Page 6 of Reckless Youth
In that moment, I wasn’t sure what he meant. All I could feel was the way his fingers splayed across my stomach, his pinky grazing the top of my bikini bottoms, and the solid muscle of his thigh pressed against my bare legs.
I nodded uncertainly. “I think I am.”
The moment was a blur, held on by short snippets of time. The brief kiss he placed on top of my head. The feeling of jumping, falling and then flying into the unknown.
Something foreign took up residence in my bloodstream, spinning me like a top upside down as he held me against him as we fell together toward the water below.
“I’ve got you,” he repeated gently against my ear. “I’ll never let you go.”
Chapter 4
Once Cam and I had landed in a splashing, laughing, joyous heap in the depths of the river, with Sage swimming over to us, splashing us even more, we climbed the steep embankment and swam for hours on end. Until the sun began to dip just past the tops of the tall, weeping willows that lined the river bank and dusk was quick to follow.
Sage had to get home before his father did in order to do his chores and begin dinner, otherwise, a punishment was sure to follow. Cam, however, seemed to linger, in no particular hurry to leave. As the day progressed into late afternoon, the crazy, tingly feeling had intensified and dropped low in my belly; they climbed up my spine any time he touched me – however playfully or unintentional he meant them to be.
It was this strange and familiar, yet unfamiliar, dance we did with one another. We’d horseplay around, joking and splashing one another, our bodies magnetized, pulling closer together in proximity. As if being drawn toward each other in a strong undertow. But the minute our limbs touched or brushed underneath the water, Cam would push away as if he’d been bitten by a water snake.
Yet as the day drew on and the afternoon sun began to drop over the top of the tall Willow trees along the embankment, the innocence of our friendship seemed to dip and drown into the murk of the river. Every touch dawned a new realization that there was something happening between us. A sensual tension began to emerge – whether a lustful look, bite of a lip, or flick of a tongue.
I was both petrified, but curiously excited, and didn’t know how to escape the odd sensation growing within my body, taking over like the vining weeds against the water’s edge.
I wasn’t Cam’s first kiss, but he was mine.
Just like that perfect summer day, and the hot July sun glistening off the river that weaved its way along the boundary of my parents’ property; the moment leading up to my first kiss was everything that love poems and sonnets are written of.
And then as if in slow motion, like a gravitational pull too strong to keep us apart, wrapping its invisible hold around us, drawing our bodies closer and closer together; keeping only a modicum of space between us. We stood toe to toe, talking about nothing in particular until we got around to the inevitable question that only best friends ask one another in times like these.
Who did we have a crush on?
I watched Cam as he dunked his head backward, the sun sparkling off the water droplets over his broad shoulders. As he stood again, he swiped the hair out of his eyes, slicking it away from his handsome face, the formerly round and chubby cheeks now carved out to accentuate a chiseled jawline of a man.
I copied his move, dipping backward, coming up sputtering water out of my mouth and licking it away off my lips. When I opened my eyes, I found him staring at me in a fascinated, yet lustful gaze.
“Do you still have a thing for Baylor Reynolds?” he asked with reservation.
Baylor and I had barely dated our freshman year and he hadn’t even tried to kiss me. He took me to a dance because our mothers were part of the church bazaar committee and thought we’d make a good couple. Baylor was only doing his mother a favor however, because we later found out it was Johnny Fellows that he really liked. And Lord have mercy, was that something for town gossip.
I guffawed incredulously. “Are you kidding me? He smelled like pickled beets. No way.”
Cam tipped his head back, roaring with laughter, his grin wide and beautiful when his gaze returned to mine.
“Then who do you like?”
Feeling all sorts of uncomfortable, I shrugged a shoulder. Curiously I watched his eyes roam over the skin of my shoulder blade, then drop to the tops of my breasts that were like buoys above the water, and then returning to meet mine.
I shivered gloriously, goose pimples forming over my flesh. Just from the tracking of his gaze.
“Are you cold, London?”
No, I’m too warm with you so close.
He stepped in closer, our chests brushing against each other. I could feel the tips of my breasts harden and pebble against the Lycra of my bikini. Cam raised both hands to touch my exposed shoulders and arms, then dragged them down and back up again. He did this several times and I reveled in the exquisite feel of his rough palms on my virgin skin.
“If not Baylor, who then? Who do you like?”
Before this, I’d never even thought about an attraction to a boy. I’d never had reason to allow my affections to deepen toward anyone and couldn’t even date until I was seventeen. Even if there had been someone that caught my eye, how could they ever measure up to the two boys in my life?
The gentle, humid breeze swept over us, clinging to our wet skin and permeating the air with the sweet, lilac scent of summertime. That is the way I’ll always remember my first kiss with Cameron. It’ll be etched in my soul and memory for as long as I live.
