“Good,” she said, resting the cup on her thigh. “Daddy?”
“Hmm?” he hummed, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“Can we watch the pony movie?”
He smiled. “Sure,” he said, standing from his spot and turning toward the television, and just as Lauren went to stand, Erin reached over and clasped her hand.
“You can be the pink pony, and I’ll be the purple one,” she said.
Lauren smiled softly at her before she glanced over at the front door, at her salvation. With a resigned sigh, she sat back against the couch, rubbing the back of Erin’s hand with her thumb.
After hitting play, Michael returned to the couch, sitting on the other side of Erin, and she laid down across them, putting her head in her father’s lap and her legs across the top of Lauren’s thighs. Michael glanced down at her and smiled before he looked over at Lauren.
“I’m sorry,” he mouthed.
She had no idea if he was referring to the fact that she was forced to stay and watch the movie, or what had just transpired between them, but she nodded.
“It’s okay,” she mouthed back, and he smiled softly before turning his attention back to the movie.
For the next hour, they watched the pony movie, and eventually Lauren found herself starting to nod. The first few times, her eyes would snap open, and she’d shift on the couch, trying to refocus on the cartoon movie about magical flying horses. But at some point, that method must have stopped working, because the next thing she knew, she felt something softly brushing against her cheek.
She opened her eyes slowly, blinking against her blurred vision. The television was off, and the room was almost completely dark now.
“Hey,” Michael whispered, brushing his hand against her cheek.
“Michael?” she rasped, sitting up slightly. She could just make out his features in the darkness as her eyes finally adjusted; he was leaning over her, his face mere inches from hers. “What time is it?”
“Midnight,” he said, his hand resting on her cheek. “We all fell asleep.”
“Erin?” she asked.
“She’s in her bed. I think it’s over,” he said softly, his thumb brushing the side of her face as he spoke.
Lauren nodded, her eyes falling closed for a second before she opened them again.
She felt his breath against her face as he spoke. “Take my bed tonight. I’ll sleep in Erin’s room with her.”
Lauren shook her head gently. “I’ll be awake in a second.”
“Please,” he said softly. “I don’t want you driving like this. It’s the least I could do.”
Lauren knew she should protest. She knew she had no business staying in this house. But she was so tired, and the idea of driving home right now seemed so daunting, and his bed was so close, just a few feet away…
With a sigh, she felt herself nod, and she could just make out the smile on Michael’s lips.
“Thank you again. For everything.”
Before she could even register what he was doing, Michael leaned toward her, pressing his lips against her cheek. The corner of his mouth touched the corner of hers, and Lauren closed her eyes, her body feeling heavy with sleep and surrender.
His lips left her skin slowly, but he made no move to pull away from her; their faces were so close now that Lauren could no longer decipher his features in the dimness.
And then, against her will, she turned slightly, closing her eyes and pressing her cheek against his.
His hand was still on her face, and she felt his fingers twitch ever so slightly as he exhaled a slow, shaky breath, the heat of it dancing over her ear and down her neck.
With one last stroke of his thumb against her cheek, he pulled back suddenly. “Good night, Lauren,” he said, his voice somewhat strained, and he turned and walked down the hall toward Erin’s room.
Lauren sat on the couch for a minute after he’d left her, her eyes closed and her breathing slow, but this time, it had nothing to do with being tired. When she finally regained her composure, she stood and walked down the hall to Michael’s bedroom.
By the time she climbed into his bed, she was wide awake, and she lay there in the darkness, blinking up at his ceiling. There was a strange twinge low in her chest, and she wondered briefly if perhaps she’d caught Erin’s virus.
With a sigh, she rolled onto her side and buried her face into his pillow.
It smelled like his bed in high school.
Lauren closed her eyes, remembering all the afternoons she’d spent lying in his bed, doing homework, talking, watching movies, the time he spent the entire afternoon trying to teach her how to play video games, to no avail. She remembered the night she had too much to drink at a party, and Michael had taken her home with him so she wouldn’t get in trouble, tucking her into his bed and sleeping next to her above the covers.
The twinge in her chest surfaced again, and she knew it had nothing to do with Erin’s virus. It was her body telling her what she had known on some level all along, despite the weeks of insistence otherwise.
She still had feelings for Michael. After all these years, after everything he’d done, she still had feelings for him.
Admitting that to herself instantly filled her with equal parts pain and relief, and she turned her face further into his pillow, inhaling deeply.
And then she forced herself to remember the night she wouldn’t allow herself to think about for a long time afterward, and almost immediately, she felt the pillow grow damp beneath her cheek.
She pressed her lips together as all the emotions she expected to feel when she first saw him came crashing down on her with a vengeance: the humiliation, the betrayal, the confusion, the mind-numbing pain.
And yet all she wanted at that moment was for Michael to be in that bed with her, comforting her, reassuring her, wiping the memory of what had happened out of her mind.
She pulled one of his pillows into her body and stifled a sob, wishing more than anything that it was him she was holding. The need pushed against her chest so forcefully that it bordered on painful.
She needed the anger to come soon, the bitterness that briefly surged in her earlier that evening. She wanted to feel it again; it was the only thing that could prevent her from doing something stupid.
But the resentment never came. Or if it did, it didn’t have a chance of winning out over the other things she was feeling for him at that moment.
And so she laid there, completely wrapped in the memories and the scent of him, in the intimacy of being in his bed, until finally by some miracle, she fell into the merciful refuge of sleep.
The next morning Lauren awoke with a strange feeling. It was some combination of foreboding and acceptance, like she knew something bad had just happened, but she also knew getting upset over it wouldn’t change anything.
She walked out to the living room to see Erin sitting on the couch, watching some show about a talking blue dog. She smiled and waved at Lauren before she said, “Shh, Daddy’s sleeping.”
Lauren smiled and mouthed okay to her as she made a big production of tiptoeing into the living room, and Erin giggled.
“You hungry yet?” she asked, and Erin nodded.
“Okay, be right back,” she said.
She went back into Michael’s kitchen and made Erin some toast with a thin layer of jelly, and she brought it out to her with another small cup of Pedialyte.
“Little bites and little sips, okay? Just until your belly is back to normal.”
Erin nodded and thanked her, turning her eyes back to the television show as she took a small bite of the toast.
“I’m gonna get my stuff and head back home now. But Daddy’s here, and I’ll see you on Monday.”
“Okay,” she said around her mouthful of toast, her eyes still on the TV, and Lauren leaned over and kissed the top of her head before she turned back toward Michael’s room.
After grabbing her things, she stopped in the doorway to Erin’s bedroom. Michael w
as sprawled out across the floor, lying on a pink comforter half the size of his body and covered with another that left the majority of his legs exposed. She pressed her lips together when she recognized the ponies on his blanket as the ones from the movie last night.
Her eyes moved to his face, his expression completely serene in slumber. His dark lashes fanned out beneath his eyes, and there was a shadow of stubble on his jaw, contrasting the full, pink lips that were slightly parted with his soft breathing.
Lauren walked carefully into the room, pulling the blanket off of Erin’s bed and covering his legs. And then she closed her eyes and took a long, steadying breath before she turned to walk out of the room.
She said good-bye to Erin and got in her car, not even bothering to turn the radio on as she made her way back home.
Crossing lines. It had been what started their friendship in the first place all those years ago, and then what propelled it into something substantial. What built it up and made it strong.
And finally, what ended up destroying it.
Lauren knew she had just done it again. Her original plan had been to remain strictly professional with him, at least until they could talk about everything that had happened. But yesterday, when she had offered to go to his house and care for his sick child, that plan had gone out the window.
It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, crossing back into a friendship with him. But Jenn, damn her, had been right. She wasn’t starting on square one with Michael. Lauren had let herself go an inch last night, and suddenly she was right back where she knew she couldn’t be.
She needed to get back.
The “keeping it professional” ship had sailed; she recognized that. Instead, she needed to focus all her efforts on holding the line now, on keeping it strictly friendship. She couldn’t allow herself to slip beyond that again, the way she had last night.
“You can do this. You can totally do this. Just…get back on the other side of the line and stay there,” she told herself as she turned onto the interstate.
But Lauren had been crossing lines with Michael for as long as she could remember.
And she knew from experience that once she did, it was virtually impossible to go back.
August 2002
“I feel like we’re in that movie Dazed and Confused,” Jenn said. “Party at the Moon Tower,” she added in her best attempt at a Southern drawl, and Lauren laughed and shook her head.
“First of all, that’s the worst impression of Matthew McConaughey I’ve ever heard.” She dodged Jenn’s slap as she continued, “Second of all, there’s no Moon Tower to be seen. Or water tower. Or even a lonely power line. We are just standing around in the middle of the woods, drinking like a bunch of idiots.”
Jenn shrugged, taking a sip from her blue plastic cup. “Well, this is what happens when nobody’s parents will let them throw an ‘End of the Summer’ party at their house. They force us into the wilderness to do our celebrating. Kinda stupid if you ask me. At least if we were in someone’s house, they could supervise us.”
Lauren looked around before taking a sip from her own cup. “There’s got to be like eighty drunk teenagers here, Jenn. Nobody was gonna be able to supervise this, house or not.”
“Oh well,” Jenn said, plopping down on an old tree trunk as she finished her drink. “At least the cops won’t be breaking it up out here. It’s a perfect night to be outside anyway.” She tilted her head back and sighed. “I love summer nights.”
“Aaand, now we’re in the movie Grease,” Lauren said as she sat down next to her, and Jenn laughed, nudging her with her shoulder.
“Ah, there’s my two favorite girls!”
Lauren and Jenn both turned to see Michael hopping over the fallen tree they were sitting on, reaching over to muss Jenn’s hair in the process, and she pulled away from him, casting an irritated look in his direction.
“Idiot,” she muttered, bringing her hand up to straighten her hair, and Michael smirked, his eyes on her as he took a sip from his cup.
“So, Jenn,” he said once he had swallowed, sitting on the other side of Lauren. “You think you might ever get over your deal with me?”
“That depends,” she said. “You think you might ever stop being a complete asshole?”
“Guys,” Lauren scolded firmly, rolling her eyes. Few things entertained Michael more than getting a rise out of Jenn, and no matter how many times Lauren asked her to ignore him, she would always take the bait. Every time. Lauren had grown extremely tired of their little routine after two years.
“You know what your problem is?” Michael said, ignoring Lauren’s reprimand and leaning toward Jenn. “You need to loosen up. Learn how to have a little fun.”
“Please,” Jenn said, her expression disinterested as she looked away from him. “Like I need lessons from you on how to have a good time.”
Lauren watched the smirk lift Michael’s mouth, and she knew this conversation was going nowhere good.
“Okay then,” Michael said, motioning with his head toward a group of boys standing around just a few feet away. “In that case, I think you should go up to Dennis Kinley and make out with him.”
“Michael,” Lauren said reproachfully just as Jenn shook her head.
“You’re such a child,” she sighed, and Michael laughed.
“Hey, you said you didn’t need lessons on how to have fun, right? It’s a party. Dennis seems like a cool kid. It’s just a kiss after all. No big deal.”
Jenn turned toward Michael, her brow quirked. “Yeah? Well then in that case, I think you should kiss Lauren.”
Instantly Lauren whipped her head toward her friend, her expression incredulous.
She could have killed her.
Despite the fact that Michael and Lauren had been friends for almost two years, and he had never even come close to making a move on her, Jenn was insistent there was more to their friendship than what the two of them were acknowledging.
But none of her attempts to prove it had ever been as blatant as this.
Lauren turned toward Michael, ready to tell him to ignore Jenn, but before she could speak, Michael silenced her, leaning down with ease as he brought his mouth to hers.
Instantly she froze, her lips pressed tightly together, too stunned to react or respond in any way to what was happening.
But then his lips parted gently and he leaned into her, taking her bottom lip between his with a tenderness even Lauren would never have given him credit for. Instinctively, she felt the tension melt away from her mouth as she tentatively kissed him back.
His mouth opened one more time, and hers responded automatically, their lips brushing against each other’s. Again, he captured her lip between his, holding it for a second before gently releasing it. He lifted his chin, brushing his full bottom lip over her top one before he finally pulled away from her.
It took her a few seconds to open her eyes, and when she did, she saw Michael looking over her head, smiling triumphantly at Jenn.
She couldn’t breathe.
It felt like something had ignited inside of her. Her chest was burning, sending little heated sparks down through her stomach and out through her fingertips.
With an embarrassingly sharp intake of breath, she finally started breathing again, but neither Jenn nor Michael seemed to notice. Lauren was vaguely aware of the bantering going on over her head—something about how Jenn should have known better than to dare Michael to do anything—but she couldn’t focus on their conversation.
Her lips felt warm and tingly, and she fought the urge to touch them with her fingertips.
She noticed Michael look down at her then, and she lifted her eyes just in time to see him smile at her; he tugged a piece of her hair and winked, and then he picked up his drink and walked away as casually as if he’d just said a passing hello to them.
Lauren stared after him, watching him walk away, still unable to form a coherent thought.
“Well, shit,” Jenn said from bes
ide her, although her voice seemed far away. “I gotta give him credit; it certainly looked like the boy has skills.”
“I can’t believe you did that,” Lauren mumbled, staring straight ahead. Now that Michael was out of sight, she timidly brought her fingers to her lips; the second she touched them, they tingled with sensitivity, like she’d been burned.
“I know, right?” Jenn laughed. “You’re welcome,” she sing-songed, hopping up and grabbing Lauren’s wrist. “Vamos, chica. I need a refill.”
And Lauren allowed her body to be towed further into the wilderness in search of the keg, although her mind was still back on the fallen tree, kissing Michael.
Oddly enough, as the night went on, Jenn seemed perfectly content to move past the little incident on the log; to Lauren’s surprise, she never even brought it up again. But as the hours passed, no matter how many conversations Lauren tried to get into, no matter how many times she filled her five-dollar plastic cup at the keg, no matter how many times she scolded herself for going back to that moment, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Maybe Jenn had been right? Lauren thought as she stood with a group of people who were laughing and talking, completely oblivious to her zombie-like state. She sipped her beer, her eyes on the floor.
She’d never been kissed like that in her life.
The gentleness, the tenderness, it had to mean something, didn’t it? Suddenly it didn’t seem that farfetched that Jenn could have been right in her assumption. After all, she had been right about one thing—one thing Lauren couldn’t deny anymore if her life depended on it.
She was hopelessly in love with Michael Delaney.
By the time Lauren had finished her third beer and Jenn had disappeared somewhere, cozying up to some senior, Lauren had convinced herself she needed to find Michael. She needed to know what he thought of that kiss.
She needed to know if it changed anything for him.
It took her a while, but she finally found two of Michael’s friends leaning up against a tree with a couple of girls, passing around what appeared to be a cigarette, although Lauren knew better.
“Hey,” she said when she reached them. “Have you seen Michael?”
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