Page 177 of Mad Girl

I swallowed, our terrible secret—mine and Michael’s—heavy in my throat.

Voice scratchy soft, you whispered, “Forgive me.”

“For what?” I asked, breathless.

“For being stupid and jealous,” you said, bringing your forehead to mine. “Jealous of all that history you have with him. He knows you in ways I never will. Something else I missed. All that time I could’ve had with you—gone.”

I swept my thumb across your cheek, and you gripped my wrist. “But you’re here with me now. Right where you belong. You can’t ever leave me—even if you wanted to. I won’t allow it.”

You dragged your nose down the bridge of my nose, whispering, “Promise?”

Up close, you smelled amazing. Like cool-mint toothpaste and the bar of soap in your shower—not that I’d ever entered your shower for the sole purpose of smelling your soap or anything. I’d never do anything creepy like that.

“Promise,” I whispered back.

Your nose brushed my cheek, your mouth hovering above mine. So close. Then the softest stroke of your bottom lip against my top lip. And finally…we collided.

God, how do I even describe it? Our very first kiss?

The wonderful weight of your lips on mine? How you didn’t have to coax my mouth open or beg me to respond, because my reaction was immediate? Visceral? A greedy, resounding yes?

How can I possibly describe it, Casey? All that pent-up longing and desperation, flooding out of you and crashing into me?

You were a boy, begging for my forgiveness, and I gave it to you, over and over. You were a boy drowning, begging me to save you, and I did.

How can I ever do that moment justice?

Describe how you cracked me wide open and crawled inside? How you moved through my veins and engulfed me from within? How you ruined me for all others with a single kiss, and I’d never be the same again?

It was everything I craved. Better than I ever—during the course of a thousand daydreams—could’ve imagined. We pulled and grasped at each other, your t-shirt fisted in my hand, the bottom of my cami clenched in yours. We couldn’t get close enough, could we? A kiss that was long overdue, my heart beating faster with each stroke of your tongue against mine.

I’d just caught your bottom lip between my teeth when you pulled away, both of us panting and starved for air. And I wanted to keep kissing you—I tried to again, but you jerked back. “No,” you said huskily. “No, I’m sorry, but we have to stop.”

“Why?”

You shook your head. “We can’t.”

I drew back. “Why?”

Head still shaking—as if maybe you were trying to convince yourself as much as me—you plucked my sweatshirt off the floor and pressed it to my chest. “Go back to your side, Elliot.” When I didn’t move, you said, “Go.” An order.

Angry tears welled as I searched your gaze, waiting for you to take it back.

“Don’t look at me like that,” you said, drawing back farther. “Don’t fucking look at me like that.”

Fisting the sweatshirt to my chest, I returned to my sofa. I kept hoping you’d cross the room, pull me against your chest, and say you were sorry.

But you stayed where you were, letting the tension grow thick between us, letting me lay in the dark all alone, fighting the stupid, humiliating urge to cry.

The next morning, you’d just placed my eggs on the counter when I flung open the fridge and grabbed my water bottle. “I don’t want your eggs. I’ll have a banana.”

“That’s not an acceptable breakfast,” you said.

“Oh, screw your acceptable-breakfast bullshit,” I fired back, grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl, anyway. “I don’t want you making me breakfast anymore. I can fix my own.”

“But I like making it.”

“Don’t care. Don’t want it.”