Page 60 of The Way I Am Now
“No, I—I don’t mind. I mean, it’s really not messy,” I lie.
She comes to me now and wraps her arms around my waist. “It is messy, but that’s only because I was super nervous getting ready for an important date with this guy I really like.”
And now I genuinely fucking hate myself. But coming clean wouldn’t make me feel any less guilty and would only make her think I don’t trust her or she can’t trust me. There’s no reason to ruin what has been an amazing night because I’m paranoid that everyone I love is going to turn into an addict.
I clear my throat, breathe her in, and say, “Oh?” As she looks up at me, I lean down to kiss her. “Think you’ll see him again?”
She smiles and lets out a small laugh as she presses her cheek against my chest, her wet hair leaving a damp spot on my shirt.
“Tonight was the most fun I’ve had in a really long time,” I tell her, a different truth, instead. And itwasfun, but it was also equally sexy and romantic and meaningful, but I’m not sure how to say all that.
“Hmm, me too,” she sings. “But—”
“But what?” I ask, starting to get worried. Is she already having second thoughts?
“You have to tell me the theme.”
“Oh.” I exhale too forcefully, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“I mean, Italian restaurant. Italian dessert. Italian fountain. That’s the theme within the theme part, right?”
“Right.”
“So, what’s the bigger theme? I still don’t think I got it.”
“You. Being here. Me. Being so beyond happy about you being here. I guess that’s the real theme I was going for.”
“Oh.” She pauses. “Well, then, I guess I did get it, after all.”
“Good.” I touch her cheeks where they’re blushing. “You know, I feel like I’m getting to see this whole other side of you here,” I tell her, moving my hands through her wet hair.
“Really?” She brings her hands up around my neck and looks at me with this easy smile. “You didn’t know I could be fun before?”
“I did, but I’m realizing you’re also kind of . . . wild.”
“Me?” she gasps. “What aboutyou?”
“What about me? I assure you no one has ever once accused me of being wild. Responsible, dependable, sensible?” I count them on my fingers as I list the words. “Yes. Wild? Never.”
“Do I need to replay the footage from that whole steamy fountain kissing scene?” she asks, and her fingers are so light as they dance up and down my arms that I feel momentarily dizzy. “Because that seems to be playing on a loop in my head right now. The part before you walked me into a freezing waterfall, I mean.” She pauses to let her grin disappear before she continues, more serious. “The part right before that was . . .intense.”
I lean to kiss her neck just so she doesn’t see my face turning red, but I pull myself together and look at her again, so she knows. “I never would’ve done that with anyone else.”
“Me neither.”
My hands go to her bare arms. She’s wearing only a thin tank top and shorts, and as I lean down to kiss the other side of her neck, I can’t help but notice that she’s not wearing a bra. She touches my face and brings my mouth to hers while her fingers trail up my stomach, under my shirt.
“Can we take this off?” she asks me as her hands start to push my shirt up. Something in me melts a little at the way she said “we.”
So we do. We pull my shirt off over my head together and let it fall to the floor, but before I can start kissing her again, I feel her mouth planting these soft, warm kisses across my chest and stomach, sending chills through my whole body.
“Oh God,” I breathe. “That feels so good.”
She takes my hands from where I lost my train of thought and left them perched lazily in her hair and presses them against her over the front of her shirt. I raise her shirt just enough to touch her skin, and then her hands are there too, moving my hands up under the fabric, over the gentle curve of her stomach.
“This is okay?” I ask, even though she’s the one who placed my hands there. “Can we . . . ?” I begin, suddenly unable to finish the sentence. “Can we take this off too?”
“Mm-hmm,” she murmurs, her voice muffled as she pulls the shirt off over her head. She brings her arms in front of her chest and moves in close to me before I can really look at her. The feeling of her bare skin, her body pressed against mine, has my heart going so fast. Even though I’ve seen every naked inch of her so many times before, this feels brand-new. Because it’s not only her attitude that’s changed in all this time apart, but it’s her body too—every part of her fuller, stronger, softer, from the arch of her back to the shape of her shoulders, her thighs and hips and waist—I need this minute to prepare myself. I take a deep breath as her fingers work under the band of my shorts, hands roaming gently over my carefully selected underwear, gradually edging the athletic shorts down over my hips.
