concrete—just blurry flashes of him moving over me, of this spiraling, back-bending pleasure, and of his own breathy, gravelly noises when he came. “I don’t think I realized I was saying anything coherent.”
“Not all of it was coherent.” He laughs. It turns into a groan. “How are we going to hide this? I’m sure I won’t be able to keep it off my face. Maybe we shouldn’t try to keep it quiet.”
Is he serious? He can’t really think we’ll announce this today, after one day of togetherness? Does he not know our families at all?
But I don’t actually want to think about any of them right now. I wind my arms around his shoulders, and he starts to feel me up. “You know, it might look suspicious from the outside when the curtain starts to wiggle.”
He pulls back in feigned shock. “What are you thinking we’re going to do in here?” Even so, his palm comes over my breast.
I still feel the rhythmic echo of last night all over. In a twist I can only blame on my semi-uptight upbringing, guilt casts a shadow over my elation. Mom has left a lot of her own mother’s prudishness behind, but her biggest conservative holdover is her preference that sex not happen casually. She knows I’m not a virgin, but I’m also sure she wouldn’t love to know I was having sex with Andrew in his parents’ cabin. I don’t regret it, but I don’t want to flaunt it, either.
Andrew sees the shadow fall over my thoughts; his hand slides back down to my waist.
“What’s wrong?”
It’s also more than just the reality that I had sex with Andrew so quickly—which, frankly, is shocking enough. But in the past several hours, I’ve let myself forget that I’m actually on a wild, cosmic trip, that I might be living on a timer. I’ve been in this exact day and hour before and I don’t know what might propel me backward all over again. Do I feel more firmly rooted here than I did last time, when the branch fell on my head? Maybe? I made it through day three without returning to the plane, but I also didn’t make any new declarations or have any heavy realizations yesterday. I was just . . . happy.
And being happy was the only thing I asked for.
So what happens when I’m not happy? What happens when this vacation is over, and Andrew heads back to Denver, and I return to Berkeley, and I’m devastated to be away from him, and jobless and broke? What if I can’t keep up this trajectory? Will I fail this particular test? Will I find myself back at the beginning of the game, tasked with reliving all these moments again and finding a way to keep the balloon in the air eternally?
“Nothing’s wrong,” I say, and hope I wasn’t quiet too long. “Just processing it all.”
“Oh, shit.” His face falls. “We’re moving too fast.” He runs a hand down his face. “We should have taken it slower last night. It was so good, though, and I was just—”
“It wasn’t only you. It was fast,” I admit, and his admission that it was good makes me hot all over again. “But it wasn’t too fast. I’d wanted to do that with you since I knew what sex was.”
A wicked smile pulls up one half of his mouth.
Sobering, I add, “I mean, it’s only too fast if . . .” I swallow. “If it’s just an over-the-holidays thing.”
He pulls back and looks genuinely hurt. “Is that a serious concern?”
“I don’t actually know, because you’re more private than Theo is about these things. But I’m definitely not like that.”
He toys with the strap of my tank top. “I would never do that with you, Mae. That’s not what this is.”
“This is complicated by a lot of things, but let’s start with the fact that our parents are best friends and we live hundreds of miles apart.” I chew my lip. “Sorry. I don’t mean to get all intense.”
“Are you kidding?” He bends at the knee so we’re eye to eye. “The only way to do this is to be open about it. Even if you feel like we didn’t move too fast last night, we definitely went from zero to sixty. Talk to me.”
I guess there’s no point delaying this conversation. “I know you want to tell everyone about us, but are you sure about that?” I slide my hand under the hem of his