And just as I was about to completely surrender to him, Calvin seemed to have had his fill and pulled away slightly only to whisper against my ear, “He’s right. You are sweet.” He gave me one last surprisingly chaste kiss on the cheek, released me, stood up, and then he was walking away. The world snapped back into place and my body slumped slightly now that I wasn’t being held in place. My eyelids fluttered and when they were done, I found my surroundings just as I had left them. Adam, Kate, Missy, Evelyn, and Malcolm were in their exact same spots. My own body was in the same place where I had sat down except my chest was heaving, my lips were wet and flushed, my heart was dancing, and my brain was full of fog.
Whatever had happened seemed to have escaped everyone else’s notice. Though I was convinced that everyone must have seen and must have been staring, no one looked my way or was even facing in my direction. I blinked a few times; my mind trying to recall and process the sudden storm that was Calvin. If someone had come up to me in that moment to ask what that was about, I’d have absolutely no clue how to answer them. I would’ve thought that I imagined the whole thing too, except that I saw Calvin making his way across the small park with his two buddies in tow. Before disappearing around the corner, he turned around to face me with a smirk and a wink and made sure I saw him adjusting himself in his pants.
Suddenly my brain slotted everything in place, its gears having sorted themselves out with Calvin’s departure. I tried to put everything in sequence. I saw him. We locked eyes. Calvin came over. Calvin kissed me and I kissed him back. Wait, he said, ‘he’s right.’ Who’s right? Why does Calvin seem so familiar? But by the time my mind had been afforded the time to wonder and had recalibrated enough to formulate these questions, Calvin had long disappeared.
Just as he promised, I saw him around. Calvin and I orbited each other in the days that followed. He caught me staring at him now and again, giving me a look that was always accompanied by what I eventually came to know as his signature smirk. But we never spoke again. He never as much as walked towards me. I couldn’t help the creeping sense of rejection that came from our lack of interaction after the searing kiss. Was I not a good kisser? Did my mouth taste weird? Why I cared so much about the attention of a stranger who, by all definitions, was predatory, I didn’t dare to examine. I did end up speaking to his tall friend Jon quite a bit. As for the other boy Mikie, I never saw him again. As suddenly as Calvin had appeared, Jon suddenly became a constant presence. He fell in with my immediate group of friends easily and was a seamless addition to our smoke circle, fun yet unobtrusive to have in the group. Everyone liked him. By the second afternoon, Jon and Adam were already jokingly conspiring against the girls. It was easy being around Jon.
When the next Monday came, the clouds had rolled in to block the sun for the first time in weeks. The air was thick with unreleased moisture that left my skin glistening and tacky. I assumed my regular spot on the rim of the fountain basin, again watching my friends frolic in the cool summer afternoon, happy to be a spectator to their shenanigans. The usual suspects were doing the usual things. A handful of kids hunched together over a joint. Nearby, another group were in a circle for a game of hacky-sack. Some moped about with cigarettes hanging loosely from their lips. There was plenty of daylight left, but the dark storm clouds made it seem much later than it really was. I had nowhere to be tonight because the family diner was closed on Mondays, so I closed my eyes and basked in a rare chance to be unhurried and free. I lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and exhaled all the air out from my lungs. Moments later, Jon sidled up next to me and playfully bumped his shoulder against mine. When he grabbed the cigarette from my mouth to put into his, I opened one eye to look at him in response.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked as he pulled a breath through the filter, eyes fixed on me with part curiosity and part concern. Of the short time I had spent with him, it was obvious that silence and stillness made Jon uneasy. He often filled the amicable silence amongst my friends with some such stories of his adventures with Calvin. All the stories ended with the same refrain, “Can you believe he did that?”, followed by fits of laughter. His stories affirmed my suspicions that Calvin was their ringleader and much of the mischief they got up to was a direct result of Calvin’s scheming. They were so different, Jon and Calvin. I couldn’t understand why or how they were even friends.
Calvin, if my one experience with him was any indication, was forceful, aggressive, and controlling. His confident personality was the complete opposite or perhaps in compensation of his slight frame and delicate features. Hazel eyes that could have been warm were hardened and piercing. Had I not known the warmth of his body, the softness of his hands and lips, I would have assumed he was bristly and cold. Everything about Calvin made it seem like he was a precise and efficient weapon, ready to engage at a moment’s notice against any and all enemies. In the days we orbited each other, I noticed that the other boys in Fountain Park maintained a healthy distance when he passed, weary of getting sucked into his riptide of aggression. As for the girls, they fluttered in his radius, but I never saw any signs of claims being made on him or him making claims on anyone. Not that I was keeping tabs, of course. Jon, on the other hand, was very kind and soft around the edges despite towering over Calvin. Jon was well over six feet tall with a wide build that he hadn’t completely filled out yet. His arms and legs were thick and athletic, betraying his life outside of the park. His overtly affectionate personality made his large and strong frame seemingly designed for hugs.
Another bump against my shoulder, along with the return of my stolen cigarette in front of my face, snapped me out of my thoughts. I took the cigarette and asked in answer, “Where’s Calvin?”
Jon slumped in his seat and shrugged, “He’s around. He’ll turn up soon enough. He always does.” Jon curled in on himself and slid down into the fountain basin, his wide back pressed against the center with his long legs left to dangle over the rim. “He always turns up,” Jon mumbled under his breath.
“Suppose he will,” I said more to myself than to him and handed the cigarette back. I followed suit and slid down into the basin too. I leaned my head on his shoulder on a sigh, which caused Jon to lean into me in return. In the past week, the two of us had quickly fallen into an easy rhythm and comfortable familiarity, compatible in our proneness to physical affections. It was possible we were both touch starved, but we didn’t have the vocabulary to call it as such then. We sat there together and took in the scene before us while passing the cigarette back and forth.
“What do you like about him anyways?” Jon wondered out loud after a few drags of the cigarette.
“Who?” I exhaled in a cloud of smoke, feigning innocence.
“Calvin.”
“Who says I like him?” my mouth replied, but my body shrugged and that was an answer in itself. Jon’s question did make me wonder. Why am I thinking of Calvin at all? Was it the kiss? He wasn’t the first person I kissed, so what was it about him that was so compelling? Maybe it was the weird nigging feeling that he was somehow so familiar. My mind ran circles but offered no answers. There was no doubt that his domineering ways were a glimpse of danger that every teenage girl craved whether we admitted it to ourselves or not. The way he confidently took whatever he wanted was exhilarating to watch and experience first-hand. One couldn’t help but be drawn to him, even if his behavior was detestable. Not to mention his attractiveness, which was obvious and undeniable, even to the most discerning eye. All of his features worked beautifully together in perfect place and proportion. From afar, my fingers itched to trace the sharp lines along his brow, nose, high cheekbones, plush lips and angular jaw, down to his utterly kissable throat. Maybe in another and better life, he could have been called handsome.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that some people in the park had begun moving and grabbing their things out the fountain basin, sensing the coming storm and not wanting to get wet. But most were still milling about on the concrete steps, on the planters, or on the benches. Jon and I were the only ones tucked into the fountain basin today.
I took a deep breath and sighed, sinking more into him. Jon wrapped an arm around me and took a deep breath against the crown of my head. “Fuck him anyways, right?” I whispered and felt him nod above me in agreement. Just then a fat drop of water splatted on my arm. One or a few must have landed on Jon too because he tossed the still burning cigarette and jumped up onto his feet to offer his two hands to me.
“Oh shit, the storm. Come on!” he exclaimed as he hoisted me up by the hands out of the basin. Overhead, storm sirens rang through the air in warning. It must be bad for them to have come on. “Come on! Let’s go take shelter!” I barely had the time to gather my things before being dragged away from the park, across the street, and down an alley towards one of the nearby parking ramps that had a designated storm shelter in its basement. How we all knew this? I wasn’t sure. At some point we must have been told, or maybe we’d seen the signs around town so many times that the information absorbed into our minds little by little.
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