Hold the Forevers

Marley shrugged. “Okay, I said my piece. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

“Are you happy? I haven’t heard about a new boy anytime recently.”

Marley crinkled her nose, and Maddox laughed.

“Oh, here we go,” Maddox said.

“Hey, if you have deets, you could tell your roommate,” I said, smacking his chest.

He laughed harder. “She hasn’t told you about the grad school guy who showed up at her apartment to serenade her?”

My eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Marley insisted. “It was a guy I’d dated for three seconds at Harvard last semester. I guess he was still into me.”

“He played a guitar outside of your apartment and sang a song he’d written about you.”

Marley rolled her eyes at Maddox. “So fucking cheesy.”

“It sounds nice,” Teena said.

“That is so not Marley though.”

“It reeks of desperation,” Marley said.

“One day, you are going to find someone who sweeps you off of your feet so completely that all that desperation will look like love.”

She shot me a quintessential Marley look. “I’m not you.”

“True.”

I drained my glass and then let her refill it before I went in search of the person who had swept me off of my feet.

“There you are,” Ash said when I found him across the deck. He pressed a kiss to my cherry-red lips. “I’m glad Marley agreed to come to the party tonight.”

“Me too.”

“Is she still mad at me?”

I made a face. “She wants me to be happy.”

“And Josie?”

“You’ll have a harder time with her. Grudge-holder and all.”

“Why don’t we plan a trip to LA to see her?”

“I’d love that,” I gushed. “Maybe spring break.”

“I’ll get us tickets.”

I bit my lip. “Thank you.”

“Just because I’ve won back over the love of my life doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying to win over her friends. I know how important they are to you.”

“They are,” I said. I leaned into him and looked across the Savannah waterfront. “I miss Sunny.”

“Me too,” he said, pressing a kiss into my head. “Maybe we should have brought her with us.”

“She hates fireworks. She’d have been a wreck. It’s better that she’s at the vet.”

“Probably.”

I reached up on my tiptoes and kissed him again. “This is right where I want to be.”

“Good.”

His hand slipped down the back of my silky red dress until he grasped my ass. I tilted my head up to look at him. He smiled that same Ash smile that I’d always fallen for. One that was all mine.

We’d only been dating a few weeks ago. I’d still been hesitant that this would work despite the last few months of friendship while I was in PT school. It was a grueling semester, and it was good to have Ash there when things got hard with school and Mom. Then he’d come over with an early Christmas present—a new copy of Little Women for my shelf—and I’d realized I had no reason to hold back.

Though we were together, we hadn’t quite moved to the next level. I hadn’t exactly thrown caution to the wind, like I’d let Marley believe. I wanted this, but I wanted it the right way. And now, I was here, staring up at his perfect lips, with his hand dragging me closer against him, and I had no idea why we were waiting.

I released a breath. “Maybe we should …” I tipped my head toward the stairs to go below deck.

This was where we’d shared our first New Year’s. Where we’d had our first time. It felt symbolic that this was where it would all start again.

“Maybe we should,” he agreed, walking me away from the rest of the party.

We headed downstairs to the small bedroom. It’d been renovated since we’d used it five years earlier, but it still felt the same.

The party roared overhead. Way more people than should probably be on the deck, anticipating the annual fireworks display. But here in this space, we were cocooned against the noise.

Before we even made it fully through the door, Ash’s hands were on me, pulling me against him. He kissed me hard, his tongue brushing against mine.

All the restraint had evaporated.

We’d pulled the pin on the grenade.

I’d wanted this to be a perfect moment for us to be back together, but now that I was here, all I wanted was him. I couldn’t seem to slow down and revel in what was happening. There would have to be time for that later. We’d inched toward the precipice and not fallen over it. Now, there was nothing between us, nothing to stop us.

His hands fumbled my skirt up to my hips, wrenching at the string of my thong and snapping it as if it were made of tissue paper. I gasped in an almost protest, but then his lips were against mine. I fumbled for his belt, yanking his shirt loose from his pants and pushing them off of his narrow hips.