The Book of Firsts

Twenty-Nine

Rin was again working on his song on Friday, but this time alone, playing small sections on the guitar and then making minor changes to the sheet music. Discovering the teapot to be cold, I went and brewed a fresh batch, picking the ginger infusion from the collection of canisters on the table.

I poured a cup for Rin, but didn’t talk, since his attention was clearly on the music. I was starting to suspect, however, that he was playing a game with me, or trying to test me, because there were surely many opportunities for him to compose, and none of them required my presence. But many years of airline travel had honed my patience, and I appreciated the warm drink on a cool, overcast day, so I simply read the school forums, looking for gossip about the person I was about to enjoy.

Speculation about Bran continued to be hot news, especially because a short time ago Meggan, Tomas and Bran had met outside the faculty building, and then Meggan had gone somewhere with Bran.

"Why the frown?"

Rin had put down the guitar, and was studying me as he sipped his tea. I handed him my phone, and he read expressionlessly, swiping up a few times, then gave it back.

"Jealous?"

I felt strange, but jealousy didn’t seem to fit the feeling. "I don’t want to find myself in the position of the other woman. I could never do that."

"There is precisely zero chance of Meggan and Bran getting back together."

Ice cold certainty, accompanied by a completely unsmiling expression.

"Why are you so sure?"

"Because Kyou and I won’t permit it. Bran is the most intensely loyal person, and Meggan knows that perfectly well, and yet she gave him such a choice. She watched him shred himself for a year. And this play-acting now with Tomas makes me want to empty a bucket of tar on her."

"Play-acting?"

"Handholding in the most public of settings, but no follow up. Not that Tomas isn’t in pursuit, but she put on that show for Bran. Still trying to make him choose. I thought she was better than this."

He sounded genuinely upset and, perhaps having shown more than he’d intended, he immediately put down his cup and stood up.

"Another dance lesson?"

There was no music. Rin simply hummed, keeping up an effortless melody, and whisked me around the garden. I found I had to devote less of my mind to where my feet were going, and could trust Rin not to run me into a wall—at least if I didn’t provoke him first.

"What’s funny?" he asked. He’d stopped humming, but kept us moving as I decided whether to answer, and offered me his warm, gentle and entirely untrustworthy smile. "I’m more tolerant than you seem to think."

"I was picturing you dancing with Lania," I admitted.

He gave me a look, but then curled a corner of his mouth, amused. "I enjoyed your pointed speech. She looked very happy."

"Do you really have a phobia of short girls?"

"Which one of them told you that?"

"Bran."

"I’ll thank him later. And, no."

"Then why didn’t you date Lania? Or was Bran wrong?"

"Believe it or not I was a little shy my first year here, and hadn’t worked out a good way to deal with the way people react to me. Lania wore her hair in these tremendously cute pigtails, and I spent most of every maths class watching her playing League of Legends under her desk, but she would turn crimson and run away if I looked liable to go nearer. I didn’t figure out a way to talk to her until second year, and by then she was dating Rick."

"Lania dated Rick?"

"For about two years." His eyes narrowed. "And yet Sirocco still targets her. She’s been very subtle—I didn’t know at all."

"Let’s not talk about Sirocco. Bullies are so boring."

Rin smiled, and I had a strong intuition that something uncomfortable was going to happen to Sirocco in the not-too-distant future. I had to wonder how far he’d go, and whether he’d step over a line that would make me dislike him, but for now I appreciated the gesture on Lania’s behalf.

"Did you regret very much telling Kyou about your underwear preferences?"

"The knowledge that you were running around school without your pants on Tuesday more than made up for it," he said, then lifted his hand from my waist so he could pull my shirt forward and peek inside. "We’re overdressed for this dance lesson."

We shed our clothes in a leisurely way, and slow-danced in our underwear until the wind picked up and I started shivering.

"I’ll bring an oil heater next week," Rin said, leading me inside. "But, other than a bucket of hot water, we’ve yet to think of a solution for cold weather clean-up that isn’t very suspicious. It’s bad enough that we’ve taken the covers for all these cushions to be laundered a couple of times, which we can only hope hasn’t been noticed by the gardeners." He took my hand, guiding me to lay down on the blanket-draped couch. "We’re trying to be better about putting down covers before you arrive, because we tend to forget as soon as you lose your shirt."

"Tiny but mesmerising?" I said.

Rin, sitting on the edge of the couch, smiled. "Bran or Kyou?"

"Bran’s was more satisfying than expected."

"And you didn’t hit either of them? You’re so tolerant, Cheshire." He leaned down and ran a finger along one strap of my bra. "It makes me want to see how far I can push you."

"But will you enjoy the knee to the groin that’s likely to follow hitting my limit?"

"I wonder. We’re learning a lot about ourselves with this. But probably not." He slid his hands under the fabric of my bra. "Almost a B cup?"

"Almost," I agreed.

He stroked me very gently. "I spent the week thinking about your underwear. How foolish. What did you think about this week, Cheshire?"

"What you three will look like in tunic and tights," I said, smiling wryly. "And about playing Signus III with Lania after the exams, which will be a bit complicated since I’m going to my parents over the break, and I don’t know where they’ll be yet."

"What does that mean?"

"My mother’s finished her current job, and is deciding between various offers. They all have different start dates, so depending on what she picks we could spend Christmas in whatever country the job is in, or at my grandmother’s, which is where we stay when between jobs. But my aunt and cousins have descended on my grandmother, so my parents are talking about going hiking in Patagonia instead. Which should be fun, but not an ideal gaming environment."

"That sounds infinitely more enjoyable than what we’re going to endure over Christmas. The whole clan parading themselves before our great-grandfather and trying to make each other look bad."

"Is there a reason you’re going? You’re all adults, and I presume you’re preparing to move out when you do your big reveal for college. Why not move up the schedule?"

"To avoid the follow-up argument. Children in high school leaving home is a drama. University students living closer to classes is nothing out of the ordinary, making moves to bring us back into line much easier to shut down. Besides, I like my sisters. Since we have to come back from our trip for the family Christmas activities, I’ll be able to take them to the Helios Book Festival, possibly for the last time for years. "

Rin slid his hands out from beneath my bra and reached around to undo the hooks, pulling it free and putting it on the coffee table. He added my underpants, and then looked down at me, mouth curling. "I’m going to miss seeing these," he said, stroking the partially faded hickeys. "Childish and meaningless and…"

He glanced at me beneath those long lashes, then bent his head and pressed his mouth to the mottled patch on my breast. I didn’t move, and wasn’t surprised when he only licked me and then laughed, lifting his head.

"Cheshire, am I really so transparent?"

"If you were someone who didn’t respect a firm no, I wouldn’t be here," I said, catching a strand of his hair.

"One day I’m going to shake that calm."

"I think I might be looking forward to that," I said.

He caught at my hand as I twined another strand, and pressed it down, kissing me with a sudden, surprising urgency. I used my free hand to pull his hair out of his usual loose topknot, and he immediately pinned that hand as well, and then we wrestled for a while. This kind of play was definitely a favourite of Rin’s, and we came close to falling off the couch a few times until he had me properly pinned facedown, and pushed urgently into me. I wriggled to escape, mainly because I knew he would enjoy it, and laughed a little as he stopped holding back his strength and controlled my movement completely. The facedown position again felt supremely good to me, especially after he snatched up one of the small cushions and tucked it beneath my hips. Rin’s size only added to the experience, although his height did mean our upper bodies fitted together less neatly than I had with Kyou.

"You three have too much stamina," I said, a long time later.

He chuckled, then bit my ear lightly, not reducing his weight on me in the slightest. "We made a few side-bets," he murmured. "Once we discovered how easy it was to make you come."

I parsed this, then let out my breath, disgusted. "If it wasn’t so enjoyable, I think I’d be annoyed."

Rin nipped my other ear, then turned me over and kissed me with a leisurely enjoyment, then lay on his back and allowed me to appreciate his collarbone. He started humming, and I couldn’t decide if that was a sign of him being in an especially good mood, or if his mind had wandered back to the song he was composing.

But apparently not entirely, since after a while he asked: "Is there any challenge you’re looking forward to in particular?"

"That depends on who gets to do the talking in Simon Says."

"Absolutely not you."

"Then the blindfold challenge."

"Oh, really?"

"You sound way too pleased by that." I paused. "You feel way too pleased by that."

Rin showed me how pleased he was for an extended period of time, leaving me to wander into Art Club very late, feeling far too tired to achieve anything on my model.

The previous week the room had been deserted, but this week Art Club had a full complement, busy creating screen-printed posters about studying for exams. Blockish pieces in tangerine and watermelon shades, of kids buried in books, or with twenty pens in their hair.

"Rick’s designs," Lania said. "He’s so good at shape."

"Call-backs to our sand sculpture," Rick said, bopping over. "Though they almost didn’t get past the faculty, since being overwhelmed isn’t the message they want to sell. But the text is all about not letting that happen."

"I don’t think I’ve seen actual screen-printing before," I said.

"Digital’s so much easier, after all," Rick agreed. "But I love the variation you get from screen-printing, particularly if you play with the colour mix."

He showed me how to print a layer, giving me a peach colour. Since the drying time between layers wasn’t short, they’d done the base colour for four different designs earlier in the week, and now were adding the second layer. I enjoyed the results, particularly when he added a swirl of lime into my tray.

"I might try to create something like this myself," I said, surveying the result. "I’m terrible at colour, but I like the idea of thinking in shapes."

"Tall, blond and broody alert," Sean said, from the sinks by the window.

"Any sign of Meggan?" Anika asked, wiping at a watermelon streak across her nose.

"No-one else. But he is being very broody. Hands dug in pockets, head all the way down, own personal thundercloud. Heading for the river."

I tensed, then made myself relax. Bran was a difficult person to predict, but I very much doubted he would take another swim without destination. Especially not on a school day where too many people were around to interfere. And the school gossip network, transmitted via Sean, soon confirmed that Bran had met Kyou by the site of the now cleared-away boathouse and were joined by Rin and several faculty members a short time later. I should have expected something of the sort: Rin and Kyou were on high alert about Bran’s welfare at the moment, and would not ignore drama about Meggan.

After I finished my stack of posters, Rick showed me how to clean the screen, and I was putting it away when Carr came in.

"Mika, can I borrow you for some paperwork? It’ll only take a minute."

"Sure. About that supply order?"

He shook his head, leading the way to the office, and handed me a printed form. "A model release," he said. "I should have taken care of it before, but completely didn’t think about it until I received a nudge from the rules committee."

"You found a shot you liked? Can I see?"

He nodded, picked up a tablet, and showed me the figurehead of the ship. Not quite the tiny scuba diver before large boat image I’d expected, but after I’d stopped posing and swum closer. Both the carving and I were shown as three-quarter figures, and I recalled that I’d lifted my hand to touch the carved face, but remembered the request not to interfere with the wrecks and drawn my hand back.

"That lighting," I murmured. We’d been relatively deep, and so the blues had been heavy, but a bright column had descended conveniently on the figurehead, catching me in the edges, producing an array of beautiful shades.

"I had more trouble deciding which shot to use rather than whether any suited," Carr said. "But this one was outstanding."

"Being pushed to get your paperwork in order might be a good sign."

"Possibly. I’m trying not to get my hopes up."

"Are you more interested in photography or painting?" I asked, skimming through the clauses of the release he’d given me.

"Twin loves. Sometimes I’ll reproduce in paint photographs I’m particularly proud of and display them as a series. Before you sign, I should warn you that the shortlist is used in promotional material."

"I’ve seen advertisements for the Mirion before."

"Because Helios is the competition home city, there’s a month where it seems like the pictures pop up everywhere." He smiled. "It’s not what got me into photography, but I have to admit I’ve long burned to see my own work celebrated that way."

I signed the release, and handed it back to him. "Win or lose, I’d like a copy of that picture when you’re ready to circulate it. Though I’m now dying for it to be shortlisted just to see whether my parents recognise me. Or anyone here, for that matter."

"Even with the mask and mouthpiece, I think you’re unmistakeable. Are you coming to the Tokley tonight? Another bowling session."

I shook my head. "Tired myself out."

"Next week will probably be a movie night."

"Sounds good."

Though if Rin, Kyou and Bran really did have a side-bet, chances were good I’d sleep through almost any movie.