onto the street. I can see through the tinted windows that it’s almost dawn. We’ve been dancing all night.
And we’re alone now.
The air is charged with … what’s about to happen.
How far will I go?
I already know how far he’ll go. As far as it’s possible to go. He gives off that vibe: that he has no limits.
“How many times has Gigi Hayes been kissed?” he asks in a lazy drawl. Like he can guess that I’m not very experienced.
In a saner moment, I’d never admit it. But I’m a little drunk. Okay, more than a little. I never realized alcohol is basically a truth serum and I find myself admitting things I’ve never told anyone except my sisters. “Three times. Once on a middle school bus trip, for a dare. Once in a movie theatre. And once at a party.” I fully realize how pathetic it sounds, laid out like that in all its unimpressive glory. They were hardly even kisses at all. Just a press of the lips in a cautious, curious game that was never intended to go further.
“You mean to tell me you’ve only been kissed three times in your whole life? And one of those times was in middle school?”
“I’m not exactly proud of it. But it’s not entirely my fault. After my Daddy died, Momma did everything she could think of to keep the four of us from getting into trouble. She said each of us had a twinkle in our eye, was how she put it, and no father to look out for us. She wasn’t ready to wave his sawed-off shotgun around at every boy who happened to stop by. And there were a lot of them. So she spent the last of the insurance money and sent us all to a strict Catholic boarding school. During high school, we didn’t even get much of a summer vacation, just a few days or a long weekend here and there. The rest of the time they kept us busy with community service, extra study and prayer.”
Vaughn mutters a low oath under his breath, maybe in sympathy. “What did you pray for?”
“The usual stuff. The health and happiness of the people I love. World peace. Eternal salvation. That kind of thing.”
“Shit.” Like he can’t relate. “What even is eternal salvation?”
“It means you go to heaven instead of hell.”
He fills our glasses. “What if hell is more fun?”
“I guess you’ll find out.”
Vaughn laughs. Damn him. I love the sound of it.
“Champagne for breakfast?”
“It’s the best time to drink champagne. Besides, I’d better enjoy myself if hell’s all I’ve got to look forward to.”
“I guess maybe you should.”
He finds the topic funny, but I sense there’s an edge to his amusement. “Can’t I repent in my final hours and have everything forgiven?” He asks the question earnestly, almost insistently. I find myself wondering why.
“Well … technically, yes.”
“Good.” But he’s not finished with his inquisition. “What about after high school? You said you’re twenty. So you’ve had two years since then. You never met a guy between now and then that you wanted to kiss?”
“I’ve been on dates but they never go anywhere. Because of my rule.”
He pins me with an alert glance. “What rule?”
“I made a pact with myself that I’d never have sex with someone I don’t love. I don’t even want to kiss anyone I couldn’t love because … well, what’s the point of kissing someone if you’re not going to … you know.”
The look in his eyes is intense. But his voice is soft. “You’re right. There isn’t one.”
“That’s what I thought too.”
“Unless you just really want to kiss that person.” As he says this, he lightly brushes his thumb along my cheekbone.
His touch, like always, makes my heart beat faster, surging with two conflicting emotions. The very beginnings of something I can clearly identify as love. And the very beginnings of something else that’s just as easy to identify. Heartbreak. “I never did.”
“Then why did you agree to go out to dinner with the dweeb?”
“Oh, you mean Dylan? Well, because … just today, in fact, I was starting to think that maybe my rule is stupid, and pointless. What if I never find anyone I could love? I mean, I haven’t yet, so maybe I just … won’t. And what if I go my whole life never knowing what it feels like to be with someone just because my standards are too high? I realized that maybe I need to lower them.