Aliens on Aventine Hill

Watching Waiting [Part 1]

They were kissing, bodies intertwined in the back seat of Jimmy's station wagon. His palms were flush against the sides of her slender waist, as his lips wandered the smooth skin of her neck, up the edge of her jaw. She kissed the tip of his nose and guided his hands towards the buttons of her blouse.

She felt them hesitate ever so slightly, and she tasted shyness on his lips. Taking hers away for a just a moment, she cupped his chin in her fingers and playfully studied her wide-eyed boy before kissing him again.

But she had seen it. Again, that worried wrinkle of the brow—I didn't take you for this kind of girl—with a new addition—Don't you know that you don't have to be?

It threw her for a loop, that little bit. There were so many things she'd done in the city, haughty and proud and, to use his word, fearless. She had been cruel and loveless, quick to anger and hard to please, oh but she had so much fun. That's what she'd had, wasn't it? That's what she'd called it, as she'd drank and smoked and loved, invulnerable but for one thing—one person.

Christopher.

She could still feel his hands, quick and rough against her body, superimposed on the gentle, tender hands of the boy kissing her now. His lips were softer too. Rather than stinking of gasoline and cigarettes, Jimmy smelled faintly of freshly mown grass and spaghetti sauce and spearmint gum. He did not rip her blouse apart as Christopher would've done. No, Jimmy undid each button with a sort of innocent reverence that made Alice wonder for a moment: I can't possibly be your f...

Jimmy's lips touched on the hard bone of her clavicle as his fingertips drew a line up the length of her inner thigh, and all of Alice's doubts vanished. His fingers pressed into her flesh so that they might leave bruises like fingerprints, while she traced the hard lines of his shoulder blades, drawing him closer into her and breathing deep into his collar.

That's it, she kissed the tip of his ear, Just forget about the men in the woods. Just forget about the way he looked. Just forget about... Alice kissed Jimmy harder, trying to distinguish the taste of him from the taste of fear lingering in her mouth. Just forget.

His wayward hand slid beneath the hem of her shorts, and they both stiffened. She'd let out a little involuntary gasp, a strange, sharp inhale. Nighttime played in the curves of their faces and the whites of their eyes as they looked at each other.

"Do you want to stop?"

Alice felt her eyes widen. It wasn't that it was a strange question. She swore it had always been asked before, and yet not like this, not without resentment, not without that subtle urging, that heavy breathing...

She felt hot and reckless and pent-up—and anxious to get away from everything that she had seen today—but suddenly she was cool. This had always been a bad decision, a good time, just a thing to do and nothing more, but as she stared into those baby blues and considered that soft question, Alice saw that it meant something.

And despite everything that she had done in the past, in this moment, her answer to that question felt oddly sacred. She kept it back, let that feeling hover in her mouth, while Jimmy slowly withdrew from their embrace.

She watched him go. The cruelty in her sneered at this adorable bout of nerves working through his face, but it drained away as she felt her expression match his.

"I'm sorry."

"What for?" he laughed, shaking his head and stretching up to the front seat to rummage through the glove box.

"I don't know."

He returned to her with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Offering her the box, he tucked a cig in the corner of his mouth and cracked a window. Alice plucked one out and slipped it between her lips, so that when he flicked open his lighter the two of them leaned into the flame as if they were kissing again.