“Easy for everyone else.” My vision goes blurry. I squeeze my eyes shut because, God, this is the worst time to cry. I need to speak with confidence. I need to appear strong.
He frees my hands so he can press his palms to the column of my neck. I suspect he can feel my pulse strumming beneath my skin, the rapidbeat-beat-beatof desperation. “I don’t care about everyone else,” he says, and I believe him. “We should spend our time with people who make us happy.Youmake me happy. I want to see you as often as possible, every day.”
“But—”
“But what? Elise, I don’t want to be miserable before it’s necessary.”
I blink up at him, covering his hands with mine. I inch forward, until I can see the variations of copper and bronze and gold swirling in his eyes. “When you go, it’ll be like you’ve disappeared. The chances of us seeing each other again… I just… Ican’t.”
He draws back, making a hopeless sound deep in his throat, a combined half sigh, half groan, as if he’s steeling himself to whatever course he’s decided to follow. And then his eyes harden, like the blunt points I’ve been trying to force into his head finally fit, pegs into holes.
He gets it.
Panic washes over me and, all at once, I don’t want him to get it. I want him to fight, for me, for us. I’m frantic to backpedal. “Mati—”
“Wait,” he says, holding up his hand. “It’s selfish of me to ask for your time when I cannot promise you anything in return. My life isn’t my own, and I cannot run from my responsibilities. If you want me to keep my distance, I will. If you think walking away now is right, go, but know you’re taking a piece of me with you.”
I’m grasping at fragments of what he’s said, turning them over, trying to understand.I cannot promise you anything… I cannot run from my responsibilities.I want his promises, all of them. I want to be his responsibility, and I want him to be mine. I want to be the reason he wakes up, the reason he smiles, the reason heis.
He’s not selfish; I am.
But then there are his other words; words better than empty promises, because they sing the truth.You’re taking a piece of me with you.I understand these words. Ifeelthese words. It’s as if he mined them from the quarry of my heart.
“I don’t want to walk away,” I whisper.
His eyes widen. “No?”
I shake my head. “And can we just… not talk about this again?”
He laughs, his whole body unwinding. “You brought it up.”
“Because I can’t stop thinking about how hard it’s going to be later.”
“Do you know what I can’t stop thinking about?”
“What?”
“How good it isnow.”
He leans in and, at the same time, so do I. We meet, and we kiss, and there is nothing careful or neat or polite about it—it’s the opposite of every kiss we’ve shared since the night we spent at the park. He winds my ponytail around one hand and grips my hip with the other, using his height to angle me back until I’m leaning against the arm of the sofa. I open my mouth to his; he tastes like bliss, like daydreams, likehome. Winding my arms around his neck, I tug his hat off so I can play in his thick hair. I ease back further, taking him with me, until he’s stretched over me, supporting his weight on his elbows. I spend asecond fretting about his ribs, his comfort, but he seems pretty okay, actually, so I settle beneath him. His kisses become deeper, and mine become greedier, and it’s entirely possible I will never get enough of this. Of him.
We kiss for eternities, and oh God, it’s perfect. The sort of perfect I’m not likely to forget. The sort of perfect no other boy will live up to in a lifetime of kisses.
When he pulls back, he gives me a glazed-over smile. “I could get lost, kissing you.”
My lips feel full, swollen, and my chin is raw from the sandpaper stubble on his. Not that I care, because the burn is a reminder, a feeling ofalivenessthat’s been elusive for too many years. His hips are nestled against my hips, his feet tangled with my feet. He’s got one hand linked with mine, and the fingers of his other twist and twirl the locks of hair that have escaped my ponytail. He feathers his lips over my throat, my cheeks, my eyelids, kisses like dandelion fluff. He was right…
Thisisgood.
Time passes and the light shifts, casting new shadows on the walls. I remember, with urgency, his parents. I check the time and find it’s growing late.
No, no, no.I’m not sure when we’ll get another afternoon like this.
“I should go,” I say to save him the awkwardness of booting me from the cottage.
He pulls away from where he’s nuzzling my neck. “Already?”
“Unless you want your parents to find me here… with you… like this.”
