I lift my hand to his chest.
His t-shirt is soft. His heart is racing under my palm. The thump of it through the cotton is faster than my own, and my chest squeezes so hard I almost can’t breathe, because Blue Golding is supposed to be the calm one in this room. He’s the one who never lets you see anything. He’s the boy who walks into the rink with his game face on and walks out of it with the same face, the boy I’ve watched bury feelings so deep I started towonder if he had them, and his heart is going that fast under my hand. Because of me.
The boy who’s spent all these years pretending he could survive without me is as undone as I am.
My mind’s racing with all the things I want him to do to me, and I’m trembling against him.
I slide my hand up to the back of his neck. His hair is soft at the back. I press my hand flat against the back of his head and pull him closer to me, and he goes. He’s letting me move him. He’s letting me have him. The thought makes me whimper.
I kiss him deeper. Needing more. Needing all of him.
His hand at my waist slides down to my hip. The dress has ridden up at the hem from how we’re sitting on the edge of the bed, and his palm is now half on the silk of the dress and half on the warm fabric of my tights, and even through two layers, I can feel the heat of him, and my hips shift toward him without me telling them to.
He’s holding himself back. I can feel how tense he is in his shoulders, in the set of his jaw against mine, in the way his fingers are pressing too carefully into my hip like he’s afraid.
I don’t want him to hold himself back.
I want all of him.
I push my tongue against his again. He huffs again into my mouth. The huff this time isn’t a laugh.
He pulls back and rests his forehead against mine. He’s breathing through his nose in slow, controlled draws like he’s counting them, like he’s trying to slow his own heart down, and I can feel his whole body fighting itself.
“Mel.”
“Yeah.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. It comes out cracked, low, breathless.
“I need to —”
“Yes.”
“Mel, you don’t even know what I’m —”
“Blue.”
A beat.
“Yes.”
He opens his eyes. He pulls back another half-inch. His hand is still at the back of my neck. The other’s still at my hip. He looks at me with the careful Blue face he gets when he’s worried, and my stomach twists, because I know that face. I’ve watched that face in high school. That’s the face he made when he first kissed me all those years, when he cuddled me. That’s the face of a boy who has secretly loved me for a very long time and is holding back.
I don’t want him to worry.
“Are you sure?”
“Blue.” I search his face. My hands are still shaking against his neck.
“I have to ask, Mel.”
“I’ve been sure…since high school.”
He almost laughs, and the almost-laugh becomes a small, sharp exhale through his nose. He leans his forehead back against mine for half a beat — and in that half-beat I feel him let go of something, feel the tension drain out of his shoulders by a fraction — and then he tilts my chin up with the heel of his hand and he kisses me again.
The kiss this time is the gate opening.
Everything he’s been holding back comes through it at once. His mouth’s harder on mine. His tongue’s hungrier. His hand at the back of my neck slides into my hair and grips, just a little, just enough to make me gasp into his mouth, and his hand at my hip pulls me closer to the edge of the bed. My knees go around his thigh. The dress rides up further. He’s leaning into me, and I’m leaning back into him. I can tell by his body language that the decision’s been made, and it makes me lean into him more.
I can feel him through his sweats against the inside of my thigh.
