THE FIRST TIME Sonya kisses me, I don’t see it coming.
We’re at my place, curled up on the couch with Meatloaf napping on one armrest and Marshmallow dozing on the other. Dad’s home, and Mom is gradually coming to terms with everything. She doesn’t completely buy the story that most people are selling about how TerraCorp created these hallucinations with their experiments. Hallucinations that caused some people—June Rapaport and Chet Landry, to name a couple—to do some pretty awful things. But she has some trouble wrapping her head around the idea of the Bug Man, too. Neither story sounds truly believable. She’s just glad to have me home, she says.
Sonya and I are alone. Talking about anything that isn’t related to the trial or what happened in June, to Sonya’s dad, to the investigation, to Charlie, who hasn’t really come back to himself yet. We’re just talking to fill up the silence and keep our minds off everything.
I turn away for a second to scratch at the back of Marshmallow’s head. When I turn back, Sonya’s waiting for me, and her lips are suddenly pressed against mine. I inhale sharply, but I don’t pull away. Instead, I pull in her scent—hot metal, lavender soap, cinnamon from the Big Red chewing gum she stole from my room.
When she finally leans back, there’s this vulnerable look in her eyes, a swelling tenderness that’s been growing for who knows how long. This is the pivotal moment that those feelings have been building toward, and I realize that I’ve been reserving feelings of my own. Parts of myself that I just haven’t had time to try to figure out, that maybe I don’t need to figure out.
Right now, I know two things. The first is that I love Sonya. The second is that her lips felt good, felt right, when they were connected to mine.
The first time Sonya kisses me, she catches me off guard.
The second time she kisses me, I kiss her back.