{"id":986,"date":"2011-07-13T08:18:32","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T12:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/?p=986"},"modified":"2011-07-16T06:27:33","modified_gmt":"2011-07-16T10:27:33","slug":"red-flags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/short-stories\/red-flags.htm","title":{"rendered":"Red Flags"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Red<\/a><\/p>\n

You never know what you’ll do when you when you’re consumed by the fever of lust. Maybe you forget who are, maybe you confuse red flags with the burning flame of desire. Who knows? Here’s just one example I’ve heard. Check it out:<\/p>\n

The boy and the girl stand in the back of the auditorium, next to each other. They are supposed to be looking straight ahead at the choir director, like the good boys and girls are doing. But apparently, the boy and the girl don\u2019t want to be counted amongst those obedient ones, because they\u2019re not looking at the choir director, little rebellious devils that they are. They\u2019re flirting with each other, and only a blind person would miss it. Check out the moves they\u2019re making. They think they\u2019re being stealth, but it\u2019s such a bad stab at it. Can you see the bad acting? They\u2019re so obvious. <\/p>\n

\tLook. See what I mean. The boy\u2019s looking at the girl. The girl\u2019s looking at her feet. She\u2019s pretending not to notice, yeah right. Because if you watch, you can see her steal a glance at the boy. Check it out. She moves her head when she does. It\u2019s so obvious. She\u2019s not stealing anything, glance or otherwise. Even the boy knows it. Check out the gleam in his eye. The girl\u2019s looking at her feet again, though I don\u2019t know why she\u2019s bothering with the shyness ruse. Even the boy has her game down. And she knows it. Check out that scrunched up smile she\u2019s sporting. Uh-huh. <\/p>\n

\tThe boy keeps looking at her. Well, that\u2019s to be expected, I would think. Because after all he is a boy, and boys look at girls, if they\u2019re straight and this boy certainly is with the reputation he\u2019s had over the years. She\u2019s pretending she\u2019s shy, looking away, but she\u2019s smiling, and if there was ever a time for a no to seem like maybe, this would be one of those times. He keeps looking at her, until she finally turns to look at him. I bet he knew she would eventually. Now they\u2019re checking each other out. They\u2019re alike, but different. They both have green eyes. They both wear sweaters. His is velour. It dipped just below his Adam\u2019s apple, which is prominent whenever he swallowed hard. Hers is a red turtleneck which is supposed to hide her attributes, at least in a literal sense. The sweater fits her tightly, so in theory, it hides nothing. <\/p>\n

\tThe boy realizes this, it seems, because his eyes go wide as his eyes drop from her face to her chest. The girl seems hot, yes? A little too hot, considering the goody-goody stuffiness atmosphere of the choir. The boy pulls away from the gaze, which makes him feel strange. You can tell from the frown he wears for a second. He\u2019s not the kind of boy who breaks a stare with a girl, and now he has with her. She smiles, knowing that he looked away first, and she laughs about it. A hot chick laughing at a cute boy, that\u2019s what she is. This whole thing is apparently very funny to her, because she\u2019s suppressing a volcano of laughter. You see, she had never been sure if the boy wanted her, but now she knows he does from his stare. What do you do when you find out that the boy you want wants you? Sometimes, you laugh like the girl, especially when he makes it obvious what he wants from you, and you want the same from him. Fantasies that come true can be nerve-wracking, especially at this tender age of adolescence. <\/p>\n

\tThe boy moves closer to the girl, close enough now that he catches her scent. Strawberries. That\u2019s better than the smell of the auditorium, which smells like mold and dust. He stands so that he almost touches her, but doesn\u2019t. She turns to face him, which makes her arm brush against his, almost like a whisper. It\u2019s the first time they ever touched each other, and they both draw back. Considering what these two want to do each other and what they have done with others, this alarm seems quaint. But this is how it is with them, now that the touch has alerted that the other is more than a fantasy. Like something between them has been unearthed, and can\u2019t ever really be buried again. <\/p>\n

\tThe boy leans over to the girl, just close enough that his lips are near her ear. They touch her hair. The boy and girl both tremble, just a bit, at the touch. Their actions mirror each other, two mirrors with green eyes. The boy hesitates, feeling the light tickle of her hair on his lips. What is he waiting for? It is as though he is unsure if he was supposed to say something, or devour her right there in the back of the auditorium. This pause lasts only a second, though. He stops trembling, and says to her, \u201cDo you want to get out of here?\u201d<\/p>\n

\tShe responds by looking at him, quickly and directly. Her eyes are green lasers pointed at him. His mouth twitches because he doesn\u2019t have his answer yet. But nervousness can paint the world with an impatient brush, for he doesn\u2019t have to wait all that long for her reply. See? The girl is walking towards the exit door. At first, the boy doesn\u2019t follow. For a boy who thinks himself slick, he sure is tanking the game badly here. See him? He\u2019s standing in the back of the auditorium, his brow furrowed. Nervousness can also make a person clueless, it would seem. <\/p>\n

\tThe girl stops by the exit door and looks back at him. She waits. Something seems to wake up in the boy, because he moves in her direction, and surpasses her, retaking the lead once he gets to the door. Such a gentleman he is, he holds the door open for her and follows her out. They are now outside, together, cold wind blowing in their faces. The music they ignored before is now silent. It is gone. They are alone, the way they had always been in their secret fantasies of each others. The fantasies are not so secret now, now that they are out here, alone and together, infused with the desire of the other one.<\/p>\n

\tOutdoors, it is almost dark. The horizon is painted with the last light of the day. There are brilliant strokes of orange, yellow, and pink. The sun is just beginning to dip underground. It is red, and seems to illuminate the girl. She can\u2019t see this, but the boy can. He stands, watching her. She isn\u2019t looking at him. She\u2019s scanning the landscape she\u2019s found. It\u2019s a big parking lot full of old used cars and new shiny sports cars. It\u2019s the kind of extremes you might find amongst suburban adolescents and young adults requiring a car to escape. What could they possibly be escaping? The boredom they perceive in the grownups they themselves will be in several years, that\u2019s what. It\u2019s hard to tell what colors the assorted vehicles are in the escaping light. The sun has stolen its warmth along with the light as it drifts under the horizon. In its place, wind begins to pick up. The girl still isn\u2019t looking at the boy. She shivers. <\/p>\n

\t\u201cI\u2019m cold.\u201d She says each of the two words like they are sentences in and of themselves. She focuses her green lasers on the boy. She knows the answer to her next question, but she’s tired of him standing there, just staring at her and not doing anything about it. \u201cYou do have a car, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThe boy opens his mouth for a second, just slightly. His eyes evade hers, and looks to her lips. In the last light, he can see they are painted red. They are shaped in a scrunched circle, a kind of determined pose. He breathes slightly faster. He seems to use her statement about her state of being as an excuse to look her over, head to toe, watching her shiver away. He imagines her shivering, in much different circumstances, with a lot less clothes. <\/p>\n

\tIt makes him shiver too. It seems to bring him to a different state of mind, because he brings his head down closer to hers as he returns her glare with his own lasers. \u201cOf course I do.\u201d His voice seems gravelly, suddenly. The girl\u2019s eyes widen as he grabs her arm. It is small and delicate in his hands, and he easily directs her towards the automotive potpourri in front of them. <\/p>\n

\tHe marches her to a red sports car, towards the passenger door. She matches his pace, doesn\u2019t protest the fact that he\u2019s pulling her with him. The fact that she hadn\u2019t even reacted when he grabbed her in the first place seems like a good sign to him. In fact, she doesn\u2019t mention anything, good or bad, when he opens the passenger door. She gets in the car, and he closes the door. It shuts with a loud bang. The girl jumps at the noise, and the boy catches her startle from a quick scan. Is he losing her? He starts to walk quickly to the driver\u2019s seat, but notices that she is not making any move to escape. So his movements slow down. The girl appears to have relaxed, which is a good thing. She\u2019s not startled anymore, so the boy interprets that she still wants him. <\/p>\n

\tShe looks at him as he enters the car. He ignores her now, as he adjusts the mirrors of his cars to his liking. They are moved and arranged, although it appears they were moved back to their original position. The girl watches all this movement. She sighs. She doesn\u2019t mind showing off, but these last antics do nothing for her. The boy appears to ignore her reaction, but his actions betray his uneasiness. Look. His mouth is twitching, and he swallows so you can see his Adam\u2019s apple. She frowns and looks at the dashboard of the car. What does this mean? Does she even know? The boy doesn\u2019t stop to speculate. He puts the car in reverse while she\u2019s making her observations, or lack thereof. <\/p>\n

\tThey leave the parking lot with its mishmash of vehicles. It disappears behind them, along with the building that housed the auditorium that brought them together. The first street they travel on has many lights, some red, some green, but the second one gives the impression of a straight empty highway, at least at first. The boy turns the car onto this road. All the sound that is between the boy and the girl is the reverberating pulses that come from a sports car that is being pushed nearly to its limits. The boy leans over to her, touching her arm again. This time, neither of them flinch. \u201cWhat kind of music do you like?\u201d<\/p>\n

\tShe tells him. With one hand on the wheel, the boy rifles through the selection he has. He has exactly what she wants, what she asks for. Like an expert disc jockey, he selects the perfect song. The girl watches all of this, and exhales in a ragged way, her lips opened in an unformed kiss. The boy looks over to her, and smiles. His attention is divided between the road and the girl, but he had been attuned to her intense response. Something shifts in the both of them, like they are each switching some internal gear simultaneously. The girl reaches over to the boy, kissing him on his cheek. He guns the engine in surprise. It\u2019s hard to tell with the din of engine noise and musical entertainment, but it sounds like the girl might be laughing at his startle. It\u2019s hard to tell, because she ducks her head away so you can\u2019t see her expression. If she has, it seems she gets a rise out of tripping him out of his slickness. But it\u2019s hard to tell with all the other distractions going on. <\/p>\n

\tThe boy touches his cheek where her lips just were. She looks to him again, smiling. He licks his lips, then chews the bottom one. The girl watches his tongue, follows its every move. She crosses her legs, facing him, arching her back so her breasts face him more prominently. He floors the gas. The music is hard to hear now. They don\u2019t use words, but they don\u2019t travel in silence. Life becomes a dizzy blur outside of them at the speed they move. The girl sees the digits on the speedometer steadily going up. She eyes the boy, his green eyes focused beams on the road. Funny, even with this external cue of focus, it doesn\u2019t seem he\u2019s thinking of the defensive driving tips he learned a few years earlier. He looks like he is grasping for air. The girl giggles, and gently taps his knee before ducking away. In some kind of gesture, the meaning unclear, the boy turns the music higher. It is so loud it overpowers the engine noise. The girl reaches for the knob to turn it down, but the boy grabs her hand away. \u201cYou don\u2019t like the music? I\u2019ll change it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThe girl looks at her hand. It is trapped by its wrist in his hand. \u201cIt\u2019s fine,\u201d she says. The boy lets her hand go. She looks at him, confusion written on her face. He\u2019s not looking at her right now. He\u2019s looking at the stereo. He turns the music back to its original volume of blare. The music is louder than both of their voices. It\u2019s hard to hear anything else. <\/p>\n

\tThe girl leans back, looking up. The car has a sunroof, but the kind that you can see stars through at night. What is the night sky saying today? She watches. There are clouds, and then there are bright stars. They seem to alternate back and forth, like they are dancing a strange tango. Stars, clouds. Stars, clouds. Such evenness. Stars, clouds. Boy, girl. Male, female. It\u2019s all written in the stars. Like melody and harmony together. Like fate. The girl is looking up, and she touches her lips, caressing them in a slow gesture. <\/p>\n

\tThe boy watches her again. He glances at her more than he glances at the road. He watches the outline of the girl as she bends back to look at the sky. He watches her outstretched neck, her sweater-covered breasts protruding in her posture as she gazes upward, and thinks of the moment before where she faced him in the same outstretched gestures. He sees her touch her lips from his periphery. He takes her left hand, and kisses each of her five fingers, one by one. They taste like the strawberries he smelled on her before. There is a rose ring on her finger, the finger that was intended for wedding bands. He takes the ring off her finger, placing the ring on the dashboard in front of him. She frowns, her green eyes wide open. He licks the now bare finger. She smiles, but her eyes are still wide open. <\/p>\n

\tShe touches his arm, the one that holds her hand. It\u2019s covered in his sweater, but she caresses the fabric anyway. What does she mean by this? It\u2019s hard to tell if she digs the feel of velour, or if she\u2019s implying she\u2019d like to rub the skin underneath. Regardless, she\u2019s caressing him, and he\u2019s kissing her hand. She\u2019s smiling, her mouth open. The boy gives one glance at the road before returning to her, looking at her mouth. She leans over to him, to his face, and gently licks his top lip with the tip of her tongue. He tastes strawberries again. There\u2019s a bend in the road ahead, and she lurches back to her seat by the car\u2019s sudden jolt. The boy nearly missed seeing the bend, but his quick moves saved both of them. They both laugh. \u201cSorry,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

\t\u201cYou need to be careful.\u201d The girl sings this rather than speaks it. <\/p>\n

\t\u201cOh, hell no.\u201d They both laugh, staring at each other while they do so. <\/p>\n

The road curves again, and the red car nearly slides off the road again. The girl kisses the boy when it recovers. His immediate vision is blocked, as well as hers. They don\u2019t see the rose ring fall to the floor. She covers his mouth with hers, and he wraps his arm around her neck. She tastes like strawberries, and he swallows hard with her tongue embracing his, while his hand drifts down her body to grasp the slope of her breast. My, my. Neither sees his Adam\u2019s apple throb. They are in a world of their own, and nothing else exists. They don\u2019t see the sign saying, \u201cRoad Work Ahead\u201d, or the orange cones that dictate that their safety lies to the right of them, away from the direct path they are taking now. <\/p>\n

All of the sudden, the steering wheel jerks and slips out of his hands. The car rumbles as it runs over the cones. As their tongues separate in the sudden jolt, they feel themselves going airborne. In that microsecond, they both wonder if this is their first and maybe last kiss before it all goes blank. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You never know what you’ll do when you when you’re consumed by the fever of lust. Maybe you forget who are, maybe you confuse red flags with the burning flame of desire. Who knows? Here’s just one example I’ve heard. Check it out: The boy and the girl stand in the back of the auditorium, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"views":2197,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=986"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1314,"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions\/1314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkuzmier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}