Chapter 7: The Wrong Kind of Touch
The neon buzz of the Lone Star Bar felt like a migraine coming on. Noah held the rickety screen door for Kelsey, catching a whiff of her perfume—something sweet and floral, like the soap aisle at the grocery store. It clashed with the bar’s true smell: stale beer, fried grease, and the ghost of a million cigarettes.
“This place is awesome!” Kelsey shouted over the twang of a steel guitar. She was pretty, in a careful way. Blonde highlights, a smiling mouth, jeans that looked brand new. Dee Mae’s friend from equine therapy. “Totally authentic.”
“Yeah,” Noah said, his smile already feeling stiff. “It’s somethin’.”
He led her to a scarred table near the back, away from the pulsating jukebox and the cluster of ranch hands arm-wrestling by the pool tables. The linoleum floor tugged at his boots with every step, a sticky trap.
He ordered a pitcher and two glasses. Kelsey talked. She talked about her horse, a paint named Sundance, and her classes, and how much she loved true crime podcasts. Noah nodded, sipped his beer, and made the right noises in the right places. “Yeah?” “No kiddin’.” “That’s wild.”
Her hand found his thigh under the table about twenty minutes in. Her fingers were small, her touch light. He flinched, a tiny, involuntary jerk he hoped she’d mistake for a startle at the roar of laughter from the next table. He covered her hand with his own, his calluses scraping her smooth skin. It felt like holding a strange, small bird.
“Wanna dance?” she asked, her eyes bright with the two drinks she’d already finished.
The dance floor was a packed, shuffling mass. A slow song came on, one of those mournful ballads about lost dogs and lost loves. He pulled her into the space between bodies, one hand on the small of her back, the other holding hers. She melted against him, her cheek resting on his chest. He could feel the press of her, the softness. He closed his eyes and tried to sink into it. This was what he was supposed to want. This was the cure.
He breathed in her perfume. He focused on the weight of her, the melody of the song, the warm blur of the beer. For a second, his mind went quiet, blessedly blank.
Then her fingers crept up to the back of his neck, playing with the sun-bleached hairs there. A jolt, like a live wire, shot down his spine. It wasn’t pleasure. It was recognition. A different hand, different fingers, a different texture of touch he’d only imagined against his skin. The ghost was suddenly there, in the space between him and Kelsey, taller, leaner, smelling of clean sweat and grass, not flowers.
Noah’s eyes snapped open. He stared over the top of Kelsey’s head at a neon longhorn sign, its red glow bleeding into the smoky air.
The song ended. A faster, driving honky-tonk beat kicked in. The crowd whooped. Kelsey pulled back, laughing, her face flushed. “You’re a good dancer, Noah Callahan!”
Before he could form a reply, she went up on her toes, her hands framing his face. Her lips found his.
They were soft. They were eager. She tasted like beer and lip gloss.
He felt nothing.
A vast, echoing hollow opened up in his chest. He stood there, stiff, while she kissed him. He moved his lips because it was expected. His mind was a silent, screaming room. Feel something. For God’s sake, feel something. He tried to summon a spark, any spark. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer, trying to force a connection through sheer physical will.
Nothing. Just the hollow. And beneath it, a rising tide of hot, sour guilt.
He broke the kiss, pulling back just enough to break contact. He forced his smile, the one that had won him ribbons and handshakes and pats on the back from his daddy. It felt like a death mask.
“Wow,” Kelsey breathed, her eyes still closed for a second.
“Let’s get another drink,” he said, his voice rough. He took her hand and led her off the floor, not waiting for her answer.
The rest of the night was a blur of loud music and louder conversation. He laughed when he was supposed to. He filled her glass. He let her touch his arm, his shoulder, his knee. Each point of contact was a small, cold shock. He was a spectator in his own body, watching a decent guy have a decent time with a nice girl.
He drove her home in his pickup, the radio filling the heavy silence. At her dorm, she leaned across the console and pecked his cheek. “I had a really great time, Noah.”
“Me too, Kelsey. Thanks for comin’ out.”
He waited until she was inside, until the glass door swung shut behind her. Then he sat, both hands gripping the steering wheel so hard the vinyl creaked. The hollowness was gone, replaced by a cramping, vicious self-loathing. She was sweet. She was pretty. She’d wanted him. And he’d used her. He’d tried to use her like a tool to fix himself, and it hadn’t worked. He’d stolen her evening for nothing.
He drove, not toward his own apartment, but out past the university limits, where the streetlights faded and the black sky opened up. He pulled onto a dirt service road behind the agricultural plots and killed the engine.
The silence was absolute. Crickets, the ticking of the cooling truck, the blood pounding in his ears.
He got out and leaned against the warm hood, staring at the impossible sprawl of stars. The clean, vast indifference of it made his chest ache. He replayed the kiss. The softness. The nothing.
A memory, sharp and unbidden: Taichi on the soccer field that first day, leaping to control a high ball, the ruthless grace of his body in mid-air, the focused intensity on his face. A different kind of beauty, one that hooked something deep in Noah’s gut and pulled.
He shoved the thought down, hard. It was poison.
He looked down at his hands, pale in the starlight. Ranch hands. Cowboy hands. They could rope a calf, buckle a belt, fix a busted fence. They could hold a girl and feel absolutely nothing.
He slammed the heel of his palm against the truck’s roll bar once, twice. A dull, satisfying metal thud that traveled up his arm. It didn’t help. The guilt was still there. The longing, sharper now, was still there.
He’d done what he was supposed to do. He’d followed the script. And it had left him emptier than before, with the taste of someone else’s lip gloss on his mouth and the ghost of a different touch burning on his skin.