Hold Me Now
Page 23
“This is our song.” I touch my finger to his nose and outline his lips. “You remembered.”
“Are you kidding?” He lands a hasty kiss to my lips. “I remember everything about us. And, I plan on making new memories. Just you and me.” That sadness takes over his eyes because graduation is coming up, and we still haven’t received our acceptance letters yet. I’m not sure how great the spatial divide will be, or if there will be one. We did have a few schools in common that we apped at. But I do know this; I have faith that no matter what happens, it will all work out. What Jessie and I share is much too strong not to.
Jessie holds me like that, staring into my eyes as if he sees tomorrow and all that it holds written out for him, for the two of us. I hike up on my tiptoes and crush my lips to his one last time on the dance floor. Jessie and I haven’t made it to the scholastic finish line just yet. Graduation is still a week away, but we’ve already made it home.
* * *
After a long night that can only be labeled as wild, Jessie and I stagger down the powdery sand of Baker Beach, along with the rest of Glen Heights’ senior class of 1986. The entire lot of us looks comical with our zombie gaits, our disheveled formal wear, crooked and wrinkled. Half of the girls have their hair frizzed out, electrocution style, and the guys have a pepper of stubble.
“Get over here, girl.” Melissa thumps a spot on the sand as Jessie and I fall next to her and Joel. Heather and Russell do the same to our right.
“We did it.” Heather offers Mel and me each a high five. “To the class of ’86!” she shouts into the virginal morning, and an echo of catcalls follows. Then, in a show of brilliance, the pink eye of the sun peers above the horizon, expanding her wingspan over the heavens in a burst of color, radiating her beauty over the earth, and baptizing all of the seniors from Glen with her glory as if to say Godspeed.
A new day had dawned. A new story was about to begin. Life was changing. We had already changed so much.
Graduation comes up like a thief in the night, and, just like that, it’s over. One by one, Principal Harper hands out the diplomas—and when the final scroll is served, and the final speech is given, we toss our hats into the air, high and fast, dotting the sky with our hard-won glee.
That night there’s a rager at Craig Amalfiano’s, three kegs and enough beer bongs to make the entire senior class forget about the last thirteen scholastic years of their life. But we don’t stay. The six of us head over to Joel Miller’s game room, hang out, make out, kick one another’s asses in Atari one last time before we hit the real world.
“I got my letters.” Jessie takes in a deep breath while navigating me to the corner. Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night” plays softly in the background.
“I got my letters.” I shrug. I knew I would dread this conversation, and here it is, our first real world conversation getting in the way of our last day of our time at Glen. “I’m going to stay local to be near Jilly,” I say it so fast my teeth buzz.
Jessie breaks out into that sexy grin of his. “I’m staying close to be near Jilly.”
“UCLA?”
“UCLA.”
We share a laugh as tears come to my eyes. “Who’s going to break it to the Trojans?” I nod over at the rest of the crowd. Joel is already at USC, and Melissa and Russell start in the fall. Heather is taking classes at San Ramos, hoping to transfer over in a year or two herself.
Jessie frowns over at our friends as they cue up The Goonies on the VCR.
“We’ll save it for another time. I sort of like the peace tonight.” He steals a quick kiss off my lips. “You know what else I like?”
“My neck?”
Jessie has become an expert at loving my neck, the way he craves, without leaving a mark. Suffice it to say, that hickey necklace didn’t go over well with my parents once my brother snatched off my scarf. Melissa and Heather weren’t fans either.
His easy grin lights up his face. “That and the fact I know I don’t have to worry about the future because you’ll be in it.”
“Forever if you’ll have me.”
“Forever won’t be enough.”
Jessie Fox lands his mouth over mine and loves me with his achingly slow kisses, his wild demanding kisses, everything in between.
Life threw every curveball at us, but we held fast.
Jessie and I are together, in love, moving forward into unseen days with our fingers interlaced, our mouths happily fused, as we journey together through this thing called life.
Life is happening.
We’re still happening.
In the years that followed, college drew to a close faster than we could have imagined. Joel and Russell went through law school, and eventually opened their own firm—Miller and James Attorneys at Law. Melissa went on to become an author, hitting the New York Times just a few years later. We always knew she would. Heather became a nurse practitioner, and we all take turns picking her brain over our latest ailments.
Jessie went into finance and made his millions in the stock market. And me, well, I’m doing what I always suspected I would be, teaching English and gym at Glen Heights High. I love that I’m back in those hallowed halls, reliving my glory days and watching others live out theirs.
The six of us still go to football games in the fall. We still cheer for the Glen Heights Pirates as hard as we ever did. Jilly teaches there with me, too. She’s the new drama teacher. She always did have a flair for the dramatic.
Melissa and Joel married first, on a cliffside right here in Glen. Heather and Russell had a proper church wedding with a wild reception that followed at the country club. Her mother and his father had already been married four years at that point. Jessie and I married on the beach surrounded by family and friends. Our reception was at that very same hotel that held our senior prom. And much like that magical night, we danced to that old ’80s song we called our own.
The six of us still get together regularly for dinner, our kids are growing up together, and we see a lot of ourselves in them. They laugh when we talk about our glory days, remembering the crazy hair and clothes of those hazy neon-colored days. Sometimes, just for the fun of it, we turn up the ’80s music and get wild for old time’s sake. We remember how we met, what brought us together and laugh.
It was like totally awesome.
Still is.
A Note from the Author
Thank you for reading Hold Me Now (A Totally ’80s Romance 3). If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review at your point of purchase. Even a sentence or two makes a difference to an author. Thank you so very much in advance! Your effort is very much appreciated.
Want to listen to the music that inspired the book?
Head over to Spotify for the Hold Me Now playlist!
http://hyperurl.co/gic8i5
*Listen to the Tainted Love playlist on Spotify!
http://hyperurl.co/x2km4u
*The Melt with You playlist is also available on Spotify!
http://hyperurl.co/2r6s6p
Books by Addison Moore
Young Adult Romance
Melt With You (A Totally ’80s Romance 1)
Tainted Love (A Totally ’80s Romance 2)
Hold Me Now (A Totally ’80s Romance 3)
Ethereal (Celestra Series Book 1)
Tremble (Celestra Series Book 2)
Burn (Celestra Series Book 3)
Wicked (Celestra Series Book 4)
Vex (Celestra Series Book 5)
Expel (Celestra Series Book 6)
Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7)
Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 7.5)
Elysian (Celestra Series Book 8)
Ephemeral (The Countenance Trilogy 1)
Evanescent (The Countenance Trilogy 2)
Entropy (The Countenance Trilogy 3)
Ethereal Knights (Celestra Knights)
Season of the Witch (A Celestra Companion)
Romance
3:AM Kisses (3:AM Kisses 1)
Winter Kisses (3:AM Kisses 2)
Sugar Kisses (3:AM Kisses 3)
Whiskey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 4)
Rock Candy Kisses (3:AM Kisses 5)
Velvet Kisses (3:AM Kisses 6)
Wild Kisses (3:AM Kisses 7)
Burning Through Gravity (Burning Through Gravity 1)
A Thousand Starry Nights (Burning Through Gravity 2)
Fire in an Amber Sky (Burning Through Gravity 3)
Beautiful Oblivion (Beautiful Oblivion 1)
Beautiful Illusions (Beautiful Oblivion 2)
Beautiful Elixir (Beautiful Oblivion 3)
The Solitude of Passion
Someone to Love (Someone to Love 1)
Someone Like You (Someone to Love 2)
Someone For Me (Someone to Love 3)
Celestra Forever After (Celestra Forever After 1)
The Dragon and the Rose (Celestra Forever After 2)
The Serpentine Butterfly (Celestra Forever After 3)
Perfect Love (A Celestra Novella)
Acknowledgments
A very special thank you to my totally awesome readers—YOU! Thank you for coming along on this time-traveling journey with me and revisiting a decade that is so near to my heart. There isn’t another era I’d rather relive, and I hope my enthusiasm and passion for the ’80s came through on every page. I hope you’ve enjoyed the Totally ’80s Romance Series as much as I have. Melissa, Heather, and Jennifer were all characters very close to my heart, and it was a pleasure sharing them with you. The playlists attached to each book were just as fun to compose, and I hope you get a chance to check those out as well.
To my Angels, you rock my socks with your excitement to share and read my books. It’s because of readers like you that I get to do what I love most—hide from the rest of the world and pound away at my keyboard.
A huge and heartfelt thank you to the following ladies: Lisa Markson, Tabby Coots, and Heather Love King, the best sister ever. You guys are simply the kindest, the best-of-the-best, nicest people on the planet. So thank you for that.
To Kaila Eileen Turingan-Ramos—wow, you are remarkable! Thank you for scouring my manuscript and helping me sparkle and shine. You have the remarkable eyes of an eagle, and I’m so very grateful! Tons and tons of hugs for that!
To the like totally radical, Kathryn Jacoby, archangel, ninja word warrior. Thank you for lending me your superpowers! As always, you go above and beyond. I’m so honored to know you.
A huge, super colossal, totally tubular thank you to the fab Paige Maroney Smith for lending my your knife-sharp editing skillz. I’m so very grateful for you. Words cannot express how thankful I am that you take the time to pour over my work so meticulously. Thank you for making me better. You have been a gift I hope to never lose.
And last, but never least, thank you to Him who sits on the throne. Worthy is the Lamb! Glory and honor and power are yours. I owe you everything.
About the Author
Addison Moore is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author who writes contemporary and paranormal romance. Her work has been featured in Cosmopolitan Magazine. Previously she worked as a therapist on a locked psychiatric unit for nearly a decade. She resides on the West Coast with her husband, four wonderful children, and two dogs where she eats too much chocolate and stays up way too late. When she's not writing, she's reading.
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