Except I was no longer the sixteen-year-old on his first date.
I was older and more experienced. I knew what the feeling in my gut was now. I was attracted to the confident way he talked about the painting and the knowledge he had about art. I found the way he talked about it to be so damn sexy. I wasn’t timid, and I knew what I wanted to do about the attraction I was feeling toward him.
I stepped in front of him and kissed him.
The feelings I had last night came back in force. It hadn’t been tiredness that made every part of my body come alive when our lips touched. It wasn’t the fact that he’d just pulled me out of an overthinking spiral. It was just Noah.
And he kissed me back, the same way he had the night before. His hands wrapped around my waist, and he pulled me in tighter. When he deepened the kiss, my knees went weak. I lost all sense of decorum. My hand slid up his back, anchoring in place in the strands of hair at the base of his neck. I didn’t know how long the kiss lasted. I didn’tcarehow long the kiss lasted. I just didn’t want it to end.
But like all good things, it did.
He pulled away, his lips swollen and wet and so tempting that I dove back in for another kiss. He dodged my attacking lips and put a hand on my chest. He took a step back, putting space between us. “As much as I would love for this to continue, Iamat work.” Right. We were not on a date. He was at work. I had just kissed him like that while he was at work, in a room full of cameras. Whatever boldness I’d felt when my lips crashed into his faded away. “But I think we still need to talk. About last night.”
Right. That was the real reason I was there. Not to kiss him again, but to talk about what had happened the night before.
I looked around the gallery room. An elderly couple walked through the arch and started walking around. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have this conversation with them around. I didn’t want to give someone’s grandmother a heart attack talking about why I didn’t invite him upstairs. “What time do you get off?”
“Five.” He paused. “Meet me at the beach? Our old spot?” He cocked his head to the side, like he was thinking. “Wait, our old spot is still there, right? It hasn’t been wiped off the map in a hurricane or anything?”
“It’s still there,” I assured him. “I would have told you if it was gone.”
And I would have known, because before it had been our spot, it had been mine. It was a place I’d shared with him when we were younger. I’d reclaimed it when I moved back to King’s Bay, going there when I needed to clear my head.
“I can meet you there at 5:30?”
“Perfect.” He looked around the room quickly before he leaned in and gave me a quick peck on the lips. “I should get back, but I’ll see you at 5:30.”
6
Ithadbeenyearssince I’d been to our old spot on the beach.
It was a small outcropping of rocks, a ten-minute walk from the closest parking lot. Even though I’d grown up in King’s Bay, I hadn’t known it existed until Matt introduced it to me. We’d been sixteen, and we’d spent the entire summer flirting over text messages while he visited his mom and repaired his boat. He’d just gotten back to town, and we’d walked down the beach from the marina. He’d told me there was someplace special he wanted to take me.
Going back there now felt natural. It felt like the right place to talk about everything that had happened the night before. I’d even spent the rest of my work shift thinking about what I would say, about what Ineededto say to him. I needed to understand why he didn’t want to go upstairs. Maybe it was just like Moira said, but there was a nagging fear in my head that it was just me. Maybe he just wasn’t interested in going upstairswith me.
After all, he’d freaked out about the hug. But then, he’d initiated the kiss that afternoon. I just didn’t understand, andI wanted to understand. At least I could be certain about one thing: he hadn’t turned me down in an attempt to hurt me. That had never been Matt’s style.
Matt was waiting for me when I got there. He was sitting on the rocks, his long legs extended in front of him, one knee bent. He was leaning back, and even from a distance, I could see the way he’d filled out from the scrawny sixteen-year-old he’d once been. His arms were thicker. It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed that particular change, but the way they were flexing under the weight of his body? Delicious. The sleeves of his faded black tee shirt were practically straining against them.
I’d always loved arms.
“You made it,” he said softly as he turned, noticing me standing there. His voice was barely audible over the sounds of the waves crashing against the rocks.
“I told you I’d be here.” And I was a man of my word. He knew that. I didn’t say I’d do something or be somewhere and then not follow through.
He pushed himself upright and curled his long legs in toward his body, sitting cross legged on the stone. I slid down and sat next to him. Inches separated our knees, and I swear I could feel every single one of them. I just didn’t know if they felt close together or like a vast canyon separating us. It felt like both simultaneously, and I didn’t like the contradiction. I wanted it to choose one way or the other.
An awkward silence settled over us. I had spent so much time figuring out what I needed to say, but now my tongue was heavy and dry in my mouth. I didn’t know how to start, and I wished I’d brought the list with me. If I had, then I would at least have a jumping off point. I would have a carefully scripted and meticulously planned strategy. I still had all of that, I just didn’t remember a single thing that I’d written down.
“One of us should say something,” Matt said slowly, breaking through the awkward silence. I didn’t know how long it had lasted. It had to have been minutes. I knew it wasn’t hours, because there was no way Matt Guthrie could go for hours without talking. Unless that was something that had changed in the years we’d been apart. I very much doubted that.
“Who goes first?” I watched as his shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. Of course it wouldn’t be that simple. If either of us knew how to start the conversation, we wouldn’t be sitting in silence now. “Rock, paper, scissors?” I suggested with a weak laugh.
He cracked up, like I’d made the world’s funniest joke. Truthfully, it was probably just the tension getting to him the same way it was getting to me. At least his laughter was soothing. I felt some of the tension drain from my shoulders.
I could do this.
I could start this conversation.
