“Let’s check again,” he said, and put his hands on my waist and pulled me forward.
Oh god. Sensation. It poured through me, swirled and pooled. It was heat and craving and delight. I wanted to be even closer to him; I wanted every inch of us to be touching. I pulled myself higher and tighter against him, my arms wrapped around his neck, and he made a small noise. I pulled back and stared at him, at those eyes so close they made me dizzy, and I remembered to breathe and dropped my arms and broke away.
My breath came in pants. “Wow.”
“Agreed,” he said, almost laughing.
I was still having trouble breathing. Kissing! Who knew! “This is great,” I told him emphatically. “I am in full favor of doing this forever.”
He laughed. “Good.”
“Wow,who knew?”
He kept grinning at me, his face all crinkled up, his nose looking a little scrunched. “I think a lot of people. I think that’s the whole point, of, say, biological imperative.”
“Wow. Well. I’m really for it.”
“Better than with Isaac?”
I shoved at him. “You’re terrible.”
“Sorry,” he said, his mouth twitching. “That was inappropriate.”
“You’re saying the right words but smirking too much.”
“Better wipe the smirk off my face, then,” he said, and we were kissing again. I hadn’t known you couldfeellike this. I hadn’t known time could disappear, thoughts could slip away, sensation could totally, utterly take over—
We only stopped after hearing a noise terrifyingly like one of his moms walking down the hall. “Should I go?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I don’t want you to think I only came over to make out with you—”
He grinned. “Didn’t you?”
“No! I mean, yes. But I also don’t hate hanging out with you.”
He shrugged, almost managing to look perfectly nonchalant, but he couldn’t quite hide the smile at the corners of his lips. “We can hang out.”
So we hung out. I told him about Sarah Barbanel. “I just want her to have been happy,” I said mournfully. “Even if she lost her lover to the sea, or if they broke up for other reasons. I hope she got to be happy in the rest of her life.”
“Maybe she left behind some writings.”
“Maybe,” I said doubtfully. “I feel like my grandpa would have mentioned if she had, though.”
He bit off a leg of a gingerbread man from the plate Elena had brought us in a not-so-subtle check-in we were luckily prepared for. “An affair with a sailor is dumb though, right?”
“What d’you mean?”
He ate the man’s other leg. “He’s on land for, what, a couple months, before shipping out for years? Not very satisfying.”
I thought about how I’d fallen for Isaac without really knowing him, how spending time with him lessened his appeal. “Maybe it made the affair easier. She could picture him as the poetic ideal of a lover, without spending enough time with him to get irritated.”
“Not real love, then.”
“No. But I think imagination can be almost as powerful.”
My phone pinged. Mom checking if I’d be home for dinner. “I should probably head home.”
“You want a ride?”
“You don’t have to.”
