Spencer was standing on the lawn, still clutching her field hockey stick, watching Ian disappear around the corner of the house. Her lips still felt a little tingly from their kisses.
“Okay, gross!” Alison voice cut across the yard, full of disgust.
“What did you see?” Spencer asks, her heart dropping to the pit of her stomach.
“Enough to make me wanna puke,” Alison responds, moving forward to lean against the makeshift goal Spencer had been aiming at. “He’s your sister’s boyfriend. And he’s like, old.”
Spencer doesn’t bother to point out how many older boys Alison herself has probably kissed this week. Alison is too dangerous around secrets to provoke.
“Well, it was nothing, okay? Just forget it.”
Alison doesn’t buy this line. “It looked like you were into it,” she suggests, and her pose against the goal post is different, challenging.
“Well, I wasn’t.” Spencer thinks of her dad, talking to a clients on the phone after dinner. His main piece of advice was always deny, deny, deny.
“I hope not,” Alison warns. “Because if you were, that would make you a skank.”
Spencer adjusts her grip on the hockey stick. “I’m not. He started it. It didn’t like, mean anything.” She does her best to make her voice sound confident, like on the debate team, arguing against any emotional attachment to her first real kiss.
Alison narrows her eyes. “I’m just looking out for you, Spence,” she says, and her tone is warmer again, caring. Conversations with Alison are like this a lot, a swirl of hot and cold. Tornado weather. “You wouldn’t want to spoil your bright Hastings future,” Alison continues, “just to suck face with some pedo who sells cameras at Best Buy.”
Spencer bites her bottom lip, stares at the grass. Ian’s good enough for Melissa, she thinks. And he smells nice, his cologne makes Spencer think of trees, and he was so close all pressed against her like that, she can still catch a faint scent of it clinging to her shirt.
“You need to snap out of it,” Alison says, and her voice this time isn’t hot or cold, just full of authority. She’s giving Spencer a direct order, in a tone that clearly declares Spencer can only disobey at her own peril. “Put this stuff away.”
Spencer was supposed to practice for another forty minutes, she wrote it down on her agenda for the day. But maybe if she does whatever Ali wants now, maybe she can convince her to keep quiet. Not tell Melissa. Or the other girls. Or the cops, she wouldn’t put anything past Ali.
So Spencer opens the door to the barn, stows her hockey stick and wheels the practice goal inside. She turns to leave, but there’s a shadow blocking the light from the door. Alison.
Ali walks toward Spencer slowly and deliberately. Spencer feels almost panicked, like she should be running, looking for an emergency exit out.
“I don’t believe you,” Alison says, her voice low and dangerous. “You shouldn’t lie to me, Spencer. You liked it. You wanted him to do it again.”
“Maybe,” Spencer admits, feeling like she’s throwing herself on a grenade. “Kind of.”
Then Alison smiles sweetly, like she understands. “Believe me, I get it,” she says, putting a friendly arm around Spencer’s shoulders. “He’s cute. He came on to you. But it can’t happen again. It was a mistake, okay? You need to forget all about it, not get all starry eyed and romantic.”
Spencer nods, but she’s still half-thinking about Ian’s lips on her neck. The thought sends shivers down her spine.
“He’s taking advantage of you,” Ali insists, as if she can read Spencer’s mind. “You let it happen again, and he’ll be asking you to polish his stick next time Melissa won’t.”
“Ew,” Spencer says, because Ali’s making it sound gross.
“Exactly,” Ali nods, encouragingly. “He’s not worth thinking about. I bet he’s a lousy kisser.”
“I guess,” Spencer agrees, half-heartedly.
“You guess?” Alison says, quirking an eyebrow. “You’re not sure?”
“Yes,” Spencer says. “I mean - no.”
“You mean you don’t have a point of comparison,” Alison concludes. “God, everything’s a science fair with you. What about Holden Strauss?”
Spencer blushes. “That was different,” she says, remembering the chaste peck they’d exchanged at Aria’s birthday party last year, an experience curated by Alison during a game of truth or dare.
Ali sighs, like she’s exasperated, then uses the arm she has around Spencer to pull her closer.
Nothing in her life has ever surprised Spencer as much as the feel of Alison’s mouth pressing against her own. Alison’s kiss starts gentle, all soft lips brushing Spencer’s, the taste of lipstick. But it escalates quickly, it feels like Alison is trying to devour her with a white hot intensity that takes Spencer’s breath away. It’s like the way people kiss in spy movies where everything has to be a secret, everything is life or death.
Spencer can’t say she’s never thought about it before, not exactly. She has thought about it in the abstract, what it would be like to kiss a girl. And maybe sometimes in the specific, a specific girl. She’s caught herself staring at Aria sometimes, which she used to write off as being fixated on her strange fashion sense, until she realized she stares even when Aria’s helping her with yard work in jeans and a t-shirt, when they’re having a sleepover and she’s wearing fuzzy pajamas. But never Alison, even in her imagination she wouldn’t dare.
Alison bites Spencer’s lip, not hard, just enough to make Spencer open her mouth a little in surprise, enough for Alison to slide her tongue in. A noise comes from the back of Spencer’s throat, part whimper, part moan. The kiss is wet and exhilarating and galvanizing and probably a hundred other SAT words that Spencer’s brain is short circuiting too much to come up with right now.
It’s over as suddenly as it began. Alison pulls away, smiles at the sight of Spencer’s eyelids, which have fluttered closed. “I have to go,” she announces, smoothing her hair. “I’m meeting Emily after swim practice.” She sashays out of the barn, knowing Spencer’s eyes are still wide, still watching her. And then she’s gone, leaving Spencer staring at the open door.
Eventually, Spencer goes back into the house, too dazed to say hello to Melissa or wave back at Ian, who’s sitting with his arm around her sister on the couch. She doesn’t notice the charming smile Ian shoots at her, or the way his eyes follow her up the stairs. Ian’s not important. She has other things to think about now.