About a Girl

“I remember everything,” Kurt whispered into my ear, tucking some stray hair into proper position. Soft bug sounds comingled with raindrops rebounded off of tree leaves and filtered through the window screen. Kurt’s arms encircled me in a protective ring, his fingertips lightly grazing the skin on my forearm.

“Hmmm.” I stirred ever so slightly, turning in his direction. Kurt’s words were the only break in the expansive lapse of time that had taken place between us. I couldn’t remember what we had spoken of before that point, though my sore lips stung from a distant remembrance. Kurt and I had managed to stay fairly clothed throughout our earlier displays of passion which really spoke to our high level of self-control.

My still-wet hair clung to Kurt’s chest as I met his intense blue eyes in the dim light of his bedroom. I couldn’t tell if it was morning or night. The Northwest had a strange way of messing with time though that also could have been Kurt’s own influence.

Being next to Kurt in such a raw, intimate way made my stomach ache. I felt vulnerable and exposed. Our relationship had developed quickly from my pining from afar to acting on our mutual feelings of connectedness. Yet something inside of me wriggled around, gnawing at my insides as if warning me of impending doom. I was a natural worrier so the physical reinforcement was quite unwelcome.

Kurt repeated himself more softly, “I remember everything… meeting you after the concert. Staying up late in your apartment and eating junk food…”

I laughed softly, “Yes, very romantic pretzels.” The nagging inside of my head seemed to calm down a bit when he matched my smile.

“Don’t patronize me, Ally.” Kurt smiled crookedly at my sarcastic statement. After the passage of a few seconds, a subtle blush built on his cheeks and he opened his mouth, closed it, and then tried again to speak again without success. It took me an extended moment to realize he was trying to build up some nerve to tell me something.

I squirmed farther away from him and sat up crisscross style on the tangled bedsheets to appear slightly more aloof and professional. I placed my hands on my hips in faux disappointment with him. I adopted a light tone to hide my growing anxiety, “Now, I think I know you well enough to guess when something is on your mind. You can’t hide anything from me. What is it, Mr. Cobain?”

Kurt laughed at my formal title, but quickly fell back into the serious mood of the moment prior. His light blue eyes searched around the cartoon-filled walls as if finding support from his own drawings. After a moment, he sighed at held eye contact with me, “I’m trying to be partially romantic here.”

“And what’s the other part?” I teased as my stomach tingled with anticipation.

“Honest.” He admitted and then paused again, searching for the right words. “Listen… Sometimes I’m really fucking terrible at being indirect so this might be blunt, but I think you deserve to hear all of this.”

I toyed with the hem of the covers and acted unaffected by his words. The earlier feeling of unrest descended back onto me, filling my mind with negative thoughts. This long anticipation was killing me – I just wanted to know what Kurt had to say, whether it be good or bad. I inhaled deeply, “Just tell it to me straight.”

Kurt raked a hand through his tousled, stringy hair. He still seemed hesitant, but pushed through the verbal barrier, “I’m a fucking disaster. There are things about me that you don’t know and don’t deserve to deal with under any circumstance. And I don’t say any of this lightly to you, Ally. I’m telling you because… I’m already in too deep.”

“Too deep?” I asked.

He nodded, still avoiding my eyes in favor of the doodles. “With you.”

There was a poignant silence between us as the gravity of the statement settled between the two of us. I didn’t know how to respond to his mysterious statement or the admission of feelings for me. Both were topics too complicated to tackle at once.

Kurt mistook my contemplation as indecision and added, “I understand if you want to back out right now. I’ll give you an easy out. We can just cut our losses here and not follow any of this anymore.” I still remained silent as he continued to get even wordier, “Just go back to being friends again and try to forget that this —.”

I leaned forward suddenly and kissed him in the middle of his speech. The surprise was evident for Kurt as he took a moment to reciprocate my initiated kiss. After a moment, he added the pressure of his lips and gently cupped my cheek in his palm, rubbing his thumb on the skin there. I pulled back slightly and then decided against that, going in for another kiss. He laughed into the kiss and pulled me closer to him. The added weight caused us to fall backwards onto the pillows. Instead of meeting my lips again, Kurt hugged me tightly against his chest.

Despite how tight he held onto me, I rested my head on his bare chest easily and felt content enough to watch the rain drizzle fall in the light of the streetlight outside. Almost unconsciously, I threaded my fingers with moving them in and out of the spaces between his own fingers. I whispered out into the direction of the rain, “There’s a long way for me to go before I want an out.”

After my words were spoken, I could feel the tension physically leave his body and his posture immediately relaxed. I let the early statement about being a “disaster” fall to the wayside. Kurt was a private; I didn’t want to press any information out of him that Kurt was not ready share. I made a mental not to keep track of his statement for his overall wellbeing. I considered asking Krist or Dave to clear up the ambiguity since the weight of Kurt’s secret seemed to be leaning heavily on his mind and body.

However, the carefree Kurt returned almost immediately after my reply. Even facing the opposite direction, I could feel his smile, “Can I get that in writing?”

“Of course.” I rolled out of his arms and onto the floor. His expression was one of pure shock as I abandoned him on the bed. His reaction was comical and only made me laugh harder. I walked across the room and retrieved something that had caught my eye; a discarded permanent marker. I uncapped the black marker and could immediately smell the strong scent of chemical.

I slowly mounted the bed and straddled Kurt’s waist. He looked at me in awe and raked his hands from my hips to knees. I leaned over him and bypassed his lips to kiss the top of his disheveled mess of blonde hair. I held him down with my left hand and wielded the marker with the other, scrawling something onto his chest with the permanent marker.

Kurt looked down at the black writing over his heart and read upside down, “Out.”

“If I take an out, I’ll always take you.” I said sheepishly, feeling akin to a Hallmark card. I wasn’t used to such an honest relationship with open lines of communication. My past experiences with dating, mostly with Cory, always came from a place of deceit, especially in the Feelings department. This was already a welcome change for me.

Kurt’s only reply was to abruptly change location. Swiftly, he flipped me off of him and I laughed at the playful change of position. Kurt rolled me over on my stomach and played with the shoulder strap of my tank top. With one easy movement, he pulled the fabric down slightly to reveal my bare shoulder blade.

“The marker, Ally.”

I automatically handed it to him, possibly liking my current captive position a little too much. I tried very hard not to continuously replay the sound of how my name came from his lips. Nothing platonic could come from that thinking at the moment. Kurt bent downwards and began to scrawling directly on my shoulder blade. I could tell from the rapid strokes of the marker that he was drawing, not writing words. After a couple of minutes, he kissed my shoulder blade as a signal of the completion of his work. Unfortunately, he released me.

I twisted and turned but could not get a full picture of the image on my shoulder from my angle on the bed. Instead, I jumped from the bed and ran into the bathroom to get a full look at the drawing. My balance was still slightly off and I almost stumbled into the porcelain countertop. However, from the giant mirror, I could study the fresh drawing on my shoulder.

Despite what I had felt during the drawing process, the black marker did form words on my shoulder blade. Emblazoned boldly on my pale skin was the matching word “Out” written in extravagant graffiti-style on my skin. I touched the dry ink and traced some of the detailing, wondering how Kurt had managed to create something so intricate so quickly.

I leaned against the bathroom doorway with my damp hair ticking the exposed skin of the new drawing. Kurt still remained on the bed where I had left him, watching me with bright eyes. I smirked at him and crossed my arms over my chest. “Couples tattoos already? So cliché.”

Despite my joking tone, I held my bare shoulder with a certain reverence I had never experienced before. I felt drawn to Kurt on more than a mere physical level, but with the pull of something near cosmic. Our personalities were similar yet provided the opposing structures which the other needed on a fundamental level. The simple writing on Kurt’s skin and the intricate writing on mine connected us even further in a deep, intellectual level which we both innately understood. If ever I doubted Kurt’s feelings, I soon shoved those negative thoughts far away into back of my mind.

As if mirroring my own thoughts, Kurt traced the outline of my body with his eyes and told me, “Well, if I end up choosing an ‘Out’ then I’ll still be choosing you. So it all sounds pretty reasonable to me.”