Kissing the Bee - Hardcover

From Kissing the Bee
 
    I wanted Emil. I wanted him from the very beginning, before Avra even saw him. No one knew this, even though Avra would occasionally make these odd little jokes, when we were all together: driving somewhere, the radio on and the windows down; or sitting on the patio, under the acacias; or drinking gunpowder tea in our favorite booth at the Green Bowl: If anything ever happens to me, she's say, piling my hand and Emil's together on the lacquered green table, his long fingers, the scarred silver-spoon ring she gave him, you two have to carry on in my name.
    Carry what on? I would say, sliding my hand back, my skin electric where it had touched his, a living tingle.
    It's the lest we could do, Emil would say. And roll his gray eyes, and smile.
 
    His smile is so sweet. Always with his lips closed--there's this little gap between his front teeth, extremely cute but he is very self-conscious about it--long narrow lips the exact shade of Dark Peach lip balm; his hair is the color of champagne. He is just as tall as Avra but only just. My head barely comes up to his chin. . . . Once he slept with his head on my shoulder, in the backseat of Avra's car. We had gotten bored at this stupid keg party--neither one of us is much of a drinker--so we went out to the car to wait for Avra, waiting and yawning and talking and then not-talking, until Emil finally just gave up and fell asleep. His hair--it was longer then--mashed up tickling against my skin, his arm was warm and still and heavy on mine. I took little breaths, tiny little breaths, to breathe in his smell, to not break the spell and wake him up. The street-light shone sideways through the back window, that faint underwater green, and I pretended we were on the ocean somewhere, on a sea journey, a nonstop honeymoon cruise. I leaned my head sideways, craned it sideways, so my hair would brush his. Finally I fell asleep, too.