Sweet Fall

“The Coke,” I whispered out loud, and Lexi huffed out a small laugh.

“Yeah, the Coke. Twelve ounces of soda. One hundred sixty calories. Zero grams of fat, but forty-two grams of carbs and forty-two grams of sugar. If consumed, it would take twenty minutes of hard jogging to work it off. But I wouldn’t just stop there. I’d have to jog another ten minutes more just to be sure I hadn’t calculated anything wrong. Plus, then I’d be about one hundred calories in the negative. Because ten minutes of jogging roughly works off one hundred calories, and the more calories burned means more pounds off the scale. I live by the measure of that scale.”

Stunned, my hands slipped from Lexi’s head, and she smiled coldly at my reaction, lifting her hand to cover her mouth with the pulled-down sleeve of her shirt.

“Great isn’t it, Austin? Living with that. Thinking like that over everything: food, drink, exercise, every part of everyday life, forever. Hating brushing your teeth every morning and night because toothpaste probably has calories, doesn’t it? So after brushing your teeth, you drop to the cold tile floor in the bathroom and do fifty push-ups and fifty sit-ups just in case a few wayward calories slipped into your stomach and jeopardized your goal.”

“Fuck, Pix,” was all I could offer in response to her outburst. She seemed breathless with the exertion of her confession.

“Welcome to the freak show, Austin. I’m here all week,” Lexi said sadly.

I stared at her in sympathy. “You’re right. You are a freak,” I said bluntly, and the hurt that transformed her face almost cut me.

Lexi moved immediately to jump off the bed, but I reached out and grabbed her arm. It was the first time I noticed how frail it was under my hand. I could clearly feel the bone beneath my fingers, and not that much flesh around it.

“I said don’t touch me!” she shrilled, jerking back her arm, and, losing my shit, I jumped off the bed, staring her down, and proceeded to rip off my shirt, baring my chest.

“What… what are you doing?” Lexi asked, petrified, as her eyes fixed on my chest, then back up to my hard stare.

Grabbing her hand, I smashed it to the skin of my torso and leaned in until I was a hairsbreadth away from her mouth. “Yeah, I said you’re a freak.” Lexi flinched at my words, but I added, “But so the f**k am I.”

Gasping, Lexi’s eyelashes fluttered in nerves. I began pushing her hand along the plains of my stomach, my chest, and slowly ran them down to my hips and across to the skin just above the waistband of my jeans.

A pink blush spread on Lexi’s cheeks, and I said softly, “I got scars, a whole f**kin’ lotta them.”

Taking her index and middle fingers, I ran them just under my Day of the Dead tattoo on my ribs. “Slashed with a pocket knife by a rival gang at age fifteen for encroaching on their turf.” The pads of Lexi’s fingers drifted over the raised scar, and she sucked in a shocked breath.

Moving her fingers over my chest to the outside of my left arm, I said, “A bullet wound from a drive-by. Age sixteen. Skimmed the outside of my bicep. I was lucky. Another crew member wasn’t.”

A breeze of warm breath flowed over my chest, the source: a sharp exhale from Lexi’s slightly parted lips.

Finally, I ran her fingers down the hills and valleys of my abs and came to an abrupt stop just above my waistband. I left them there for a second and squeezed my eyes shut. My neck strained as I fought to control my breathing. Little Pix was making me real f**kin’ hard, and I was trying like hell to calm down.

“Austin?” Lexi whispered, and I opened my eyes once more, retaking her fingers and running them across the three-inch long scar across my lower stomach. “Attacked by a tweaker junkie with a piece of jagged glass, all for a line of coke. I was sixteen.”

“Austin…” Lexi said almost silently as a single tear dropped from her eye.

“So you see, Pix, I have scars too. It’s just mine are on the outside where everyone can see.”

Taking me by surprise, Lexi launched her arms around my back and her cheek lay flush against my torso. Her nails were digging into the flesh of my back, and I tentatively laid my cheek on the top of her head.

She smelled so good.

Felt so good.

I wasn’t sure how long we just stood there like that, two f**ked-up emo kids confessing our sins, but it was enough time for me to realize one thing: I was falling hard for the little dark pixie.

Real. Damn. Hard.

It had come on so suddenly. I felt blindsided by the emotion.

Feeling the heat from Lexi’s closeness infusing my body, I whispered, “Pix, I really need to kiss you now.”