When he says nothing, I recline onto the pillows and reach for the remote. “Should we see if they have movies here?”
His eyes find mine, and they hold on for a few moments before he replies. “No, I don’t think we should.”
The words wake up every cell in my body, and not a second too soon, because then he’s leaning down, his lips rushing to mine. My thoughts a whirlwind, I hear only one distinctly. I have never been kissed this way before.
There’s urgency to the way he deepens the kiss. I understand why. Our time is limited. He’s racing the days, hours, minutes we have together with every brush of his lips on mine.
It won’t be enough. Feeling something I don’t have the words to name come over me, I reach up with clumsy, hurried hands and pull his shirt over his chest. He has a nice chest. Limber, lithe. It’s like good poetry, perfectly crafted to hold everything it needs and nothing else. I run my hands down the contours, to the ridges where his skin meets his waistline. Freckles cover his neck and shoulders, uncountable. I could study them endlessly. For now, I settle for kissing one I choose randomly on his shoulder, then one on his neck, then one on his jawline. My thoughts fall away, and it’s only me and him, here and now.
I remove my own shirt. I don’t feel bare, because his gaze covers every inch of me. Pulchritudinous, I hear in my head, and it’s in his voice.
He kisses me gently. Then he pulls back.
“I really like you, Juniper,” he says breathlessly.
“I like you too,” I say.
“It scares me sometimes, how much I like you,” he continues. “How much you can change my world. How much you already have.” There’s a tremor in his tone, one I know is not entirely from us being nearly naked. Because it’s the same tremor running through me.
“It scares me too,” I say.
He looks up. “Yeah?” He shifts so we’re lying opposite each other on our sides, our forearms gently touching.
I nod. “It scares me how much I want this, despite everything with Matt. I don’t want to repeat heartache like that. I don’t want to be looking back on what you and I had, unable to move forward.” If this were to continue, how could I not factor this boy into my college decisions? I don’t want him to influence my wide-open future, even unconsciously, but I can’t ignore what lying next to him is doing to me. I’m trapped between a really exciting rock and a really, really attractive hard place. “But this feels special,” I go on. “I don’t want to miss it.”
“Me neither,” he says.
“Why couldn’t we have met earlier? Or later?” I ask. “Why did it have to be now, when we’re on the brink of everything?” The question comes out choked. We both know the end date of this new itinerary we’ve built together. In two days, we’re going to turn around and start driving home. It’s unavoidable. We can’t just wander the country, traipsing from hotel to hotel with our lives on hold forever.
“How about this?” His hand finds the curve of my forearm. I glance up. The beautiful blue of his eyes catches mine and holds on, unwavering. “We only have a few days together,” he says. “Let’s live in the present.”
His words relax the tension in my chest, calming the tremors. He knows exactly what to say even when he’s not using his elaborate vocabulary. “Fitzgerald Holton wanting to live in the present?” I chide gently. “I really am changing you.”
He smiles. “You really are.”
Fitz
WE DIDN’T HAVE sex. I wanted to, and I’m pretty sure Juniper did too. It would have been my first time, which I understand objectively is a big deal, yet with Juniper somehow it feels natural, fated—and completely awesome, of course. Part of me is still hoping for my first time to be with her. But last night, we wordlessly decided we didn’t want sleeping together to complicate the upcoming couple of days.