then

friday, august 25

eleven years ago

Summer vacation ended on a scorching day in August. Dad, Elliot, and I packed up the car, and then Elliot shuffled conspicuously to the side, waiting for our customary goodbyes.

This was the fourth time we’d done this – the parting of ways after a summer of long afternoons together – but it was by far the hardest. Everything had changed.

As it had always been with us – two steps forward, two steps back – we hadn’t kissed again, and we certainly hadn’t spent any more time grinding on the floor. But there was a new tenderness there. His hand would find mine while we read. I would doze off on his shoulder and wake with his fingers tangled in my hair and his body loose with sleep beside me, my leg thrown over his hip. It felt, finally, like we were together.

Dad seemed to sense it, too, and after closing the hatch to his new Audi wagon with a firm click, he smiled tightly at us and walked back into the house.

“We should talk about it,” Elliot said quietly. He didn’t really have to explain what he meant.

“Okay.”

He took my hand, leading me to the shade between our homes. There we sat, our backs to the side of the house and our hands interlocked, in a patch of grass beneath my dining room windows, out of view of anyone in either house.

“We fooled around,” he whispered. “And… we touch like… we’re more than friends.”

“I know.”

“We talk to each other and look at each other like we’re more than friends, too…” He trailed off and I looked up, catching the tenderness in his expression. “I don’t want you to go home and think I’m doing those things with anyone else.”

My mouth twisted, and I pulled up a long blade of grass. “I don’t want to think of you doing that with anyone else, either.”

“What are we going to do?”

I knew he was asking about more than just the obvious kissing-touching, boyfriend-girlfriend thing. He meant in a bigger sense, when our lives started existing more outside the closet or his roof, and when we had to satisfy ourselves with only one or two weekends a month together.

I traced the lines of the tendons on the back of his left hand. With his right, he ran a finger slowly up and down my leg, from my knee to the midpoint of my thigh.

“What’s your favorite word?” I asked without looking up.

“Ripe,” he answered, no hesitation, his voice low and hoarse.

My blush exploded across my skin, a scorching trail of red that I felt lingering on my cheeks long after he gave up trying to catch my eye.

“Yours?”

I looked up at him, his hazel eyes wide and curious, something wilder barely contained in the dark ring of black around his irises. Beneath the surface, layered under the word Yours? there was something hungrier: teeth on skin, fingernails, the sound of him growling my name. Elliot was sexy. What boy our age used the word ripe?

There was no one else in the world like him.

“Epiphany,” I said quietly.

He licked his lips, smiled. The something beneath the surface grew darker, more insistent. “That’s a good one, too.”

I stared down at his hand, smoothing the back with my thumb, and said, “I think we should stop pretending we aren’t together.”

When I looked back up, his smile grew. “I agree.”

“Good.”

“I’m going to kiss you goodbye,” he said.

I tilted my face to him, saying, “Good,” again as I felt his breath on my mouth, his hand cupping my jaw. My lips parted against his, and like before it seemed natural to suck at his mouth, to let his tongue touch mine, to taste his sounds. His fingers slid into my hair, both hands now cupping my head, mouth urgent.

And why did we do this out here, where we couldn’t lie back and kiss until our mouths were numb and our bodies on fire? Even with this tiny touch, I ached. I wanted him over me again, wanted that last reminder of his weight and the hard presence of his need for me pressing between my legs.

I let out a small, tight gasp and he pulled back, eyes flickering back and forth between mine.

“We’ll take it slow,” he said.

“I don’t want to take it slow.”

“That’s the only way to make sure we do it right.”

I nodded in his cupped hands, and he kissed me one more time. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”