When we round the corner and stop, he hums, and I press my lips together, loving how the sound makes my lungs constrict. It shouldn’t be possible for my legs and lungs and brain to all quit working at the same time.
“You could pretend this is a stage,” he says quietly, leaning his hand against the wall beside my head. “You could pretend to be someone else. You could pretend to be the girl who pulled me down here because she wanted to kiss me.”
I swallow, forming the words carefully in my head. “Then who will you be tonight?”
“The guy who gets the girl he wants and doesn’t have any fires to put out back home.”
He doesn’t look away, so I feel like I can’t, either, even though my knees want to buckle. He could kiss me right this second and it wouldn’t be soon enough.
“Why did you get me over here? Away from everyone?” he asks, smile slowly fading.
I look past him, over his shoulder into the club, where it’s only slightly lighter than where we’re standing.
When I don’t answer, he bends to catch my eyes. “Am I asking too many questions?”
“It always takes me a while to put words together,” I tell him. “It’s not you.”
“No, no. Lie to me,” he says, moving closer, his heart-stopping smile returning. “Let me pretend when we’re alone like this I render you speechless.”
And still, he waits for me to find the words I want to say in reply. But the truth is, even with a bowl full of words to choose from, I’m not sure it would make sense if I told him why I wanted him down here, away from the safety of my friends, who are always able to translate my expressions into sentences, or at the very least change the subject for me.
I’m not nervous or intimidated. I simply don’t know how to slip into the role I want to play: flirty, open, brave. What is it about another person’s chemistry that makes you feel more or less drawn to them? With Ansel, I feel like my heartbeat is chasing his. I want to leave my fingerprints all over his neck and his lips. I want to suck on his skin, to see if it’s as warm as it looks, and decide if I like what he was drinking by tasting it on his tongue. I want to have an entire conversation with him where I don’t second-guess or struggle with a single word, and then I want to take him back to the room with me and not use any words at all.
“Ask me again,” I say.
His brows pull together for a beat before he understands. “Why did you bring me down here?”
This time I don’t even think before I speak: “I want to have a different life tonight.”
His lips push out a little as he thinks and I can’t help but blink down to them. “With me, Cerise?”
I nod. “I know what that means, you know. It means ‘cherry.’ Pervert.”
His eyes shine with amusement. “It does.”
“And I’m sure you’ve guessed I’m not a virgin.”
He shakes his head. “Have you seen your mouth? I’ve never seen lips so full and red.”
Unconsciously, I pull my bottom lip into my mouth, sucking it.
His eyes grow heavy and he leans closer. “I like when you do that. I want a turn.”
My voice is nervous and shaking when I whisper, “They’re just lips.”
“They’re not just lips. And please,” he teases, and he’s so close I can smell his aftershave. It smells like fresh air, like green and sharp and soothing all at once, something I’ve never smelled on a man before. “You wear red lipstick so that men won’t notice your mouth? Surely you know what we dream about a mouth like that doing.”
I don’t close my eyes when he leans in and takes my bottom lip between both of his, but he does. His eyes fall closed, and every one of my senses picks up the gravelly sound he makes: I taste it, feel it, hear it, see the way he shivers against me.
He runs his tongue over my lip, sucks gently, and then pulls back. I realize it wasn’t really a kiss. It was more a taste. And obviously he agrees: “You don’t taste like cherry.”
“What do I taste like?”
He shrugs a little, thoughtfully purses his lips. “I’m unable to think of a good word. Sweet. Like a woman and a girl still, too.”
His hand is still planted near my head, but the other toys with the hem of my cardigan. I realize that if I want to live a different life I have to do it. I can’t tiptoe along the edge of the cliff. I have to jump. I have to figure out what kind of girl would do what I want to do with him, and pretend I’m her. She’s the one onstage. Mia watches from the audience.
I pull his fingers down to the bottom of my dress, and then under.