“Come,” Michelle said, framed in the doorway, a hand outstretched, beckoning. “Come in.”

Ryan stood on the front steps, hesitating. Two weeks had passed, and for the first time since they’d met, he was on the verge of entering Michelle’s house.

He’d seen it before, having walked her home a dozen times, a two-story house perched on the hill just off the ridge, where it provided an unobstructed view of the small lake below. Beyond that, Ryan could see Vandeveld, where his father had his store, and in the distance the tall buildings of the university district, slightly obscured by a smoggy haze.

But he’d never been inside, never met her parents, never seen where she slept and ate and watched TV. It was, he felt, a major step, especially now, since he knew that her parents were not at home. If he went inside — and he still wasn’t certain he would, even though he knew not doing so would leave him looking foolish — they would be alone together. They would have the entire house to themselves; they would be hidden away from the world, free to do as they pleased.

Finally Michelle turned away from him and slipped inside, leaving the front door open, and he felt his free will melt away. Now he would have to go in, at least for a moment, to explain why he couldn’t stay.

He stepped cautiously into the foyer. To his immediate left, jackets were hung from a rack on the wall; below them was a low bench, beneath which several pairs of shoes, in various sizes and styles, had been tucked away. A staircase in front of him led to a landing halfway to the upper floor, where it made a ninety-degree turn. On his right, a long living room began where the foyer ended, stretching back to a large dining room. Everything was tidy and in its place; there was no clutter, no blemishes to indicate the wear and tear you would expect in a house inhabited by a family of three.

“Boo!” Michelle yelled, jumping out from behind the front door and flinging it shut.

Ryan jumped, his eyelids fluttering; and then he laughed, waiting for Michelle to join him. But she didn’t laugh; instead she just watched with that muted look of amusement that had become so familiar to him. She knew that she had instigated a moment of fun, yet she seemed unable to fully participate in it.

“You want something to drink?” she asked, and he nodded.

The kitchen was at the back of the house, off the dining room. Ryan stood in the center of it as Michelle leaned into the refrigerator examining its contents. As usual he was working hard to respect her beauty, refusing to take advantage of the view her prone position provided him. Instead his eyes drifted around the kitchen, the clean surface of its counter, the unmarred wood of its cupboards, the sparkling interior of its stainless steel sink.

There had so far been no moments of physical intimacy between them. They had not kissed. In fact, they had barely even touched, and then only by accident, a hand momentarily on her shoulder when she headed in the wrong direction, the brief brush of his forearm against hers when, walking side by side, they moved too closely to one another. It was as if they were operating under a tacit agreement to maintain a certain distance from one another.

Ryan didn’t know what other boys in his position would’ve done by now, and if any of it seemed strange to Michelle she wasn’t letting on. But the gap between them, and how to bridge it, was something that occupied Ryan’s mind more and more.

When Michelle again stood upright and turned to face him, she was holding two bottle of orange Fanta, the liquid inside almost fluorescent. She handed one to him; he took it.

“I hope you like it,” she said. “It’s all we’ve got.”

“I hope I like it too,” Ryan said.

Ryan had no idea what he’d meant, but Michelle smiled as if she understood — or as if she didn’t care — and closed the refrigerator. Then she turned and walked away from him toward the living room. Before she disappeared around the corner, he allowed himself to admire her from behind. She was wearing a pink T-shirt and faded blue jeans, and between them at the waist a horizontal strip of flesh was exposed. A wave of yearning forced him to look away.

In the living room he found her sitting on a large leather sofa, her legs crossed underneath her, her bottle of Fanta on the coffee table. He sat next to her, leaving a good two feet between them, and set his bottle down beside hers.

“So,” she said, smiling confidently, or happily, or uncaringly. With Michelle it was never clear. “It’s not so bad, is it?”

“The Fanta?” Ryan said. “I haven’t had any yet.”

Together they glanced at his unopened bottle.

“I’m talking about my house,” she said. “You didn’t want to come in. What were you worried about?”

“The usual,” Ryan said. “Your parents aren’t home, and I have a reputation to protect.”

It was either an innocent joke or a gentle way to broach the subject that had been on his mind. Ryan would let Michelle choose which way to take it. After all, it was her house, and it was she who had brought him there.

Nodding, she picked up her Fanta and opened it. She waited a moment for it to stop fizzing and took a drink.

“So you’re known as a boy who doesn’t enter a girl’s house unless her parents are home,” she said.

“Known as?” Ryan repeated. “Well, I’m not sure it’s the first thing people think of when they think of me.”

“No, it’s not,” Michelle said. “I know it’s not.”

Ryan understood. Two weeks had passed, and he was no longer the lone shaper of her opinion of him. She’d heard things, talked to other students about him. He wondered who she’d talked to and what they’d said. He also wondered if he really wanted to know.

For something to do, he picked up his bottle of Fanta and opened it. It fizzed loudly, its contents bubbling up to the top, threatening to overflow. He put his lips to the top and sucked in a mouthful of foam. Then he took a drink.

“You like it?”

“It’s great,” Ryan said, in a neutral tone foreshadowing sarcasm. “It’s orange, but not orange. The orange we call orange even though it’s not orange.”

“Like watermelon candy.”

“Like watermelon candy,” Ryan confirmed. Then, “What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t really taste like watermelon,” Michelle explained. “But we call it watermelon anyway. It’s watermelon, but not watermelon.”

Ryan put his Fanta down.

“Kiss me,” Michelle said.

“What?”

“Kiss me,” she repeated. “I want a kiss that’s orange but not orange.”

So this was it. She had brought him here to feed him Fanta and ask him to kiss her. Although he had considered such a possibility, he had done nothing to prepare himself for it, had not for one second contemplated what exactly he would do if the moment arrived. He took her in, her slate blue eyes, her rose-colored skin, her golden blond hair pulled back away from her face. He could do it now. He had been asked to. He could kiss one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen.

He leaned forward; their lips met.

The front door opened; her father walked in.

Quickly pulling away from Michelle, blood rushing to his face, guilt-laced fear in his eyes, Ryan turned toward the foyer to take in the man he’d heard so much about but had not yet met.

From what Michelle had told him, he had been expecting a tall man, and one with more bulk. A physically intimidating presence. But the man who stood there was on the short side, and his simple black suit was hanging from a frame that was lean and wiry. His short-cropped hair was as black as his suit and receded far back from his temples, coming forward into a sharp point at the top of his forehead. His eyes were small and dark, black points that scrutinized Ryan and Michelle as he pulled off his suit jacket.

Ryan’s stomach tightened: slung over the man’s left shoulder was a gun belt; in its holster a pistol hung heavily. Ryan stared at the weapon, having never seen one in real life before. He had no way of knowing it, but the next time he saw this gun, it would be pointed at someone’s head.

“Michelle,” her father said as he pulled off his gun belt and hung it and his jacket on the rack beside the front door.

“Hi, Dad,” Michelle said, and Ryan saw that she was also blushing. The two of them looked guilty as hell.

Michelle’s father moved across the living room, a hand already extended. Ryan stood and extended his own hand; they shook.

“Tom Bishop.”

“Ryan Sheffield.”

“Nice to meet you,” Tom Bishop said. “Michelle’s told us a lot about you.”

Ryan nodded and sat.

“How’s your mother?” Tom asked Michelle.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“You haven’t checked on her?”

She shook her head.

“She called the office,” Tom said. “That’s why I’m home early. Why don’t you go upstairs and see how she’s doing.”

As Michelle stood and moved toward the staircase, Ryan took a moment to process this information. Michelle’s mother was upstairs? They hadn’t been alone after all?

Tom walked back to the kitchen, and Ryan heard the refrigerator door open and the clinking of glass. When he returned, Tom was holding a bottle of beer. He lowered himself into an easy chair at one end of the coffee table.

“So,” he said. “Ryan.”

“Yes,” was all Ryan could think to say.

“I don’t suppose you and Michelle spend a lot of time here after school. While I’m at work.”

“No, not at all,” Ryan said, a bit too emphatically. “I usually walk Michelle home, but this is the first time I’ve been inside.”

“I see.” Tom took a long drink from his beer. “Probably not the last time, though. Am I right?”

“That’s up to you,” Ryan said with a shrug. Then he quickly added, “Of course it’s up to you.”

Tom nodded, appearing to contemplate Ryan’s words. His eyes were on something to Ryan’s left.

“You’ll want coasters for those,” Tom said.

Suddenly Ryan realized what Tom had been looking at: the two bottles of Fanta on the coffee table. At the base of each was a ring of condensation.

Looking around, he spotted a stack of coasters in a holder on a small table at the end of the sofa. He grabbed two and placed them on the coffee table, then he set the Fantas on top of them. After taking a moment to wipe away the rings of wetness on the tabletop, he remembered Tom’s beer. Quickly he grabbed a third coaster and set it down in front of Michelle’s father.

“Thanks,” Tom said. “Michelle knows better, but she forgets.” He looked at Ryan meaningfully. “You’ve noticed, I’m sure.”

“Noticed?” Ryan repeated. “That she forgets?”

Tom set his beer down and leaned back. He took a deep breath, then exhaled heavily.

“It’s not so much that she forgets,” he said. “She just can’t keep it in her head, because she doesn’t empathize. She can’t put herself in my shoes and feel how it makes me feel.”

Of course Ryan knew what Tom was talking about. The laugh that didn’t quite commit, the polite smile that emerged when others around her were outright amused, the humor so dry it was hard to tell she’d meant to be funny. He’d ascribed various meanings to these traits, even declared them signs of her confidence and unselfconsciousness. But was it really just a failure to connect?

“She’s not always right there with you,” Tom went on. “the way you might think she is. She’s learned to cover it up, and of course it helps that she’s pretty and smart. People cut her a lot of slack. I’m telling you this so you’ll know, because she seems to like you a lot, and I want you to know how to take care of her.”

“I understand,” Ryan said, although he was still processing what he’d just learned, retracing his relationship with Michelle, redefining their interactions.

“And I’ll tell you something else,” Tom said, leaning forward almost ominously, his head lowered, his eyes tilted up at Ryan. “That child isn’t just my daughter. The way I love her, it’s more than that. She’s one of my best friends.”

Ryan swallowed hard. Tom’s profession of love had the tone of a threat.

“We have a very special relationship,” Tom said. “A very special relationship. So if you have any questions, or if something happens you don’t understand, you should come to me.”

Tom reached out and slapped Ryan’s thigh; the boy flinched.

“Are you hitting my friend?” Michelle asked as she stepped back into the living room, a smile on her face, one eyebrow cocked.

“How’s your mother?” Tom asked as he picked up his beer and stood.

“She’s fine,” Michelle said, adding, “You know.”

She walked around her father’s chair and past Ryan’s knees, retaking her seat on the sofa.

“She doesn’t remember calling you,” she said.

Hearing this, Tom nodded wearily.

“I’ll go up and see how she’s doing,” he said. “It was nice talking to you, Ryan. Let’s have you over for dinner sometime.”

“Sure,” Ryan said, trying to hide his relief that Michelle had returned and that her father was leaving. He watched as Tom turned away and disappeared through the foyer, listened to his footsteps as he ascended the stairs.

“So,” Michelle said, “that’s my dad.”

“He has a gun,” Ryan said, hoping to prompt an explanation.

“Yeah,” was all Michelle said in response.

“And your mom?” Ryan asked, watching Michelle as she put her bottle of Fanta to her lips and took a drink.

“She’s having a bad day,” Michelle said simply, setting her bottle down several inches from the coaster it had been on.

Ryan reached for his own bottle, but Michelle stopped him with a hand on his wrist.

“No,” she said. “We have some time.”

He looked up at her, drew his eyebrows together, confused.

“Kiss me,” she said. “Kiss me now.”