I stopped everything at fourteen.” He hands me the glass, drapes his arm on the back of the couch, and looks me straight in the eye. “Well, not everything.”
Our eyes stay locked as I set the glass down without taking a drink. At the same exact moment, we reach for each other.
He kisses me.
I kiss him.
My blood and my heart are pumping again, so strong and hard that I wonder if my body can hold them. He touches my face, and then his hand wanders south. And that’s it. Yes yes yes. Suddenly I’m the bravest person in the world.
I climb on top of him so that I’m straddling his lap, and I can feel him through his shorts as we kiss harder and harder. And now we’re lying down, me on top of him, and I have to pull away for a moment because it’s too much and my heart is going to burst. We’re both making these heavy breathing sounds as we try to fill our lungs, and I can hear my heart slamming against my chest as if it’s trying to break out of there.
He throws the pillows on the floor to make more room for us. Kisses me again. Wraps his arms around me tight. Rolls me over so that I’m under him, and we somehow manage to stay on the couch. We lock eyes, and then he moves in, and everything is blurred, and his lips are on mine, and the only thing that exists is his mouth and his skin and the fine, tight muscles of his back under my hands.
I kiss him until we go boomeranging into the danger zone, the one barricaded and police-taped and littered with smoke bombs and alarm bells and CAUTION signs. The one that makes my brain go numb and keeps me from thinking about anything else. I ignore the voice in my head that’s shouting, This is actually going to happen. I can feel myself close to the edge, and now the couch is on fire and the entire back of me, head to toe, is burning, but I don’t care. He senses it and I can feel him shift a little, but I won’t let him go. So now we’re both burning up right here on this sofa.
But this time I don’t stop. Not even as he’s telling me he’s STD-free, only safe sex practiced here. Not even as he says, “Are you sure? Remember—four weeks. That’s it. Less than that now.”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes.”
“I’m kidding, but not, Captain. I won’t go any further without your consent.”
This throws me because I don’t remember Shane ever asking me for my blessing. I can say no, and we can stop right here.
“Yes,” I say again. “You have it. As long as I have your consent too.”
And I can tell by the look on his face that this throws him. “Yes,” he says, very low. “God, yes.”
To prove to myself and him that I’m sure, that this is one thousand percent what I want, I pull his shirt off, kiss his neck, his shoulder, his chest. He groans a little and then he’s pulling off my dress, the red-and-white one I bought last July 4. I’m braless, in underwear, and he’s still in his shorts. I reach for these next, and when I can’t get them off him, he helps, and he’s not wearing underwear at all, so he’s completely naked, and now I can really look at him because I think maybe it’s expected or maybe I finally want to know, and there’s this little trail of gold hair on his chest that leads all the way down.
I fight the urge to cover myself with my hands. Instead I let him kiss my breasts, and while I’ve technically gone this far with a boy, right now it feels so much further.
Next my panties come off, all at once, both legs at the same time, and he’s looking at my body, and I resist the urge to grab the blanket on the back of the couch and cover up. I let him look at me, but not for long, because I’m kissing him, and his hands are in what’s left of my hair, and then he’s rolling on his side and fishing around in the pocket of his shorts for something.
He’s getting a condom.
When he rolls back toward me, condom in hand, I go, “Wow. You’re confident.”
“Not confident. Hopeful. Although, hello.” He waves at his body and