Rage: A Love Story Read Online Free Page B

simple greeting requires. Testing, feeling out the possibilities.
    I loosen my grip.
    T sighs and says, “Come if you’re coming.”
    Am I?
The lock on the car door clicks. I guess I’m coming.
    The kissers on the stairs part to let us through. They nod at Tiffany and check me out. What do they see?
    Tall girl, broad shoulders, average weight, longish, straight hair, tight jeans, sleeveless shirt. Converses. God, I should’ve dressed more sexy. I should’ve put on makeup.
    T slows at the top of the stairs and leans against the door to let me pass. She checks me out the whole way. My eyes avoid hers as they soak up the scene.
    A rectangular room, painted all different colors, a mural on the far wall. I can read the letters: PRIDE . There are two long couches and armchairs, people lounging. A girl sitting on a boy’s lap. A guy fiddling with a microphone in the center of the room puts his mouth to it and says, “Pick up. Shut up.” People begin to claim folding chairs and scrape them around to sit closer to the karaoke machine.
    T touches my back. “See you,” she says, and takes off.
    People are talking and laughing, flipping through the karaoke notebooks. Reeve materializes out of the mural. She’s playing pool with two other girls behind a beaded curtain.
    She bends over to line up her shot and I can see clear down her halter. One of the girls with her I know from school. Brittny? Britt? She and Reeve were together last year, then they weren’t.
    Someone nudges me and I gulp a can of air.
    “In or out?”
    A kinetic surge draws me in, toward her. I stall under a string of twinkling lights.
    I can’t see if Reeve makes her shot. Her eye makeup tonight is dark and heavy. She’s intense. Guarded.
    Britt saws her cue stick back and forth over her handthree, four times, and strikes the white ball. It smacks one of the striped balls, sending it careering into a side hole. Britt whoops.
    Reeve’s expression doesn’t alter, even when she glances up and catches my eye. Or does it?
    Does she recognize me? She circles the table, her back to me, and lines up her next shot.

 
    She turns slowly toward me. Her eyes, they drink me up. She closes the distance between us and asks, her voice low and sultry, “Do you play?”
    I smile. “I never have,” I say
.
    She knows the truth when she hears it. “Do you want to learn?”
    My smile widens. “I do.”
    I sweat and shiver at the same time. She doesn’t speak, but the vibes between us are fingernails on a chalkboard, increasing their pressure and volume until my ears whine and my teeth hurt
.
    She leads me to the table. Hands me her cue stick and slides around behind me. All eyes in the room are on her—us. All the girls want her, and some of the guys too. She takes me in her arms and I drop the stick on the floor
.
    She laughs. So do I. I retrieve the stick. She sets it on the table
.
    Her lips start out hard as molded plastic, then turn soft as padded felt
.
    She runs her hands up under my shirt and the twinkling lights explode
.
    • • •
     
    “Excuse me.” A guy touches my arm. “I have to use the john.”
    I step aside to let him pass.
    The karaoke blares and I’m swarmed; I lose sight of Reeve. As the crowd clears, I see her kissing a nameless girl. The girl has no face, no arms or legs or physical presence. No meaning to me.
    A sharp edge gouges my arm.
    “You want the book?” a guy asks. The black three-ring binder. The karaoke songbook.
    “No, thanks.”
    Everything’s tilting, listing in place. I refocus.
    Where is she?
    I scan, but don’t see her. Maybe what I saw was a … projection? The person she was kissing was me, the girl I want to be.
    The cue sticks are on the table, as if her game was interrupted. There, at the top of the stairs leading to the exit, I catch a glimpse of her ice blue halter.
    A mob of people cram the doorway, all coming in for karaoke. I murmur, “Excuse me. Excuse me. Sorry,” as I maneuver my way through. “Ow!”