“Is that a good spot for a tattoo?” I asked. She bit her lip and nodded. “All right. I’ll think about it.”
The party stopped for a moment when Lillian called for everyone’s attention for a toast. Everyone else had a shot in hand while Talia and I clasped glasses of water. While Lillian spoke, the gravity of Kennedy standing on the other side of the living room kept pulling my gaze. No matter how hard I tried fighting it, my stare kept landing on her. The words Lillian spilled from her heart didn’t stand a chance with Kennedy in the same room. We kept stealing glimpses, and the further into the speech Lillian got, the more we stopped trying to be secretive.
“To Quinn and Talia,” Lillian said as she raised her shot. “May you bring home ten medals, or you’re dead to all of us. Cheers.”
The group tossed back their drinks, and our eye contact broke. Once we downed our shots, Talia grabbed my wrist and Lillian’s and tugged us into the nearest corner.
“Okay, spill,” she said with a light punch to my arm.
My eyebrows folded. “About what?”
“Kennedy. You’ve been eye fucking each other all night.”
“No, we haven’t,” I said with an eye roll.
“Oh my God, I felt like the third wheel in your eye fuck during the toast.”
Lillian laughed. “More than the sexiling in South Korea?”
“About the same. She’s totally eye fucking you right now, for the record,” Talia said and nodded to the back of the apartment.
Kennedy was talking to two girls who’d lived on our dorm floor freshman year, but her eyes were on me and flittered back to the two girls when she noticed me watching.
“We have chemistry—”
“You have more than just chemistry,” Talia said.
“I’ve been with you most of the night, and I give one toast, and you two are eye fucking,” Lillian said.
“She eye fucked me.”
“You know, this apartment has been stuffy with your sexual tension all day. I need to breathe, and I bet you do too.”
“Nothing can happen, guys. It’s already messing with me.”
“Okay, then as your guardians, let’s go where you can’t see her and dance.” Talia grabbed both of our hands and twirled us around.
She was right. Dancing was a good distraction. We stayed in the corner of the kitchen dancing, with the occasional friend passing by to grab more alcohol. But a few songs later, “Drunk in Love” by Beyoncé came on, and I searched for Kennedy, thinking back to when I deemed “XO” our song, and anytime Beyoncé came up on my music, I thought of her.
Turns out it did the same thing to her. I found her maneuvering through the crowd with a crooked grin. She awkwardly danced over to me, as if trying to be funny, and when she reached me, she held out her hand.
I felt trapped between Talia, Lillian, and Kennedy’s extended hand.
“It’s our girl,” she said over the music. “So now you have to dance with me.”
“Oh, is that a rule? Must dance with Kennedy when Beyoncé plays?”
“There are a lot of rules to Beyoncé songs,” she said, and the weight of the memory found its way to us. I told her back when we dated that the rule when listening to “XO” was that she had to kiss me every time Beyoncé demanded it.
“Dance with me?” she asked.
Dancing was innocent, right? Especially when it was next to Lillian and Talia, who knew nothing could happen. Their presence would hold me accountable. I accepted her extended hand and spun her around.
It could have been the tequila shot for her, maybe it was Lillian’s comments for me, but as the song progressed, Kennedy’s dancing grew freer. Midway through the song, she was inches in front of me. Her hand slipped behind my back and pulled me into her. Before I knew it, the two of us were grinding in the middle of my living room. Her butt moved against the part of me that burned with desperation and controlled my body as if my mind had decided to take a quick break because it’d been working overtime the past couple weeks.
She twisted so we could face each other again, hips still glued together, swaying loosely. I positioned my hands on her waist as I forgot all responsibility. I couldn’t have my hands on her hips without sliding them up her shirt to graze her skin. That was all I’d allow myself to do to dilute the desire to touch her. I would only allow my fingertips, almost as if it were an accident.
At my touch, she extended her hand over my neck and pulled my face into the side of hers. Our sweaty cheeks stuck together as the song changed. The new song didn’t help end the grinding. If anything, it was even stronger than the Jose Cuervo she’d consumed, and I realized my brain was going to remain on vacation for as long as she was attached to me. The sensations beneath my underwear and the burning in my gut triggered me to move my hands up her sides and reacquaint my palms with the soft skin of her back. She leaned in and brushed her lips against my ear. Her teeth clasped my earlobe, sending sharp shocks down my arms.
“Take me to your room,” she whispered and followed it with another nibble.
A nibble to the ear sent my body into a storm of fervor. With barely any common sense left, I used the last remaining bit to pull away to see if I heard her correctly. She looked at me with purpose, and her eyebrows were set and determined, her stare direct and hungry.
“What?”
“Take me to your room,” she ordered.
My mind drained. No thoughts. No words. No worries. No conscience. No ability to determine rights and wrongs. It was an empty space looking for a pilot to lead it, and that pilot was Kennedy.
“Okay.”
I barely registered Lillian and Talia’s wide eyes, both of them tightening their jaws as if telepathically telling me not to do it. But when it happened, the only thing that clicked was that they were in front of me, not that they were trying to stop it. My brain wasn’t able to function when my libido was in control.
Kennedy had me completely under her spell. I grabbed her hand and pulled her around the people, up the stairs, and into my room. The second I closed the door and pushed in the lock, she tossed me on the bed and forced her thigh in between mine. She applied pressure at the right spot for me to catch a moan in my throat. My heart hammered with adrenaline, knowing that her hovering over me was this dangerous and exciting thing that shook up a life so dulled with mundane schedules. Everything was a schedule. Everything was a roadmap to something. My day-to-day for the last four years had been literally written out, factoring in no time for adventure, spontaneity, or risks.
I was desperate for that jolt to awaken me, so I could be reminded what it was to finally live, to have free will, the power to choose something that hadn’t been chosen for me.
I hooked my fingers through her belt loop and yanked her down until her lips landed on me. They were so hungry; there was no time for the acquainting peck. My mouth fell open and welcomed the passion and urgency of her kiss. She sucked in my bottom lip and pulled a moan from me, and I dug my fingers into her back to hold her in place. She tasted like fresh tequila, and that made me suck on her lips. Somehow, I always remembered the drinks she tasted like. Root beer, chocolate malts, and now tequila. Jose Cuervo was by far my favorite Kennedy taste. Maybe because I knew it was dangerous, just like her kiss.