A minute later Graham knocks at my door; I know it’s him without looking. I chew my thumbnail, deliberating. He maybe almost kissed me this morning, and he just came out of Brooke’s room. But we’re friends, and nothing actually happened this morning, and it’s silly to refuse to talk to him because he was in her room.
I take a deep breath and open the door, employing every acting skill I possess to fix a pleasant expression on my face. His arms are propped on either side of the doorframe, his lanky, muscular body filling up the space. I’m aware of nothing but how casually sexy he is: barefoot, in jeans and a white t-shirt.
“Hey.” His dark eyes search my face. “Did you need something? I just… thought maybe you were knocking on my door just now…”
“Oh, no. I mean, no, I don’t really need anything, and yeah, I knocked on your door, but it’s cool. I’m just bored. I fell asleep for a while, and now I’m awake and kinda wired…” Shut up, Emma. “and… uh… that’s all.”
“Bored, huh? What did you have in mind?”
I try to push away the answers that crowd in, most notably come in and finish what you started this morning.
“I don’t know. I was just thinking maybe you were still up, or something…”
“Well, you were right.” He smiles, stretching against the door frame, hands gripping the top, his shirt teasing up and displaying a sliver of skin. “So. Can I come in?”
“Oh,” I back into the room, “Sure. I’m sorry. Jeez. I guess I’m still a little fuzzy from the late nap.”
He walks past me and drops into one of the chairs and I sit on the bed, folding my legs under me. “Do you wanna watch something?” he asks, tilting his head towards the television. “Or… I could interrogate you, find out all your secrets.”
My bed is unmade, covers and pillows askew, the only light in the room coming from one small lamp and flashing MTV images. From a lifetime of reading scene settings, I know this setting is the definition of intimate. “You already know more than a lot of people know about me,” I say. “I’m relatively boring.”
“Mmm, I don’t think that’s true. And I don’t even know the basic stuff. Like, how old are you?” He leans forward in the chair, elbows on knees.
“Well, that’s certainly a stimulating topic. I’m seventeen, for another two months and…” I count in my head “…three weeks.”
“So, eighteen in less than three months.”
“Yeah… is that surprising?”
“Well, you look as though you could be younger than that, but you seem older, more mature. It isn’t surprising; I just wasn’t sure.”
“So how old are you? Twenty?”
“Yep, since June. How’d you know?”
I am not telling him that I Internet stalked him. “Well, you seem younger than that, very immature, in fact, but you look older…” I laugh at the shocked look on his face, and then he growls and starts out of the chair. Backing farther onto the bed, I shake my head, still laughing. “Noooo…”
“So I look like an immature old guy, is that what you’re saying?” One corner of his mouth turns up as he puts a knee on the bed, following me.
“Positively decrepit.” I hold my hands out in what’s clearly simulated protection as he advances. I’m almost to the other side of the bed when he grabs both of my hands in one of his, sweeping his opposite arm around my waist and pulling me towards him. In two seconds, I’m flat on my back and he’s on his knees next to me.
He releases one wrist long enough to catch it with his other hand, and he flattens my hands to the bed on either side of my head. His eyes are black in the low light of the room. “Do you surrender?”
My heart is pounding, and I’m tingling from head to toe. “Surrender to what?” I whisper, my chest rising and falling, my eyes locked on his.
His gaze doesn’t waver. “A kiss.”
Images flash through my mind: the sincerity of his concern when I told him about losing my mother. The feel of him sitting next to me this morning, soaked through and touching my face. The jolt of seeing him exiting Brooke’s room a few minutes ago. None of this adds up, or makes sense, and I want to care about that, but I can’t find the will to resist—not just him, but my own desire, or curiosity, or something. I don’t care what. I want that kiss.
He loosens his hold, starts to draw back because I haven’t answered.
“Yes,” I breathe, and he freezes.
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
He trails his fingers over the side of my face, temple to neck, tracing a path, neck to waist. His right hand moves palm to palm with my left, intertwines our fingers as he lowers his head, and then his mouth is moving over mine, softly, carefully. I squeeze the hand holding mine and shift closer to him, clutching his shirt in my free hand, and he deepens the kiss, stretching out next to me, one knee hooked over my thigh. The hand at my waist progresses down over my hip, moving over my bare leg to the sensitive spot behind my knee. His hand is warm on my skin, drawing my leg over his until we’re tangled together in the middle of the bed, his opposite shoulder under my head, his arm encircling me. His tongue traces my lips softly, parting them, thrusting inside. I moan, opening my mouth and pressing as close to him as I can get.
Too soon, he pulls away, both of us panting, sucking air as though we’ve been underwater. Teasing his fingers through my hair, he pushes a strand behind my ear, and I close my eyes as he cradles my head in his hand, the pad of his thumb stroking my cheek and jaw. Our heartbeats slow as we lie there, hardly moving, for several minutes.