It is not true that if a girl starts making out with a guy that it’s going to go any further.

Not that Natasha doesn’t want to go any further. She doubts it, though she is not sure. Either way, the oblivious and hot body on top of her moves slightly, rubbing over her. The mouth attached to the body moves against her mouth, tongue slipping between the lips. She follows him like a dance, eyes closed, letting him lead. Big, meaty hands roam her clothed body, fingers slowly sneaking towards the taboo areas.

She’d told Justin she got a tattoo. He'd asked to see it. She figures that's what the fingers are searching for.

Justin is a football player, and Natasha’s brother always says that high school football players have two things on their mind: football and girls; more specifically, getting girls on their backs like they’d knock over a player on the other team. Natasha enjoys courting this feeling in the players. She draws them out like a hunter trapping prey. Then she drags them back to their den and lets them do as they please.

Justin's lips move from hers, kissing gently but quickly down the slope of her neck, moving to suck at her collarbone, teeth lightly nipping at her, forming a purple bruise on the pale skin. She shivers and thinks he must think its from pleasure.

Petting his hair in false appreciation of his ministrations, Natasha’s eyes stare up blankly at the printed mural above her. Colors swirl in her eyes, leaving her in a blissful state of half awareness.

The colors resonate inside her, somewhere deep, in a memory that she’d tucked away like a picture in an envelope. Slowly the picture is pulled out of the envelope, brought to the forefront of her thoughts where the colors keep swirling.

“Lay down with me,” Daniel had said, and grabbed her hand. She followed him to the floor skeptically but nonetheless took a place right beside him, their hands still tightly held together. "Look up there." He pulled the hand that was in his, up to the sky, making her point with him. The night sky was filled with swirling clouds, stars ablaze with their own luminescence, and a bright crescent moon. "The sky isn't dark and black, without character. It's deep blue, with light poking through the blueness and the blackness. It shines." He waved their arms, showing her everything. "Look at the stars! Burning, bursting through!"
She looked at him. Sometimes, she doubted he was only in high school. Sometimes, it felt like he was up in those stars, swirled into those colors, the brightest rolling star in the sky, high above everyone else, but somehow still holding her hand.

He smiled at her, seemingly dazed by the stars burning in his China blue eyes. The warmth of his gaze filled her and she turned back to the sky, sighing happily.

Now, lying down on her bed, in her cold and empty room, the colors mean nothing but Daniel.

The boy on top of her with his hands gripping her defined hips and his knee between hers says, “You’re so hot,” in his gruff voice. “I need you.”

She contemplates that. Because, he doesn’t need her. At that moment, all he needed was air in his lungs and possibly a glass of water because the dry skin of his lips was scratching her skin. He doesn’t need her but he wants. And his body wants.

Natasha wants to roll him off like a log so she can wrestle herself out of bed but she doesn’t want him to roll him off the bed. Or maybe she does. But there’s another part of her that wants the weight on top of her, pressing on her chest, just for the glorious feeling of another warm body near her. She knows she should just roll him off and tell him he promised her dinner at the diner where they would eat on the hood and look into the night sky.

But, it feels too safe, and too dangerous. His body is like a warm reminder of love and desire, pressing over her, allowing her to escape for just a few minutes into the past abyss of the night sky above her bed.

As his lips move again, now down to the top of her breast, her eye catches his earring and it pierces her like a needle. It's so violent, so normal, so wrong.

Daniel didn’t have an ear piercing.

“Starry, starry night. Paint your palette blue and grey, Look out on a summer's day, With eyes that know the darkness in my soul,” he sang to her, eyes fixed on the side of her face as she watched the night sky. Giggling at him she turned her head to see his dopey grin stretching across his face, glimmering like the stars. He leaned over and kissed her cheek, subtle and chaste, but her stomach twists in a knot of star-hot fire as a red flush moves over her skin. Their eyes locked for a moment. Her eyes granted him silent permission and he leaned over again and kissed her lips. The stars in his eyes, transferred to her, two burning behind her eyes, exploding colors and light. The kiss was fleeting, like the wings of a butterfly settling on her before moving away again. She watched a similar blush stretch across his skin as he pulled away.

Justin moans, his lips traveling back to meet hers. Her lips move skillfully with his but there are no stars, only the painting. He raises himself up slightly “Want to go a bit further, babe?” he whispers excitedly into her lips. She gives a nonverbal yes, barely nodding before he’s back on her like a bear, pawing at her shirt. His paws shove it up, exposing her bra and his lips quickly follow. They descend on any inch of exposed skin, kissing and sucking. One hand slips inside, cupping at her clothed breast, but quickly slide under and fondle her bare breast. Her back arches into his hand but suddenly she begins to squirm, needing to get away from his rough hands.

Daniel’s hands had been soft.

Nothing is the same today. She feels like she can't defile the painting above her with this boy. Every time she'd done this meaningless act, it had been somewhere else; at a party, at their house, in the back of a van, once even in an empty classroom after school. But never in her own space, under her beautiful starry night.

“Let’s get something to eat,” she says softly and quickly, bracing her arms on his shoulders. “I’m starved.” As her savior, her stomach growls.

He's quick to agree.

"Football players also love to eat," her brother had told her.

“I have a bit of a problem,” Justin complains, looking down between them. Until he said it she hadn't noticed. “Can I just…”

“Sure,” she says. Part of her felt like she owed it to him. She should have been better, more prepared, insisted they do this thing in his truck or somewhere else. Anywhere but here.

Justin's body begins to slowly rock against her stiff and lifeless one, groaning and moaning into her exposed neck, occasionally sucking on the skin. Eyes, wide open, she just watches the painting, the black plume of paint to the left side filling stretches up to the night sky, as if it were trying to reach something. She watches it in envy, wishing she could do the same. Just reach up to the night sky and pull down a star.

The painting consumes her as Justin moans, the sound mixing with the black plume, tightening around her, constricting her, filling her lungs like smoke.

His entire weight falls on top of her, suddenly not comforting or wanted anymore. He kisses her and tells her how good she was and asks if she wants him to do something for her. She quickly shakes her head no. All she wants to do is get out of the room, go eat and pretend her painting was still unmarred.

He curls into her side as he regains his energy but she has no time for it. She quickly wrestles her body out from under his and ushers him to the bathroom to clean up, promising more after dinner. With a coy and oblivious smile he kisses her cheek and leaves the room.

Finally able to breathe she pants, falling back on her bed for another moment, trying to regain her composure and some ounce of sexiness and desire, before pushing herself up and fixing her hair and clothes.