Dare Me to Live

Chapter 13 (Part one)

"So are you two a thing now?" asked Amber when I told her that Tyler would be driving us to Kevin's.

She was sitting at her desk, inspecting her forehead in a magnification mirror, tweezers perched to pluck any wayward hair that threatened her perfect eyebrows.

I was holding a long-sleeve, blue dress up to my body in the full-length mirror on the other side of the room, so I could see my own eyes grow wide at her question.

"What?" I asked.

"What are you?" she said in her typical, demanding tone. She spun around in her chair so she could pin me with her shrewd gaze. "Are you fuck-buddies, are you using him for his car or to buy you alcohol, are you dating, what?"

"I don't know," I said, my thoughts spinning wildly. "None of the above."

"How can it just be nothing?" Amber brandished the tweezers at me and pushed back the rolled-up bandana holding up her hair.

I shrugged and turned away from the mirror so she couldn't see my red cheeks. Placing the dress back in my closet, I began to absent-mindedly leaf through the other hangers. "We just hang out together; we've never really talked about it."

"So it wouldn't bother you if he was sleeping with someone else?"

My hand paused on a black dress.

Would it bother me? We weren't exclusive, so if he was sleeping around, technically I couldn't fault him. But even as I imagined him kissing another girl, a jealous hand twisted my stomach. I passed on the black dress and kept looking, though I wasn't seeing any of the clothes.

"No, I think it would bother me," I said.

"So why don't you do something about it?" she demanded. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her rise to her feet and place her fisted hands on her hips.

Being her friend was almost as scary as not being her friend.

"It's complicated," I said, slowly.

Truthfully it was; I valued being able to talk to Tyler openly, or at least more openly than to anyone else. If something were to go wrong and I lost him as a friend...

The kiss already had the potential to screw things up. Though it had only been a week, we hadn't talked about it or what it meant. I wasn't even sure what I wanted it to mean.

I could remember every detail of that moment in crystal clarity. The slight pressure of his hands on my back, pulling me just a bit closer to him. His lips, sweet from the apple, and soft at first in his hesitation. The sound of more apples falling to the ground like audible heartbeats. In that brief moment, nothing and no one else existed but the two of us.

Afterwards, despite my best attempts not to, I found myself comparing Danny and Tyler. Kissing Tyler had been sweet and comforting, like coming home after a long day. When Danny kissed me, it had been fearless, full of wild energy, like running through a lightning storm. But I couldn't decide which life was more like me. After all, how did you compare the living with the dead?

Something hit me hard in the back, catapulting me out of the memory; it was one of Amber's moccasins.

"Hey!" I snapped. "What was that for?"

"It's not complicated," said Amber. "Either you're just in it for the hook-up, and you don't care who else the other fucks, or you like him enough to make it exclusive. Figure out what you want and tell him. Because it'll save you a hell of a lot of pain down the road."

She grabbed her shower caddy from under her bed, towel slung over her shoulder, and waltzed down the hall towards the showers.

I supposed in her own aggressive way, Amber was right. It would be better to talk to Tyler about this, whatever it was, sooner rather than later. But did I even know what I wanted? I shook my head and turned back to my closet, this time focusing all of my attention on sorting through clothes.
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