‘go steady.’ I mean, what a boring idea, that you’re supposed to be with one person all the time and never so much as look at anyone else. Haven’t we evolved past that as a culture?”
I was about to reach my breaking point with this conversation. “What are you talking about?”
Christa looked down at her hands. “The thing about Steven and me is that we’re taking a break for the summer.”
“A break?” I watched her closely. “What does that mean?”
“You know.” She met my eyes for a second and then looked away, her shoulders shifting. “We don’t believe in that old-fashioned rule about how you always have to be totally monogamous. It isn’t human nature, you know? So, since I was coming down here, we decided we’d take the summer off from our relationship. So we could see other people for a little while. If we wanted to, I mean.”
“Oh.” Ohhhhh. “So you mean—he was your boyfriend up until this week, and he’ll be your boyfriend once you get back home, but right at this moment, you’re boyfriend-free?”
She nodded. “That’s the general idea.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about him last night?” My annoyance was fading fast, but I tried not to let it show. This kind of changed everything.
She bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I should have. Steven and I agreed before I left town that we’d both be totally up front about the whole thing so no one gets the wrong idea.”
“And what would the right idea be, exactly?”
She looked back up at me, her mouth set in a straight line. “The right idea would be...that even though I technically have a boyfriend, I could still like a girl. A particular girl, I mean.”
My chest felt fluttery. Damn it. I was supposed to be mad at her.
Also, this meant Christa was definitely bi. The same as me. I’d hardly known any other bi people.
“I mean.” She stepped closer. “You know my thing for artist types. Because as it happens, there’s this one artist girl, a musician in fact, who I happen to like a lot. But only if she’s okay with the temporary thing, since that’s all I can do. And only if she likes me back.”
This time, I was the one who looked down at my hands. She was being honest with me, but I wasn’t being honest with her. She still thought I was an artist type, like her. And like the super talented actor that was Steven.
“Because the thing is,” she went on. I glanced back up. She was still biting her lip. Was she nervous? Did Christa get nervous? “I mean, if that particular musician girl did like me back, then, well, we’re here in this totally new place, where we hardly know anyone. Where we can basically start a whole new life, just for ourselves, just for these next four weeks. No one even needs to know about it. It could be our own private universe. And then once we get on the plane at the end of this trip, we go back to the real world.”
Christa tugged at her shirt again. She looked so awesome, especially next to me in my paint-splattered pants. Had she changed her clothes because she knew she was going to see me?
I looked away again so she couldn’t tell I was smiling.
Christa had a boyfriend. If we really did hook up, a little summer thing was all we could have anyway. We’d say goodbye at the end of the trip with no harm done. It would be a fling. Exactly like the one Lori and I had fantasized about that morning.
Maybe it wasn’t even a big deal that I’d lied about my music. It wasn’t as if Christa and I were getting married. For a summer fling, getting all the details right didn’t matter quite so much.
This was my chance to see if I really liked girls. It would be an experiment. The coolest experiment ever.
Suddenly I felt very sophisticated. Or, as Christa had said, modern. Why should we have to stick to rules about monogamy that some old white guys made up a million years ago? We were young. We should be having fun.
Christa was looking at me expectantly.
“I...um...” I sounded horribly inarticulate after all that amazing stuff she’d said about universes. “It would be a total secret, right?”
Christa nodded. Good. I couldn’t picture going up to Dad after he was done leading us in one of his long, rambling prayers at vespers and telling him I was bisexual. Or anything-sexual.
Come to think of it, we were probably already late for vespers. Oh, well.
Christa was still watching me. Waiting.
I took a step closer to her. She looked right at me. The smile was in her eyes as much as her lips.
Oh, God. We were going to kiss.
I thought I’d be nervous, but I wasn’t.
I felt awesome, actually. Better than I remembered feeling in, well, ever.
So when Christa stepped toward me, I didn’t wait. I leaned over and pressed my lips against hers.
I could feel her smiling as she kissed me back.
And...oh.
She tasted like the sky.
Kissing her felt sweet and strong and urgent all at the same time. As though we were made to kiss each other.
We didn’t bump against each other awkwardly, the way I usually did with boys. Instead we kissed gently. Slowly.
I’d never kissed anyone that way before. As though it really meant something. I wasn’t sure what it meant, exactly, but I didn’t care.
After that things got kind of—well—intense. She ran her hands along my back. I played with her hair. It turned out the pink streak wasn’t real. It was just clipped in, as I discovered when I accidentally pulled it out. We both giggled at that, but only for a second, because kissing required every bit of attention we had.
When we finally pulled apart, I felt breathless and raw, and it was getting dark. I should’ve been worried—we were late for vespers, and we were out in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country—but my heart was beating too hard to focus on anything but Christa.
She looked as if she felt the same way. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes sparkled. Our arms were still wrapped around each other, and our breasts were touching through our clothes. I thought again about that bra strap poking out from her tank top earlier. I was getting flushed, too.
“We should go to vespers,” I said. “Dad will notice if I’m not there.”
“Okay.”
But we didn’t let go.
I closed my eyes, but I could still see the stars overhead.
“We should, um.” I tried not to think about how she felt. “We should go.”
We kissed again. And again after that.
The stars were all around us, spinning, whirling, carrying me off with them into the sky.
