As I brace myself for soft, urgent lips and gentle, tingly passion, I'm met instead with stiffness. It's like our faces don't fit together; our noses are in the way and our lips are made of brittle wood. I part my mouth for him, tensing as he moves his lips over mine out of sync.
"Sorry." The word hisses out as a small wisp, and he literally wipes his mouth off with his fingers.
Disappointment, shame and tears well up and ripple throughout me, held just below the surface as I blink at him in paralysis. I've done something terribly wrong, but I don't know what it is.
Alex licks his lips nervously, interlaces his fingers in mine and pulls me close to him again.
"Sorry about that," he says again, barely above a whisper.
"What?" I ask, not comprehending. "Why? I'm confused." I stare at the ground, holding back a river of emotion.
He clears his throat.
"I'm nervous," Alex admits. Our fingers still intertwined, he swings my arms back and forth in a gentle fidget-like gesture, a feathery chuckle emanating from him as fine-spun gold.
"You're nervous? It seems like that could never be possible."
"Seems, key word."
"Oh."
"And I know you are too, so that doesn't help," he elaborates. There's the sting of failure puncturing my abdomen again.
"Sorry," I say this time, the word fluttering quietly into the periwinkle orchids hanging above us and evaporating in the heat of our foliage bubble.
"Don't be sorry!" He abruptly readjusts his posture, standing up straighter, grabbing my upper arms with clammy, insistent fingers. "I like your nervousness, your innocence, your awkwardness. I like you, okay? Which is why I was nervous to kiss you. I like you a whole damn lot."
Suddenly, his vulnerability has my confidence shooting up like a sparkling water fountain lit by rainbow lights in the night.
"I make you nervous?"
He sucks his lips into his mouth, delight dancing in his eyes. "Yeah?"
"Okay." I drop my gaze again, blinking and processing this information, golden giggles bubbling soundlessly inside my throat.
"What are you self-conscious of?" I ask, harking back to a conversation from a half-hour ago. The question materializes from somewhere other than my brain, vocalized before it's filtered out. "You said you had to think on it?"
"Yeah." He stops to inhale. "I'm self-conscious of... not being good enough. Like, not having my life together. For example, you're on the straight-and-narrow to achievement and success, whereas my path has always been sort of scattered up, down and every direction."
There is a pause. We are still magnetized within an intense, charged physical proximity, which renders the conversation incredibly raw and intimate.
"I find you... terribly precious," he murmurs, and there's more he has to say, but I watch it catch in his throat, and he holds it there.
More eye contact converts the moment from tender to electric in a few seconds' time; playful desire flushes Alex's face, replacing the earlier vulnerability, and I can tell our second kiss is going to be spectacular.
"Someone's in there!" Teenage girls screech and squeal a few feet from us.
Alex practically shoves me away from him. We catch each other's eyes one last time, both of us bursting with exasperation and hilarity. Megan leaps like a ninja into the greenhouse, aiming her water gun point-blank into Alex's face.
YOU ARE READING
A New Reflection
Teen FictionNatalia Stevens is smart, nice and shy-and this is exactly how everyone sees her. Even day-to-day conversations with friends and classmates are difficult, and guys certainly don't pay her any attention. During her senior year, Nati begins to notice...
