“Where would you like me to sleep?”
She looks around the bed, notices that she’s covering every square inch, then smiles to herself.
“I just wanted to touch all of it,” she says, sliding her foot off my lap and leaning up against the wooden headboard. “Every little section of where teenage Jeff used to make love to himself while looking at Kelly Kapowski.”
“Are you jealous? Because I can take her down.” I stand and start to walk over to the poster.
“No!”
My fingers slide beneath the corner of the smooth paper. I lift a brow.
“You want her to stay?” I ask.
She nods. “You can’t change a thing in here. It’s like a shrine. To Little Jeff.”
“Are you calling my penis Little Jeff?”
The laughter pops out of her like a cork. “I mean Young Jeff,” she corrects.
I slide back into the bed next to her and pull her alongside of me so that we are laying face to face.
“Good. Because I wouldn’t want to have to spend all day in bed with you proving you wrong about that,” I say, running my hand down her side over her hip.
She makes a soft sound as I lower my lips over hers.
“Jeff,” she whispers into my mouth.
“Hmm?”
I kiss along her chin. Then down her neck. She arches into me and I grab her perfect ass and keep her there.
“I heard you and your mom talking this morning. Is everything ok?”
I let my hand slide back up to a more decent place to rest as I pull back and look down into her eyes.
“The therapy center is bringing in less and less every year. It doesn’t help that Donna pretends to forget to charge some of the families who can’t handle the payments,” I explain.
“Will they have to move? This place—it’s magic. Sammy is so happy here.”
I lift her chin toward me. Two little lines are etched between her brows. I run my thumb over each of them, but they stay. Persistent little worries. “It’ll be ok.”
She shakes her head a little and smiles. “I’m supposed to be comforting you and here you are trying to soothe me. Why are you so—you?”
“Years of therapy?”
She laughs, then realizes there’s truth in my words. There’s no judgment. No surprise really, either. In fact, the set of her lips and small breath she releases tells me that what I’m telling her makes perfect sense. I kiss the tip of her nose.
“I need to tell you something,” she says against my chin, tilting her head back so I can have an unobstructed view of her full mouth.
“I’m listening.”
She puts her hands around my face, wraps her fingers in my hair and pulls me back an inch, away from her, forces me to be still. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes so wide I could dive into them.
“I’m in love with your mom’s meatballs,” she says and I let out the breath stuck in my throat. She smiles. “And also you. I’m in love with you. I tried really hard not to be. But my dumdum heart won’t listen.”
My mouth fills with words. All the words. Too many to sort through as they use my tongue as a trampoline, all bouncing around making chaos. I focus on the way the gold in her eyes starts to swim as she blinks hard and fast. I open my mouth to speak. Close it again. She’s so beautiful. So soft and still so strong. She’s just jumped off a cliff—broken all of her rules—with nothing but the hope that I’ll catch her.
“Your heart is a genius,” I say, and the smile she gives me makes me want to say more. To say everything. There’s too much to tell her. So much she needs to know. I’ll start with the good, because there is so much good. Then tell her the rest. We’ll make it work.
