I glanced up at him, found him watching me. His eyes reflected the stars and I was close enough to see they were on my lips.

“Jessica,” he whispered, swallowed, his hands now motionless on my waist.

I shook my head slightly; really, the small movement was me telling myself to cease feeling. Duane was all around me, and he felt intoxicatingly good. I need to end this, whatever it was.

So I blurted, “I’m not kissing you.”

His eyes lifted to mine, his expression unreadable, but I felt him tense. “Why not?”

I huffed. “Because you lied to me, you pretended to be your brother—”

He cut me off, yanked his head back. “And you want Beau.” His tone was cold, unfathomably resentful.

I gripped his biceps to keep him from moving away. “No, no—that’s not it. It’s the lie, and my sexy bee cousin.”

“Your sexy bee cousin?”

“Yes. Tina Patterson, my dad’s sister’s daughter. Remember her? You kissed her. You kissed her right after you and I...” I couldn’t finish because I was confusing myself. I used to kiss boys all the time and it never meant anything. Yet I couldn’t finish my sentence because I was beginning to think Duane’s earlier kiss—even shrouded in a veil of deceit—had meant something to me.

He licked his lips before he asked, as though reading my mind, “Did our kiss mean something to you? Not,” he shook his head and glanced around the darkness, “not when you thought I was my brother, but after, when you found out it was me.”

I answered honestly, my words pouring out of me. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. And I don’t get why you’re pushing this so hard now. I feel like I don’t know you at all. One minute you’re the Duane Winston who throws rocks at my cat, kissing another girl, making me feel like I have heartburn, arguing about the color of the sky, and the next minute you’re telling me we’re suited for each other. I don’t trust you.”

“Jessica, we’re standing in the forest naked. You trust me a little.”

I pushed against his chest lightly, shaking my head, feeling sleepy and exasperated and not ready to let him go. It was the strangest of combinations.

“Of course I trust you that way. I know you’d never murder me or take advantage—well, not take too much advantage. I mean, you did get a penis stroke out of me earlier and did really fantastic things to my nipples.” A little shiver raced through me at the memory. “But now that I think about it, you stopped me before I could—”

“Jessica, please stop talking.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you’re making everything…really hard.”

We stood motionless for a long moment as understanding dawned; his words held a delicious double meaning and, even in the inky darkness, I could tell he was struggling. I wavered back and forth between wanting him to do something, and hoping he wouldn’t. Our breath mingled. His fingers dug into my hips.

Then his eyes closed and he set me away. He didn’t let the blanket slip. Instead he pulled it from his shoulders, stepping out of our little oven, and wrapped it firmly around my shoulders, tucking it under my chin. I was mummified in our residual warmth.

Duane left and quickly located his pants. I watched his outline pull them on then move to the tree where I’d discarded my clothes. He brought them back and held them out.

“Here,” he said.

Once I had the folded pile I sensed him turn away.

I stared at the back of his neck for a beat, just the dim outline visible to me, then slowly began the process of getting dressed.

I rewound through the evening and our time together; all of my actions. I was too honest. He made me feel naïve and mindless. I wasn’t used to the disorientation brought on by excellent quality physical intimacy. Plus he and I knew each other. We had history.

Maybe my immature, fantasy-based feelings for Beau had dispelled so abruptly because I’d been given a taste of reality, of an actual adult liaison. The way Duane touched me felt like a brand.

I felt the beginnings of an uncomfortable blush creep its way up my neck to my cheeks. When I was finished dressing I cleared my throat and glanced at him. I could just make out the shape of his bare back.

“I’m all done.”

He twisted, his eyes moved over my body still wrapped in the blanket, and he nodded. “Okay, let’s get back.”

Duane took a few steps, carrying him maybe ten feet, but then stopped. I hadn’t yet moved as I was more or less swimming in a sea of mental melancholy. He might be right, we might be suited, but so what? Nothing could ever come of it other than a few months—at best, years—of being together.

In my typical fashion of getting ahead of myself, my mind leapt to a time two years from now when I would be ready to leave Green Valley. What if Duane and I were extremely well suited? What if we became serious? What if I couldn’t leave him?

I glanced up just in time to sense then see him returning to where I stood. Instinctively, I took a step back; but he held me by my arms and halted my retreat.

“Tina, your cousin,” he said, his voice thick with both hesitation and ferocity.

“Yes, Tina is my cousin.”

“She dared me to kiss her.”

I pressed my lips together and swallowed, feeling again like I had heartburn. “You did kiss her, and she’s your ex-girlfriend.”

“She was never my girl.”

I didn’t want to argue semantics. “Right, you’ve been with Tina since before I left for college, but she was never your girl. What about her?”

He hesitated for a beat, then said, “You remember who I was with before you left for college?”

I responded through gritted teeth, “Duane, what about Tina?”

He seemed to shake himself before starting again. “Tina…” He nodded, then took another step, bringing him firmly inside my personal space. “When I kissed her earlier, it didn’t mean anything.”

“Well, it looked like something to me.”

“It wasn’t. Not with her. But with you, at the community center, I meant what I said. I’ve always wanted you. And I am sorry you didn’t know it was me, because…” His voice lost its fierce edge, but roughened, his next words emerged sounding like an aching confession. “I’d really like for there to be a next time.”

CHAPTER 5

“Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.”

? Judith Thurman

~Jessica~

I was distracted.

Not even Rick Steves’ Europe could hold my attention.

It was all Duane’s fault. His words and lips, and hands, and eyes, and his penis’ fault.

He had a nice one; at least it had felt nice in comparison to the only other penis of my acquaintance, thick and long and smooth and rock hard. I didn’t get a peek at it backstage or when he’d dared me to go skinny-dipping. However¸ I could recall with surprising clarity what it looked like when we were younger, when he’d been naked chasing me through the woods, or the time before that when a bunch of us went skinny-dipping in the waterfalls near Burgess. He was circumcised. I’d noted it as a teenager because I’d just finished eighth grade health class (also known as sex education).

I never expected to be fixating on Duane’s circumcised penis. Yet there I was, sitting at my desk at work, grading pop quizzes, trying to recall the glorious weight of him in my hand…

How irritating, because now I was having a lusty hot flash.

I groaned, letting my red pen drop as my face fell into my hands.

How had I even arrived here, in this purgatory? Yes, I was drooling over the memory of his sexual magnetism from afar. But it was more than that. So much more. And this more was beyond distressing. Duane’s admission—that our time backstage at the community center had been something he’d wanted for a long time and he wanted a repeat—felt overwhelming.

I’d known him forever. I knew all about him, or I thought I did.

His confession felt like finding out my cat—Sir Edmund Hillary, named after the first man to climb Mt Everest—could talk and wanted to give me a tongue bath. At best, Sir Hillary was indifferent to my existence. At worst, he may have been plotting my demise. He was an audacious Calico psychopath, always pushing his litterbox from its place beside the toilet in the bathroom directly in front of the shower, but only when I was in the shower…

Anyway, I decided I was cursed by the spirit of J.R.R. Tolkien for my ironic sexy Gandalf blasphemy. That’s why I couldn’t stop thinking about Duane Winston’s body parts and his perplexing suggestion we were suited.

Five days had passed since Halloween and my busy, bizarre night. Of course I’d avoided him since. What would I say? What could I say?

Hi, Duane. I don’t know whether I like you or not, and you confuse the hell out of me, but I’d like to buy you a piece of pie so we can argue about the color of the sky. Let’s schedule that.

Or how about,

Hello, Duane. I obviously lack self-respect and common sense because—even though you kissed my cousin, your sexy stripper ex-girlfriend right in front of me—I don’t find that weird or creepy or disrespectful. Let’s go out for ice cream cones so I can watch you lick yours.