Manhattan

by Steiner, Kandi

Then his other hand found my chin, and he tilted it up, tilted his own down, and gently, his lips found mine.

  We both exhaled a shaky breath at the contact, and he squeezed my hand in his, pulling me closer. Just that little squeeze, that centimeter of movement had my heart doubling its pace, thumping so hard in my chest I knew Mikey had to be able to hear it.

  I reached for him, fisting my hands in his t-shirt as I deepened the kiss. A tingling sensation trickled through me when our tongues touched, and when a soft groan came from his throat, I felt muscles in a place only I knew about tighten and pulse.

  I broke the kiss, pressing my forehead to his as a long breath left my lips. “Does kissing always feel like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like…” I shook my head, wetting my lips. “Like if you kiss me any longer, I’m going to explode?”

  He smirked, sitting back and brushing my hair from in front of my face. His eyes searched mine as he played with the strands. “Was I your first kiss?”

  I blushed. “I mean, if you don’t count Zachary Hoggins holding his lips on mine and counting to five behind the middle school when we were twelve, then yeah.”

  “Zachary Hoggins?” Mikey grimaced. “You can do better.”

  “Hey, he wanted to kiss me and I didn’t exactly have any other suitors at the time, okay?”

  Mikey smiled, tugging on my hair before he leaned in and kissed me again, making all the butterflies in my stomach take flight once more.

  “Does it feel weird to you?” I asked when he pulled away.

  “Kissing you?”

  I nodded.

  His mouth pulled to one side, his eyes on the sky before they found me again. “Strangely, not at all. I guess now that you mention it, it probably should, huh? But it doesn’t. It feels… I don’t know. It feels right. It feels natural.” Then he smirked. “It feels like I want to do it all the damn time.”

  He leaned in, kissing me all over my face as I laughed and shoved him away.

  “Does it feel weird to you?”

  I shrugged. “Not weird, but…” I blew out a breath, trying to figure out how to explain. “It’s just, I wanted you to kiss me for so long, and now you just… do it. So, it’s kind of shocking. Exciting, but surreal, if that makes sense. It surprises me, I guess.”

  My stomach flipped and floundered with every word I said, like it couldn’t believe I was being so honest about something so embarrassing. But it was Mikey. I didn’t know how to lie to him, how to hide from him.

  Especially ever since the only secret I ever did keep from him had been exposed.

  He held me on top of that water tower, one hand playing with my hair while the other drew circles on the hand I had in his lap. His brows were furrowed as he watched me, his eyes flicking back and forth between my own.

  “How long have you wanted to be more than friends, Kylie?”

  I swallowed — or rather, attempted to swallow. “For a while.”

  “How long?”

  I shrugged, but didn’t look away. “I think the first time I really realized it was the summer after eighth grade,” I whispered. “But… I don’t know. I think I always kind of felt it. In some way.”

  He shook his head, frowning more like what I was saying was impossible. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  I laughed. “Because it’s us, Mikey. We’re friends, and I didn’t want to ruin that.” I paused. “And, honestly, because I just thought…”

  I stopped, my heart clenching hard in my chest, as if it was warning me to stop while I was ahead.

  “You thought what?”

  I forced a breath. “I thought there was no way it wouldn’t happen. Eventually. When the time was right.” I shrugged. “We were already best friends. I was just waiting for you to realize I was a girl. You know,” I said, leaning forward with a cocked eyebrow. “With boobs.”

  He swallowed, eyes falling to where my t-shirt gaped a little now, giving him a peek at the aforementioned cleavage. “Yeah… really not sure how I missed those.”

  I chuckled, sitting upright again.

  “We held hands all the time, and cuddled,” I pointed out. “I guess I just thought things would kind of slowly progress… when the timing was right. But, when you and Bailey started hanging out…” My eyes fell to my lap. “Well, we all know that story.”

  His hands went still for a moment, but only a short breath before he groaned, shaking his head. “God, and I asked you to help me plan our dates and write her notes and pick out stupid flowers for her and shit.”

  “Yep,” I confirmed, the word ending on a pop.

  He tucked my hair behind my ear, waiting for me to look at him. “I’m sorry I never saw.”

  I shrugged. “It’s okay. It is me, after all.” I chuckled. “Not like there’s much to look at.”

  He frowned, shaking his head and framing my face in his hands. He held me there for a long time, just looking at me, his eyes tracing every inch of my face — from my forehead to my nose to my chin and cheeks and eyes and back around.

  “What are you doing, weirdo?” I asked, lifting a brow.

  “Making up for lost time.”

  My heart squeezed, those damn butterflies in a tizzy again, and his eyes stopped their roaming when they found mine.

  “For the record, there is a lot to look at.” He swallowed. “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.”

  I wanted to roll my eyes, but I fought against it, though I couldn’t fight hard enough to stop my knee-jerk reaction of word vomit that came next. “What about Bailey?”

  He blinked, but his eyes never left mine. “What about her?”

  Emotion surged through me like a tidal wave, so fierce and fast that I couldn’t stop the tears that pricked my eyes. They weren’t sad, and they weren’t strong enough to fall — just powerful enough to let me know they were there, that I was feeling something.

  That it was real.

  Mikey leaned in, kissing me for a long moment before he pulled back and narrowed his eyes at something behind me. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “What?” I asked, turning to look as he popped up and walked over to whatever it was he saw.

  He bent down, picked something up, and then turned to me with a mischievous grin, holding a can in his hand.

  “Spray paint,” he said, shaking it.

  I stood, walking over to inspect it with him. “I bet it doesn’t work anymore.”

  “No?” he asked, still shaking it. The little ball inside it clicked and clacked. “Sounds like you’re wrong about that one.” He scanned the tower behind me. “But, only one real way to find out.”

  He brushed past me, popping the lid off the can and bending down toward the tower.

  “Wait!” I hissed, bending down with him and snapping my hand down on his wrist. “You can’t do that. It’s vandalism.”

  “Kylie, look around us,” he deadpanned. “It’s tradition.”

  I swallowed, biting my lip as I read over the names and years and doodles.

  “What are you going to write?” I asked.

  He smirked, taking my question as permission and shaking the can once more before he started to spray.

  I choked against the fumes, waving them away and standing to put more distance between myself and the cloud. Mikey’s rounded back shielded whatever he was drawing from my view, but I watched the muscles of it as he moved. And when he stood, he turned, grinning at me before he stepped aside.

  It was our names.

  Ky + Mikey, it read — surrounded by a lopsided heart.

  I rolled my lips between my teeth, shaking my head before I looked back at him. “You’re insane.”

  “We left our mark,” he said, dropping the can to the metal floor. “Now, let’s make out.”

  I laughed, shoving against him when he advanced on me, but I didn’t really try to keep him away. And when his lips found mine, and he wrapped his arms snug around me, I melted into him, into the moment, int
o the fact that our names were written together and framed in a heart on our town’s water tower.

  It was silly.

  It was cliché and cheesy.

  But it was something almost every girl in this town wanted — and I wasn’t too proud to say I was one of them.

  The longer he kissed me, the more my mind raced with questions I was too afraid to ask. What did it mean that he wrote our names on that tower? What did it mean that he put them in a little heart for all the town to see?

  Those names were permanent — at least, until someone who worked for the city climbed up there to paint over everything. And judging by the years that still showed, my guess was that didn’t happen very often.

  It was something a couple would do.

  Something a boyfriend and girlfriend would do.

  My fists twisted in his shirt, pulling him closer, kissing him harder as if that could somehow stop my mind from overheating. And by some miracle, when he opened his mouth and slipped his tongue inside mine, caressing it with a roll that made my nipples harden under my sports bra, it worked.

  Every other thought was gone, and all I could focus on was the way it felt to have his hands on me, his lips kissing my lips, his tongue touching my tongue.

  Maybe we didn’t need to talk right now.

  Maybe we didn’t need a stupid title.

  Maybe, at least for now, those names on the water tower were enough.

  Michael

  The summer blazed by like a comet, and my entire universe was wrapped up in Kylie.

  After the night at the water tower, we were as inseparable as we had been before I met Bailey. Every day after work, we met up at her house or mine, sometimes spending the night playing video games or watching movies, other times, checking off more items on her list of adventures.

  And what I realized on top of that tower stuck with me long after I left it.

  All summer long, I’d been all about me. My broken heart. My move to New York. Me me me. And all the while, Kylie had given herself over, put all her focus into making me happy — even when it seemed impossible to do.

  It was my turn to return the favor.

  We went fishing at the lake, even though neither of us knew how to rig up a pole, and Kylie nearly cried when I had to shove a hook through the worm we had for bait. All it took was one time of actually hooking a fish for her to really cry and for us to throw in the towel on fishing.

  We drove around town late at night, eating ice cream from Blondie’s and talking for hours. We sat by the fire in my backyard, me playing my new guitar while Kylie read or planned out her gap year road trip — one I was making her plan, because one way or another, I was determined to get her to actually go on it.

  There were Saturdays at the nursing home pool and Sundays holding hands in the back of the church. There were Friday nights where I tried to teach her more line dances in her living room while her father laughed and laughed, and Sunday evenings drinking sweet tea on the porch with my mom, listening to her talk about how different our little town was thirty years ago.

  And yet how much it was the same.

  We spent the Fourth of July lighting fireworks down by the lake with her family and mine, and as the summer days got hotter and longer, so did our kissing. Every time I touched her, it felt like a fire scorching me from the inside out, and when I was brave enough to feel under her shirt or slide my hand a little farther up the inside of her shorts, the moans she gave me were the sweetest reward.

  When I was at work, I texted her the entire time and thought about how I couldn’t wait to see her after. When I wasn’t at work, I was with her — period.

  And all thoughts of New York were put on the back burner.

  I knew I needed to be looking for apartments, for a job, for a moving truck. I needed to figure out what I was taking, what I would ask Mom to hold onto for me, what I would sell or donate. It was already July, and I didn’t have anything more in my plan to leave than I did when I announced it at my graduation dinner.

  And maybe part of that was because I knew I could separate the junk in my room, figure out what to keep and what to sell and what to toss in the trash.

  But I couldn’t do that so easily with Kylie.

  Any time I did think about it, anxiety would creep in, hard and cold, and I’d immediately shake free from it before it could wrap me in its grasp.

  I knew I was avoiding — not just what would happen when I left, but talking about what we were and weren’t, too.

  Because I didn’t know.

  And I didn’t want to fixate on it when I could spend time with her, instead.

  On Sunday, July eleventh — one week after Independence Day — Kylie and I were wrapped up in a flannel sleeping bag in the treehouse my father had built for my me and my brothers when we were kids. Each corner of it was decorated based on our personalities, on what we loved. Logan’s was filled with books, Noah’s with sailboats and constellations, Jordan’s with football legends, and mine, with music.

  Of course, at that point in the night, my guitar had been abandoned next to my shelf of records and the old record player Dad had brought out there for me, because I was too busy putting my hands on Kylie to play a damn chord, let alone a song.

  We were both breathless when I finally pulled away from her kiss, trying not to think about the way her hand was tucked into the band of my basketball shorts, and mine was wrapped around her, holding her small, perfect little ass. As much as I wanted to devour her, I had a more pressing subject to discuss.

  “I need you to do something for me,” I said, running my fingertip down the bridge of her nose before I tapped her swollen lips.

  “What’s that?” she asked, her eyes heavy and sated, cheeks rosy pink.

  “Tomorrow after work, come to my place.”

  “Like always?”

  “And bring your dad.”

  She frowned, watching me like I was insane. “Okay… why?”

  “My mom wants to cook dinner for you guys,” I lied — well, partially lied. “I know it’s last-minute notice, but do you think you can make it happen?”

  “Well, if I don’t cook or bring home takeout from the diner, Dad doesn’t eat. So, I think he’ll do whatever I say when it comes to dinner.”

  “Good,” I said, smiling and lowering my lips to hers again to end the conversation. I didn’t want her asking too many questions and spoiling the surprise.

  “Why do I feel like you’re trying to distract me from whatever it is you have planned tomorrow?” she asked, smiling against my lips as I played with the hem of her tank top under the sleeping bag.

  I slipped that hand under the fabric, splaying it flat on her stomach before I inched my fingers up, brushing the bottom of her bra. “Is it working?”

  She let out a sharp gasp of an exhale and nodded, no longer able to speak.

  I smiled wider, tracing the lacy edge of her bra with my fingertips, but not going even a little bit under the cups. She squirmed and moaned, and the way she ground her pelvis against my thigh had me rock hard under my shorts.

  I groaned, adjusting myself before I pulled away and wrapped her in my arms to halt the kissing. “You’re going to be the death of me, you know that?”

  “You’re the one who keeps stopping,” she panted.

  I smirked, kissing her forehead and running my fingertips through her hair. “We have time,” I told her.

  The truth was I knew without her having to say it that I would be her first — for anything I chose to do with her. If I was her first kiss, then I already knew I was the first to put my hand up her shirt, the first to grind against her while making out, and — if I made the move — I’d be the first to touch her, the first to finger her, the first to kiss her below the belt.

  The first to be inside her.

  My erection throbbed at the thought, and I inhaled a long, cleansing breath and closed my eyes, counting to ten in my head. As much as my teenage hormones protested against it, I knew I needed to wa
it, to slowly ease into all of that.

  I couldn’t go back in time and notice Kylie sooner. I couldn’t take away all the pain I’d put her through while she watched me date Bailey. I couldn’t go back and save myself for her, too.

  But I could take it slow, and make sure every time I did touch her, she knew that I treated it like the goddamn privilege that it was.

  And that’s what I intended to do.

  “So, you going to tell me what you really have planned for tomorrow?” she asked after a moment. “Or are we sticking with the Mom wants to make you dinner story?”

  I kissed her hair. “Patience, baby. Patience.”

  She froze in my arms, and then leaned up, balancing on one elbow with the flannel sleeping bag falling off her shoulder as she looked at me. “You just called me baby.”

  I smiled, brushing her hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear. “I did. Is that okay?”

  The smile that bloomed on her face was the one I love the most, the one that reached all the way up to her eyes, crinkling the edges of those nutmeg irises I loved to stare at so much.

  She nodded, leaning down to kiss me. I thought it would be a peck, but she held it there, kissing me over and over until I opened my mouth and let her sweep her tongue inside. As soon as she did, the erection that I’d finally got to calm down sprang to life again.

  “Woman,” I groaned, grabbing her arms in my hands and holding her from grinding on me.

  “Come on,” she pleaded, nipping at my bottom lip. “It’s just kissing. We can kiss, right?”

  I sighed, shaking my head at her playful, I’m-so-innocent smile as she lowered her mouth to mine again. But I couldn’t say no — not with her pouting and looking at me with those big eyes of hers.

  So we kissed.

  And we kissed.

  And we kissed some more.

  Until our lips were chapped and the night crawled slowly into early morning, I kissed that girl.

  And I wondered if I’d ever be able to stop.

  Kylie

  All summer long, I’d been flying.

  I’d lived in the clouds, in a place where my days were filled with volunteering and my nights were filled with kissing my best friend. I’d lost myself in weekends wrapped up together under blankets and surrendered all my thoughts to daydreams of Michael Becker.