"Like what?"
"So intense. So..." She searches for the word. "Connected. I felt like we were the same person for a minute there."
"We were." I kiss her softly. "We are."
I finally, reluctantly, pull out of her. We both wince at the sensation, and I look down to see the evidence of what we just did: her thighs slick with our combined releases, a little bit of blood mixed in.
"Shit." I sit up, suddenly aware that we're on her couch and I just took her virginity. "Are you sore? Do you need anything? Water, a towel—"
"Owen." She catches my hand, pulling me back down. "I'm fine. Better than fine."
"But you're bleeding—"
"A little. It's normal." She cups my face again, forcing me to look at her. "Stop panicking. I'm okay. That was perfect."
"It went over whatever I thought it would be," I admit. "So much better than I imagined. And I've imagined it a lot."
She blushes, even after everything we just did. "You have?"
"Ivy, I've been fantasizing about you for so long. But the reality?" I kiss her forehead, her nose, her lips. "The reality is so much better than any fantasy."
"Even though I didn't know what I was doing?"
"Especially because of that. Because you trusted me. Because you let me be your first." I pull her against my chest, holding her close. "You have no idea what that means to me."
We lay there in comfortable silence for a few minutes. I can feel her heartbeat against my ribs, can feel the rise and fall of her breathing gradually slowing to match mine.
"Owen?" she says quietly.
"Yeah?"
"You said something earlier. About how no woman has ever felt like this."
"Because it's true."
"But you've been with other women."
It's not a question, but I answer anyway. "A few. Nothing serious. Nothing that lasted more than a couple of months."
"Why not?"
I consider lying, or deflecting, or giving her some generic answer about bad timing or incompatibility. But we just shared something too intimate for lies.
"Because they weren't you," I say simply. "I tried to make it work with other people. Tried to convince myself that what I felt for you was just some teenage fantasy I needed to get over. But every time I was with someone else, I'd think about you. Compare them to you. Wonder what you were doing, if you were happy, if you ever thought about me."
"I did," she whispers. "Think about you. All the time."
"Yeah?"
"Every time I had a date, which wasn't often, I'd spend the whole time wishing it was you instead. Wishing you'd come back to Blackwater Falls and see me. Really see me." She tilts her headup to look at me. "I used to have this fantasy where you'd show up at the library. You'd walk in during my shift, and I'd be shelving books, and you'd just appear at the end of the aisle and smile at me. And somehow, in the fantasy, I'd be brave enough to talk to you. To tell you how I felt."
My chest aches. "Why didn't you? Reach out, I mean. Call me or text me or—"
"Because I was terrified you wouldn't remember me. Or worse, that you would remember me and not care." She traces patterns on my chest with her finger. "It felt safer to just keep it in my head. To imagine what could have been instead of risking the reality of rejection."
"I would never have rejected you."
"I know that now. But for fifteen years, I didn't." She sighs. "We really were idiots."
