The Kingdom of Childhood

She poked him in the abs. “Where’s your shirt?”

“I just took a shower. Gonna go to bed in a little bit.”

“You don’t wear pajamas?”

He snickered. “No. I sleep in my underwear, unless it’s frickin’ freezing.”

“Boxers or briefs?”

“What do you think?”

She smirked and ran her finger under his waistband, behind the elastic. The touch excited him instantly. She tugged his boxers high enough that she could see them, then said, “That’s what I thought.”

“Are you sure?” he joked. “You want to double-check?”

To his surprise she popped open the snap of his jeans and tugged his zipper halfway down. Then she looked into his eyes and grinned. “I see you like this game. I’m flattered.”

“Yeah, feel free to ignore that.”

With her finger she drew two dots above his navel, poked him in its center, and drew a semicircle beneath it. “Happy face,” she said. Beside it she drew a downward arrow. “Right there.”

“Not very. Can you draw a ‘frustrated as hell’ face?”

“You and me both.”

“Oh, please. I don’t get why girls say that. Walk up to any guy on this trip and tap him on the shoulder and he’d be glad to help you out with that.”

She reached up and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Don’t tease,” he said. “It isn’t nice.”

She curled her whole hand around his waistband and tumbled him onto her. In the pure shock of it he pushed himself up on his arms, then looked into her face and kissed her without hesitation. As things escalated she began pressing his shoulders downward, then his head, and he wondered what strange wormhole the universe had opened up for him in which Fairen Ambrose was coaxing him to go down on her. But he was happy to roll with it. Ten minutes ago he had been getting a root beer for Temple; now the can sat on the night table, gradually moving toward room temperature while Zach cast off most of what remained of his naivete. As he worked he felt her body wind tighter, tighter, unbearably so; and then, just as he thought she might push him away, she collapsed in a fury of obvious and wild pleasure. He rose to his knees in awe of what he had just made happen. It felt like a superpower.

“Get back up here,” she said.

He crawled back up the bed and stretched his body over hers. She wrapped her legs around his, shrugging his loosened jeans even lower. As she tightened her grip he grew aware that the only thing stopping this from being sex was the presence of a single layer of cloth. He pressed his face into her neck and growled in frustration.

“Too bad we don’t have a condom,” she said.

“Oh, I’ve got one,” he replied. His voice was muffled by his lips against her throat.

“Seriously?”

He reached into his pocket to produce the one he always carried under strict orders from Rhianne, and held it up between two fingers.

“Oh, goody,” she said. “Put it on.”

He gladly obeyed. As he made the necessary preparations she turned onto her stomach and looked back over her shoulder at him kneeling behind her, and when he met her eye he felt himself seized by the sense that they were nothing but two animals rutting in the woods, driven to mate—without any higher purpose, without any sense of propriety or time. He started out as gently as he could, but he had been on edge before they even started, and as his control slipped away he grabbed her hair roughly into a ponytail and, teeth gritted, let his instincts overtake him.

The image that lingered—behind his closed lids and, later on, in his dreaming mind—was the look on her face when he twisted his fist in her hair: nose wrinkled, canines bared. It was sex. She had looked that way for only him, because of him. No matter what else happened, that was his to keep.

9

Zach found it intoxicating, this discovery of what his body could do to a girl. He thought of nothing else during the first three-hour stretch of the drive back to Maryland. He had hoped to wrangle a seat in the car in which Fairen was riding, but after his disappointment ebbed, he decided it had been fortunate. It would be difficult to sit next to her, maintain an appearance of propriety, and not go insane. He had not seen her since he left her room the night before, and he knew this was in his best interest. If she could see the depth of his lust or the magnitude of his desire to be with her again—and again and again—she might feel put off. He knew little about the nature of girls, but one thing he did know was that nothing derailed a relationship faster than an imbalance of love —or any of its close relatives.

And so he stared out the window at the stubbled cornfields and called up, over and over, the shape of her body. The flare of her shoulders above her shoulder blades, shapely as wings; her small round navel between angular hipbones; the scooping shadows between her belly and thighs. He thought of her face, the fine twin points of her top lip above the curvaceous lower one, her knowing eyes and fine brown lashes, the way her silver earrings climbed the edges of her pale ears like filigree.

He was in no mood for conversation, but it didn’t seem to matter. Scott gazed out the other window, headphones in place, probably wading around in similar thoughts about his own girlfriend, Tally. Exhausted from the night before, he fell asleep against the window and dreamed of her. Then the car’s purring motor unexpectedly fell silent and he awoke with a start, disoriented and blinking at the sudden light.

They were at a rest station along the highway. Judy slammed her door, followed by Temple, who had been in the passenger seat beside her. Scott rested his head against the window, eyes closed, music in a fog around him. Zach smacked his arm lightly, and Scott opened his eyes.