Butterface Read Free Page A

leaning her misshapen face against the wires and wanting to cry.
     
    He found her there, still clinging to the cyclone fence long after everyone had gone. The bleachers shook as he took the steps two at time. So sure of his body because it had never betrayed him.
     
    “Thanks for coming,” he said after a few minutes of charged silence.
     
    “I’m sorry I’m having a nervous breakdown at your game.”
     
    “You want to talk about it?”
     
    “God no.”
     
    Lucky reached across her and loosened her fingers from the fence. Then he pulled her into his chest and held her. Just held her. He’d showered after the game. He smelled like soap. He was so clean. She’d never feel that way. But she was glad he could. It occurred to her that if given the choice, she’d take the defect again if it meant he could keep this life for himself.
     
    The stadium lights went out all at once, leaving her outside environment as dark as her inside environment. Except that Lucky’s squeezed her a little closer, and all her synapses started firing different messages at once.
     
    “Your eyes will adjust in a second.” His voices soothed her senses like warm honey.
     
    “Okay,” she squeaked.
     
    Every sense but her sight sharpened. The sound of his steady heartbeat, the softness of his sweatshirt, the scent of his soap and the grass of the field…she could have stayed in the moment forever. But he was right, there were enough security lights from campus to slowly return the black world into the real world again.
     
    He stood and carefully helped her down the bleachers. On the last step, her foot slipped and she tumbled into Lucky and her very first kiss.
     
     
     
    * * *
     
     
     
    He didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Every day, he dug himself deeper. At first, Lucky told himself that he was only trying to make up for his friends being such jerks, even if she didn’t know they had been. He needed to undo the karmic damage or something. He’d make her see how great she was, maybe help her with her confidence. And no way was he taking her to that party. He’d figure something else out.
     
    The guys didn’t understand what a great kid she was. She didn’t deserve to be called a rover or a butterface . She had a couple scars that barely saw the light of day, and a slightly rounded jaw. No big deal.
     
    So he decided to be a mentor to her, be the big brother she never had. It wasn’t a hardship to spend time with Beth. Her sharp edges smoothed the more he got to know her, and the harder he worked to gain her trust, the more he wanted it. Spending time with her was refreshing. More than anything, he wanted to be that guy she saw when she looked at him.
     
    But then he’d seen her wearing a tank top.
     
    She didn’t like to wear her uniform home, so she changed in the bathroom one night, coming out in jeans and a little pink tank top. It hit him like an anvil Wile E. Coyote ordered from the Acme Co.
     
    Jesus Christ, she’s a girl. His palms tingled and his mouth went dry. And all the virtue he thought he’d been stocking up on by taking this mission on was gone. One small shirt undid it all. He was no better than the jerks he lived with.
     
    He recovered quickly enough. Mostly. He tried to push his shallow feelings to the corner of his mind and concentrate on being her friend, and he did a good job for the most part. He still liked her after all. He didn’t have to stop liking her just because he had inappropriate feelings. So what if he noticed that her eyes were just as green as they were brown, depending on what color she was wearing. And if something tugged on his gut whenever she bit her lip, he could live with it. If he dozed off at night thinking about that tank top and the breasts underneath it, nobody had to know.
     
    But he never intended to kiss her.
     
    Finding her clinging to the bleachers had punched like a fist. He hated seeing girls cry, but it never made him feel like that before.