“An apartment with a fishing hole?”
“I think they’re disconnected.”
“Ooh,” she said. “You have multiple settings.”
He turned to Anna and looked earnestly into her eyes. “I really think she’sworkingon me.”
“I do, too. You get better every day.”
He was still looking in her eyes. His freckles were stark in the sunlight. There was a breeze playing with his peachy hair. He had scruff on his cheeks—that was new. He was smiling at her. He was always smiling at her.
James brushed his thumb along her cheek. “You have an eyelash,” he said, “just … there.”
“Thanks,” she murmured.
“Anna, I …” His hand stayed on her face. It wrapped around her jaw. She could feel his palm. She could feel every finger. She tipped her chin up, hopefully.
James leaned down to kiss her.
She’d imagined this a lot. Kissing. Boys and girls. Men and women. Never their faces—they didn’t have faces. Or names.
James’s lips were soft. His mouth was wet. Someone had given him teeth and a tongue and a soft way of sighing.
Anna let herself touch his bristly cheek.
When he pulled away, she looked at her lap—afraid of his reaction, that he might regret it. But he was laughing breathily. He lifted her face up by the chin. He was smiling.
“That was my first kiss,” Anna said.
“Mine, too.”
James was made for kissing.
They kissed on the porch swing.
In the wheat fields.
Lying on top of her bed, on her homemade quilt.
He was soft and gentle, and he never stopped touching her—his hands on her face, in her hair, on her back.
He smiled while he kissed. He laughed.
“I shouldn’t,” she said one afternoon between kisses.
James was holding her face with his thumb on her chin. “Shouldn’t what?”
“Kiss you,” she said. “You’re meant for someone else.”
He lowered his eyebrows, thinking. He was leaning on one elbow. His shirt had come unbuttoned an extra button. “You said that we won’t remember what happens here.”
“We won’t, I don’t think. That doesn’t seem practical.”
He rubbed her chin with his thumb. “I don’t know what’s right,” he said. “But I know that I’m acting in character.”
Anna smiled. She felt it all the way up to her hairline.
James kissed her cheek. “If she didn’t want me to kiss you, she shouldn’t have made you so kissable.”
