“Shhh.” Hazel placed a finger to her lips before pointing down to the floor in front of the couch where Scarlett was snoring away in her purple sleeping bag, not a foot from where I was standing.
I nodded and stepped around Scarlett and sat on the other end of the couch. “What are you still doing awake?” I whispered.
Hazel shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep either, I guess.”
I nodded again, not sure what else to do or say. I looked over at the infomercial that was playing on the TV with the volume so low there was no way she could hear it. I wondered what she was doing up this late sitting by herself in the dark looking so lonesome because it sure as hell wasn’t watching TV.
Hazel adjusted the knot of hair on her head and looked at me expectantly like she was waiting for me to say something, anything. And I knew I should because, for God’s sake, I was the one who had come down here.
So, I thought of the first thing that came to mind because it was what I had been doing before I’d dragged my behind down here to see her. “Want to go play the new Zelda?”
She perked up, her eyebrows rising high. “You have the new Zelda? For the Wii?” It was the loudest whisper ever.
“Yep,” I said with a sly grin. Hazel loved video games and about the only time I got to hang out with her and Scarlett was when they allowed me to play with them on the Wii or PlayStation. Which wasn’t that often since I had football practices most days after school while they were being lazy bums.
A matching smile broke out across her face and she stood quietly and said, “Yeah, let’s go.”
I followed her to the stairs and then up them, and I couldn’t help but stare at her really nice ass the entire way. Lately, Hazel had been getting curves everywhere and it didn’t matter that all of the clothing she wore was probably meant to cover them, I still saw them all the same. And the ones I couldn’t see, I had no problem imagining.
We padded over the soft carpet on deft feet so we didn’t wake anyone and made our way into my room, Hazel first. I closed the door softly behind me, my heart beating a mile a minute. It wasn’t the first time Hazel had been in my room, but it sure as hell was the first time without Scarlett. And I’d never had a girl other than my sister in my room with the door closed. I wiped my sweaty palms on my sweatpants and looked around my messy room, overthinking every damn thing in the world. Would she think my Star Wars poster was stupid or would she think I was a slob because of all the dirty clothes on my floor, including my stinky football socks? I kicked them into a corner.
“Well, put it on, Winnie.” She gestured to the TV and sat on the edge of my bed. My throat damn near closed up at the sight. There she sat. On my bed. In my room. Door closed. It didn’t get much better than this. Ya know, unless she let me kiss her, too. But I knew that wasn’t going to happen. What fourteen-year-old girl wanted to kiss a twelve-year-old boy?
I was doing the goo-goo eyes again and the only thing that snapped me out of it was Hazel giving me the what-the-heck look.
“Sorry,” I said, softly running my hands through my curly, too-long hair. It was time for a haircut. I busied myself turning on the TV and Wii and trying my damnedest to get it together. This was just Hazel, I kept telling myself. But the truth was she’d never for one second ever been “just Hazel” to me. So, it was hard to rationalize it in my head that way now. She’d always been more. The girl I’d wanted to make happy. Then the girl I wanted to torture. And now the girl I just wanted.
I sat down on the bed next to her, controller in hand. I tried to pretend my hands weren’t shaking and that my heart wasn’t in my throat. We decided we would play it on story mode so we would just have to take turns since it was only one player. Which was awesome because while she played, it gave me all the time in the world to sneak looks at her while she was concentrating. And her concentrating face happened to be one of my favorites. She stuck her tongue out a little and bit it, her eyes squinted and her forehead wrinkled. It was pretty damn cute.
But when she discovered something awesome or beat a villain, she would laugh and beam, her smile sitting in her eyes, and I couldn’t help but laugh back until she’d shush me for fear of waking my parents.
An hour went by in a flash and it didn’t escape me that Hazel was being a bit of a turn hog. “You gonna let me have a turn or what, brat?”
She paused the game and turned to look at me, her eyes wide. “Did you just call me a brat, Winnie?”
“I sure did. You’re hogging the controller,” I said with a smile. “Brat.”
She leaned her body toward mine and nudged me hard with her shoulder. “Well, now you’re never getting it back,” she smarted and pressed start again.
“Is that so?” I said, inching toward her and the remote. Up until then, I’d been doing my best to give her some space, but right then I was caught up in the lightheartedness of the moment. Of just hanging with a friend I’d known since I was a little boy.
Hazel backed up on my bed toward my pillows at the top, holding the controller high over her head like she could keep it from me. She may have been over a year my senior, but she was a hell of a lot smaller comparatively. I was big for my age. Tall and lanky, my mom called me when she complained that I was going to eat her out of house and home.
These lanky arms were about to come in handy. I crawled up the bed after her quickly, straddling her and pushing her back into the pillows and mattress. And still she held that damn controller up so I couldn’t get it.
“Get off me, Oliver,” she whisper-yelled through her giggles, pushing at my chest.
“Give me the controller, you Zelda hog brat,” I said back, laughing.
She tried to tuck the controller and her right hand under my pillow. “Never!”
It only occurred to me then that I was wrestling on my bed with a girl. And not just any girl. Hazel.
I paused above her, staring down at her caramel, brown, smiling eyes. God, she was gorgeous.
“What?” she asked, laughing, breaking whatever spell her baby browns had put me under.
I pursed my lips, smiling. “Nothing. Give me my damn controller.”
She sucked in a feigned shocked breath. “Why, Winnie. I do declare. Did you just say damn? You know you are too young for those kinds of words. What would your momma say?” She pushed the controller farther under the pillow.
I rolled my eyes at her jokes. I’d heard Scarlett and Hazel dropping F-bombs like they were sailors last weekend over a game of Monopoly.
I used an elbow to hold my weight above her and tickled her side with my free hand.
“No,” she cried between giggles. “Oh my God, stop, Ollie. Please.”
While she was weak, I slipped my hand up and under the pillow toward her palm that was gripping the controller. She wouldn’t give it up, so I grabbed the sleeve of her hoodie and pulled it hard, trying to snatch her hand out from under the pillow.
But the more I pulled, all that happened was that the sleeve of the hoodie moved up her arm. And the more skin it exposed, the more I felt something rough against the skin of my hand.
I stopped pulling, trying to look at her arm, wondering what I was feeling. The only light from the room was my small TV and it made it almost impossible to see anything, but still I leaned closer and kept pulling her sleeve up, the controller long forgotten.