by Gina Ciocca
He laughed. “As long as you’re not afraid I’ll bring my Norwood cooties with me.”
“Cooties,” I snorted. “You’re coming this summer anyway, aren’t you? We can take a boat tour and eat taffy on the beach, like we always do. It’ll be fun.”
“That would be fun. As long as you’re up for it, I’ll do whatever you want.”
My heart skipped with glee. Maybe I could have the best of both worlds after all. I leaned over and smacked a kiss on his cheek, except he moved and it landed on the corner of his mouth. My heart went from skipping to a dead halt.
Crap.
David’s eyes widened. “What was that for?”
I scooted under the blanket and looked up at the sky again, embarrassed at the awkward turn things had taken. “Because I missed you,” I said quietly.
David propped himself up on his arm and leaned over me. Even in the waning light, I saw the intensity in his eyes and I knew I should look away. This couldn’t happen, not when everything was about to change so much.
But it did. In the next instant his lips were on mine. They were a warm, inviting contrast to the cool twilight air, tasting of mint and something else, something totally delicious that I couldn’t put my finger on.
My eyes closed. I should have pushed him away. I should have told him that it was too late for this, that he couldn’t have picked a worse time to take things to the next level, and that, logically, this would never work.
But I didn’t want to be logical. I wanted to keep kissing him.
My fingers caressed the soft skin at the base of his neck as he kissed me and I kissed him back. Part of me wondered why we hadn’t done this before. Another part, another annoying, nagging, growing-louder-by-the-second part, knew it shouldn’t have happened at all.
David pulled back and smiled at me, his thumb moving back and forth at the curve of my waist. My shirt had pulled up when I put my arms around him, and goose bumps erupted over my belly as he stroked my bare skin.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you again forever,” he said.
“Again?” An impish look came over his face. “You son of a bitch!” I laughed. “You’re talking about the time with the taffy! You told me that wasn’t a kiss!”
“Only because you freaked out,” David said with a chuckle. “You looked at me like I’d tased you.”
“Well, what was I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know. Push me down on the rocks and make out with me?”
I curled my fingers into the material of his shirt and yanked him down to me. “Like this?” I kissed him again, savoring the way he tasted and the feel of his hand stroking my rib cage and belly, so tender it was almost reverent. We were both breathless the next time we pulled apart.
“Yeah, like that,” David said. He leaned in and brushed his nose against mine. “Can’t help who you like, remember?”
“Are you saying you like me, David Kerrigan?” I’d meant to sound playful, since it was pretty obvious that he did like me, but it came out as a cross between desperately hopeful and totally panicked.
The smile disappeared from David’s face, and I knew playful had worn out its welcome in this conversation.
“No.” The word was gentle but firm. “I love you, Kelse. I always have.”
Oxygen fled from my lungs like a fugitive prisoner. I no longer remembered how to form words, and the weight of his hung between us like humid summer air.
Part of me had always hoped, had secretly wished it might come to this, though I didn’t fully realize it until he said the words. Another part of me knew he had no right to do this, not now. Not after he’d wasted so much time on the wrong person. How dare he kiss me, and hold me, and look longingly at me through those amazing lashes, and let his warm hand run over my bare belly and—oh, God, this had to stop.
Except he’d said it out loud, and there was no going back. So I did what any confused, terrified girl would do. I burst into tears.
I turned my face into David’s arm, blubbering like an idiot against the sleeve of his T-shirt. His lips pressed against my temple. “What’s wrong?” He trailed kisses down my face, the parts that weren’t smashed up against his arm, anyway, until I felt him breathe a sigh against my earlobe. “I had to tell you,” he whispered.
I jerked back. “You had to tell me now? I’m leaving tomorrow!”
I’m starting over tomorrow.
“I know.” There was so much sadness in his face, in his voice, that I almost forgot to be angry. “But seeing you so sick this year, and then we were fighting, and now you’re leaving . . . I thought . . . it’s now or never.” Half his mouth crooked up. “You know?”
“No! No, I don’t know!” I sobbed. “You could have told me a million different times. Why didn’t you?”
David’s brow puckered into a frown. “Did I have to say it at all? Are you honestly telling me you didn’t know?”
I turned my head, swiping furiously at my tears. “I guess I should’ve figured it out somewhere between Amy Heffernan and Isabel Rose.”
“Kelse.” David’s hand covered my cheek, turning my face back toward him. “They don’t matter to me. They never did.”
“Really? Then which one did you sleep with? Or was it both?”
His face fell. “I—Kelse. C’mon.”
“ ‘Come on’?” I spat. “Now what? I move away, and you’re left with all those stupid girls who throw themselves at you, and you’re going to magically start telling them no? I don’t want a long-distance relationship! I don’t want to complicate things!” And then I said the worst thing I could’ve possibly said. “I don’t want to love you!”
David looked at me like I’d asked him to quit breathing. His eyebrows pulled together, and he traced my bottom lip with his thumb. “But you do . . . don’t you?”
I knew from the way he asked the question that I’d shaken his confidence in the answer. It didn’t help that I let the black, silent space where my response should have gone grow, until it stretched into a gaping hole between us.
Finally, I sat up, fighting off the dizziness that came with the motion. I pushed the blanket off me and slid to the ground.
“I’m not doing this,” I said. “You’re ruining everything.”
I heard twigs crunching beneath my feet before I even realized I’d turned and started to head through the woods toward my house.
“Kelse, wait!” David called.
I turned and saw him struggling to untangle the blanket from his legs. “Leave me alone, David,” I called back. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.” With that, I broke into a run.
For more than a year, those would be the last words I said to him.
Twenty-Five
Rhode Island
Senior Year
Ryan’s fingers crept around my waist seconds before his lips brushed against my jawbone.
“Excited about staying over tonight?” he asked.
I smiled and nodded, attempting to concentrate on the chunks of pumpernickel I was arranging around a bowl of spinach dip. Ryan had decided to throw a Saint Patrick’s Day party, the same way he had last year when his parents took off for New York to see the parade. Remembering how trashed our friends had gotten, I’d insisted on having more than chips and Cheetos to serve with the alcohol. Preferably something that would absorb some of it, and limit the number of pukers and passer-outers.
From the slight slur in Ryan’s words, I had a feeling my plan wasn’t working very well.
I put the last of the bread on the platter and turned to face him, wrapping my arms around his neck.
“Remember what happened last Saint Patrick’s Day?” he said, his dimple popping out with a mischievous smile.
Of course I remembered. Before the party got into full swing, he pulled me into his bedroom and closed the door. He immediately started pacing
back and forth, adjusting and readjusting his baseball cap like it didn’t fit his head anymore.
“Um, Kelse, I sort of have something to tell you,” he said.
He looked so nervous that my first thought was, Oh crap, he’s going to dump me.
My mouth went bone dry. “What’s wrong, Ry?”
He let out a nervous breath, continuing to leave tracks in his carpet. “Okay, so there’s gonna be drinking tonight, and what I have to say, I don’t want it to come out while I’m drunk, because I want you to know I mean it.”
“Mean what?” I squeaked.
Ryan finally stopped pacing. He stood in front of me and took my hands. “I mean, I don’t know, because I’ve never really—but—you’re fun and you’re smart and you’re smoking hot and I think—I think I might . . .” He paused and drew a sharp breath, blowing it out with a rush of words. “IthinkIloveyou.”
A grin big enough to hurt my cheeks split my face. The old me never would’ve considered dating a guy like Ryan. I would’ve dismissed him as an immature, hard-partying jock, and moved on. And I would’ve missed out on so much. Like knowing he had a soft spot for animals, especially cats, and they loved him right back. Or that he still made cards by hand for Mother’s Day every year. And that he could make me feel like the prettiest girl in the world by kissing my hand and smiling at me.
In that moment, watching him gather his nerve to put his heart on the line, giving myself permission to do stupid things felt like the smartest thing I’d ever done.
I wound up losing my virginity to him that night. Then I’d spent the rest of it sitting by his toilet, certain I was about to yak my guts up—not from what we’d done, but from the consumption of a little too much liquid courage. Not exactly the way I’d envisioned my first time, but hey.
I nodded, smiling at the memory as I kissed him. “Can you take it easy tonight? It’s bad enough that I lied to my parents about sleeping at Candy’s. I want you to be coherent when everyone leaves.”
“It’s Saint Patrick’s Day, babe. You’re asking me to curb my Irish pride?”
“You can have pride without a hangover. Paint a shamrock on your face, like I did. See?”
I turned my cheek to give him a better view of the small green-and-gold shamrock Candy had painted just beneath my right eye.
“Cute.” He kissed my forehead. “One more game of beer pong and then I’ll stop, okay?”
“Fair enough.” I kissed him again and grabbed the bread platter. “Can you handle bringing this downstairs?”
“Aren’t you coming?”
“In a minute. I want to clean up the deck a little. Your buddies are slobs.”
Ryan leaned in and kissed me again, the smell of beer mixing with his cinnamon gum. “You were more fun when you drank,” he teased.
I lingered by the door to the basement, listening for thuds or crashes as Ryan made his way down. When I heard Crowley yell, “Food!” I knew he’d made it, and relaxed a little. I headed into the darkened dining room, where I had a view of the beer pong game in progress in the side yard.
When I first moved to Rhode Island, I’d tried to convince myself that I loved these kinds of parties, that I’d missed out by not jumping on the bandwagon sooner. At first, copious amounts of alcohol helped me believe it. But ever since I’d realized booze still held no real appeal for me, the glamour had quickly faded on the rest of it as well. I would’ve been perfectly content to curl up next to Ryan and watch a movie tonight, rather than watch my friends lose their inhibitions and fine motor skills inside big red plastic cups.
Ryan and Crowley ambled over to the beer pong table as David took his turn, sending the little white ball sailing into one of the cups on the other side of the table. Violet flailed and clapped, then threw her arms around his neck and smacked a big kiss on his lips. And another. And then one more for good measure.
As many times as I’d seen them kiss, it still made me gag.
I shuddered and headed back toward the basement door just in time to nearly get hit in the face with it.
“Are you hiding out up here?” Candy said. “I’ve been looking for you. We’re about to take shots.”
I made a face. “No thanks.”
Candy ran her fingers through her hair. “Crowley says if I can down two shots of Hennessy, he’ll let me chase it with his tongue. I told him to dream on.”
“What is with you?” I’d never cared about Candy and Matt’s cat-and-mouse game before, but all of a sudden I felt an overwhelming, inexplicable disgust toward the way she toyed with him. And an equally mysterious inability to keep my mouth shut about it. “Do you think he’s going to wait forever? If you like him, why don’t you just say you like him? Or better yet, act like it?” I snapped.
The second I saw the dumbstruck look on her face, I deflated. “I’m sorry, Can. I don’t know why I said that. I think I need some fresh air. I’m gonna go clean up the deck.”
I started to turn away, but she grabbed my arm. “No, wait. Megabitch attitude aside, you’re right.” A devious smirk slithered across her lips. “I got this. Walk over to the dining room window. I want you to see something.”
A few seconds later I watched her reappear in the side yard and come up behind Crowley, who stood pouring shots into glasses lined up on a bench. She tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned around, she grabbed his face and kissed him full on the lips. At first, he stared dumbly. Then he put his bottle down, grabbed her around the waist, and brought his lips crashing down on hers again.
I had to laugh as drunken shouts and cheers erupted around them. A few seconds later, as I stepped out onto Ryan’s deck, my cell phone chimed with a text message: That was long overdue. Now take your own advice.
I sighed and shoved the phone into the pocket of my green hoodie. One of these days she’d forget this ridiculous idea of David and me as tortured lovers, if I ignored her long enough.
A roll of thunder sounded as I picked up empty and half-empty cups, napkins, gum wrappers, and various other debris. I tried to work faster than the approaching rain, and after a few minutes I had the deck looking fairly presentable. Just as I attempted to hoist a cooler full of half-melted ice over the railing, I heard, “Need some help with that?”
David emerged from the house and started toward me. Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed the other end of the cooler and helped me dump the contents onto the lawn.
“Thanks,” I said.
“What are you doing out here all by yourself?”
“Cleaning up. What are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be canoodling with Violet?” I set the cooler down and tried to walk past him, but he blocked my path.
“ ‘Canoodling,’ ” he repeated with a bleary-eyed grin. Then he brushed a stray piece of hair away from my face. “You and I ‘canoodled’ once. Remember?”
Oh boy. My chest caved in on itself and I had to remind myself to breathe. “Sounds like somebody’s had a few too many.” I patted him on the arm. “Yes, David, I remember. Now go back to the party. Go back to your girlfriend.”
I tried to walk past him again, but he grabbed my wrist. “What if I told you I want you to go to prom with me?”
“What if— What?”
He stepped closer. “What if I want you to go to the prom with me?”
I stared at him, waited for him to laugh, to make fun of me for being so gullible. He didn’t. He stared right back, his expression dead serious, and if he hadn’t smelled like a brewery, I would’ve wondered if he wasn’t so much drunk as insane.
“Then I’d say that’s crazy, because you’re going with Violet and I’m going with Ryan,” I said evenly.
“Kelsey.” He took another step closer to me, leaving barely any space between us. “You never even thought about going to the dance with me, did you?”
“Why would I think about going to the prom wit
h you when we’re both—”
“No, not that dance. The Swirl. It never even crossed your mind to go with me, did it?”
I swallowed, knowing I needed to get the hell out of there. But his fingers were twined loosely around mine and I stood frozen to the spot, his face just inches from mine. “You went with Isabel.”
He leaned in, close enough that our noses nearly touched. “I wanted to go with you.”
And that’s when he tried to kiss me.
“Don’t,” I growled, my voice razor sharp. The corners of his mouth turned down and he pulled back a fraction of an inch. Then, before I could stop him, he leaned in and softly kissed the shamrock on my cheek instead.
My knees buckled. How dare he? How dare he breeze back into my life in his stupid green T-shirt that clung to his ridiculously sexy chest and try to act like the last year had never happened? How dare he come to this party, the party he’d only been invited to because he was dating my friend, and touch me so that I couldn’t remember why I wasn’t supposed to want him to?
“Am I interrupting something?”
Ryan.
That was why.
David turned around and I took a step back, glad his body blocked Ryan’s view of me. I prayed he hadn’t been able to see how close David and I had been two seconds ago.
“No,” David said. “I was helping Kelsey empty out the coolers.”
Ryan spit in the grass and folded his arms across his chest. “Vi’s not feeling so hot. You might want to take her home.”
I stepped out in front of David. “He’s wasted, he’s not taking her anywhere. I’ll drive them home.” I turned to David and in a tone of voice that left no room for argument said, “Come back tomorrow and get your car. You’re not in any shape to drive.”
When we got inside, though, it was obvious Violet wasn’t in any shape to leave. She’d curled up on the couch in the basement and passed out, taking a wobbly swipe at Candy’s head when we tried to shake her. Then she immediately zonked out again.
“She’s done,” Ryan said as he covered her with a blanket. “She can crash here tonight. I’ll take Kerrigan home.”