Upton's eyes clouded over. "Oh, God, Reed, I'm sorry. I'm such an idiot. I'd forgotten."
He looped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me to him, kissing my forehead. "We don't have to talk about this."
"Okay."
He held me there for a long while. I breathed in and out, in and out, until the images went away. Until the aching subsided. I didn't want to be this person. This dark and gloomy person who ruined a perfectly gorgeous day out on the Caribbean Sea talking about her doomed first love with the guy she was currently dating. I wanted to move on. I wanted to be free of the whole thing already. I just wanted to be able to let myself go with Upton. Be completely and truly with him and no one else. Why couldn't I just do that?
"Forget this crap," Upton said suddenly, leaning back to look into my face. "Who wants to talk about awkward, meaningless, stupid first times? All that really matters is our first time. Which, by the way, does not have to happen anytime soon. I'm just letting you know that that is the only time I care about."
I laughed at his rambling as a stiff wind blew my hair back from my face. I rested my palm on his chest and toyed with the button near his collar. He was right. The ishy encounter with this older woman...
73
whatever I had with Thomas ... it didn't matter. Those moments had nothing to do with us. And neither did any of the other girls Upton had been with. They couldn't touch us.
I took a deep breath and decided to live in the moment. To not think about the past. To concentrate on how I felt about Upton right now. And how I felt, lying there in his arms, was perfectly happy. I knew that he cared about me. He had done so much for me--telling off Poppy, putting together that insane Christmas gift, spending all this time with me over the last week when he could have been hanging out with his friends, not to mention saving my life that day Misty had been spooked. He wanted to be with me. His actions showed that. And I wanted to be with him. More than anything I just wanted to go on feeling this safe, this loved, this blissful.
I felt words bubble up inside of me. I thought about holding them back. But I was letting go.
"What about tomorrow night?" I asked, my voice thick. I looked up at him and wondered if he could feel my heart pounding through both our shirts.
"Tomorrow night?" He was, unsurprisingly, shocked.
"After Kiran's party," I said, sounding completely certain even to my own doubting ears.
"Areyou sure?" he asked.
"I figure if you're goingto be my long-distance boyfriend, we should probably seal the deal before we go home," I said faux-casually.
Upton's grin lit his entire face. The entire boat. The entire ocean. "I'm going to be your boyfriend, then?"
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"If the offer is still on the table," I replied with a smile.
"Oh, it's still on. It's definitely still on," he said. He leaned in and gave me a brief, joyous kiss. "But if we're goingto do this, we're going to do it proper-like."
"What do you mean?" I asked, giggling.
"Don't worry about it. I'll take care of everything," he said, leaning back again.
I cuddled into him, resting my cheek against his chest. He ran his hand over my hair and I sighed, feeling content in my decision. Feeling secure. And more than a little bit excited.
Upton kissed the top of my head and I could hear the smile in his voice as he said, "I'm going to make sure that tomorrow is a night neither one of us ever forgets."
75
DISINVITATION
"What' re you going to wear to the party tomorrow? " Kiran asked, taking a sip of her mango guava smoothie.
The two of us were sitting side by side on the stone patio at the Ryans' palatial estate along with Noelle and Taylor, our legs dangling in the crystal-clear infinity pool. Dash, Gage, Graham, and "West were all messing around in the water, splashing us occasionally, while Sawyer sat under a teal umbrella, his nose buried in Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit. Amberly and Tiffany were inside, having gone in search of more drinks a few minutes earlier. Paige, Poppy, and Sienna reposed on lounge chairs behind us, pretending to read magazines, even though I could feel them glaring at me over the tops of the pages. They'd invited us over after Upton and I had gotten back from our boat trip, pretending it was a sort of peace offering. But if they were going to launch some kind of attack, I wished they would just get it over with already. Constantly paranoid was not a state I liked to be in.
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"I haven't really thought about it," I lied, lifting a shoulder.
My New Year's Eve wardrobe had been one of the many things I'd been obsessing about ever since I'd decided that I was going to have my first time with Upton. I wanted to look sexy, but not trashy. Sophis -ticated, but not trying too hard. Part of me wanted to go shopping for something brand-new, but unlike my friends, I was completely broke. I'd probably just fall back on the dress Kiran had bought me that I hadn't worn yet--a red minidress with spaghetti straps and a straight neckline. It seemed like a solid choice.