Not Who You Thought (BxB Drama-Romance)

Light Pollution

Now

"I'm New York there's no stars, only satellites and planes. The light pollution drowns out everything at night, even the clouds."

Allison is light pollution, staining the sky in my brain orange and pink. As she talks I get lost in her voice, everything else crowded out at the sound. I can't stop looking at the backs of her legs, how her hair swishes over her shoulders with every movement she makes, and the way the skin in the corners of her eyes creases into wrinkles when she smiles.

I squint at the sky and try to imagine it empty of stars. Above us is a magnificent galaxy, the stars tiny pricks of light in a blanket of darkness. The lake reflects the moonlight from the full moon, which has given a ghostly cast of blue over the water and our bodies.

"I can't imagine," I say truthfully. "Sometimes when I lay here and look up at night, it's overwhelming. I feel like the sky is too close to the earth by the lake without the trees, and it's kind of suffocating. It feels like a weighted blanket."

Allison laughs, and a few of her toes which she had buried in the sand pop out and flick particles of sand across my shins. "You look like a jock but you sound like a poet."

I think we've been flirting. When we reached the empty beach she took off her sandals and dangled them from one hand, moving with a sway to her hips and a bounce to her step which made her skirt flip up so that I received a peek of lace panties as she walked. Her lips are glossy with lipgloss and they make a suctioning noise whenever she pops them open to speak.

"I'm not a poet." I turn to look at her. We are laying on our backs, our heads resting against the sand. "I'm an artist. I can't work with words, only pencils, and paint."

"Well, Lucas. You do art." She turns and meets my gaze, which causes a deep warmth to spread in my chest and farther down in my groin. "What else do you do?"

She's been using my name excessively all night, creating a soup of feel-good hormones in my brain at the sound. It makes me think she knows what she's doing by the way she drops my name and bats her eyelashes at the same time. I've become hypnotized by the way her lips move while she speaks, her thick lower lip eating her upper while she talks.

"What do you think I do?" I ask slyly.

"Well." A strand of hair falls down her face and sticks to her lip-gloss. "I don't like to make judgments based on appearances. Stereotypes are overrated."

"Read me like a book and I'll correct you."

She giggles "Getting frisky with me, Lucas? Well, I don't feel like you're a townie. You aren't a hick, but you aren't completely refined and polished. You seem to be empathetic to others, which is probably because you're not white. You're drawn to things that are different from the norm since you're sick of the countryside and the lack of diversity."

A lump forms in my throat as she continues.

"You're attracted to pretty things because you're an artist." She gives me an imploring look. "Or is it because you want to escape the mundane?"

Charlie is a pretty thing and now that she's said this I can't stop thinking about him. When I hooked up with him the first time, it felt like I broke through a wall and into a new world. He meets me in the monotone of where we live and offers something tantalizing, his beauty alluring and his mannerisms strange. Despite all the sadness and joy that he's shown me, there's still a mystery to him.

"Who doesn't want to escape when you live here?" I ask, flustered. "It's better than doing heroin or crack like some of the people here."

She continues to read me like a medium. "Despite your need for beauty, you're still a jock at heart and like to drink at bonfires in the woods, watch big titty porn, and drink too much Gatorade. You're the guy who would date a cheerleader, stay with her through college, and marry her when you're twenty-one after completing college with a football scholarship."