Let's Get These Teen Hearts Beating Faster, Faster

Ava was known for being impulsive, but there were times when she was just straight up reckless.

Even though I loved every one of Ava's personalities, sometimes they scared me.

It scared me when I walked out of the gym one night to see her standing in the rain, waiting for me. Her bare feet slapped the pavement in loud thuds as she ran across the parking lot, grabbed my cheeks in a death grip, and kissed me hard until I couldn't breathe.

Looking around, my truck was the only car and only one streetlight burned through the downpour. Every last thread of Ava's coat was soaked, all the way to where it stop at her knees, but she kept smiling.

We were completely alone and she was incomprehensibly excited.

Smudges of mascara lined her eyes as they reflected the streetlight and compensated for the lack of stars in the cloudy night. Her legs peeked out from under the coat; they were flushed as she shivered against me. Only she would find rain in July cold and though I moved to wrap my arms around her, she didn't want to be held.

"C'mon," she said, biting her bottom lip, turning the pale to pink. "I gotta show you somethin'."

Before I could speak, she grabbed my hand and started pulling me around the gym, toward the football field. It was then that I knew Ava was in one of her wild moods. Anything we did tonight was going to be like snow in the summer: so impossibly beautiful that you knew it could never happen again.

Steam rose from the pavement and stuck to my skin like sweat, making everything slippery and sticky all at once. The haze was almost suffocating, but I kept breathing, holding tight to Ava's hand and wondering what had pushed her over the edge this time.

Carrying the weight of being a good girl on her chest suffocated her until suddenly she would just snap. It was like she was flipping a switch and turning everything off until she was only running on cheap lies and bad expectations. She would entertain her every whim and desire with the most amazing smile.

When she got like that, it was best to give in to her compulsions and worry about damage control later. She only ever lost modesty for a handful of hours at a time and her emotions came crashing in like waves before withdrawing like the tides.

If I could hold on to her, we'd be okay. She just needed enough of someone to dull the pain and I needed enough of someone to distract me, so we always swam in our sins together. Those times when she turned off the good girl act, we stripped down to our skeletons and were twins—mirror images of bad decisions and inescapable regrets.

That was when we'd lay in my front yard and play little games with each other. Those were the times when she'd jog to my house at one in the morning just to sneak in the back door and crawl into bed with me. It was flipping the switch that made her want to swallow pain pills until she was either sick or numb—anything different from what she was always feeling.

And on rare occasions, Ava made switching into her most extreme personality an event.

That's what was happening that night. She was tired of playing okay and her impulses were telling her that something needed to happen. Something so bad it was good. So painful it felt amazing.

As we came over the hill, jogging awkwardly hand-in-hand, I saw the field lights twinkling, making the pavement all around glow in a strange glory. It was like afternoon in the middle of the night—some sort of backward eclipse setting the world on fire in the middle of a rainstorm.

She kept smiling and running until we reached the gate. Panting, she threw her hands on the chain link and rattled at the lock. "Look," she said. "They forgot the lights."

I nodded and she continued. "It's great, isn't it? Come on."

There wasn't even a span of breath before she had dug the keys out of her pocket and popped the lock, throwing the gate back so fiercely it crackled on its hinges.

Ava and I were raised on that field and we'd seen it in almost every situation imaginable. Rain, snow, sunshine, moonlight. The stands were sometimes packed or sometimes only scattered with a few people here and there, far apart, but woven together through a common interest.

We'd seen different teams come and go, new cleats tearing up the grass, new paint making all the yards, new coaches throwing clipboards to the track. After all those years we thought we'd seen it all.

But we were wrong. We'd never seen it with just the two of us. It was like a whole new world was right in front of us and all we had to do was breathe.

Like we were both being called by some instinctual desire, we wandered to the middle of the field. Standing at the center of so much blank attention was like screaming all the things you never had the courage to say. It was freeing and pointless all at once.

Ava stuck her arms out and spun in circles like a record, going round and around and around. The image stayed in my head like a song on repeat for years after that night, but at the moment I was convinced it was never going to end.

Her blonde waves were dark and messy, weighed with so much water that it rolled off the ends, splashing the ground like she was her own storm. The black coat stuck tightly to her, the fibers heavy and thick.

It took me laughing at her to get her to stop spinning and for a moment I was mad at myself. She was my favorite album and pulling the needle away in the middle of the best track felt wrong. But the way she smiled with those pretty pink lips was an entirely different melody.

"Shut up," she smiled, grabbing my face again and pulling me to her. When I ran my hands over her coat, she ran hers up the back of my neck and through my hair.

When I reached for the buttons she pulled back and grinned. "Wanna see something?"

I nodded, afraid if I spoke the magic of the moment would sink into the mud and just disappear. Slowly, she unbuttoned the coat. As her long fingers moved, I started imagining what was underneath and as she started pulling the fabric away, my breath caught in my throat as all my dreams unfolded before my eyes.

The actions were painfully slow, but as the fabric slid down her shoulders and off her arms, all I saw was her pale flesh glowing in the field lights. With a flat thump, the coat hit the field, grazing her legs on the way down before piling in a heap, leaving Ava standing in nothing but little pink panties and a black bra.

Ava and I had fooled around quite a bit in the months following the first time we had sex, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I'd never really seen her naked.

Not like this. Not hidden by sheets or the night, I could see Ava so clearly I almost had to shield my eyes. Always when we finished messing around with each other, we put our clothes back on and pretended nothing had happened.

We had one item on our agenda and we never left time for really seeing each other. When it was crossed off our list, Ava rushed away to shower and cover up. I never saw her the way I was supposed to. I didn't get to lay in her arms the way everyone in the movies and the books did. Fooling around only made us closer until it was over.

Then we were never farther apart.

But standing on the field beneath all the lights, she seemed perfectly happy to let me wonder over her skin, feeling it through the rain in ways I'd never known it through sweat.

That night I knew where we were headed and I knew she was going to let me take the scenic route to get there.

Out of fear for my answer, she never asked me what I thought of her body. What she didn't realize was that from that moment on I'd think a lot about her body.

The spots on her chest, the freckles on her back, the birthmark on her leg, it was all far from perfect. But to a seventeen-year-old boy staring at a sixteen-year-old girl in her underwear, it was beautiful.

The way the field lights turned every angle and curve of her body into shadow brought about a new kind of clarity. It was like staring at nothing more than a skeleton, the definition of her muscles hugging the bone tightly so that all the lines faded into a darkness so vibrant it almost glowed.

The lace of the black bra designed to be flaunted looked loose enough to slide a hand under. The pink panties, clinging tightly to her body, drenched and dark with rain, did not.

Trying to fight her discomfort, she kissed me again, this time smashing herself so close to my body it almost hurt. Between breaths she put her arms around my neck and twisted one leg around my waist. Almost like she was floating, she tightened her muscles under my hands and lifted her other leg off the ground, leaving her entire weight on my shoulders and in my palms.

She never felt heavier than she did with no clothes on simply because I'd never been more afraid of dropping her. I was afraid if she hit the ground those bones would shatter like glass. For years I'd treated her like a porcelain doll and she had never felt more like one.

Ankles locked together behind me, she coaxed my hands to slide up her skin and rest on the small of her back.

Then, slowly, she turned her face to the sky and leaned back, balancing her body against my own so that she was suspended above the ground by almost nothing but air. It must have felt like flying as she paralleled the field. Her blonde waves were so long they almost brushed the grass and she laughed as water dropped into her mouth and ran across her cheeks.

Fighting gravity and every desire I had, I watched her stomach, trying hard not to look anywhere else. If I lost focus, I was going to drop her.

The pale skin was pulled so tightly as she stretched even farther backwards and I could see her heartbeat thumping in her veins, making the water bounce in rhythm to her body's natural song.

Suddenly, I found myself looking up to the rain pooling in the lines of her ribcage, making her body a landscape of mountains and rivers. The lace of the black bra outlined the scenery in grandeur and I wanted to run my fingers under it and explore the secrets behind the fence.

I wanted to feel the fabric of the pink panties next to my skin.

Instead, I felt her thighs shaking around my waist as she tried to hold on, digging into my hips so hard it almost hurt.

But none of that matter. Her sitting up and letting the water roll down her flesh like ice down a bluff was the most important thing in my world. I hadn't realized that I had been instinctively leaning back too until our chests rose together to meet in the middle in a warm collaboration of ecstasy.

She pulled her darkened waves of hair back and piled them on top of her head with a lazy smile before letting them fall back to her broad shoulders with a thud. As I looked up at her, water rolled off her nose and hit my lips, cold and sweet—a poisoned wine.

She put her elbows on my shoulders and twisted her long fingers in my hair. "Dance with me," she said.

I laughed and shook my head, trying to avoid an embarrassment waiting to happen.

She smiled with those pretty pink lips, pleading in her gray eyes. "C'mon," she said. "Just dance with me."

Wiggling out of my grip, she set her little feet back on the ground and it felt like the earth trembled.

I wasn't much of one for dancing, but for her I did. I spun her around like my favorite record. I twisted my fingers in hers and laid my hand on the small of her back. I let her stand on my toes and when she asked, I hummed a song for her.

They were simple steps at first, done stiffly to a strict timing—one. Two. Three. Four. One, two, three, four. One two three four. Onetwothreefour.

But the more we moved, the most I felt her muscles relaxing until she put her head on my chest, the wet hair sticking to my shirt, and suddenly the only thing keeping us from becoming one person was the fact that neither of us could dance. So we laughed while I tried to hum and keep from stepping on her all at once.

As softly as I could, I ran my hand down her spin, feeling the ridges of vertebrae jutting from the skin like rocks at the bottom of a canyon. Beneath my touch, I felt her shudder and return the gesture, slipping her hand under my shirt and up my back.

It was then that I realized she was a tiny person. She always had been, but that night she felt like nothing more than a little spec in the great big universe. Yet, strangely enough, this little bit of dust ran the world.

Everyone always assumed that she was so little and so quiet and always hiding behind me that she must have needed a man to save her and speak for her. But the thing was, she didn't need anyone to take care of her. She was too busy taking care of everyone else.

It was written in the way she caressed my spine: I wasn't the one holding her. Ava didn't need anyone. We all needed her.

And as though we both knew the moment was over with that realization. She pulled away and laughed. "You're right. You suck," she said.

I shrugged my shoulders, letting my eyes take in her body again, seeing it differently now that the skin was warm and pink from my own heat.

"Know what else you suck at?" she asked and I shrugged again. "This."

Without warning, she shoved her hands into my chest as hard as she could, sending me over backwards from the sheer force and surprise. As I hit the ground, mud sliding under my palms, my pants growing colder and wetter, she took off running.

Through the grass she skipped, over the red clay track—not flinching as the rocks dug into her feet—and up the bleachers, laughing as she went.

It wasn't out of anger or even embarrassment that I got up and ran after her. I did it because nothing else would have felt right. Running might have been Ava's game in more ways than one, but she was in my territory.

For what felt like the quickest eternity, I chased her over the bleachers, letting her stay just far enough ahead of me that the hunt was never over. We slipped and slid on the cold, wet metal, falling hard with crashes that echoed across the field and could only be drown out by the sounds of our laughter.

On the off chance that I could grab hold of her arm, I always let her go. Neither of us wanted the game to end. Even when we were sweating and our skin turned pink and flushed, we kept going. Bruises rose on our arms where our flesh met metal, but it didn't hurt.

The innocence of the moment was brilliant. It was fun to let go for a while. To be completely reckless and carefree as we ran over seats and up and down the stairs, getting dangerously close to the edge.

Had anyone seen us they would have mistaken the scene for something incredibly ridiculous. We must have looked like fools, running, and falling, and laughing as we went, but it didn't matter. It had been a long time since I'd ever had so much fun.

Finally, she slipped and when I grabbed her ankle to pull her to me, she didn't fight back. We were both exhausted and completely satisfied.

Between breaths, she kissed me over and over until we were doing more kissing than laughing. But when she wrapped her thighs around my waist again, it was my turn to stop the moment.

When I told her we couldn't fool around because I didn't have a condom she almost seemed angry. Like she couldn't believe I was bothering her with that. "So?" she said. "We don't need one."

No. I told her no. As badly as I wanted to have sex in the bleachers and as much as it killed me to ruin the night over something I didn't like anyway, I couldn't let her think it was okay to be so careless. I'd done enough of that to her over the years.  

Usually, I gave in to her whims, but not this time. When I taught her something bad was okay, it became another impulse for her. Me telling her things were okay was the reason she took so many pain pills. It was the reason she let me do the things I did to her in my front yard. It was the reason she took her clothes off for me.

I wasn't going to make this another one of her things. We were using a condom or we weren't having sex.

When she slammed her hand down, the metal of her rings making a sharp slap against the bleachers, I thought she was angry. Then she spoke, her voice an almost airy laugh and I knew she was making up another adventure in her head. "Then off we go," she said, scrambling to her feet and skipping to the stairs.

I called after her asking where, feeling as confused as I was uncomfortable.

She turned around and smiled. "To get a condom," she said, her pretty pink lips squished together in a grin.  Then she was off again.  

It was like the idea of fucking me was some kind of drug she was getting high on. Anytime I blinked she was doing something new. Skipping, running, laughing, kissing. She was all over the place like she was on the best worst trip I'd ever seen.

I couldn't drive fast enough to the drugstore with her mouth on my neck and her hands on my chest. She whispered sweet nothings and nasty everythings in my ear with a voice that was detached from the body that was so present.

"Carter."

The way she said my name was a peace of mind as I tried to find my way between the highway lines.

I almost didn't want to leave her sitting alone in my truck with the keys in the parking lot. It felt like she was a dream and going through the door for the drugstore would be like waking up. I told her not to leave as I stepped out into the rain and she gave me a sly smile.

"Don't leave me," she said, a true fantasy in her black bra and pink panties.

When I walked in and the stench of summer sex hit my nose, I knew it wasn't a dream. The young girl behind the counter tried nervously not to make eye contact with me as I threw money at her and left, almost running out the door, fighting my every instinct to not act normal.

Before I could even get back in my seat, Ava was on my side of the truck again, falling over me like she was the coat she'd been wearing earlier. Trying to put the truck in drive with shaking hands, I turned away from her kisses.

I asked her if she really wanted to have sex in a drugstore parking lot and she sighed.

"Hurry up," she said, folding her arms across the black bra, pushing her breasts together and making my skin crawl.

I asked her where she wanted to go.

"Anywhere," she said. "Anywhere with you."

And after I drove the five minutes to the closest, most secluded spot I could think of, it felt like we went everywhere.

Trying to make more room, I laid the backseat down, but it wasn't enough. It still felt like we were all awkward knees and elbows, but neither of us seemed to mind how it was incredibly uncomfortable. The summer heat swam into the cab and our quick breaths were flames washing across each other's flesh in a melting fire.

Sweat and rain mixed together in a strange wine on our skin, making us slide and stick to each other simultaneously. We laughed more than we kissed and apologized more than we moaned.

And it was so wrong that it had never been so right.

When it was all over I helped her clean up and then Ava laid in my arms for the first time. Around us was a disagreeable scene of perfection. The windows fogged over with steam and humidity were our sheets, the yellow and orange dash lights our candles, the radio playing the same old songs our favorite soundtrack.

For the first time, we talked. She let me slap the black band on her wrist. I let her mess up my hair. We did weird things that seemed so normal they were foreign.

Even folded up in the backseat, melting in an embrace of body heat, it felt like we were doing something right.

After her curfew had come and gone, I had to take her home. She put on my still drenched shirt and snuck in her house at three in the morning.

And when her dad asked about the bite mark on my chest the next day at practice, I just smiled. Ava had never been more mine and I had never been more hers. It had never been more perfect.

A few days later I found out her aunt was moving back to town and her aunt's husband had sent Ava a letter.

It said that he was excited to see her.