I crack a smile, even if I’m a bit peeved at her for repeatedly warning me about Pierce. We’re a lot alike—calm but worried, perky but snarky—but she seems like she’s put together. She was instantly inviting, yes, but it’s more than that. It’s early in our friendship, but I can already tell. We just work.
“Soph,” I say. “I’m your friend. And not temporarily, until someone better comes along.”
The front door creaks, and Pierce takes a step into the night sky. He’s changed into a graphic tee and mesh shorts. He looks at me, and I feel it again. Dry mouth, caught breath. I’m in deep.
“Yeah, yeah. We’ll see about that,” Sophie says with a chuckle.
She pats Pierce on the shoulder as she goes inside. It’s just us.
He comes to me. Kisses me on the neck and looks up at me. I bring my mouth down to his, and we share a light kiss.
“Stay with me tonight,” he says. “In my room.”
Sophie’s words run through my head, over and over, crowding my happy thoughts but leaving room for the doubtful ones to punch through. I want to say no. I want to say yes.
I don’t know.
I want him to be my boyfriend. I want him to fall in love with me. There are too many factors outside my control, and usually that makes me panic. I’m kind of stressed, but I wouldn’t call it panicking. Not yet, at least.
Maybe that’s why I say, “Okay.”
I exchange a long glance with Sophie before Pierce and I go upstairs. There’s so much I didn’t consider before the door shut. Like how I’d feel when he rips off his shirt and throws it on the antique chair in this room. He turns to me. He’s got a slender frame, with a built chest and a faint six-pack. God, those arms.
This is the time when I should say words. I should try to act cool. But I can’t do these things. I gawk at his body, which slowly comes closer to me. His chest hair is sparse, but present, and it trails down, lightly gathering at his stomach before it disappears beneath his shorts.
I’ve thought about this moment for a long time.
He puts an arm around me, and the lingering smell of deodorant and his musk hit me, and I know it’s a feeling, a setting, I’ll never forget. I turn off the light. We kiss, push and pull into each other in the fragile light of stars. He lifts my shirt over my head, and I freeze. He looks into my eyes, and I press my lips to his, while keeping my gut away from his body.
He sits on the bed.
I slowly remove my shoes and socks. “I left my paja—um, shorts downstairs.”
“That’s okay.” He slips his off, revealing tight black boxer briefs.
I pull down my jeans, take my time folding them, and walk to the bed. We get under the covers. I’m on my back. He’s on his side, looking up at me, holding on to me. We kiss again, and I wrap my arm around his back. Our breathing intensifies, and he pulls off me to pant. His hot breath on my neck sends chills.
His hands start at my collarbone and slide lower. His fingers graze my stomach, and I flinch. He pauses. He slides lower and I almost moan. I suck in a breath—if he goes any lower, we’ll have gone too far. I’ll be Colin, who had his first everything with Pierce before he moved on to another.
I don’t want him to stop, but I do.
But I don’t.
He looks at me, his fingers tiptoeing back up my chest.
“You’re panicking.”
“I’m panicking.”
“Right.” His smile pierces through the night. “Should we go back to making out, then?”
EIGHTEEN
The ride back is uneventful. Shane’s working when I get back, so it’s just me in the apartment. The highest highs of my weekend away with Pierce make these lows feel even lower. I open my laptop to check for new jobs, knowing I need to treat it like I did all my homework back at Avery High.
I’m an overachiever by nature. Not in that intensely smart, know-it-all kind of way, but the fear of failure drives me harder than anything. Back in high school, the few times we’d blow off homework to stay out through curfew, I’d always get up at 5:00 a.m. to finish it. Skye would turn papers in a few days late, taking the lower grade. And Megan would calculate her