“Give it up. They’re not getting in.” Art ducks back into the water, his arms turning windmills as he propels himself away from the edge. “Something weird happens after people turn eighteen, and they can only lay by the pool in their bathing suits. I think they can’t get wet anymore for some reason. Like maybe they’ll melt. I don’t know.”
“It’s because they’re lame!” Delilah sends another wave splashing out to soak her brother.
Without a word, Nate walks toward the deeper end of the in-ground pool, dives in and disappears in a spike of water that sloshes out over the edges. When next he comes up, he flips his sister into the water as he rises, his hair plastered against his face as he starts toward Art threatening to put him under. It isn’t long before it starts to feel like there’s more water outside the pool than in, and since I’m already dripping wet, I jump in and the four of us engage in a game of chicken that makes Nate’s grandmother click her tongue and roll her eyes when she leans outside to see what all the commotion is.
“Nathaniel.” She edges toward the opposite end of the pool, her hands on her hips. “Your mom just called. She’s working overnight tonight, and she wants me to keep Delilah here. Why don’t you get dressed and run over to the house to get some things for her.” Before he has a chance to answer, she adds, “And you can stop at the store on your way back and pick me up a few things for supper.”
“Because the store is totally on the way,” he teases her as he swims toward the ladder. “It’s like seven miles out of the way, Gram.”
She leans out and swats at him with a rolled up crossword puzzle book, grinning as she declares, “What? You had a fly on your shoulder.”
“Aw, does that mean Arthur has to go home?”
“Arthur can stay for supper, if his mother says it’s okay. Tali, too.”
“But not Nate.” Delilah sticks her tongue out at him and he charges toward her, as if he’s going to jump back in and drown her.
“Sorry, Dee, I’ve gotta feed him, too. It’s in my contract as his grandmother. Even if he does eat more than any one human should ever eat.”
“You should see Tali eat, Mrs. Kramer,” Art says.
“You wanna come with?” He gestures toward me with his head, but before I can answer Delilah launches herself at my back, her arms circling around my shoulders to hold me in the water.
“Tali has to stay and play Marco Polo.”
“I guess I’m staying?” I say uncertainly, but he grins and shakes his head.
Slicking his hands through his wet black hair, he winks at me before turning away, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll be back.”
“Bring ice cream!” Delilah screams in my ear.
“There’s a list on the counter.”
“Is there ice cream on it?”
“Put ice cream on the list on the counter.” His grandmother sighs, and drops into one of the lawn chairs to stretch her legs.
“Birthday cake ice cream!”
Nate’s grandmother leans into him and mutters, “Not birthday cake ice cream.”
“I should call Mom and let her know we’re staying for dinner.” I untuck Delilah’s arms from my neck and wade toward the ladder.
“They’re so gross,” I hear Art tell Delilah as I’m climbing out, water dripping all over the sidewalk around me. “You know she’s running in there to kiss him. It’s like neither one of them can breathe unless their lips are touching anymore. How did they even live before they knew each other?”
“It’s a mystery!” Delilah throws up her arms dramatically, and I swipe my towel off the walk, wiping myself down before wrapping it around my body and slipping through the sliding glass doors and into the air conditioned dining room.
I left my phone in the pocket of my jean shorts, so I pad into the spare room where Delilah and I changed, fish it out of my pocket and dial home. Mom sounds relieved that I’m keeping Art out of the house, and as I bend down to tuck my phone back into my pocket, I see Nate standing in the doorway. He takes three steps, coming in behind me as I stand up again, and wraps his arms around me.
“You’re shivering. You should go back outside.”
Leaning into him, I tilt my head into the crook of his neck just as he kisses my temple. “And put some more sunblock on. You’re turning a little pink.”
“So are you.” I touch the redness on his cheeks.
“We’ll have the house to ourselves tonight after we drop Art off. Do you want me to see what’s in the Redbox?”
His hand slides across my belly, holding me closer as his lips flutter along my cheek, over my jaw and into the cool, damp hollow of my stretched neck. His tongue feels warm, flickering out to dance along my cold skin, and my insides tighten and clench with desire. I swear, I’m going to just melt into a puddle right at his feet one of these times, but for the moment I moan softly, “A movie sounds good.”
“I was thinking we could play the new Mortal Kombat…”
“Do you really want me to humiliate you that way? It won’t be pretty.”
Turning me in his arms, he cups my face in his hands and murmurs, “Finish me,” across my lips before drinking deep. The tingle spreads through my body, every inch of me humming as I curl my toes into the carpet and tighten my fingers into the fabric of his shirt. “I’ll be back,” he promises, hesitant to pull away.
“I’ll be here.”
I welcome the heat of the sun as soon as I step back outside, but for a few minutes my hair still feels frigid against my skin. I’ve never been a big fan of air conditioning; I don’t know if it’s because Dad doesn’t believe in it, or what, but being cold has never been high on my list of favorite things, not even on the hottest day of the summer.
I ease into the chair beside Mrs. Kramer and cross one leg over the other, watching the kids toss a beach ball back and forth in some bizarre verbal game that requires them to spout out the biggest word they can possibly think of if the ball touches the water or they lose a point. The old woman beside me grins and shakes her head, muttering something about the creativity of kids these days.
“They have a lot of fun together,” I say, smoothing my fingers along the stitching of my towel. “I’m really glad they’ve become such good friends, and we appreciate you letting us come over to swim. It gets him out of the house.”
“And out of your mother’s hair, I imagine,” she chuckles. “Either way, I’m happy to have him here, and you too.” She touches her elbow to my arm before turning her head over to smile at me. “It’s been good for Nathaniel, having you around this summer. He’s been… different since he met you.” The hesitation in her tone suggests she’s carefully thinking through her words before speaking them. “In a good way. He’s had his mom and me real worried this last year, but over these couple weeks since he met you I’m seeing a side of him I wasn’t sure we’d ever see again. It’s really good to see him smile, hear him laugh.”
Nate and I have spent a lot of time talking. We’ve been getting to know each other slowly, and though I’ve seen the melancholy in his eyes from the start, every time I bring up how sad he is, he laughs and tells me he’s happier than he’s ever been, and it’s all because of me.
It’s really hard for me to compare this broken guy other people keep telling me about to the one who’s with me from the moment I wake up until I fall asleep reading his last text at night. First Gretchen and the other girls at the river lot, now his own grandmother, and while I really want to know what happened to take the spark out of him that my company seems to have rekindled, I still don’t feel right asking him about it, and I feel even stranger asking someone else to elaborate. The weird thing is, everyone seems to think I already know, and I don’t know how to tell them I haven’t got a clue.
The only thing I know for a fact is that he felt like he was dead inside, but since he met me I’ve made him feel alive. I should probably ask him why, but I still hesitate every time I think those words. He’s said a lot of things like that since the night of
our second date, vague but full of promise, but I always hesitate, and then I tell him what a wonderful thing life is. Especially with him in it.
My life, anyway.
“I love to see him smile,” I tell her, turning my attention to the kids in the pool again and allowing the majestic glimmer of sunlight across the rippling water to mesmerize me for a while.
“He’s a good boy,” she groans when she brings herself to her feet and arches her back into a stretch. “Got a real good heart.”
If there’s anything I have seen since we met, it’s the evidence of that goodness of heart, so I grin up at her and say, “He does have a really good heart.”
“You take care of it.” She winks and heads back into the house, leaving me alone outside with Delilah and Arthur, who are sending waves of water in my direction and bellowing for me to rejoin them in the pool.
SEVENTEEN
“No, no, no! Oh my god!” Nate growls, squeezing the controller between his hands and shaking it as if he’s about to throw it across the living room. The loose layers of hair in the front whip back from his face as he throws his head with another roar. “You’re fucking relentless.”
“I did warn you.” I glide my thumb across the buttons, seeking out the right combination, then lean back and watch my avatar tear his to shreds in one of the goriest pixelated displays in the gaming industry. “God, I love that. It’s so disgusting.”
“I’m done,” he announces, surrendering his controller. “Six thousand percent done. You’re impossible to beat.”
“Aw,” I pout. “Do you want me to go easier on you? Maybe I could let you win next time?”
“Never. I will practice my skills, build up the blisters on my thumbs and take you out. You’ll see.” Up on his knees, he edges toward the game console, ejects the disc and swipes a movie from the shelf. Popping it open, he slides it into the player and then jumps up while it’s loading to announce, “I’m making popcorn. You want more iced tea?”
“I’ll get it.”
Following him into the kitchen, I lay our empty glasses on the counter, plunk ice cubes in and yank open the refrigerator to tug out the pitcher of tea. He tosses a bag of popcorn into the microwave, punches in the timer and then slides up behind me, snaking his arms around my waist and making me spill tea when he tickles his facial hair against the sensitive skin of my neck. We laugh, his lips brush across the same spot and make me squirm against him.
“You realize this is the longest we’ve ever been alone? No parents, no little minions, no one else at all. Just you and me.”
“Hmm.” I stretch my head toward my shoulder, exposing more of my neck to the gentle kisses he’s layering across my skin. “It is a rarity, isn’t it? We’ve been here two whole hours, completely by ourselves.”
“And the night’s still young.”
“Whatever will we do with ourselves,” I wonder.
“I can’t even begin to imagine.”
Though I think if his mind goes to the places mine goes, he’s got plenty of things he’s been imagining.
“So, what are we watching?”
“My favorite movie of all time. The fact that I’m sharing this with you… That’s how you know I really like you.”
“Aw, are we watching Dumbo?”
Playfully shoving me forward, he explains, “That’s Waffles’ favorite movie.”
“Then you better go get him, or he’s going to be really upset that we watched it without him.”
“We’re not watching Dumbo,” his voice grows very serious. “Not right now. No, we are watching the greatest cinematic display of all time.”
“The Matrix?”
“Pfft. Wrong.”
“Star Wars?”
“Ooh, so close.”
“The Wrath of Kahn?”
“You’re getting cooler. The last one was much closer.”
“I give up.”
“You can’t give up. Come on, you were literally like right there.”
“Empire Strikes Back?”
“Bingo!” He grabs the tea from my hand to return it to the refrigerator, then turns around to eye me suspiciously. “You’re not going to disappoint me with some nonsense about not being that into the Star Wars movies, are you?”
“Um, did you not see my hair yesterday? With the twisty little Princess Leia buns?”
“I did see it, and it looked very… ahem… sexy, but that style’s often been borrowed without precedence by many great pretenders.”
“I am no pretender, Nathaniel Thorne. I rock the Leia look, and I know exactly where it came from. You’ve met my dad. Do you really think he’d have let me grow up in a house with no original Star Wars trilogy? Now the prequel trilogy…” I blow a raspberry, inspiring the most adorable grin from him before he turns to mop up the spilled tea on the floor and counter.
“See, it’s like we were destined for each other.”
“Totally like that.”
We settle into the corner of the sectional couch, sprawling out with me snuggled up between his legs and the popcorn in my lap. I hear the lowest rumble of thunder through the open windows and watch the gauzy curtains lift against a gust of cool wind as the opening theme for Empire Strikes Back blasts out to meet us, the story crawling along the screen until the letters near the top grow so small you can barely tell they’re letters anymore.
A flash of lightning draws my attention back to the window and I shudder, a chill traipsing across the back of my shoulders as that breeze passes between us.
“Sounds like a big storm’s coming.”
Nate reaches his arm under mine, curling his fingers around a handful of popcorn. “Perfect night to stay in.”
I agree, nestling back against him and trying to focus on a movie I’ve seen enough times that I know every line practically by heart. Every once in a while he feeds a piece of popcorn between my lips, my teeth nibbling at his fingers playfully before I kiss them in apology.
It isn’t long before the curtains are sweeping in further with every push of the wind, and the thunder overhead is so loud I swear I can feel the foundation of the house shaking beneath us, but the storm and the movie on the screen are no longer my focus.
The trail of kisses he leaves on my neck begin at my ear, delving deeper with every breath and making my chest rise and hitch between ticklish delight and building desire. His hand tightens over my stomach, fingers twitching across the top of my jean shorts and sending electric pulses through my body before they dip between denim and skin to caress the sensitive flesh above the lace on my panties.
We have spent the last two weeks learning every way imaginable to kiss each other, our bodies giving in to rhythms that mimic lovemaking with clothes on. Sometimes we wrestle playfully, and whenever he tackles me and crawls in above me to let his hair fall in around my face like a curtain, blue eyes staring through them like a predator about the lunge for prey, I know it’s just a matter of time before I surrender to the need he stirs inside me. Because that need’s inside him too, I feel it straining against his shorts.
This desire has been here from the start. The very first moment our eyes met some part of me wanted him to touch me like this, and now that he is I know with those hands he could mold me into anything he wanted me to be.
The fingers tickling across my stomach rise upward, tracing delicately across my skin until he reaches the underside of my breast. There’s something primal about the way he squeezes my flesh, and the electric pulses his touch inspires ripple through my core. I stretch my legs, toes brushing against the arm of the couch as I curl them and writhe against him.
Every time his lips caress bare skin, my breath quickens, and it isn’t long before I turn between his legs, tilt my face to his, and let him taste the salt and butter on my lips. I rise, lifting a leg across his, and tuck my knee beside the cushions on the couch. Descending slowly to straddle his hips as his half-parted lips find mine and I am lost.
He gasps when I roll my hips forward, droppin
g into his lap. I feel him beneath me, the hard warmth of desire pressing through his jeans, and his hand slides over the curve of my hip, around to rest on my backside to squeeze me closer, tighter against him. The other hand is in my shirt again, fingers searching, fumbling with the hooks on my bra.
There is no reason in my mind. No sense telling me to think this through more carefully. In this moment there is nothing in the world I have ever wanted more than the feel of Nate’s naked skin against mine, the taste of his kiss, the certainty of his hands guiding my hips in slow circles that stir things inside me I have never felt before. When he begins to lift my shirt up over my head, tossing it toward the other end of the couch, I don’t feel self-conscious or afraid as he leans back to take me in with an appreciative smile.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispers, and I steal the sound of it from his mouth, swallowing it deep inside me and letting it empower me.
I reach down, tugging his shirt up and pulling back from him only long enough to draw it away from his body. He stretches his arms until he’s free, then crushes me against his chest. The callouses on his fingertips press into my back, and I tremble when he draws his legs up so the press of him against me is undeniable.
“We should go upstairs.” Trailing his tongue over my lower lip, he draws it teasingly between his teeth, nibbling gently before I dart mine out to invite him into my mouth again.
Leaning back, the flash of the television illuminates his face, his blue eyes searching me for answers, and I nod slowly before backing out of his lap. I don’t bother to snatch my shirt from the couch when he grabs onto my hand and leads me toward the staircase. Thunder clashes dull the sound of the wind howling outside and the electricity flickers as lightning makes the landing at the top of the stairs bright as midday. The power surges, and then all is dark and quiet when the rumble dwindles out and the electricity fails to come back on.
I don’t stumble, or trip up the stairs, and when we reach the landing he guides me effortlessly through the pitch, into his bedroom which smells musky like his body wash with the barest hint of cedar. I’ve only been in his room twice since I met him, but I find my way with ease and before I know it I’m on my back in the middle of his bed and he’s crawling in to join me. Covering my body with his, the stickiness of the humidity means nothing to us. Sometimes the wind trails through the rising curtains, bringing in the earthy scent of fresh rain, but it does little to cool the heat we’re generating.
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