Cold Kiss Goodbye

Chapter Two

Everything looked better in daylight, a little safer and cleaner. In the cool light of dawn, brushing your teeth, you can doubt the monsters of the night were real. Especially if you have a best friend nearby. Ideally, a best friend you can call gibbering for rescue when you feel besieged by ghosts and monsters.

Then Ryan's dad walked in on me when I was half-naked in the bathroom.

I took Ryan's toothbrush out of my mouth and forced a smile. He was not quite dressed, white t-shirt and khakis, his belt slack around his hips. He gaped at me briefly.

"Hi, Mr. Roberson," I said brightly. "I stayed over last night. Hope you don't mind."

He turned suddenly, blundering into the doorway as he careened out of the bathroom. He spoke to me from the safety of the hallway. "Um, no problem, Sam. Does your mom know where you are?"

I was pretty sure he knew the answer to that. I lied anyway. "She sure does. Ryan and I were up late with Chem last night." After I fled my house because of the ghosts.

"Great!" he said. "I'll... come back later."

I washed my face with the only soap in the bathroom, yellow Dial. Bad luck needing a sleepover this week. The soap at Ryan's mom's house didn't dry out my skin.

I ran down the hallway to Ryan's room, flinging myself onto the bed. Onto him. The covers squirmed beneath me.

"Time to get up!"

"You're so loud." His voice was muffled.

"I just ran into your daddy in the bathroom," I said, yanking at covers and sheets until his squinting face was revealed.

"Oh god, I'm in so much trouble." His sleepy squint deepened as he tried to focus on me, a lost cause without his contact lenses. "Were you wearing pants?"

"Nope," I said. "I should really keep some clothes here; you should clean out a drawer. I'm going to take one of your shirts for school today."

"Fine. Just... keep your voice down." He burrowed into the pillow. In response, I curled into his side, shoving my face into the hollow beneath his neck. For a few long seconds we cuddled quietly. When I was sure I had lulled him into a false sense of peace, I jammed my fingertips into his armpits.

"Holy hell." He tried to move away, not trying very hard. "Why do I let you stay over?"

"Because you love me." I shoved away and rolled out of bed onto my feet. When I pulled one of the drawers in his chest out, it fell out onto the floor, spilling socks and boxers onto the gritty carpet.

Ryan finally sat up, shaking long brown hair out of his eyes. He had a nice body for a high school boy, muscular arms and faint definition in his abdomen.

As I pulled his favorite indie band t-shirt over the same tank top I wore last night, I told him, "I want breakfast."

"You might as well be my girlfriend," he said, picking through the tangle of clothes on the floor to re-wear his jeans. "You're a big enough pain in the ass."

***

On the drive to school, some of my frenetic energy ebbed away. I crumbled the granola bar Ryan had tossed me on our way out the door, eating some of the tiny pieces. My throat felt raw. I always seemed to be sick lately from stress and missed sleep.

He tapped a rhythm out on the steering wheel, nodded at the exit for Cape Cod like always. "School's so overrated. Especially on Tuesdays. Do you want to skip?"

"Not today, I didn't do all that Trig homework for nothing," I said. "Tomorrow."

I'd been promising tomorrow since he got his license.

He reached over and turned off the radio. "We should talk."

"We do nothing but talk, Ryan." I said, putting my feet up on the dash. It was something he hated. "Since I moved here. We're besties."

He hated the word besties, too. I was probably the most annoying best friend a boy could have.

"What was going on last night?"

"Like I said last night, I don't want to talk about it." Once I'd made sure the house was locked up tight, I'd retreated to my bed. But I'd felt restless and lonely and scared by every creak. Of course, I'd called Ryan, and of course he'd come, yawning and complaining, to pick me up for an impromptu sleepover.

"Yeah, but now it's this morning. You were freaking."

That was such a nice way of putting it. "I was not. I just couldn't stand to be apart from you a moment more. I had an overwhelming need for cuddles and Axe body spray."

Even though now I regretted giving in to the desire not to sleep alone. I didn't think I'd sounded freaked out the night before. I'd told him I was having a bad night, having nightmares. Certainly, I hadn't sounded as freaked out as I had every right to be.

"I just want to know you're okay," he said quietly.

I couldn't stand it when he pushed me to talk. I gave him a thumbs-up.

"You think your mom's going to be mad you stayed over last night? Did you even tell her you were leaving?"

I shook my head. "I don't care."

"You care."

"Don't tell me how I feel." I balled up the granola wrapper and threw it at him.

Ryan swiped it away, deflecting it to fall by his feet. His lower lip pudged out a little. "You talk so much. But you never say anything, Sam."

"I'm a bad person," I admitted. I pulled his t-shirt up to cover my nose. "This smells like you. Did you put dirty clothes into your dresser?"

Ryan sighed as he turned into the student parking lot. "You're not a bad person."

"That's probably going to be the nicest thing anyone says to me all day."

"You just need therapy." He glanced over at me. "And that's not true. You think everyone is out to get you, and they aren't."

"I don't," I said. "I don't think anyone cares that much to want to get me."

"Do you need a ride home after practice?" His tone was almost paternal. I knew his concern shouldn't bother me so much, that my irritation was irrational, but he drove me nuts. "I can come back. It's no big deal."

"Nah," I said. If I rode home with him, he'd just continue to bug me about what spooked me the night before. I loved Ryan to pieces, but sometimes I needed him in small doses. "I'll ride with one of the girls. Thanks, though."