Love Me Broken (17 page)

His warm mouth is on mine, and suddenly the volume of the world is turned on high. The waves seem to be crashing against my ears, filling my hearing with violent white noise. All at once his arms are around me, holding me, and for a moment I feel like I can’t breathe, like I’m going to explode, and then—he starts to pull back, but I want more.

I breathe out through my nose and press my breasts into his chest. His hands are running along my back, tickling up past my bra and to my neck. Both hands go up to my face, cupping it, tilting it up toward his, and I open my mouth ever so slightly, not more than a millimeter, but we’re so close that he feels it and opens his own mouth. His tongue meets mine, and they touch, caressing. I feel almost naked at this intimate contact. He tastes sweet, a mixture of soda and mint, but also something carnal: the taste of him. I open my eyes slightly just to see him, to bring me back to reality, but I can barely make him out in the moonlight. Just a silver edge of his jaw. This feels like a dream. Like a fantasy.

My hands rise up from my side and start to explore his body. They find their way to his chest, his pecs defined and hard through the soft fabric of his shirt. He feels so solid, so secure. I loop my fingers around the back of his neck. He’s warm, and I continue upward, running my fingers through his hair.

“Mmmmm,” he moans. The sound is in his chest, but it rumbles into me as well. I moan back, and he pushes his mouth against me harder. It’s like we’ve been starved, like we couldn’t breathe until this moment, and now we rely on each other for every kind of life support. I can barely think. All I can do is feel, and react, and want more and more and more.

Then, after what is either ten seconds or ten minutes, he pulls back.

“Don’t stop,” I gasp, and reach for him again. He tries to object at first, I can tell, but he is unable to fight against the force drawing us closer. We are back together as one, arms around each other, feeling the new but natural desire of our bodies wanting to touch. Needing to touch. His hands are in my hair. Holding my face. My hands grip his back, his shoulders. We are rocking back and forth together, pushing each other with the force of our need to kiss.

Then we take a moment to breathe, holding each other, our foreheads touching. I feel his chest rising and falling against my own. Our arms are wrapped around the other. His eyes—his eyes are wide and practically glowing in the moonlight.

“Wow,” he whispers.

He doesn’t need to say anything more. He didn’t even need to say that. I can already feel it.

There is something between us, something I had felt before but denied in small ways. He was “just” a cute boy. He was “just” here for the summer.

Now I’d rather spend a summer with this boy than a life with anyone else. I’ve never felt anything this intense. I’ve kissed other boys (or should I say, they’ve kissed me?) but it’s never felt like this. It was nice. I will say that. But this—this is something else entirely. It’s like we’ve just invented a new way to kiss, a way that’s never been done before but will be the benchmark for all kisses forevermore.

I smile, and he smiles back playfully. It’s like we’re in on the same secret. His hands brush my hair back from my face. His touch feels so good. I didn’t even know what I had been missing. It’s like I wasn’t even aware that I was hungry, and now with the first few bites, I realize I was starved.

Our shoulders are still heaving with our breath, but the intensity of the moment has abated a little. I turn and look at the waves sparkling in the moonlight, and realize I had completely forgotten when and where we were, I was so lost in the moment of the kiss.

He follows my gaze and looks out at the night.

“I wish this moment would last forever,” he says quietly.

I look back at him and see his face has undergone a change. The fire has gone out of his eyes, and now he’s gazing out toward the distance as if gazing at a bleak eternity.

“Then let’s make it last,” I say.

A side of his mouth goes up in a sad smile. “How do we do that?”

I curl up closer to him, and he puts his arm around me. “By making it count.”

And this time, I’m the one that starts kissing him.

It’s not until the sunrise starts to enflame the sky that either of us even thinks about leaving. We spent the night kissing on the pier.

Just kissing, mind you, although I would have been up for more—and I was up for more, if you know what I’m saying. But I could tell Erica wasn’t ready for that yet. Especially on a pier in public, which is understandable.

The night was great anyway. We kissed for hours. Erica’s a great kisser. I’m not too bad myself, but—as the saying goes—it takes two to tango. She has this sort of raw intensity that makes everything electric and breathless. It’s like we have to keep kissing or we’ll die.

But we didn’t kiss the entire night. We talked some more. She told me some stories about Astoria, and I tried to explain motorcycles to her. She understood it all—she’s a smart girl—but I could tell it was starting to put her to sleep, so we talked about the ocean and what it’d be like to sail around the world, and what it’d be like if I had grown up in Astoria too.

I don’t think one second of the night passed without our hands holding or her leaning against me or our lips or arms or some part of us touching.

And when we finally stand up in the morning light and dust the sand off our clothes, she still has her hand in mine. Before we head back to Nicole’s house, we take one last look at our pier. It looks so small in the daylight. Like all the magic evaporated when we were done with it.

I squeeze her hand and we walk back along the street in silence. It feels like the end of a vacation, like when you’re going back to the airport and dreading the return to your regular life. I don’t want this to be over. I look over and see her face clouded with dark thoughts as well.

We didn’t talk about the future. Now I don’t want to bring it up, just in case she says tonight is enough. I need to believe that we still have a tomorrow for as long as I can.

We cross the street back to Nicole’s. Her house too looks smaller and sadder than the night before. There are still a few cars outside. We make our way back to my motorcycle.

We stand for a moment. I don’t want to get on. Then I force myself to take the helmet and hand it to her.

She looks at it as if she doesn’t even know what it is. Then she realizes, and puts it on. Her face is hidden behind a mirrored visor, and it’s a little like she’s left already.

I walk the bike back to the road and climb on. I feel her climb on behind me. Then her arms find their way around me, holding me, and it feels so good that it takes me a second to remember to start the bike. The ignition roars, and we are off down the small road and back to town.

The cold air feels too real against my face. It’s like a cold shower, breaking the moment. The ride back feels like seconds, and before I know it I’m putting on the brakes outside her house. We both get off the bike.

She takes off the helmet and stands before me, looking down. “I had a really good time,” she says quietly. Her hair has amber streaks of light from the morning sun.

I can’t talk. I want to say so much, I want to scream and hug her and kiss her and hold her, and never let her go. I want to say, Forget your house. Let’s go back to the pier. Let’s go to the sea, for all I care, just as long as we’re together.

But all I say is, “Yeah.”

Then her eyes meet mine, and I see the yearning in them. My shyness fades away, and I find the words.

“You should give me your number,” I say. “So I can call you.”

A smile erupts on her face, and even her posture becomes straighter. “Yes,” she says eagerly. “Yes, I’d like that.” She pulls a phone from her pocket, and I start to ask for her number, but instead she delicately takes the phone from my hand and hands me hers so that we can enter our own numbers into each other’s phones.

I’ve started to press the keys when I realize I’m putting in my old number. I don’t have that phone anymore.

I don’t have that
life
anymore.

“Damn,” I say, erasing the digits, “I don’t actually have my number memorized. New phone.”

She’s done with her number and hands me the phone. I page through the menu until I find my new number, then I hold it out for her to punch into her device.

“There,” she says, “got it.”

We put our phones away.

We look at each other.

“So,” she says. “You’ll call me then?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

Neither of us wants to say good-bye.

A door opening breaks our eye contact, and we look up to see her father coming out the front door.

“Oh shit,” I mutter, instinctively searching the man’s hands for a shotgun. “All right,” I say to Erica, “I’d better go.”

“Okay,” she says, and starts to walk up toward her dad. I jump on the motorcycle and am about to pull away when I notice her running back toward me. I look up, and before I can react her mouth is on mine. It’s a short, sweet kiss but it’s left me slack-jawed in amazement.

“Call me,” she says, hopping back up the path to her porch.

I blink. “Yeah,” I mouth, and then start the bike down the street before her father has a chance to kill me.

Dad looks stunned. I walk up the path to the house, trying to keep the smile from my face. When I get close and start to enter the house, he turns toward me and I stop.

“Long night?” he asks. I can’t tell if he’s mocking in a good way or a bad way. The idea of being in trouble seems ridiculous. I’m eighteen, after all. And he hasn’t cared about what I’ve been doing in months. Who cares if I’ve been out?

He must see these thoughts on my face, because he puts up a hand. “I think it’s healthy,” he says. He looks back toward the house. “I wish we could all start moving on. Nothing will ever be the same, I know, but it can be better than this.”

I’m speechless. For this brief moment, he’s talking to me again. Like we used to talk. Like father and daughter. Like family.

His eyes are on me, and when I don’t respond, something in his expression dies. His muscles seem to give up, and it’s like his eyes go numb. He makes a gesture and opens his mouth slightly, like he’s going to say something more. Then his hand falls. He shakes his head slightly and starts to turn toward the driveway.