Erin's body is a thunderstorm. I look up to the crack of lightning-- hoodie still in place, her pants are off. Then, the thunder hits. It's not meant to be sexy. Her eyes are fixed on me, but for once, I cannot read her expression. Confusion, maybe. I am staring.
The willpower it takes to shift my gaze to the floor comes with clenched fists and tight breath. The pale crescent of her thigh lingers in my vision. The baby-blue fabric of her panties, boy-shorts, detailed, fittingly, with small rainclouds and requisite lightning bolts.
"Earth to Kimber."
Our eyes meet again, and I attempt to turn my face into a mask, nonchalant, smiling. My heart races in rebellion, and my body is called to arms. My neck tingles. My fists hold tight. I keep my breathing steady but cross my legs as if she'll see the warmth growing there. Not wetness, not yet, but desire enough. Desire to be touched.
"Sorry, I zoned out," I say. "What did you say?"
She plucks a pillow from my bed and tosses it into my face. I do nothing to block it, but when it falls, I'm smiling for real.
"Movie. Pick. A. Movie."
I'm about to suggest The Princess and The Frog, but Erin interrupts.
"Not Disney," she says.
I frown, then go to say Wall-E.
Again, I'm interrupted. "Pixar is Disney."
With a sigh, I fall forward, letting my legs kick out behind me. The television's at the foot of my bed. Erin's leaning on it as if guarding against my poor decisions, arms folded. Distracted, my gaze settles in front of me as I think. Again, I'm looking at lightning bolts.
I shake my head and roll over, returning my attention to her face. "We're going to watch superhero bullshit, aren't we?"
Erin grins. "You always get it in one."
She tosses me the remote from the dresser and leaps onto the bed next to me, converting the pillow from weapon to chin rest.
I straighten and point the remote at the screen. We're behind on new releases, and I have to scroll back to the last Marvel movie. Erin's attention is on the screen, her legs straight out behind her. I hit play but don't adjust my position to match hers. Usually, we lay shoulder to shoulder, and I can't linger long, but I can't help my gaze.
Erin is taller than me by a head. I'm darker than she is, especially now that the kiln of summer has revealed my Mexican glaze. Her legs are long and incredibly white. She doesn't tan. Can't. Always burns. Whenever it comes up, she says she wishes she could tan like me, and every time I remind her that she is beautiful. Where I mean honesty, she hears encouragement.
Someone will find you beautiful. Someone else.
The one thing we do not talk about is boys. Everything else is fair play, but romance has always been off the table. Once, junior year, I worked up the courage to tell her I like girls. Her words were supportive, but something about her closed off. For two weeks, Erin felt like endings. She was quiet. We barely talked. Her family has always been religious, but not her.
I wondered if she suspected some hidden lust in me. As if, when we changed in a locker room, my eyes were memorizing the curves of her body. I wanted to talk about it. Figuring out your sexuality isn't straightforward. When she steps from the pool, glistening in a bikini, and your heart skips a beat, you don't admit the feeling. Maybe others do.
For a long time, Erin was a painting. She was beautiful and distant and unobtainable. Of course, a glimpse of the soft stretch of skin between bottoms and bikini would make my heart stop. That's what art does.
But, on the rare occasion we found ourselves changing next to each other, I never once looked. There was a curiosity then-- more about the changes in our bodies than any sort of desire. I wondered if we all grew up the same, but I never looked. After all, who lifts the Mona Lisa's skirt.
Then Erin was back to normal. I never defended myself or asked the cause. There seemed such danger in bringing it up. If it was settled, why remind her? And for years, that distance between us remained.
I dated a few girls senior year, but all short-lived relationships. I remember reading books at the time that pictured high schoolers having sex in cars and when their parents were out of town, but if such a reality existed around me, I never saw it. My girlfriends were shy things. Two of the three weren't out yet. We dated in secret, but the stress turned our bodies into labyrinths of nothing but dead ends. A hand on a thigh, the closeness of lips about to kiss, and they fled.
The only time I've been kissed was in the rain. It was cold, and her lips parted mine in streetlight glow that looked warmer than it felt. Her tongue awakened a hunger in me. My left hand slipped under the hem of her shirt and drifted across the small of her back. Then, she slapped me. The next day, I woke up with a cold.
Now in college, Sophomores, neither of us date. I haven't been waiting for her. Until this moment, she's been to me nothing but brushstrokes. Now, with my gaze caressing the dimples of her back and the curve of her thighs, something changes. Erin is not a painting. She is flesh and blood, and she is lying next to me in her panties as if it means nothing.
She could be right. The long white of her legs seems as unreal as anything I've seen. Still, she wouldn't do this with a guy. For the briefest moment, I wonder if that is the point. What she lacks in words, she replaces in symbols. Her presence is perhaps an invitation. My breath catches. I want to accept, to run my fingers across the back of her calves and up her thighs and...
"Are you gonna start it or what?"
I hit play and settle next to her. If her appearance is a statement, it is only that I am so far from being a romantic option that this is perfectly safe. There is nothing sexual about it. We are both paintings, and, as with any thunderstorm, when the drama passes, I am left only with rain.
---
I try to keep my attention on the screen and more or less succeed. Halfway through, Erin shifts around until her back's against the headboard.
"Come up here," she says.
I listen. Of course, I listen. When I turn, her beauty is fresh. I only now realize we are in my bed. She considers me a second, and I wonder if this really is meant to be a moment. Then she kicks me.
"Hurry up!"
