First Time for Everything (12 page)

I shook my head and sighed. “I don’t know what to do. We never talked about school and… and… us.”

Billy got that look on his face, the one that said I was being a drama queen again, but he knew better than to call me one to my face. “We don’t need to talk, we need to get to class, and I want to get a seat in the back with my boyfriend. Now are you coming or not?”

I smiled then. It must have been the frumpiest thing ever, because it even felt crooked, and that’s when Billy laughed as he always did when I was being a doofus. But then, Billy also took another step toward me and reached down to grab my sweaty palm as his other hand cupped my face. The whole world stopped as his face dropped down to mine in a chaste and simple kiss right on my lips in front of everyone.

My heart leapt. My skin tingled. My brain felt like a sandcastle washed away by the waves my stomach made as it flip-flopped inside me, all from a simple kiss. As he pulled away, he didn’t let go of my hand and gave it another infinitesimal tug, urging me to follow him inside like I would on any other day.

All the bombs and fireworks going on inside my head, all the frozen time where we were the center of the universe, was the exact opposite of what went on around us. Nobody stopped. Nobody stared. Nobody cared. Except Billy, who cared about me, and that was all I needed.

N
ICK
H
ASSE
, always full of imagination and a passion for reading, began writing to pass the time between classes in college. After years of fictional roleplay and at the insistence of other befriended writers, Nick began pursuing writing professionally. The Texas native can be found at home with his pets between working the glamorous life of retail, attending classes, and spending time with family and friends.

E
LLA
L
YONS

S
ITTING
ON
the floor of his bedroom, surrounded by more containers and tubes and tiny pots of glittery powder than one person could possibly be expected to keep track of, Duncan Oakes couldn’t help but feel like this had been a bad decision. Across from him, Duncan’s best friend, Abby Vail, was explaining the difference between eyeliner and mascara, but her voice was little more than a murmuring that swept right past Duncan’s ears. His heart was thudding so hard he was surprised Abby couldn’t hear it.

“Duncan,” Abby said softly, startling him out of his head. He snapped his gaze away from the pile of makeup and looked at Abby, who was giving him her softest smile. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Duncan said tightly. He picked up a long purple tube and waved it at Abby. “What’s this again?”

Abby reached out and wrapped her hand around Duncan’s. Her fingers were so slim and graceful. Her nails were filed into sweet little ovals and painted a pretty, sunny yellow. In comparison, Duncan’s hands looked clumsy and huge. His knuckles were too thick, and his cuticles were a ragged disaster. At least they weren’t hairy. He shaved them in the shower every morning. It was one of the few considerations he allowed himself.

“You know we don’t have to do this. It doesn’t have to be now.” Abby squeezed his hand and shrugged. “There will be other days, you know? Your parents will go out of town again, and we can do this then, if you’re not ready now.”

Duncan dropped the tube from his sweaty hand and wiped his palm on his shorts. Abby was right, of course. They didn’t have to do this now. They didn’t have to do this ever, really. Duncan could shove all Abby’s makeup things back into the huge bag she’d dumped them out of and tell her to forget it, and she would. Abby was that kind of friend. She’d pack everything back up, and they could go downstairs and go swimming and eat drippy popsicles all weekend long, and she wouldn’t bring it up again.

Except… except Duncan did have to do it. He had to try, because the idea of it had been seeded in the back of his mind for as long as he could remember, and it wasn’t getting any better. No matter how much of a guy’s guy Duncan tried to be, no matter how many sports he played or how many girls he kissed or how many hours he spent in the gym, Duncan couldn’t help but feel like he was wrong inside his own skin. Try as he might, it wasn’t going away.

“No,” Duncan said. “No, I want to.”

Abby raised her eyebrows. “You’re sure?”

“No,” Duncan said. “But….” He shrugged. “You’re already here.” It was a flimsy excuse, and they both knew it, but there was a reason why Abby was the person Duncan trusted with this. She had hardly even batted an eyelash when he’d come out to her a year ago, telling her he felt more like a girl than he did a boy. She’d simply nodded and started calling him Dee Dee. It played as a joke around everyone else, a silly nickname between two people who’d been friends since they were toddlers, but to Duncan, it was the entire world. And when he’d screwed up his courage and asked Abby if she’d show him how to put on makeup while his parents were away at a couples retreat, Abby had sighed, rolled her eyes with a grin, and demanded three kinds of ice cream as payment.

Duncan had made good on his side of the deal. The ice cream was in the freezer downstairs—double chocolate cherry, caramel swirl, and that gross one with all the peanut butter—and now Abby was ready to make good on hers, if Duncan could quell the nerves threatening to send him screaming from the room.

“Did you shave really well?” Abby reached out and took Duncan’s chin in her hand. She tipped his face this way and that, peering at his jaw critically. “Looks pretty good.”

“
Pretty
good?”

Abby grinned and pushed him away. “When you start shaving your underarms, we’ll talk. Do you want me to tell you what I’m doing, or do you want me to just do it?”

“I don’t know. Either, I don’t care,” Duncan said. He wiped his hands on his shorts again. Shit, they were sweating like mad. He should have turned the air up. He was going to sweat right through his shirt at this rate. Maybe he should go put on another swipe of deodorant before they got started.

Was girl deodorant different than boy deodorant? It smelled better, surely. Sometimes Duncan snuck into his mom’s bathroom and took the caps off her products and filled up his lungs with the soft floral scents. So much better than the Arctic Explosion or whatever the hell it was she bought for him.

“I’m not going to do your eyebrows because, well. Because.”

Duncan nodded and poked the pile of products. “Because they won’t grow back before the weekend is over.”

“Nope,” Abby said, popping the
p
and flipping her long red hair over her shoulder. It fell down her back in a tangle of curls. Duncan had always loved Abby’s curls. She’d taught him how to braid them when they were in the sixth grade, and sometimes she’d sit on the floor in front of him while they watched movies, letting him wind the thick strands into braids. “Because the first time hurts like a mother. The first twenty times, really. After that the skin just gives up, I guess, because it stops feeling like being stabbed by a million scorpions. Besides, thick brows are coming back into fashion. And yours are so pale that you don’t even really need that much shaping. I can probably do something with powder.”

As she talked, Abby sorted through the tubes and brushes and tiny little plastic boxes, occasionally lifting up this thing or that and holding it up to Duncan’s face. She pulled a horrible expression and dropped a container of something purple back to the floor. “That’s horrible. Why do I even own that?”

Abby’s easy, nonchalant manner made the tightness in Duncan’s chest ease up a little. To hear her ramble on, they might as well have been talking about finals or their upcoming senior year. Not something as life-altering and terrifying as the idea of changing everything physical about yourself.

Duncan breathed in slowly through his nose, then out through his mouth. Smell the flowers, blow out the candles, his mom used to say. Today wasn’t the time for that. Right now wasn’t the time for that. Today he just had to put on some makeup. That was all today was about.

When Abby touched Duncan’s face again, he gasped and jerked out of her touch. “Easy, Dee,” she said, dragging her fingers down his cheek. “I’m just going to put some moisturizer on you, okay? Not even makeup yet. Just going to smooth everything out, okay?”

“I’m fine,” Duncan lied.

“Of course you are,” Abby said smoothly. She squirted a little blob of white stuff into her palm and rubbed her fingers into it. “I don’t want to put too much on. Your freckles are so sweet. I don’t want to cover them up.”

“Okay,” Duncan said as Abby reached up and swiped her fingers down the bridge of his nose. He forced himself to be still and let it happen. He couldn’t imagine what they looked like, sitting in the middle of his bedroom floor, surrounded by piles of makeup and lotions and God knew what all. Abby was a tiny thing, barely five feet tall even at seventeen. Duncan had always felt huge compared to her, though he was actually one of the smallest guys in his class. Sometimes, when he let himself think about it, the idea of being small was really, really appealing. He liked to imagine boys towering over him, maybe picking him up like he was a small, dainty thing.

“Your skin is really good.”

“Um, thanks?”

“It is,” Abby said. “I’m jealous. I’m having this whole stress thing….” She waved a hand at her jawline. “My parents are all over me about early acceptance.”

“Are they?”

Abby gave him a withering look and reached for another lotion. This one was almost pink. She held it up to Duncan’s cheek and nodded. “Not perfect, but close enough for today, I think. This is tinted moisturizer. You don’t need foundation.” She grabbed a little foam egg and squirted the tinted moisturizer onto her palm. “My parents are losing their shit over colleges,” she went on, dabbing the egg into the moisturizer and wiping off the excess. “Just going to even everything out, okay? And, like, not all parents are as cool as yours. Dad says if I don’t get into a good undergrad program, I won’t have my choice of medical schools and then where will I end up? Look up.”

She started bouncing the egg around under Duncan’s eyes. Duncan tried to hold his face still. Was he supposed to be doing something with his eyebrows here? “I thought you wanted to go to medical school?”

“I do, but I’m seventeen. It’s the summer before my senior year. I could do with a little bit of—no, Dee, keep looking up—fun, you know? At least your parents are cool that you haven’t decided on a major yet.”

Duncan’s heart kicked a little at the reminder that he had no idea what to do with his life. It was just so hard to imagine committing to what he wanted to
do
, when he wasn’t even sure who he wanted to be.

“They’d be cool, you know,” Abby said. She pulled a tissue out of a box and placed the foam egg on it. “If you told them what was going on. They’re basically the most supportive people I’ve ever met.”

“Can you not?” Duncan said quickly. “Can you just not, today? Can we just do this?”

With a heave of her shoulders, Abby sighed and dug a couple of tubes out of her pile. “Blush,” she said. “You don’t need a lot, because you’ve got such pale skin. Always remember to start with just a bit, because you can add more, but you can’t take away, okay?”

“Start with just a bit,” Duncan repeated. He glanced down at the array of tubes in Abby’s hands. “How do you… I mean, how do you know which one, when there are so many different colors?”

“Lots of trial and error,” Abby said. “Lucky for you, I have suffered the clown cheeks in order to save you from it.” Duncan grinned as Abby unscrewed one of the tubes and pulled out a little stick with pink gel on the end of it. “We’re not going to get into contouring yet, because your cheekbones are stupidly amazing, and you don’t need it. Besides, it’s summer, and it’s so hot out there it would just melt off your face as soon as you stepped outside.”

“I’m not even going out of the house.”

“Well, that’s no reason to waste makeup,” Abby said. She swiped the blush over Duncan’s skin and then smoothed it into the apples of his cheeks with her fingertips. “I’m using the good stuff here. You want to waste my shit, look for something that says CoverGirl on it.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You will,” Abby said confidently. “You want to see?”

The very idea made Duncan’s chest clench tightly. “No, not until you’re done.”

“So we’ve got a lot of options for eyes,” Abby went on without hesitating. Duncan couldn’t have loved anyone more than he loved Abby in that moment. “Like I said, it’s too hot for much, but I do want to do a little eyeliner. Is that okay?”

“I guess?”

“Baller,” Abby said. She pulled the cap off a pencil and reached for Duncan’s chin again. “Be super still so I don’t blind you.”

“Wait, what?” Duncan reared back as Abby came straight for his eyeball. “What?”

“I’m teasing! Christ, Dee, I was making a joke. Come here, close your eyes. There’s no chance I’ll blind you until I get out the eyelash curler.”

“Abby!” Duncan jerked away, bursting into laughter. It was so… it was so absurd, was the thing. This was basically the most terrifying thing he’d ever done in his life and Abby was acting like….

She was acting like Abby. That was all. She was acting exactly like the best friend Duncan had had since before he could remember.

“Abby, seriously….”

“Oh my God, okay, no eyeliner, you big baby.”

“That’s not….” Dee pressed up on his knees and reached out, pulling Abby into a fierce hug. She let out a soft breath and squeezed him back just as tightly. “Thank you for this. I couldn’t…. You’re so….”

Abby pressed a kiss to the side of Dee’s neck. “Any time, sweetheart. Now be still.”

With a soft tug against the skin at Dee’s temple, Abby made quick work of the eyeliner. She was gentle with it, and Dee was grateful. He was still nervous, but it helped, knowing that this was no big deal to Abby, and that she would love him no matter who he was. “What does eyeliner do?”

“It frames your eyes. I’m using brown on you right now, since we’re doing a soft sort of look, but with your freckles and your blond hair and your big green eyes, you could do a gorgeous dramatic cat eye thing, and it would look beautiful.”