I’m okay with now,I lie.
Eitanand I stand outside the cafe, an hour later, feet inches apart and pointing directly toward each other.
“You were right,” I say, glancing back at the cafe door as everyone finishes pouring out. My phone is glowing with the addition of a new contact:Lucy Diaz. “Ididlike that surprise.”
Eitan’s fingertips drift up to stroke the side of my face. I lean into the touch like a cat. “You’re pretty easy to please.”
“I’m normally very picky, actually.”
“Really,” Eitan says, smiling. He leans infinitesimally closer.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I’m very difficult. Very needy, I’m told.”
“I don’t believe you.” His thumb finds the apple of my cheek, his hand cradling my jaw.
I hold my breath, not daring to move. This isn’t a fantasy, or a delusion, and the reality of it is threatening to short-circuit my brain.
“I like you, Ruby Hirsch.” His head tilts, like he’s trying to admire me from every angle.
I say what any self-respecting girl who’s gone through a breakup that threatened their entire sense of self-worth would: “Why?”
Eitan laughs. “Why wouldn’t I like you? You’re smart. Funny. Gorgeous.”
I want to hear it. It’s like water on cracked lips. “Go on.”
“Absolutely no poker face, adorable when you try to be intimidating.”
“On behalf of all women under five-foot-five, I resent that.”
“Noted.” Eitan leans in further. “Ruby?”
“Hmm?” I can’t stop staring at his lips.
“Can I kiss you?”
This is it. It can’t hurt, I figure, to try. I nod.
Eitan’s lips land on mine. They are softer than they look. Pressing into mine, tasting, testing. It feels like my first kiss at summer camp again, so new and electric. I move my own lips like I’m eating soft-serve ice cream, soaking in his sweetness. The smell of his fir aftershave fills my nose, except from close up I can smell something musky and intoxicating beneath it. Him. His scent, sitting on his skin like a fingerprint.
The breath we share, the constellation of points where we touch, this isnow. This ishere. It’s nebulous and heady and charged. Suddenly, I’m sure that if we were back outside that theater, I would go through that entire almost-kiss debacle again, if it meant getting here.
My back hits brick. His hands hold my face, steady and sure, digging through my hair, driving me mad with sensation. It feels like a hundred years since I’ve been touched like this. Zapped back to life, like Frankenstein’s monster. Desire sizzles over my skin, from my cheeks to my thighs. Iitchto feel more of him. For there to be no clothes between us, just discovery.
The seventeen-year cicadas create a pulsing heartbeat soundtrack for the city night. Seventeen years ago I was twelve, praying for boobs, studyingCosmopolitan. If a boy even looked at me, I broke out in tremors, but I wanted to do everything in that magazine. I imagined being a full grown woman, ravished by a handsome man, playing my life out like a movie in my head.
Now I can see it. The future. Except it’s not in a ranch in Topanga Canyon. It’s takeout dinners while watching a musical on my couch. Saturday morning walks while drinking coffee in Lincoln Park. Dancing with each other, out in the open, at Penelope and Josh’s wedding. My hair growing out and my scars fading until it’s almost as if nothing ever changed in the first place.
We come up for air.
“That was—” Eitan shakes his head. “Worth waiting for.”
I bite my lip. He tracks the movement. Studies it. Leans in to nip at my lip in the same exact spot.
“I thought I was going crazy,” I confess.
His brows furrow, my words catching up with him. “Why?”
My lips mash together, deciding if I should show my hand. “I…I thought you wanted to kiss me, when we were dancing. But then you—” I shake my head, clearing the thought. “It seemed like it didn’t have the same effect on you as it did me.”
