Sheltered(14)

Which probably just meant she’d started turning into bad Johnny, and soon a cop would turn up and explain that Evie’s head had reached the upper atmosphere and then simply popped, like a balloon.

“So I can. If I want to.”

“You can.” She watched him hold out the joint to her. Smoking end up, those big fingers of his almost pinching it at the base. “But you know you’re going to reek of it, right?”

“I already reek of it. And besides, there’s this invention—I think it’s called a shower. And another one…is it a moshing washine?”

It startled her when he laughed. He didn’t even rein it in, this time, or try to keep it behind a closed fist. He just let it all the way out, deep and throaty, until it seemed to vibrate through the air and into her body, to that place she absolutely wouldn’t think about, ever again.

She didn’t think about him that way. She didn’t she didn’t she didn’t.

“You know, you look innocent. But inside you’re like a cracking whip.”

Oh God, she totally did.

“Are you going to give me the thing or what?”

“Here then, smart ass,” he said, but the term didn’t bruise. It didn’t sound the least bit like her father, saying don’t be clever.

As though being clever was such a crime.

He handed it to her and she took it, fingers fumbling now that the moment of truth was on her. She was about to smoke drugs, right there on her own porch. Only as the moments ticked by she realized one rather important and probably humiliating fact.

“I have absolutely no idea how to smoke this.”

“Just figured that out, huh?”

“Now who’s being smart?”

He gave her a rueful smile. Shook his head.

“Put it to your lips. Take a breath. All there is to it.”

She thought of the way he’d touched it to his mouth—almost like a kiss, but not quite. Unfortunately, the image just made every bit of sense run out of her, right when she needed it most.

“So I…suck it in.”

“Yeah. Suck.”

More sense went the way of the dodo. He probably hadn’t meant the word to sound dirty, but somehow it did anyway. And he had a way of hitting a really low note when making S sounds, so that they vibrated through her in the same way his laugh had.

“Okay. Okay. I’m going to do it. I’m doing it. Is it supposed to be burning my fingers? I think it’s burning my fingers.”

Of course, she expected him to see her half-feigned panic as a cue to take the thing from her. If he took it from her, she wouldn’t have to actually do what her father’s voice was telling her not to, somewhere in the back of her mind.

And to his credit, he did half of what she secretly probably wanted. He took the joint from between her trembling fingers, just as her insides reached critical meltdown.

But he also said a word, as he did so. A perfectly innocent, simple sort of word.

“Here.”

And then he leaned forward with a newly drawn mouthful of smoke, and ghosted his mouth so close to hers she couldn’t do what was obviously expected of her. She couldn’t breathe in what he was trying to pass from his body to hers. He had to tell her, through a coil of smoke like a snake, emerging from between his lips.

“Take it,” he said, and she forced her body to relax. Tried to open her mouth without actually touching him—which proved an almost monumental task.

He just took up so much space. And with him being this close she could make out every detail of his face, of those lips she’d dreamt about and the almost too-straight shape of his nose. The little scar in his eyebrow, where the piercing had been. The hint of silver in his ear in the periphery of her vision.

And then heat filled her mouth and her throat and her lungs, to meet the inferno that had already started burning, low down in her belly.

She couldn’t help reveling in it, for a second. His lips were so close to hers she could almost feel the shape of them, through the slight stirring of the air in between. Plus, he didn’t seem to be moving away. He’d done the thing he’d set out to do, and now he wasn’t moving away.

Almost as though he expected her to do something more, something—

He pulled away as abruptly as he’d put himself there, and when she opened her eyes he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He took another drag on the joint instead, as though nothing had ever happened.

And really, nothing actually had. He’d just given her what she wanted—a taste of pot.

A hint of what kissing someone might be like.

“I don’t feel any different,” she said, though that wasn’t exactly true. She did feel different. Just in a completely unexpected and world-altering way, as opposed to anything to do with relaxing marshmallows.