I watched my breath fog up the air in front of me as I walked down the street. Fall break ended yesterday, so it was back to school for me. I had hoped to get a ride with my mom, but she had already left for work before I even woke up. Zach managed to get a ride with one of the kids who live across the street, but it was too awkward for me to ask for one also.
The air around me seemed to freeze over, I rubbed my arms in an attempt to warm myself up-the cold was getting to me despite the fact that I had a long sleeve and a jacket on. I rolled my head back and stared up at the sky as I walked. A few younger kids ran past me, nearly knocking me off the sidewalk.
I shook my head a little and dug around inside my bag for my iPod. My ears where met with rather loud music when I stuck my earphones in them. I winced a little and quickly turned the volume down to a reasonable level.
My breath blew out in front of me as I continued to make my way to school.
* * *
I slumped down against the back of my seat as the teacher droned on. My eyes caught site of Kristi on the other side of the room, staring back at me with a ridiculous grin on her face. I raised an eyebrow at her and she lipped something out to me.
I mouthed out, “What” back at her and she slapped her palm to her forehead. I suppressed a smile and watched her scribble something down on a piece of paper. We both glanced over at the teacher, who was writing something on the board, and she crumpled the paper up before throwing it towards me.
The wad landed a few inches away from my desk and I used my foot to drag it over to me. The teacher looked back at the class momentarily. I pretended to be scratching my ankle as I grabbed the paper from under my foot.
It was extremely difficult to read what Kristi had written. Her chicken scratch hand writing was never easy to decipher. I decided to just smile back at her and pretend like I could read what the note said. I mean, she would probably say the same thing after class anyway-might as well just wait.
* * *
I leaned back against the wall next to the door while I waited for Kristi to come out. She always seemed to take forever to get out of class. A few guys snickered as they walked past me and I scuffed my foot on the floor, a frown took its place on my mouth. I kept my eyes on my feet and tapped my fingers on my thighs as I waited.
Kristi smacked me on the shoulder, pulling me out of my thoughts and back into reality. I looked over at her and flashed a smile.
“You always look so freaking deep in thought, Molly. I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important going on in there.” She reached up and tapped her index finger on the top of my head. I laughed a little and swatted her hand away.
“No, I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. Just stuff.”
“Ha ha, alright. If you say so.” She looked me over with a skeptical expression, before shrugging her shoulders and linking arms with me. “So about the note. What do you say? Would it be cool if Casey and I came over this weekend? It’s been so long since we’ve all had a sleepover.” She grinned up at me and I returned the gesture.
“Oh, yeah. Sure. It’ll be fun.”
* * *
I stared in disbelief out the windowed doors that led out of the school building. It was raining. I sighed in frustration and dug around in my bag for my cell phone. Hopefully, there was a text or something from my mom saying that she took off work early to pick us up so we wouldn’t have to walk home in this weather.
“Yes!” There was an unread text from my mom. I opened it up and felt my shoulders drop in disappointment. “Zach is getting a ride with a friend, couldn’t find one for you. Really?” I looked out the window again, the rain was coming down even harder now. “Great.”
* * *
The rain didn’t let up at all during the walk home. If anything, it might have gotten worse at one point. I was soaked and my clothes were stuck to me, my jeans were rubbing against my skin and making me very uncomfortable. I jiggled the knob on the front door, trying to get it open, but it was locked. I patted myself down before groaning. I had left my key on my dresser.
With much reluctance on my part, I headed off the porch and towards the side gate leading to the back yard. The back door was always unlocked, for moments like these. The only problem was the back yard didn’t have any pavement. I stepped down near the back steps, right into a puddle of mud. My foot sunk into it about ankle deep. It took me a few minutes, and a bit of cursing, to get my shoe out of the mud. I stomped over to the back door and turned the knob. The door swung open and I stepped inside.
I kicked my other shoe off and shook my jacket off. There was already a little bit of a puddle forming beneath me. My mom was not going to be happy about that. I sighed and tried my best to get up the stairs as quickly as I could without getting the floor too wet.
Goosebumps covered my skin as I tugged my shirt off over my head. It landed on the bathroom floor with a loud plop noise. My jeans were nearly impossible to get out of, because they were soaking wet they stuck to my skin the entire time I struggled to get out of them. I shivered and hurried to my room to put on some dry, warm clothes.
* * *
I was dropping all of my wet clothes into the dryer when I heard the doorbell ring. I raised my eyebrows as I thought about whether or not I was expecting anyone today. I couldn’t think of anyone, except maybe Carson. He always liked to show up randomly like this. I rolled my eyes and headed downstairs.
I pressed my face against the door and looked out the peep hole to see who it was, but it was too dark outside to tell-and I didn’t want to turn the porch light on because then whoever it was would know that I was actually home. I stared a little harder against the dark and was able to make out that the person was a man, and he had his back to the door.
He turned around to knock again and I felt my heart falter for a moment. I pulled the door open before he could even finish knocking and a smile spread across my face.
“Vincent? What are you doing here?” He glanced around, and then looked over my shoulder, into my house. I tried to get his gaze back on me, but I couldn’t.
“Well, I was wondering,” As he spoke, I watched his mouth forming the words, felt his eyes falling back onto me, “if I could borrow your phone for a few minutes. The power went out and my cell died like an hour ago.” My eyes followed his nose, up to his eyes, and I stepped out of the way to let him in.
“Sure, just um, follow me.” He closed the door behind him on his way in and stood in the entry, waiting for me to lead the way. I led him across the room and into the kitchen. My hand groped the wall, looking for the light switch. When I flipped the light on, Vincent was standing inches away from me. “It’s there.” I pointed towards the phone that was hung on the wall.
“I’ll only be a moment. I just have to make a call to the electrician.” He stepped over and picked the phone up. I chewed on the inside of my lip as I watched him talk to whoever was on the other line. He laughed a few times during his conversation, making my skin crawl and burn at the same time. It was hard to ignore the blaring fact that he was incredibly handsome.
After about ten minutes passed, he hung the phone up and turned towards me. I smiled awkwardly at him and pulled on the edge of my t-shirt. He grinned at me and I felt the blood begin to burn the skin on the bridge of my nose.
“Well, that’s all I needed. Thanks for letting me use your phone.”
“Oh, no problem. Did you get everything figured out?”
“Yes, thanks for asking.”
“Well, that’s good.” I couldn’t think of what else to say to him, he had only come in for the phone, right? He stared down at me with the faintest smile playing on his mouth. Soon, the only sound that filled the room was the rain pelting against the windows. There was a flash of lightning and suddenly the whole house went dark. “You have got to be kidding me right now.”
“Looks like I came over just in time. A minute later and I would have had to look elsewhere for a phone.” Vincent laughed. I moved along the counter towards the light switch. I knew the power was out, but for some reason I still felt like I had to at least try it. I flipped the switch on and off a few times with a sigh.
“Damn.” I squinted as I looked around the room. “I know we have candles somewhere in here.” I held my hands out in front of me as I moved around the kitchen. Vincent wasn’t making any noise at all, I couldn’t tell where he was. “Um, Vincent? Are you still in here?”
“I’m right here.” Suddenly he was right in front of me, my hands brushed up against his arms, I quickly pulled them back. “I think I found some matches.” He shook a box before opening it up and lighting a match. He was much closer to me than I had initially thought. The flame caused shadows to dance around the room frantically before it burned out. “You said you had candles?”
“Oh, right. Yeah, they should be around here somewhere.” I dug around in the cabinets for a few minutes before finding a couple of slightly used candles. “Found some.” I set them on the counter and he quickly had them lit. The room was lit enough for me to be able to at least see where Vincent was now.
He had taken his coat off and was rolling the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and bit at my lip.
“So, um, since both of our houses don’t have power,” I paused for a moment and looked his face over. “why don’t you just hang out here until it kicks back on?” He smiled at me and chuckled under his breath.
“I’d love to.”
* * *
I wiggled my foot subconsciously as I stared out at the window, watching the rain trickling down it. Vincent was sitting next to me on the floor, staring off at something else. It had been at least fifteen minutes since the power went out.
“This is the longest blackout of my life.” I leaned my head back against the counter and sighed heavily.
“It’s one of the pains of living in an older house. The power takes longer to come back on.” He looked over at me and our eyes met. “I like them though. Power outages.”
“I think they’re creepy.” I scrunched my nose up and he laughed at me. “I’m serious. You never know, this is how scary movies start.” I picked at a stray string on my jeans and looked away from him when he got quiet.
“I know it’s rude to ask, but how old are you?” I waited a moment before answering his question.
“Almost eighteen.” I turned towards him and raised an eyebrow. “What about you?” He shifted his position so we were sitting face to face and smiled.
“Let’s just say that I’m older than I look.” I snorted at him and shook my head.
“So you’re like what, twenty-five or something?” He smiled again, only this one sent chills down my spine. I couldn’t help but grin back at him.
“Or something.” I didn’t even notice that he was inching closer to me until I felt his knee touch mine. I shied away, knowing all too well where this was going to end up.
“Vincent, wait.” He didn’t stop closing the distance between us. All of a sudden, his palm was pressed against the counter next to my head and he was positioned over me. My head started to feel fuzzy, I was dizzy. His scent was intoxicating, his eyes holding mine and paralyzing me. I mumbled something about not wanting this to happen again, but it was lost as lips crashed into mine.
He tasted just like his scent, a mixture of coffee and peppermint. I started to return the kiss, wanting to get just a little more from him, but the nagging voice in the back of my mind stopped me. This had happened before, when I first moved to town, with one of my mom’s friend’s younger brother.
The whole thing was wildly inappropriate, just like this was right now. I shoved against Vincent’s chest as roughly as I could, but he wouldn’t budge. He broke the kiss to pull in a deep breath. I felt my body jump as his free hand brushed against my forearm. Just as he was about to lean back in to kiss me again, the power flickered back on.
Vincent was staring at me intensely when the phone rang, the sudden noise made me jump again. He pushed himself away from me and stood up, careful not to step on me as he did so. I used the counter to help myself up off the floor and fumbled around with the phone as I tried to answer it. I held it to my ear, glancing over at Vincent who was running his fingers through his hair.
“H-hello?” My mom’s voice greeted me on the the other end. I sighed a little and slumped against the edge of the counter. “Yeah, the power was out for a while over here too.” I picked at some dried substance that was stuck in the grout between a couple of tiles on the counter top. “I’m here alone, Zach is at his friend’s.” I glanced over towards Vincent again, but he wasn’t there.
I looked around the kitchen and wandered out towards the living room. He wasn’t anywhere as far as I could see. I looked at the back door when I went into the kitchen, the lock was still bolted shut. I pushed my eyebrows together, but before I could even begin to question how he got out, my mom’s voice dragged me back to the phone.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m still here.”
