Page 28 of Don’t Be A Stranger

I nod even though I’m not serious, at all. “Are you kink shaming me right now?”

Summer shakes her head and wipes her eyes. I could watch her laugh all night. “Feet are one thing. I feel like that’s normalized now, but what’s with the whipped cream?”

I arch my eyebrow. “Do I really need to explain that one?”

“No, actually, please don’t.”

I bite off a piece of a peach ring just to take a huge gulp of my slushy and stick my tongue out, which only causes me to spill some all over the front of my shirt in the process. Summer doesn’t hesitate to laugh and call me an idiot for ruining a perfectly good shirt. I’ll take looking stupid any day when I get to hear Summer’s laugh. “Okay, it’s your turn.” Summer nudges my shoulder.

“Alright but this better be good because my question was top tier.” I set my slushy down on my bedside table, not needing any more accidents. Summer follows suit.

I start thinking of any ridiculous question she could possibly ask, trying to prepare for my answer, but what she asks is something I wasn’t anticipating.

“Truth or truth?” she asks and I answer pointlessly.

“Is it true—” She hesitates and it’s not that I know the question, I just know that something is about to shift.

How? Well, I’m about to find out, I guess.

She repeats herself. “Is it true…that you don’t think about our kiss?”

I knew that at some point this was coming. If not now then eventually, when we can no longer handle the pressure of pretending that it didn’t happen.

“Isn’t that what we wanted?” I ask because after our kiss, we realized what we had done, but weren’t going to let it ruin anything. That was the idea anyway.

“Let’s just pretend it never happened, okay?”

That’s what Summer said and I agreed because it made sense for us. But just because we agreed to forget about it doesn’t mean that I have. It just means that I’m accepting that Summer and I will never be anything more.

“Well, yeah…” Summer pauses. “But, I just wanted to know if…”

Maybe it’s the liquid courage, although I only allowed myself one shot of whatever Moose snuck into the karaoke club, knowing that I need to get Summer home safely. Or it could be how…gentle and vulnerable she looks right now. I’m honored she feels safe enough to know that she doesn’t have to hide or pretend. Not with me. But because of this trust she puts in me, I feel the need to answer her question truthfully. This is truth or truth after all.

“You want to know what?” My voice drops even though Moose is over at Bethany’s but it feels safer this way. “Do you want me to tell you that I don’t think about it all the time? That I haven’t memorized the feeling of you on my lap, or your skin on mine?”

Summer’s breath catches and her grip on the hem of her dress tightens. It only makes me want to keep going, so I do.

“It would be ridiculous for me to say that I do think about how good you tasted, but yeah, Summer. I do. I think about it and I try not to because I don’t want to ruin anything between us.”

I want Summer so bad that the ache of not being able to have her sits against my chest. The weight crushes my rib cage and the bones there are on the verge of piercing straight through my heart.

“What if we pretended?” Summer suggests, as if I’m supposed to know what that means but she doesn’t give me time to be confused for too long, because she continues breathlessly. “For tonight, pretend that this is the first time we’ve ever met.”

Her voice shakes. “Pretend you don’t know my name or where I’m from. Pretend you don’t know my favorite color, or my parents.”

“Summer…”

“Just show me,” she practically begs. “Pretend I’m a stranger.”

She wants me to pretend that I don’t know her like the back of my hand? As if I haven’t tested the ink of a new pen by writing her name? She wants me to act like we have no history? That I can’t pick her voice out in a crowd?

Strangers?

If that’s what she wants to pretend to be tonight, then fine.

I’ll be a goddamn stranger.

Turning my body, my hands rush to find either side of Summer’s face. Her own hand settles low on my hips and our breathing intertwines. We press our lips to one another hesitantly. My body finally exhales, like it’s been waiting for this for months. Years, I’d argue. Something ignites inside me. The goosebumps forming aren’t from the slushy I spilled all over me, but from the scent of coconut in her hair. I run my fingers through the tips of the silky strands.