“Hey,” Megan greeted Jon at the door, smiling broadly. “You’re pretty quick. Come on in.”
Jon stood, frozen, mouth half-open. Good Lord, she was beautiful. She had somehow gotten even more beautiful overnight. She was wearing a little-too-tight “Bill the Cat” T-shirt—ackkk, phthpt everybody—tucked firmly down into her acid washed Levi’s, and no shoes. Her toenails were painted a sparkling purple. She had her hair twisted up in a makeshift bob, what looked to Jon like chopsticks stuck through it to hold it there. Long locks of deep auburn fell around her ears, down to her shoulders, a few strands sticking out randomly. Her face was clear and bright and a little pink, as if she had just finished scrubbing it clean. She didn’t have any makeup on.
Jon had seen a lot of Megan over the past year-and-a-half, and had always thought she was attractive. But this was something else again. She wasn’t just attractive. She was radiant. And she wasn’t just radiant. She was breathtaking.
Hormones, Jon thought to himself, his new mantra when it came to Megan. It’s just the hormones. Perfectly rational, biological, chemical explanation for it. It’s all just . . . glandular.
“What?” Megan asked, still smiling but brow furrowing. “Do I have a big booger on my nose? What?”
John shook his head, eyes fluttering. He felt dizzy. Hormones, hormones. All it is. “I’m—uh—fine—I just—I ran over here a little fast, I guess—I—”
“Come on in. I’ll get you a Coke.” She turned, moving toward her kitchen while Jon felt himself stepping inside and closing the door behind him. He heard her bare feet padding softly against the tile floor—there was something wonderfully intimate about her greeting him at the door with bare feet. As he followed her into the kitchen, he couldn’t stop staring at her backside—her naked heels and ankles, the soft curve of her calf up to her thigh, the too-perfect roundness of her bottom, each buttock a perfect oval of flesh underneath acid washed denim.
As her hips undulated with each step, Jon felt like he wasn’t just casually following her into the next room, but that he was drawn towards her, each time her jeans made that perfect crease between butt and thigh when her leg move back, each time the gray fabric of her t-shirt pulled against her back towards the angle of her hip, creasing diagonally towards her right leg as she stepped forward with her left foot, then diagonally towards the left as she stepped forward with the right. And the gentle cadence of her shoulders, as her arms swung ever-so-slightly as she walked forward, wisps of red brown hair escaping her makeshift bob and falling against them. The whiteness of the nape of her neck. He suddenly had a burning desire to kiss the back of her neck. To grab her by those unspeakably beautiful shoulders and put his lips against the soft white skin between and above her shoulder blades, just before her burning auburn hair began. Jon suddenly thought that maybe he really had run over a little too fast. Because he realized he felt very punchy. Almost drunk.
He wanted to tell Megan how inexpressibly wonderful the back of her neck was. Not to mention that she had a butt that just wouldn’t quit.
Stop it! Jon’s brain snapped at him. That wonderful, clear-headed, geeky, rational brain of his, coming to his rescue as he flailed away in a sea of merciless hormones. Think about your grandmother. Jackson’s mother, the one with all the facial hair and the weepy eye.
Brilliant! And it kinda sorta helped a little. It didn’t stop his awareness of Megan’s hypnotic rhythm as she walked. How she smelled like summer rain and fresh cut flowers. How the curve of her hip changed as she moved. And how she and Jon—this girl, this incredible, wonderful, gorgeous female, and dull-as-dirt, sneakers-and-T-shirts Jon Edmonds—were supposedly an item. Like, maybe, boyfriend and girlfriend.
She stopped at the refrigerator—an old, pea-green relic from the seventies with the refrigerator on top and the freezer as a very large bin that pulled out on the bottom—and opened it. She reached toward the back and pulled out an old-fashioned hourglass-shaped bottle of Coke. Then she handed it to him, swiveling on her hips as she did, twisting her torso and making her already tight “Bill the Cat” T-shirt scream for mercy. Again, he felt dizzy.
“You sure you’re okay?” she asked as he took the Coke, the expression on her face both concerned and amused. She had to have some idea, he was sure, about what was throwing him for such a loop. But she was kind enough to just blink innocently. “You want to sit down?”
Jon nodded. “Sit down. That would be good.”
“’kay,” she said, and grabbed herself a Budweiser out of the refrigerator door, then knocked it shut with her hip. “Come on, let’s go up to my bedroom.”
Jon blinked. Bedroom? Up to her bedroom? He had never been up to her bedroom, just him and her, before. He had been up there a few times in the past, but Johnny Two and sometimes one or two of her other friends had always been up there with them. But he had never been invited up there to be alone with just her.
Breathe in, breathe out, he reminded himself. Stinky old gramma with the snot in her eye. False teeth. Remember when you saw her with her teeth out?
They walked up the stairs. The movement of her hips, her bare, white feet on the old brown carpet, was intoxicating. Sure, he had looked at her butt before—and he had seen in her walking around without shoes all the time—but something was different. Something had changed. Maybe it was just him, or maybe it was her, or maybe it was both of them. But something was different. Every little detail, from the wisps of red hair at the nape of her neck to delicate arch of her foot—and her toenails, painted purple a week or two ago and now flecking and chipped—it was entrancing. He couldn’t stop noticing every little thing about her, couldn’t seem to stop thinking it was wonderful, no matter how small or silly a thing it was.
“Well, come on, we don’t have all day,” she said from the doorway to her bedroom, motioning for Jon to hurry up. When he got inside, she closed the door and locked it. “Okay. First, I want to make my case.”
Jon blinked. The idea of going on the run, disappearing with the book and Megan and running from the law, the government, the military—whoever—had become such a given to him since last night that he had forgotten, for a moment, that he had ever been objecting to the notion, and that Megan had planned on trying to convince him.
Facing him directly, she lifted up her hands and put them behind her head, her breasts pushing up as she did so, the too-tight T-shirt pulling out from her blue jeans. She grabbed the things that looked like chopsticks and pulled them out of her makeshift bob, letting waves of red-brown hair spill over her shoulders, shaking her head back and forth in the best shampoo commercial tradition. She must use Pert, he thought incoherently. She smiled, bowing her head but looking up directly at him, her dark eyes drawing his like magnets. Damn, she was good. And she knew what she was doing. All of it. Tight t-shirt and bare feet and slapdash hair bob with chopsticks, the tilt of her head and the smile curling the corner of her mouth; it was all choreographed. She was an artist at work.
Jon just stood, frozen, his eyes fixed on Megan’s. The very fact it was choreographed, that she was going through so much trouble for him, or at least partly for him, was amazing. It was not only something he had never experienced, but something he had never even anticipated, something he had never even imagined. It made his heart skip a beat. He felt it, in his chest, as that all-important muscle just seemed to stop dead. And then thump dramatically. A kick-start thump that was so hard it felt like it was throwing itself against his rib cage, trying to get out; so hard he could hear it knock inside his ears. As she kept her eyes squarely fixed on his, he had a pretty good idea of what was coming next.
Then she pulled him forward. All at once, her lips were against his, pressing hard. Then her mouth was open, her tongue sliding across his lower lip. Jon had been, in truth, expecting the kiss, even hoping for it; hoping, but not quite believing, that that was he kind of “case” Megan had planned on making for going on the run. But the soft warmth of her mouth, the brushed-and-flossed minty freshness of her breath filling his nose, the cool, light touch of her fingers against the back of his neck—it caught him off guard. The very idea that Megan—real, live, 110% female Megan Kincaid-not only had her lips on his but was practically licking them with her tongue—it was enough to send him into shock.
Holy shit! Jon thought. She’s kissing me! Holy-double-shit! That’s her tongue! There is a God. A wonderful, merciful, beautiful God—
Suddenly, Megan stopped. She pulled back a little, a thin line of spittle stretching between their lips. She moved her head in again, pressing her lips near his ears.
“Open your mouth,” she whispered. “It’s a lot better if I can actually put my tongue in your mouth. And vice versa.”
Then, leaving him no time to respond, she pulled his head forward again, putting her open mouth over his lips. Trying to maintain something remotely resembling coherent thought, Jon opened his own mouth, and immediately felt Megan’s tongue roll over his, slipping easily between his lips.
Megan pulled back again, their mouths parting with a wet smack. She drew in a rough breath. Her face was flushed red, and her chest was rising and falling much faster, and much more dramatically than it had been a minute ago. “I’m gonna show you why people call it tonsil hockey,” she whispered, and her mouth was on his again, her hands pulling against his neck, pressing his face to hers. He could feel her tongue, warm and soft and flexing almost like it had a life of its own, moving over his tongue and sliding over his teeth, touching the inside of his cheek, and then back again, the tip just barely flicking the very back of his mouth. For a moment, he had a clear picture in his head of Megan, suspended on a beam of light, her mouth pulling his finger in until he felt his fingertips touching the back of her throat.
And then she did it again, rolling her tongue around Jon’s slowly, moving across but also in and out in soft, slow strokes, not disengaging. She was breathing through her nose, her breath coming faster and harder, hot—yet still minty fresh—against Jon’s face and, finally, Jon did the same, because it was apparent this was going to last a lot longer than he was going to be able to hold his breath.
“Hokay,” Megan breathed after a minute, pulling back, wiping her mouth with her forearm. Her cheeks were flushed, here eyes wide and bright. She smiled at him. Carnivorously. “You can do more than just stand there with your mouth open. ‘Kay?” Then she noisily drew in a deep breath, like she was about to dive underwater.
Jon nodded, short of breath himself. “Okay—“ Anything else he was going to say was cut off by Megan smashing her mouth against his. “Mmmmphglugumph!”
Her chest pumping up and down against Jon’s, Megan put her mouth back to work and this time Jon tried to match her. After a moment, she disengaged. “Okay, you’re not trying to get spinach out of my teeth. Kiss me.” She inhaled and exhaled, grinning broadly, her mouth and chin glistening with saliva. “And it’s not a piano lesson. Metronome action don’t cut it.”
“Ah—uh—metronome?” Jon asked. “What was I—?”
“You’re not keeping time for a march.” To illustrate, she stuck her tongue out of her mouth and moved it from side to side mechanically. “One-two, one-two, one-two,” she said. “That’s okay, I guess, if you’re Lawrence Welk and you’re trying to conduct the orchestra with your tongue, but if you’re kissing a girl and you’re swapping spit you gotta do better than the windshield wiper action.”
“Oh,” Jon said. “Sorry, I—”
“Don’t be,” she said quickly, her mouth almost touching his while she talked, her breath warm and sweet. “Nobody taught you how to kiss. If they had, I wouldn’t have much of a case to make, would I?”
Jon didn’t say anything. He had sort of hoped, before, that this was the kind of case she had been planning on making, from the moment last night when she had called and told him that she wanted to make her case, and in person. Which was why he hadn’t gone to great lengths, just yet, to make it clear that he had already decided on the course of action she favored. Because he had wanted to see just what sort of case she made. And see if the case had something to involve either swapping spit or the touching/baring of breasts. As it turned out, it was spit swapping, and an extremely compelling case it was.
“And besides,” she continued, her face almost touching his, giving him a soft, easy kiss on the lips. “I’ve never been the teacher. I’m always the teachee. Being the teacher is a lot more fun.” Another soft kiss between breaths, on the corner of his mouth. “Plus, think of the homework.”
Jon was thinking of the homework. But he was also thinking of that soft, easy kiss—no tongues, no lip bruising, no jaw cramps. Just a casual touching of lips, a soft, simple kiss at the corner of his mouth, and yet it meant everything. The big, wet, mouth-full-of-tongue kiss was, indeed, incredible—there was little doubt that Megan knew what she was doing—but it had almost been too big. So much, so fast, so beyond anywhere he had ever been, he had no perspective on it. The casual kiss, almost using those simple kisses as a form of punctuation, her face just centimeters from his own—that was still huge for him, but also something he could get his mind around. Sincere, simple kisses that, right there, right then, meant more than all the tonsil hockey in the world. Sweet, easy kisses from a girl to a boy. From a girl who apparently liked the boy enough, and was comfortable enough with him, to give him the soft, simple kisses in the first place.
It’s really real, Jon thought. It really is. We’re an item. Me and Megan. She was his girlfriend. He was her boyfriend. Just like that. A week ago he thought he was getting the cold shoulder from her in the hall at school, he had been planning on a summer of tagging along while she flirted with Johnny Two and maybe the both of them would dump him altogether. Now, he had a girlfriend. And it was Megan. A girl he had thought was as likely to be in his romantic future as Christy Brinkley. And now they were alone, in her bedroom, and she was showing him how to share spit. And, good God, could she kiss.
Eight boys—now nine—and two girls, his mind supplied helpfully. One a college girl.
Jon put his mouth on hers, not even meaning to, not even thinking about, cutting her off. He felt his hands circling around her back, pulling her torso against his, finding their way under the gray t-shirt and tracing the contour of her spine, up to her shoulder blades. Not thinking about it, not having the intention, just drawn to touch her, to feel her skin, to pull her towards him. Their mouths worked in tandem, jaws pumping, tongues rolling over each other, when Jon’s left hand caught Megan’s bra strap, and as he moved his hand it pulled back and then snapped forward.
Megan disengaged from the kiss, face red, eyes wide and glassy, the grin on her glistening lips unmistakable. “No,” she said. “Not yet.” Then she cocked her head. “Maybe later. We’ll see.”
Jon was breathing very heavily. “I—sorry—didn’t mean, I mean, I wasn’t trying to—I just—I wanted to—”
Megan shook her head and giggled. “It’s all right. Shut up. Seriously. I need—to stop, I think. For you being such a crappy kisser, I’m getting way too—too warm. Worked up.” She pushed his hands forward and away, leaning in to kiss him one more time while she did it. “You’re pretty hot for a geek, Jon-boy.”
Jon felt his mouth starting to move, to start trying to say things, almost of its own volition. “You’re—you—you are—I—I—I—when—“ he stuttered. It was extremely hard to form coherent sentence. “I was—when you—I—remember when—”
Megan leaned forward, eyebrows arched expectantly. “Mmm-hmmm.”
“I—I am trying to say something without sounding like a Hallmark card.”
“Oh, go ahead,” she said, and giggled. Like a schoolgirl. “Sound like a Hallmark card. Do I look like a morning sunrise touching the dew covered grass?“
“I—think—I just—I think I’m falling—” Jon started, his brain screaming helplessly at his mouth to stop. “—I mean, I’ve never felt like this about anybody—”
Megan’s look of expectancy turned to worry. See? See? She didn’t want to hear it. He just needed to shut up. If only his mouth—
“—I just, since we started hanging out, I thought maybe I did and I’ve known for, I don’t know, months that I—I—I—I love—”
Megan slapped her hand over his mouth. “Uh-uhn! Don’t say that word.” She shook her head emphatically. “That’s a bad word. Don’t even think it.”
Jon, flustered and incoherent and not a little aroused, knew he must have looked horrified, or confused at least, but he was just relieved. Oh, God bless sweet, sweet Megan. She shut his stupid, worthless mouth up. “Mmglumph,” he mumbled against her hand.
“I mean, I appreciate the sentiment and all, but it’s a bullshit word. It’s bullshit. Larry says he loves my mom. They do all their bullshit ‘out of love’. Carla ‘loves’ her boyfriends and they ‘love’ her until she gets a black eye. Out of love.” She paused, contemplative, hand still firmly clamped over his mouth. “You were right. No Hallmark cards. Right? We can do better than that. You want to say something—well, say something else. Deal?”
Jon nodded. “Mphel,” he agreed.
“’kay,” she said, dropping her hand down. “Don’t scare me like that. You’re were saying?”
“I was saying that you’ve got a butt that won’t quit,” Jon rephrased, hoping the attempt at sexual-innuendo humor would get rid of the awkwardness his mouth had created by getting all sappy and stupid. It seemed to work. Megan was pretty easy. She brightened visibly. “You think so? I always feel like my butt’s too fat.”
“Your butt is not fat,” Jon assured her. “I’ve probably spent a lot more time looking at it than you have, and, I can guarantee you—it ain’t fat. It’s like—it’s a work of art. A non-fat work of art.”
She nodded her head demurely. “That’s so sweet of you to say. In a kind of sexist, freaky, butt-obsessed way. Plus, you didn’t really need to throw ‘non-fat’ in there.”
Wondrous Megan. After his foolish gaffe, she had provided an escape route. Then practically pushed him through it. And now, it was almost like he hadn’t even said it. “Sorry, sorry. I’m just—I’m trying to say I’m convinced. You convinced me.”
Megan looked at him quizzically. “Convinced you to what?”
Jon blinked. “To go. With you. To take the book, to run—”
“Oh, that,” Megan said, and laughed. “Hee! I knew I had you last night. I just went ahead because after I started thinking about it, I wanted to see how bad you sucked at kissing. For someone who claims to have never really kissed a girl, you’re pretty good.”
“I kissed a girl in sixth grade,” Jon said. “She bit me, though.”
Megan grinned. “Oh, yeah. The biter. You told me that story. So when do you want to leave?”
Jon looked at her, still feeling disoriented, the taste of Megan still in his mouth. A wonderful taste. Not like anything he had ever tasted. Not sweet, not salty, not sour—it was like a eating a big bowl of summer. She tasted like warm wind and soft rain, like a crystal clear midnight sky, full of stars and a fat, orange moon. A harvest moon. It wasn’t merely a romance novel simile; she tasted just like that. How could someone—how could anything—taste like that? But Megan did. “Leave?” he asked. “Where are we going?”
Jon hadn’t thought much beyond the idea of staying in a hotel room, alone, with Megan. Overnight. “Canada?”
“Sure. They arrest people all the time in Mexico, just for smoking a joint or something, they go to prison for years. That’s what I’ve heard. Plus, they don’t speak English, and I don’t speak Spanish, so—”
“Do you have a passport? I don’t have a passport.”
Megan laughed. “Hah! Yeah, Mom and Larry were going to send me on a European cruise, and Ronald Reagan decided I was such a great patriot he was going to make me ambassador to France. You’re funny. No, we’ll have to figure that out—maybe there’s something in that book of yours. If we’ve got magic ashtrays that can make super-real hologram things, not to mention flying jet skis, we should be able to whip up a passport—”
“Oh,” Jon said. “I forgot. You’re right. The black notebook—I do have a passport. It came with one for me and three blanks. I think Dr. Bernhard was planning on me leaving the country.”
Megan nodded thoughtfully. “I’m impressed. I wish I had met the guy. Okay, so that’s handled—there’s a money issue, as far as paying for hotels. I’ve got $280 bucks. Carla has hidden her stash. I used to know where it was, but she must have moved it. Larry and mom apparently moved their petty cash, too.” She shook her head. “Nobody trusts anybody in this house.”
“Oh, uh, I got money,” John said sheepishly. “There was some in the notebook. Dr. Bernhard left me with $6500 dollars. American money. Actually, I think there was like $7000 in Canadian money. Also British pounds.”
“$6500?” Megan asked, eyes wide, smiling. “Seriously? Six-thousand, five-hundred dollars? Are you shittin’ me?”
“No. But—look. I’m leaving, like, half of that with my mom. I’ve never seen that much money and she has so much trouble paying the bills sometimes, and I feel bad leaving her like—”
“That’s still $3000. I’ve never even seen $3000 at the bank.” Her smile was ear-to-ear and her eyes were like saucers. “We’re keeping the Canadian money, right? That’s still—how much are Canadian dollars worth? They’re called dollars, right? Are they worth same?” She turned around, looking behind her, as if the answer to her question might be on her wall, and then turned back around excitedly. “English money? Are we going to England? Oh, wow! Oh, wow.”
She grabbed Jon and planted a wet, sloppy kiss on his mouth. “You retard! Why didn’t you tell me about this stuff last night? I spent, like, two hours trying to find Carla’s cash stash. This is so cool. Is there anything else you forgot to tell me, retardo?”
“Uh, I think he included an automatic teller card that would let me get money from any automatic teller. So I guess that would mean unlimited money. And there was a MasterCard and a Diner’s Club. I’ve got X-ray vision, too, which is really cool.”
Megan turned her head, cocking it slightly. “You put the who in the where now?”
“The bag. There were contact lenses.” Jon looked around his feet for his backpack. “Here,” he said, picking up his backpack and pulling the gray case out a pocket on the side. “They’re contact lenses. I did it. You can see through stuff. I mean, like anything. And you can—you can zoom in on stuff. It’s like bionic vision. Actually, that’s what he put on it—see?”
Megan nodded, blinking. “Uh-huh. Bionic vision. He gave you credit cards?”
“Uh huh. And I brought this stuff, too,” Jon continued, rustling through the bag. He pulled out the chrome vial. “It’s a spray. You’re supposed to spray it on your clothes. Shoes, too. The notebook says you can use it to—ah—walk on water. And on your clothes it’s like super-teflon—supposed to be fire proof, bullet-proof. Do you want to put in the contact lenses?”
“Uh—hold on there, partner. You’ve got $6000—”
“$6500.”
“And credit cards. And a magic automatic teller card. Jeeze!”
“And X-ray vision.”
Megan seemed to be staring at the wall. “Yeah. That too.”
“Megan, you all right?” Jon asked.
She was shaking her head slowly. “Jesus. Your doctor was serious about this shit. That’s a lot of damn money.”
Jon nodded gravely. “And passports. Drivers license. Travelers checks—”
“Traveler’s checks, too? How many of those?”
“Uh, about $5000, I think—”
“Shit! Even if you leave $3000 with your mom, that’s still $8000. How much is a hotel room? Thirty bucks a night?”
“I guess. That sounds about right.”
“So, how many times does $30 go into $8000? 200 times? That’s a lot of hotel staying. And you’ve got credit cards? And an automatic teller card? We could stay on the run for the rest of our lives!” She gave Jon a wide, toothy smile. “Wow. Wow.”
“Or settle down in Canada,” Jon added.
“So are you serious about that? X-ray vision? You can see through stuff?”
“Yes,” Jon said. “It’s so cool. You’ve gotta try it—”
“So, you can see through stuff now? Am I like a . . . talking skeleton?” Megan stuck her face in his. “Booga booga!”
“No, not right now. You can turn it on and off. I’ve got it off. Hang on—“ Jon blinked three times, then looked up, then down.
“Something in your eye?” Megan asked. “You’ve got a twitch.”
With eerie suddenness, the room around Jon was bright and colorless, a faint halo around almost everything. He looked up at Megan, who was luminescent against the medium gray background of the rest of the room. She looked like an old black and white film starlet, lit with soft light and shot through a lens smeared with vaseline. And her skin looked like it was glowing. As he focused in, he could see a bright network of lines criss-crossing her skin. No, under her skin. Veins, arteries, and nerves, a shade brighter than the glow of her skin, visibly brighter to him in their heat and energy. “Holy shit,” Jon said, stepping back involuntarily. “Damn. It’s hard to get used to this.”
“Hey? Are you kidding me? You can really see through—hey, you aren’t, like, looking through my clothes, are you?”
Jon looked down and he realized that he was. He was looking straight through her clothes. But it didn’t look like he was looking through her clothes, it looked liked she was so brightly lit, so internally illuminated, that her clothing was nothing but thin, gossamer outlines by comparison. It was, for all practical purposes, as if she was standing in front of Jon butt-naked—in black and white and glowing, yes, which was really quite something, but it was the butt-naked part that made Jon freeze, mouth agape, and stare directly at Megan’s torso.
Megan’s eyes widened. “You cheap bastard, you can! Can’t you? Can you? Oh, shit, you can!” She pushed Jon’s chest with her right hand, laying her other arm across her bosom, which did more to accentuate than it did to obscure. “Stop it, pervert!”
Megan turned around, then stopped. “You’re looking at my butt, aren’t you?”
“Uh, no. No. No, not at all.” Actually, he was, and, damn, did she have a nice butt. A nice, nice butt. However, he thought maybe he’d just avoid commentary for now. She grabbed the quilt off her bed and threw it around her shoulders, then turned around defiantly, but it appeared as sheer and insubstantial to Jon as her clothes. She still looked, for all practical purposes, like she was completely naked.
“There,” she announced, pulling her quilt around her—to Jon, it looked like little more than sheer netting—and then she frowned. “And you can just see through this, too,” she said flatly. “All right, stop it, right now, or I’m kicking your ass. Seriously.” She started looking around her room. “Just as soon as I find something big enough to hit you with.”
Jon blinked three times, looked up, then down, and the world flooded with color. “Okay, I’m not doing it, I turned it off.”
Megan turned around and eyed him suspiciously. Not without a trace of humor, but she was clearly pissed off. “You sure? I’m not into any, like, bionic peeping-tom action or anything like that.”
“No, no. Off. You want to try? It’s really cool. And you can zoom in and out on stuff, and you’re supposed to be able to see in the dark but I haven’t tried that, and you’re supposed to be able to see what somebody else is seeing. But I haven’t tried that yet, either.” He held out the contact case. “I have to put them in, though—so they work. Dr. Bernhard made it so they wouldn’t work if you just put them in yourself.”
“I see,” Megan said, nodding, letting the quilt fall on her bed, apparently satisfied that Jon was no longer checking her out with his X-ray vision. Which he wasn’t, but it did occur him to wonder how difficult it would be to turn it back on. And how casual he could be about it, so she didn’t suspect. But he dismissed the thought. She was his girlfriend now, or almost, anyway. He had to respect that—had to respect her. And that meant if she didn’t want him using the X-ray vision stuff on her, he didn’t—whether she’d know about it in the end or not.
He popped open the contact case. “So, you want to try it? It’s cool.”
“Maybe later. I’d have to get out my glasses—I wear contacts already. You can’t, like, stack contacts on top of each other.”
He had known somewhere in the back of his mind that Megan wore contacts, but he just hadn’t thought about it. Still, he wasn’t sure it actually mattered. He could see a lot better now than he ever could before he had tried the contacts. Everything was sharper and clearer. Certainly, Dr. Bernhard would have thought of that, and if a pair of contacts could give him X-ray vision they could certainly do the job of regular contacts, right?
“Why don’t you just try ‘em for a second? I think—I don’t think you’ll need your glasses. I think they’ll fix that, too.”
“No way. The same ones you’re wearing?”
“Well, like them. I know I see a whole lot better. I could ready the tiny words at the bottom of my Blondie poster from across the room—”
Megan was at her dresser, squeezing a bottle of saline solution into a baby blue contact case. “Hang on, let me take mine out,” she said. After a moment, she had her contacts packed safely away in her contact case and was stumbling towards Jon, hands out in front of her. Then she tripped and fell, slamming against Jon, and both of them fell onto her bed.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, her face right next to his. “I’m blind as a bat without my contacts.” Her face right next to his, Jon couldn’t help but kiss her. He did, gently on the cheek. And she kissed his. Then he pressed his lips directly against her mouth, overwhelmed with the desire to taste her again, bringing his hands to her face. It was amazing how, Jon thought, in the scheme of things, all this super techno-stuff really didn’t matter much at all. Given the proper perspective.
His fingers slid into the spun silk of her hair as he pulled her head down against his mouth.
Megan pulled away. “Okay there, stud, plenty of time for that later. Put that horse back in the stable. I can’t even see you. Give me one of those X-ray vision thingies.”
“I’ve got to put it in,” Jon said, sitting up and pulling on contact out of the little gray case. He sighed as he did it. She was right, of course, and he had already had more intimacy and closeness—and sweet, sweet spit-swapping—with Megan than he had ever had any right to expect. Still, he couldn’t help wanting more. “Keep your eye open wide.” About an inch from her eyeball, the lens seemed to jump from Jon’s fingertip and into Megan’s eye.
“Whoa!” Megan exclaimed. “Don’t poke my eye out there—holy crap! I see giant green letters telling me I need to put in the other lens.”
“Right here,” Jon said, as the second lens almost flew from his hand, crossing a gap of nearly three inches from fingertip to Megan’s right eye. “Wow,” Jon murmured. “I think they’re getting more assertive.”
“Cool!” Megan said, standing up, looking out at nothing with a broad, eager smile. “Instructions. In giant green letters.” She turned her head a little, and then did it again, more profoundly. Then she bobbed her head back and forth, laughing. “It does it so the letters stay like they are real—like there are really giant green letters scrolling through my room. I look left, they stay in the same position. If look all the way away, they start creeping back around, but—that’s so cool.”
“Can you see okay? Is it like wearing your contact lenses—I mean, everything’s not blurry, is it?”
“Hell, I almost forgot. No, it’s not blurry. Everything is sharp and clear. And I mean sharp. Things don’t ever look this in focus. And the colors are so bright! Wow. And the instructions—that’s so cool.” She clapped Jon on the back. “Ya did real good, son,” she said heartily. Then her smile faded. “Shave-and-a-haircut? What the hell is that?”
“Shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits!” Jon sing-songed helpfully. “You know, like this,” he continued, and then tapped it out on the wall. “Just blink to that rhythm.”
Megan shook her head. “This just gets weirder and weirder. Okay.” She blinked several times, and then stopped. “More instructions,” she said. “Oh good. Night vision? X-ray vision? Wow, it really has it. Nuts. This is just nuts. Okay, let me see if I can get the secret-decoder-ring-magic-eye-twitch right . . . ”
She blinked her eyes slowly and dramatically. “One,” she counted. “Two. Three. Okay, look left, look right—holy shit!”
“Cool, huh?” Jon asked.
“My wall just disappeared! Ohmigod! I can see outside. Why is everything black and white? I can—holy shit, I can see into the house next door!”
“I think you can change the color so it’s not black and white, but I don’t know if you can see regular colors—I meant to try that.”
She turned and looked blindly at Jon, her gaze slightly askew. “Okay—where the hell are you?”
“Keep focusing on things closer to you,” Jon instructed. “That seems to work—focus on whatever looks closest. Then the next closest thing.”
She stumbled drunkenly. “Crap! It’s like—it can give you vertigo and motion sickness at the same time. Okay, there you are—damn! You are naked!”
Jon suddenly felt his face redden. Of course, it worked both ways—he just hadn’t really thought of that aspect. But the idea was embarrassing. He was skinny, he didn’t work out, he was only averagely endowed—at least, with all the kissing and X-ray vision and stuff that part wouldn’t be too totally embarrassing, but still. He didn’t think Megan would be eyeing him covetously, due to his mind-blowing physical beauty, but because there just wasn’t all that much there. He should have thought a lot harder about letting her in on the X-ray vision thing, he realized suddenly.
“No, no, no, don’t you worry, I’m not to ogle your burning, glowing nakedness,” she said with a laugh as Jon self-consciously crossed his arms across his torso, attempting a nonchalant placing of the hands strategically across the groin area. “I’ve got better manners than that. But—holy shit! I can see inside you!”
Megan leaned forward, coming so close to him as she leaned over that her head was almost pressed against his chest. “I can see your heart beating! I can—I can see the blood going in and out—whoops, too far, now I can see through you. Hold on. Damn! Look at that thing go! Hold on—“ she said, then stood up, grabbed Jon’s head, and pressed her mouth over his. And, amazingly, grabbed his left hand and brought it up to her breast and pressed it against her, rubbing his hand in three long circles before letting it go. Even through Bill the Cat and the admittedly thin fabric of her bra, the sensation was overwhelming. The soft, suppleness, the slight bump of her nipple, the casual intimacy that Megan had so suddenly come to exercise so easily with him—for a moment, as she released his hand, pinpricks of blackness played at the edge of his vision. Oh my God, he thought. I’m going to pass out.
“Holy shit!” Megan said, again putting her head almost against his chest. “Your heart’s beating a mile a minute. Oh hell. You’re not going to have a heart attack are you? But—damn! I saw this film at school once, where they showed a humming bird’s heart beating—“ She stood back, laughing. “Sorry, sorry. I just couldn’t resist.”
“That’s—that’s quite all right—“ Jon said. He felt very dizzy. “I think I need to sit down for a second.”
“Go ahead,” she said, gesturing towards the bed. “And don’t get any fancy ideas. That wasn’t, like, an invitation for you start pawing at me any time you feel like it. It don’t work like that. They’re my boobs.”
Jon sat down the bed. He felt very wobbly. “Okay.”
Megan turned around to the wall, stumbling drunkenly. “Okay. This is getting irritating. How do I turn them off?”
“Same as turning it on,” John murmured, still feeling a little shell-shocked. “Blink three times, look left, look right, it turns off.”
“’Kay.” After a moment, Megan sat down on the bed beside Jon, exhaling tiredly. “That’s something else. Damn. I—” She shook her head. To Jon, she sounded a little shell-shocked herself. “Shit. Where’d I put my beer?”
“Over by the door,” Jon said, gesturing to the small green shelf holding a few dozen assorted knick-knacks under the light switch. “On top of the shelf.”
“Oh, yeah,” Megan murmured blankly. Then, with a grunt of effort, she stood up got her beer. She put the bottle to her lips, and then started swallowing, until more than half the bottle was gone.
Jon smiled a little. As profoundly wonderful as the kissing had been, as profoundly wonderful as the kissing had been, as literally mind-blowing as her grabbing his hand and pressing it up against her boob had been, this was really great, too. Just this. Here they were, alone together in her room, on a Sunday morning, and she was drinking a beer. It was so cool. She was so cool. And she liked him.
“What else did you say you had? You brought something else?”
Jon blinked. “Oh, yeah, the spray can. Hang on.” He bent over, grabbing his book bag from where he had dropped it on the floor, and pulled out the small silver tube with the slightly embossed exclamation point on it. “It’s, like, spray on superhero. I haven’t done it, but the description was something else—you spray it on your clothes, it’s supposed to make them bullet proof and fire proof.”
Megan’s eyes lit up. “Bullet proof? Like, people are going to be shooting at us?”
Jon blanched. “I hope not! I don’t care what it says about being bullet proof or fire proof, I don’t want to have to test that one out—”
Megan. “Oh, sure, I hope not, too.” She inhaled deeply, and then grinned. “But that would be so cool on the news. Megan Kincaid and Jon Edmonds in desperate shoot out with the FBI and CIA—Larry would have a heart attack. So would my mom. So would Carla! They’d all shit a cow.”
“Um, okay,” Jon mumbled. “But there’s more to it than that—the thing said you could spray it on your shoes and it would give you traction on any surface, that it’ll let you walk over soft surfaces like mud or quicksand—”
Megan said back down beside him, her smile so wide and teeth so white—God, she had such a beautiful smile. Jon was, at some level, horrified at himself for the thought he had, as she sat by him, eyes so bright and big, her excitement so tremendous it was almost infectious. The thought he had was that a smile like that was worth getting shot at for. Shot at! With guns! Her smile! What the hell was wrong with him? Oh, yeah, trust him with great power. That was a real great idea. Trust him to have his finger on the big red button, why not? A smile that might be worth nuclear Armageddon. Sheesh!
“Quicksand!” Megan said. “We might go someplace with quicksand? Where is there quicksand?”
“I don’t know, but it also said water. That you could use it on water.”
Megan blinked. “Use it on water how? Or—you said—you said you had something that could let you walk on water? You were serious?”
Jon nodded. “That’s what it says. I haven’t done it, but—”
“Hell!” Megan exclaimed, standing up with a jerk. “Spray that stuff on your shoes. I’m going to fill up the bathtub!”
“Uh—“ Jon started. Why not? They really ought to test this stuff out, see how it worked, before they actually tried to use it in some sort of real world situation, right? “Okay,” he said. But Megan had already flung open the door to her room and was in the bathroom, turning on the water.
Jon took off his shoes, sprayed what seemed a reasonably large amount of the little silver aerosol can onto the soles, then put the shoes back on. He stood up, and walked a few paces forward and then back on Megan’s threadbare carpet. Still felt like normal shoes. He slid his right foot across the carpet, which seemed to work normally, and then tried a little jump.
At first, he wasn’t sure what happened, but as he fell flat on his face and pieces of ceiling popcorn and plaster fell around him, he realized he had smashed his head into the ceiling. He looked as he sat up, seeing a notable head sized crater, still dropping fragments of plaster and dust.
Megan was at the door. “What the hell was that?” she asked. “You okay?”
“I—yeah. I did—I thought it was a little jump. Just seeing, you know, if it felt different, and I jumped and it must have—this stuff must make it so you’re like a trampoline or—“ He stopped, looking up at the hole in the ceiling. “I’m sorry about that, maybe we can fix it or—well, I guess try to figure out a hologram or something would be overkill, but—”
Megan waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, I don’t care, they can ground me for the rest of forever. Soon as we can, we’re gone. You just—what—jumped up and hit the ceiling?”
“Bounced,” Jon corrected, rubbing his head. “I jumped up a little, and then soon as my feet hit the floor, it was like something threw me up against the ceiling.”
Megan raised her eyebrows. “Cool! It’s like flubber, too! Come on, the tub is almost full.”
Jon stood up and followed Megan to the bathroom. “Flubber?” he asked.
“That movie with the My-Three-Sons guy? Where they iron rubber balls on their shoes in the basket ball game and the old car flies around?”
“Oh,” Jon nodded. “I think I’ve seen that.”
“It’s a classic,” Megan said, bending over in a way that made Jon very certain she knew exactly how her butt was pointed right at him, and turning off the water. “Jump on in,” she said. “Or on top. Or—”
Jon put one foot on the surface of the water and it was exactly as promised—he might as well have been putting his foot down on solid concrete. He stepped up, and then both feet were on the water, but not sinking into the water. It really worked—just like that. He was standing on water.
Megan’s eyes were wide and bright. “Cool! That is so cool.” She stuck two fingers in the water, and then passed them under Jon’s shoes. They went easily into the water, but Jon couldn’t help but notice that they barely seemed to break the surface, even as she moved them—no ripples. “That is so cool. That’s cooler than the X-ray vision stuff. I’ve got to do that.”
Jon nodded his head at Megan’s feet. “It said it doesn’t work on bare skin. You might want to put on some shoes.”
“Think it’ll work if I spray it on some socks?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I guess it would. You’re supposed to be able to spray it on your clothes.
“I’ll try that,” she said, and disappeared out the door.
Jon looked down at the clear, still water beneath him. He picked one foot up and put it down, then the other. He was standing on water! He noticed, as he picked a foot up and put it down, that the water rippled, but then stilled immediately each time he put his foot down. Whatever was on his shoes that kept him from breaking the surface tension was actually flattening out the surface of the water. Was it, maybe, spreading his weight over a large enough surface area, somehow, to keep him from sinking? How would something like that work on the ocean or something, with all those waves? Or a running river?
“Here we go,” Megan said, padding back into the bathroom wearing big multi-color rainbow socks. “Wow, I usually slip on the bathroom tile when I’m wearing these things. They don’t slip at all, now. Cool.”
And without hesitation, Megan put one foot up and then the other, standing beside him in the small bathtub. “I’m standing on water! Me! Standing! On water! This is so cool.” She took a step backwards, and then stepped forwards. “Now I’m walking on water! I’m a water-walker! This is amazingly cool. And my socks don’t even feel wet.”
“Hang on,” Jon said, stepping off the tub. “Just stand right there.”
“What?”
“I just want to see something,” he murmured, and crouched down by Megan’s rainbow-striped feet, standing on the glassy-smooth surface of the water as if it were solid ground. He stuck his finger in the water, right beside her foot, and it slid right into it, just as he would expect. But almost no ripple. Using two fingers, he tried to stir up the water and make it splash, but although it felt and even sounded normal, there wasn’t a splash. The water stilled almost immediately.
“Weird,” Jon said. “It’s doing something to the water. Smoothing it out or something. Hold on a second, get down.”
“Okay,” she said, stepping down. “Cool. No water on my socks. Nothing on your shoes, either. That’s pretty groovy.”
“Uh-huh,” Jon said, and hit the water with his hand, drawing it back and forth until the surface of the water was active and rippling, a little sloshing over the side of the tub onto the floor. And then he stepped up, putting his first foot on the top of the water, and the surface stilled immediately.
“Wild!” Megan whispered. “That was cool. Let me do it!”
Jon stepped down, and this time opened the drain and turned on the water, in addition to stirring the water up with his hand. Then Megan hopped onto the water with an audible if muffled splash, both feet coming down simultaneously, and immediately the water was still. Even where the fresh water was pouring in from the faucet, although it sounded fairly normal—just a little muffled—the surface was barely broken.
“Cooooool,” Megan breathed. “I don’t know what, but we’ve gotta be able to use this for something.”
“I’m sure,” Jon said, standing up on the water with her. “I think it must be distributing our weight across a much larger surface area than we see, or doing something to keep us from breaking the surface tension that flattens out the ripples and waves and stuff—”
Megan, facing him, took his hands in hers. “Look at us, Jon,” she said, squeezing his fingertips. She was positively glowing. “We’re standing on water. You and me. Standing on water. That’s got to make us special. You and me.”
Jon nodded, unsure of what to say and not entirely trusting his mouth to say something smart. So he just nodded.
Who are we together? Jon’s brain asked him. The interstitium.
“I think the water’s about to overflow,” Megan said, looking down. “Why don’t we turn it off?”
Jon nodded, stepping down and turning off the water. Then Megan stepped down, too. “Come on. This isn’t nearly as exciting, but I’ve got something to show you, too. I’ve been doing a little work.”
“Okay,” Jon consented, following Megan back to her bedroom, leaving the bathtub draining. As they go back to her bedroom, Megan closed and locked her door again.
“Come over here,” she said, heading toward her bed. She bent down and reached under it, pulling out an old cardboard box and opening it up. She unfolded the flaps and reached in, pulling out several wrinkled maps, a crumpled brown paper bag, a notebook, a book titled simply U.S.A. Travel Guide that looked like it was from the early seventies, and a copy of a book called Canada on $15 Dollars A Day.
“I’ve been trying to figure out the best route to take to Canada,” she said. “Figuring the mileage is a pain in the ass, but I know we’ve driven up to Asheville in under three hours before, so I’m figuring if I measured the distance between Knoxville and Asheville on the map, I’ve got a pretty good idea of how long it will take to get anywhere. Depending on which we way we go.”
"
Jon crouched beside her as she spread out her map, noticing that there was a lot of circling, highlighting, and margin notes scribbled on it. She had been busy.
“If we take I-40 to Nashville and get on I-24,” she started, pointing at a route traced with a red felt-tip pen, “we can probably get to St. Louis in a day, or close. And we could, you know, do the tourist thing. We’d have time for that sort of stuff, right? It’s not like there’s a deadline to get to Canada or anything. Just we probably oughta clear out of here. The only time I was ever in St. Louis, I had to sit in a hotel all day.”
“Sure, I don’t see why not. I’ve been to St. Louis, but it’s been a while—”
“Go out, get something to eat, see the sights. Go back to the hotel. Watch a little TV.” She smiled secretly at Jon. “Snuggle. You know, the cool stuff.”
“The cool stuff,” Jon agreed. Cool stuff, hell! Snuggling at a hotel with Megan? That was the miracle stuff.
“Anyway, from there we should be able to take 70 to Des Moines, and maybe stop there. Then from there,” she continued, tracing the line slowly with one fingernail, “we can drive to Saint Paul in Minnesota. I mean, it’s a lot of time in the car, I guess, but there should be plenty of cool places to stop. Every time I’ve ever gone anywhere with Mom or Larry, I always see all these cool places, and we can never just stop. We’ve got hurry up and get somewhere so we can sit around and argue all day.”
“I never been to Minnesota,” Jon said. “It’s supposed to be cold.”
“I’ve never even been near Minnesota. But I’m betting it won’t be too cold now. Should be cooler than it is here! It’s so far away. Finally, I’m going to see some of the world outside of stupid Oak Ridge and Knoxville and Larry’s grandmother’s in Asheville.”
Jon nodded. He actually liked Oak Ridge. But staying in hotel in exotic, distant places like Minnesota sounded pretty cool, too.
“And from there,” Megan finished, “we can drive to Winnipeg. Find a hotel. Maybe just keep moving around Canada for a while. I don’t know anything about Canada. But we can learn, right? How does that sound?”
Jon nodded his head. “That sounds cool. You’ve really thought this stuff out.”
“Uh-huh,” Megan agreed, nodding her head vigorously. “I didn’t get much sleep last night. I told you I didn’t think I was going to be able to sleep. Look,” she said, unfolding another, even more rumpled and faded map. “Did the same thing here, tracing a route to Mexico. I’m going to leave it here. To throw them off our trail. But did the whole thing—distances and I wrote my guestimates as to how long it’d take to get from one place to the next. Pretty clever, huh?”
“Wow,” Jon said, nodding. “Winnipeg. Damn, that just sounds so far away. Like it’s in Greenland or something.”
“And this,” she said, reaching under her bed and pulling out a large duffle bag, “is my stuff. I’m figuring we’ll travel light. But I’ve got the basics packed. Underwear and jeans and socks and t-shirts and toothpaste. Shampoo. Sometimes they have shampoo in the hotels, but you never know what you’ll get. We can wash clothes out in the sink and some hotels have washers and dryers that you can use, I’m pretty sure.” She looked up at Jon, grinning. Almost maniacally. To Jon, she looked a little crazy. Crazy with cinnamon-brown eyes, burning auburn hair, smooth, unblemished, cream-colored skin, and soft pink lips, yes. Beautiful-crazy. But a little scary-crazy, too.
Jon thought for a moment about his original super-exciting summer plans: reading textbooks, playing videogames, and programming. Maybe scary-crazy was just what he needed. Maybe even more than beautiful-sexy-kisses-like-a-goddess-crazy.
“So, basically, I’m packed,” she finished. “When do you want to go?”
It was bizarre, given that, a little over twenty-four hours ago he had been prepared to turn it all over to the Powers That Be and resume his safe, mundane life of textbooks, programming and videogames, but he wanted to go now.
“Right now?” Jon asked. “I guess I need to pack, and sneak it past my mom, but—well, there is another thing.”
Megan’s eyebrows arched. “Another thing? What another thing?”
“After you left yesterday, my Mom told me there was a reporter coming that wanted to talk to me, about Bernhard—”
Megan’s eyes lit up. “No shit! No way! Really? It’s happening already. Are you going to talk to him? What are you going to tell him?”
“I—you know, I don’t know. I’m not sure. Should I? From my mom, it didn’t sound like he knew anything about the book—what Dr. Bernhard was really up to. But I don’t think she knew. But a reporter isn’t going to turn me over to the police, right? And I wouldn’t have to tell him anything—”
“Sure, talk to him. Make sure to mention me! Tell him that whatever happens in the future, it was all my idea.”
“Yeah, then he really would turn us both in. I dunno. You think I should? I mean, if anybody had any real idea, they would have already shown up, right? The police and the army and the FBI—”
“No doubt. And if he tries to pull anything funny—kick him with your super shoes! Or make something else out of the book. Fly away on one of those flying scooter things. You’ve got to make a flying scooter thing.”
“You’re really big on the flying scooter thing, aren’t you?”
“Who wouldn’t be? So, why is he coming? How’d he find out? What does he know? Did something happen?”
“Shit,” John swore. “I forgot. I never told you about it— what my mom wanted to talk to me about. Yesterday, when she was kicking you out—that was what it was about. I may just be paranoid, I didn’t want to say anything on the phone, and—well, when I got here, we, uh, got busy—”
“Yeah, yeah, so what was the deal? She was telling you that the reporter dude was coming? He talked to her, or—”
“Hang on, hang on. Yeah, apparently they know each other, and apparently my mom runs her mouth—he some old boyfriend—”
Megan smirked. “Is there any man your mom knows that isn’t an old boyfriend?”
“Um. Not that I can think of. Right now. Anyway, she told me that Dr. Bernhard had turned up dead at a store in California. The guy apparently remembered my mom complaining about me hanging out with Dr. Bernhard—”
“Dr. Bernhard?” Megan asked, looking momentarily puzzled. “Oh! The book guy. The guy who made the stuff in the—the briefcase. Right?”
“That would be the one. So—I mean, I’ve got no idea what he knows or he doesn’t but the police or the army hadn’t shown up for me. Yet. But I think we probably ought to be leaving soon.”
Megan nodded. “Uh-huh. Didn’t you say you thought the Dr. guy was dead?”
Jon nodded. “Yeah. The videotape—the thing that looked like a videotape—he said he would be probably be dead if I got it. So, I don’t know—I guess I expected it, but in California—I guess it makes sense, he used to live out there. Still—”
Megan was nodding absently. “Uh-huh. Wow. A reporter. Cool! From where? TV or a newspaper or what?”
“I, uh. I’m not sure. From Washington, though. So, I guess it must be some kind of big deal. Maybe we should just pack it up and go.”
“No!” Megan shouted. “You gotta talk to him.” She leaned forward. “Can I come?”
“You want to talk—you wanna come? What if it’s a set up? Or what if he brings somebody with him?”
She sat back. “Well, sure, I mean, let’s prepare—get packed, figure out the magic stuff in the briefcase and spray on the super spray and all that. Do that today. Be ready to bust out of there, if it’s a set up. See what I mean? We should be able to look out for ourselves, with all the stuff in the briefcase, right? Don’t you think?”
“I—uh, I guess so. I mean—”
“You guess so? You guess? You’ve got a fucking bottle of hairspray that lets you walk on water and contact lenses that let you see through walls and book with instructions to on how to build flying tennis shoes and you guess?”
“Well, when you put it that way, that does sorta make sense—”
“So when does he get here?”
“Mom said probably tomorrow. So if we spend the first part of the day doing whatever we need to, uh, prepare, like you said, then we should be in good shape. I guess. And we—”
“—we can leave Tuesday morning. Early, before anybody is up, don’t you think?” Megan finished.
“That would probably be the best thing. Then we just start driving—”
Megan leaned forward on her hands, bring her face directly in front of Jon’s, raising her eyebrows with a wide smile. “—to Winnipeg!”
Jon smiled a little, nodding. That sounded better than how he was planning on finishing the sentence: until we find a good hotel to stop at.
Megan leaned in even closer, until her nose was pressed against Jon’s. “So.”
“So?” Jon asked.
“Do you remember what I said?”
“Uh-huh,” Jon nodded. “Um. I think. About what?”
“About, you know. Avoiding the windshield wiper action. With your tongue. When it’s in my mouth.”
Jon nodded. “Oh. Yeah. That.”
She kept moving forward, pushing him down. “You remember? You sure?”
“I—yes. Positive. I promise.”
She pushed him all the way down, sliding over him, her face still right against his. He could feel her weight pressing against him as she lowered herself a the last few inches.
“Show me,” she said.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment