Saturday Snippet

I started playing with a new story this week that's actually coming to me in FIRST PERSON PRESENT. I've never written in first! With my first MS, I tried first for about ten pages before I started going crazy. All the YA books I'd read recently were in first, so I wanted to try. That story was so much about atmosphere and scope. It didn't work in first.

But this story kind of seems to be working. I'm not really trying to finish it, just kind of poking at it as things come. It's a YA mystery with a small supernatural element. The main character, Addy, knows when someone is going to die but can't do anything to prevent it. This is a rough, unfinished scene between her and her best guy friend, Josiah (Josie). Shawn is her ex. I think that's all you need to know. Enjoy!

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Josie looks at me and it’s the look I always wanted from Shawn. It’s a gaze that sees me, drinks me in like I am the only water he’ll ever need. Like I’m a treasure.

His thumb sweeps across my bottom lip on it’s way to my cheek. The fire and ice it leaves in its wake scares me, but not nearly as much as whatever in boiling inside me.

“I don’t understand,” is all I can get out.

A smile creeps across his lips and I can’t look away. I can’t tear my eyes away from his mouth.

“Don’t you?” His long fingers work their way through my hair, coming to rest at the back of my Neck. He tips my head back to face him.

I do understand. “How long...?”

He bends until his forehead grazes mine. “I don’t know.”

“How can you not know? This is huge and life changing and...” I’m panicking because if he doesn’t kiss me, I’ll die,  and if he does kiss me, I’m ruining that special thing I’ve only ever had with Josie and why does he smell so freaking good?

He moves to speak into my ear. Not a whisper, but a hushed, reverent church voice. “I don't think you wake up one day in love,” he says. “I think you wake up and realize that thing you've felt for a long time is called love.”

The panic burst into a zillion butterflies, all scrambling to escape my stomach and soar, taking my heart with them.

Because now I know.

I press up on my toes, gathering Josie’s shirt into my fists.

I sigh the moment our lips meet. This is what a kiss is, this feeling of our lips and tongues and bodies anticipating and dancing and leading and following.It’s a fencing bout, a waltz, a synchronized swim. For every movement, ever subtle shift I make, he matches with his own.

I’m lost.

His hand slip from my hair, down my back, pressing me against him. As if I could be any closer. As if he could press us together and we’d never have to inhabit our own, solitary bodies again.