” he said. “I have tons of the stuff lying around.”
“Okay.” Like having a bottle of Merrick in my possession at all times. Amazing.
“Holy crap, I totally forgot!” He shot out of bed and swerved around me to the door.
“What?”
“I made goop!” he called from halfway down the hallway.
What the heck was goop?
I could hear him fumbling around in the kitchen, opening and closing the fridge, and padding down the hall. He came back in carrying a bowl and a dish towel, grinning like a mad scientist.
“Hold this,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He left the room again and I stood holding a bowl of mysterious… goop. The bowl was cold from the fridge. I was tempted to stick my finger in and taste it, but I didn’t even know if it was edible.
He zipped back in and traded me a fabric headband for the bowl of goop. “Put that on, to keep your hair out of the way.”
My stomach dropped. This felt too familiar. Like something I would do with Danielle at a sleepover.
“We’re not going to put that on our faces, are we?”
“Yes,” he said. “This stuff is amazing. You’ll love it. My mom and Aunt Laura used it all the time when they were our age. My aunt still makes it when her psoriasis flares up.”
“Yeah,” I hesitated. “I really can’t put anything on my skin. It’ll get pissed off, trust me. Danielle gave up giving me facials like a year ago.”
“It’s not a facial. And I’m not Danielle.” He grinned. “Here. Sit.” He’d made a little lounge chair for me out of the pillows from his bed. I didn’t move.
“Trust me,” he said. “It’ll feel really good.”
I wanted to trust him. And I wanted to feel good. So, I sat down.
“What the heck is it?” I asked, scrunching my nose up as he stirred the mixture with his fingers. It was the color of honey, but opaque. And there were tiny bubbles in it.
“It’s kind of a family secret,” he said. “But there’s nothing bad in it. You could eat it, except for the tiny bit of peppermint soap I always add. That’s my secret ingredient.” He beamed proudly.
I wasn’t feeling confident about this, but the look on his face was so sweet and earnest. And he’d gone to the trouble of making his special, secret, family goop just for me.
“Do you want me to put it on for you?” he asked, sitting back on his heels. “Or do you want to do it yourself?”
“I can’t really see what I’m doing without a mirror. So… I guess… you can do it.”
“Okay,” he said softly. “Close your eyes.”
I did.
The first touch of his cold gooey fingertips on my forehead made me jump a little.
“Cold, I know,” he said.
The goop was cold, but his fingers were warm, and the two of them together felt… so wonderful. My eyes started to tear almost immediately.
“Are you okay?” he asked, taking his fingers away.
“Yes,” I said. “It just… feels really nice.” I couldn’t remember the last time anyone, including me, had been so kind to my skin. I opened my eyes, and he was waiting, worried. “You can keep going. I’m okay.” I closed my eyes and let him smooth the peppermint potion over the rest of my forehead, nose, cheeks, chin and neck.
He was so gentle. Nothing hurt. I almost forgot my skin wasn’t perfectly smooth.
I could hear him breathing.
“Okay,” he said. I opened my eyes. “Still good?”
“Really good,” I said. It was like being under hypnosis. I was so relaxed. “Can I do you now?”
He laughed and crinkled his nose. “That’s weird.”
“Shut up.” I laughed hazily. “I meant put goop on you.”
“I know,” he said. “Sure.”
He handed me the bowl and leaned back against the mattress. I stuck one of my pillows under his lower back as he settled in. He immediately closed his eyes. I dipped my fingers into the bowl and brought them to his forehead, smoothing a thin layer over his beautifully tanned skin.
I was extra gentle around his nose, which was bruised on one side from his fight with Travis. His lips were parted slightly, and I felt his warm breath escape in the short moment my hand crossed from one cheek to the other.
It was very intimate. And it was hard not to view the whole thing as a massive step over the friend line, but I kept going. Until his face and neck were covered.
“Done?” he asked.
“Almost,” I said. I set the bowl down and reached for his right sleeve.
His head snapped forward. “Wait,” he said. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know,” I said. “But I want to.”
He looked at me, sleepily, and then gave in. He leaned back and closed his eyes again. I unbuttoned his sleeve and rolled it up to his elbow. My tears came back, but this time for a different reason.
I slid my fingers back in the goop, still miraculously ice cold, and brought them to the damaged skin of his forearm. He shuddered at first, but then I felt him relax under my touch. The lump in my throat became harder to swallow as I smoothed my hand over the rough raised skin of his scars.
I set his arm on his lap and climbed back into my pillow seat beside him.
The music he had been playing earlier had stopped and it was so quiet. I laid back and closed my eyes and just listened to our breathing. Until a persistent tug in my chest made me ask.
“Can I hold your hand?”
“Sure, why not?” he asked, his eyes still closed.
“It’s not against the rules?”
“What rules?” He was smiling.
“I know there must be rules about friends like us. To make sure we stay on the friendship side of things. And it doesn’t get… confusing.”
“Uh huh.”
“And I just want to make sure it’s not an overstep. To hold your hand.”
“You know you’ve held my hand already, like a couple of times.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But those times I did it because I thought I needed to. This time I just… want to.”
I sensed he’d turned his head to face me, so I turned mine and opened my eyes.
I laughed because he was covered in goop. But so was I, and he wasn’t laughing.
“I think instead of worrying about whether something we do is breaking a rule, we should just worry about whether it feels right. To us.”
“Okay,” I said quietly.
“Also. I’m pretty sure as long as we’re not kissing each other, we can still call ourselves friends.”
I must have visibly blushed because then he said, “And we should probably avoid mentioning the word kissing. Because that definitely felt weird.”
“Very weird,” I said, breathing over the rambunctious butterflies in my gut.
“Alright, shut up and hold my hand,” he said giddily. “My aunt will be home in twenty minutes, and I’m not done being insanely happy yet.”
I laid back on the pillows, grinning from ear to ear, and reached out for his hand. I slid my fingers between his and let our palms rest together.
And I stopped worrying about whether we were breaking any rules. And I started thinking about how it felt to me. And to him.
And it felt very right.
This post is brought to you by The Romantic.
