Callie had these lips, pillowy and soft, that only served to distract you from her fresh tongue. Her face was sweet, angelic even, but her wit was biting, and sarcasm laced through most of what she said—that was just who she was.
I’d come from football practice, senior year no less. Sweaty and exhausted, I’d just jumped into a hot shower after rubbing down with sore muscle salve—my body was on fire.
“Asa!” my mother shouted through the door. “When the girls are ready, can you take them to their dance, please? And pick them up at 9:30 for me, sweetie?”
I couldn’t say no to my mother, and she knew it. What was the big deal about driving the girls two miles to school so they could have fun? Nothing, right?
Wrong.
Callie, in her strapless white dress with those lips painted red, nearly knocked me on my ass. I came out of the steaming bathroom reeking of liniment, clad only in a white towel. My muscles were pumped and aching for a rubdown. Callie and Crosby were waiting in the hall. They’d gotten their hair done and looked like two little pageant contestants in button-up flannel shirts so they wouldn’t mess up their hair.
“Ace, you took so frigging long, and now everything is steamed up!” Crosby whined.
They looked like dolls—their cheeks pink with excitement.
“Not to mention, we’re going to smell like the boys’ locker room,” Callie deadpanned.
I caught her eyes and glared. There was a flash of electricity in the depths of them, a little something unnerving. Good. I wanted Callie to smell like me and consequently ward off advances of miniature suitors—I knew what ninth-grade boys were capable of.
“Put some clothes on,” Crosby complained. It took me a minute to realize I was towering over Callie in nothing but a towel, and another second before I registered that I liked the fact that she was looking. They stomped into the bathroom to ready themselves for the ball. I smirked at Callie’s blush, maybe the first I’d ever seen on her.
Nothing could have prepared me for how grown-up they looked when it was finally time to go. And Callie, standing in my parents’ foyer in a white dress… The full, ruby-red lips, the high, sculpted cheekbones, the green eyes that looked like a precious jewel from a sunken treasure chest. Without trying, without contemplating why, I saw her standing before me in her wedding dress, like a vision out of a dream. Innocent and ripe for the taking. Someday, she’d grow up and get married in a white dress like this one. If felt like a premonition, imagining that day sometime in the future, Callie’s father handing her over, some man agreeing to spend the rest of his life with this firecracker. It was quite a shock to see the girls so dressed up. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from how striking Callie was. Almost instantaneously, my mind and body kicked into beast mode. I wanted to cover her up, drag her away so no one else could witness her stunning beauty. But I shrugged it off. The girls were getting older, and if anyone could take care of themselves, it was the two debutantes standing right in front of me.
“Don’t the girls look lovely, Asa?” my mother asked good-naturedly.
“If you like toddlers in tiaras,” I grumbled as I searched for my keys. I didn’t want to take them to the stupid dance, had half a mind to convince them to go to a diner and catch a movie with me instead. Luckily, they didn’t have dates or else my somber mood might have worsened. It made me uncomfortable to see them parade themselves around all dolled up, and frankly, I wasn’t introspective enough to figure out why the feeling rose up.
“Lighten up, Asa. Or else I’ll pull out photos of you and Weston at your ninth-grade dance. Sunglasses and skinny ties—remember?”
Leave it to Diana Dashen to put me in my place with one friendly threat.
“Oh, this I’ve got to see!” Callie clasped her hands together in anticipation of having dirt on me.
“Let’s not be late,” I said over their chatter. With hands on their shoulders, I ushered the girls and their poofy dresses out the door and into my back seat.
“I’m so excited!” Crosby gushed as we pulled up at a light. I adjusted my rearview, only to catch Callie applying more fire-engine red lipstick to her puffy, pillowy lips. My dick twitched in my jeans, and I looked away to mess with the music. It was wrong to look at her like that, and bitter shame pooled in my gut.
Callie without makeup, hair pulled back in a ponytail, was dangerous enough. Callie in crimson lipstick and a white dress was dynamite, and it annihilated my sanity, my ability to think rationally.