Dodge remembers his first kiss, the long-limbed girl who’d tangled herself around him in the thrill of post-race adrenaline. He remembers how she smelled and how soft her lips were, and how it should have been perfect. Even after years and miles of experience he can still remember her long thin fingers around his wrist and he silently thanks her sometimes for letting him know a little more about himself.
He remembers the first real kiss, too, the one that he wanted so badly he could taste it long before they were up close and sharing breath. He’d only been half-sure of what he was doing and not at all sure that the boy he was kissing was that sort of boy at all. It was nerve-wracking and a little off-center and wonderful, enough to spark a fire under him that he was forever fueling afterwards.
The first and the second were bronzed, then, in his memory; shined up and on display beside his first broken bone and the last time he saw his father’s face. The third is lost to him, the fourth and fifth so long gone that it’s almost as if they never were. Dodge doesn’t know how many boys he has pinned tight to the locker room tile or bucked up beneath in the deserted dorms, skipping class for more important things. The love bites fade slower than the faces of this guy and that who gave them, sharp teeth and slippery tongue just a ghost in his mind. There’s no point keeping count of them all when they don’t mean anything. They’re fun, they’re looking for exactly what he is, everyone’s happy.
He forgets after a while that it can be any other way.
Aiden is an accident. He’s quiet and virginal and skittish, everything that would normally have him turning tail to run. It’s a touch and go meeting, a flustering coming-out experience (and who the hell in this school doesn’t know the reputation of the illustrious Dodger Hayes?), and a pace he’s entirely unprepared for, runner or not.
The kiss is less of an accident and more of a mistake. Even now, knowing what he knows, it’s just one big mess. A bad idea. He could’ve figured out a better way to fall in love with this twisted-up boy who had no idea how beautiful he was. In the end, though, he guesses it’s the only way he could’ve ever fallen in love; fast, hard, and with no idea it was coming. It happens the same way that everything happens for him and it’s nearly impossible to keep it from changing his life.
Moira thinks he’s cute. Stevie’s been pressing her luck all along with him, baiting and switching, cat grin all carefree. They both get serious when they’re alone with Dodge, though. They know there’s no way someone won’t end up hurt. They don’t want it to be their boy, their pretty vibrant boy with a heart full of hidden holes like booby traps.
He’s tasted a thousand mouths and felt the press of just as many bodies against his; he stopped notching his bedpost when it became more notch than post. But when he lays Aiden out like a Christmas feast and devours him, pulls from him the sweetest little bitten-back noises, he loses himself for the first time. It’s the first time he’s wondered what comes after.
