TEASER TUESDAY- MIRROR IMAGE

This is from my finished MSS MIRROR IMAGE. 

Blurb:  You'd think imagining a handsome stranger in your rear-view mirror, crashing through a guardrail, and careening into murky water would be bad enough. But when the imaginary boy--who gives his name as Jackson--rescues seventeen-year-old Lily Baker, that's just the start of her problems.

After coming home from the hospital, Jackson starts showing up in any and all reflective surfaces — mirrors, puddles, windows, you name it. Lily, fearing others will think she’s crazy, keeps the visions to herself. After all, they’ll just go away if she ignores them, right? Not if Jackson has anything to say about it. And it isn’t long before he convinces her he’s real. Even when Jackson starts talking about strange cults and parallel dimensions, she can’t deny his powerful pull. The more time she spends staring into her mirror, the more she realizes she’s falling in love with a boy her family and friends insist is nothing more than shadows in her mirror and the hallucinations of her healing head injury.

 This is the scene after her parents start realizing something isn't right about Lilly's new boyfriend and wonder why if she likes him so much, why she's constantly locking herself in her room.  In the previous scene she reassures them everything is okay, but they don't believe her.  She doesn't realize that though and so we from there.

Hours later, happy and exhausted I padded into my room a smile on my face.  The whole evening had been a blast and made me realize what a wonderful family I really had.  I never really fought with my parents or my siblings.  We had the occasional row, but nothing serious.  The best part was that they always stood behind me.  No matter what stupid thing I’d done.

            I glanced at the mirror, but it only showed my room, not his.  Damn it.  Where is he?  I really missed him.  As much fun as I had with my family, seeing my parents together had only made me miss Jackson more.

            My radio was still playing and another slow song came on as I pulled out a silk nightie from my drawer.  I hummed along and moved my hips slowly as I removed my shirt and imagined my hands were his. I trailed them along my skin, tracing lightly over my stomach, up my sides and along the curve of my breast, before sighing and pulling the top over my head. 

            “Stop daydreaming, Lily.  It’ll never happen,” I said to myself.

            “What’ll never happen?” Jackson asked, startling me.

            I spun around, and ran to the mirror, too happy to care he had scared me.  “Hi!”

            “Hey, Gorgeous.  Miss me?”

            I gave him a sly smile.  “Nope.”

            His lips curved.  “No? Well, then I guess I didn’t miss you all that much either.”

            “Good, then we can go on not missing each other.”

            He laughed and his eyes made a slow pass down my body and then up again.  His eyes darkened to almost black along the journey and goose bumps rose along my skin when his eyes met mine.  “That was some show you just put on.”

            My face warmed from the heat of my blush.  “You saw that?”

            “Well, not all of it.  Your back was to the mirror.”

            “Oh,” I said, oddly disappointed.  I should be glad he hadn’t seen anything.  Shouldn’t I?

            “But I liked what I did see.” His fingers caressed down the mirror and sketched down it, in almost the same pattern I had used with my own.  My skin tingled as if he were touching me instead of the glass.

            For the first time since we’d started talking, I noticed his shirt was off and he was only in pajama bottoms.  I gave him a saucy grin.  “I like what I see, too.”

            He grinned back and placed his palm on the glass in front of me and waited until I did the same. As one, keeping our palms together we slid down, until we were sitting on the floor in front of each other.

            His eyes roamed over my body again, sending more tingles over my already supercharged body.  My heartbeat accelerated and, from what I could see from the pulse in his neck, matched his.  My breath clogged in my throat when he said, “You are so beautiful, Lily.”

            “Thank you,” I managed after a minute.

He moved so only his fingertips touched the glass, sliding along the area my palm covered.  The surface was so warm already, I couldn't be sure, but I would have sworn I felt a change in the temperature. A slight one, but enough to cause a shiver to run down my arm.

 "Are you cold?" he whispered, his eyes moving from my palm to my face.

 "No."  I raised my other palm to the glass and he copied me, trailing his fingertips down the image of my hand.

 My heart skipped a beat and I had to look down for a moment, to stop the spinning in my head.   When I looked up again, he was watching me.

 "The moonlight is different over there," he said.  "Softer, somehow."  He moved his fingertips to the center of the mirror, brushing the surface in a curve.  "It just barely touches your cheek."

 I covered my cheek with one hand, certain I would find some trace of him on my skin. As it was, I could just barely feel that cheek was warmer than the other. My heartbeat filled my ears in the quiet of my room.  It surprised me he couldn’t hear it.

            “It’s not fair that it gets to touch you, but I can’t.” His voice was husky, making me tremble even more. “Is it strange to be jealous of it?”

Jackson pressed his right hand to the center of the mirror, and I brought mine to meet it.  Palm to palm, we stared at each other.  Without a shirt on, I could see that he was breathing shallowly.  If I tilted my head, I could make it look like my hand covered his heart.

 "It’s the glass that makes it unfair," I whispered.  "How did you get through to save me, and now we're both trapped?"

 "Maybe if we concentrate..." he murmured.

 We matched up our hands once more and stared into each other's eyes.

 "Concentrate," he whispered.

 I nodded, afraid to even blink.  I imagined my hands sinking into the warm surface and finding the heat of his palms on the other side.  I could almost feel it thinning.

 "Close your eyes."  Jackson's voice was just a breath, but I did what he said. How could I not? "Concentrate."

 No more glass, no more glass, I chanted in my head like a prayer.

 The heat under my hands grew--it was hot, almost to the point of pain, but it didn't burn me.  "Do you feel something?" I whispered.

 "Yes."  His voice was tight.  "You feel closer."

 I heard a rustle and opened my eyes to find Jackson up on his knees.  His fingers were still splayed on the glass, fitted to mine, but now his chest was just inches behind them and his mouth was close enough to steam the glass.  I swallowed, hard.  He was so close, but just out of reach.  I mimicked his position, raised up on my knees.  My breath steamed the mirror a few inches below his, and I tilted my face up to close the gap.

He opened his eyes and found me gazing at him.  With a slight tilt of his head, our breath made a perfect match.

My body tingled and strained toward the glass.  "Please," I whispered.

"Please," he echoed, his eyes slipping shut again.

I closed my own and pressed hard into the glass, willing it away.  The heat between our hands crested and for a moment, I could have sworn I felt the touch of flesh, but then as quickly as it came, it was gone.  I gasped and looked into Jackson's eyes.

"Did you feel that?"

"I'm not sure.  I felt...something," he sighed.

I rested my forehead on the glass, while disappointment made me aware of the floor biting into my knees and the chill of the room.  He touched his forehead to mine, mere millimeters of glass keeping us apart.  I leaned back and used one fingertip to scrub away a bit of the condensation from my breath.

            He leaned back as well, but his eyes were still dark, his breaths still uneven.  He straightened his shoulders.  "Does this mean the same thing in your world?" he asked, and drew an X and an O in the steam on his side.

I nodded as an overwhelming sense of relief poured through me.  "Yes."  I huffed a new patch of steam near his markings and drew a heart.

He smiled, and touched his fingertip to mine at the base of the heart.