I’m waiting for him in his room.
I asked Mrs. S to put me on the night shift tonight and she did because one of the other girls couldn’t do it. So it’s not really breaking and entering. Although I did use a hairpin to unlock his room.
I’m lying in his bed and watching the stars, still looking for Orion, when the door opens.
Zach steps inside and I sit up, wearing my mom’s nightie. The one he likes with pretty lace around the neck.
For all his hardness, he likes feminine things. My curly hair, my sweet smell, my soft stomach and heavy breasts. The lace around the neck of my nightie.
His eyes find mine as he shuts the door.
“Hi,” I whisper.
He tugs his white earphones off slowly as he walks in further. He’s wearing a sweaty vest-like t-shirt that’s stuck to his body, clinging to the curves of his muscles.
“Have you been running?” I ask.
He nods, dropping his cell phone on the dresser. “Have you been waiting long?”
I come to my feet and nod. “Yeah.”
I’ve been waiting for him for years. But that’s nothing compared to all the years I’ll wait for him even when I know he’ll never come to me.
“Did someone –”
“Nobody saw me,” I say, cutting him off.
We meet in the middle of his room. He looks down and I look up and there’s a rush inside me.
A shivering. A quaking. A landslide.
I take his hand and put it on my ribs. “You feel that?”
Zach stares into my eyes before glancing down where our hands are joined on my stomach. He presses his palm in my softness, grabbing onto it like he can’t help himself. Like a starved, dying plant latches onto the sliver of sunlight.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“Yeah. It’s the butterflies.”
His brows crease up. “Butterflies?”
“Uh-huh. You give them to me. You always have.” I swallow, goose bumps waking everywhere. “Ever since day one.”
Zach moves his fingers slightly. Going back and forth on my stomach as if trying to soothe them, the savage butterflies inside. I can hear the rustle of his rough palm over my nightie in the quiet of his room.
“I didn’t know,” he whispers, sweat dripping into his brows.
I use my thumb to wipe it off. “I used to hate them but not anymore.”
His jaw flexes and his eyes get darker. More intense.
I wish I could say I love them, the butterflies, I mean. But I’m afraid.
I can’t be, though. Not tonight. I need to be brave.
I need to confess.
Not about the love I have for him but what I did this morning. How I violated his privacy and watched him with his mom.