He’s quiet for a few moments, making me think he’s not actually going to tell me. Then: “Chase. We’re . . . We broke up.”
My breath catches. “Peter. I’m so sorry.” But I don’t want the details. Not now. Only him.
He nods. I tighten my arms around him, though it’s the equivalent of a toddler hugging a tiger. He smells cold, if cold could be a smell.
“You’re the only one I could talk to,” he says, and I can’t pretend it doesn’t make me feel good. “You’ve never tried to make me be anything I wasn’t. I was always enough for you, and you liked me because of that.”
Loved you, I want to correct, but I don’t.
He scrapes a hand over his face. “Fuck, I didn’t even ask how you’re feeling.”
“I’m okay,” I say. “My parents are freaked, but what else is new?”
“They must be taking pointers from mine.” He holds my face in his hands, his eyes red and glassy. “Just us, right? That’s all we need?”
I think about Montana and Liz and Emi Miyoshi and the entire dance team, about the potential of the summer workshop.
I think about Peter lying next to me.
“Just us.” I touch my bracelet to his, metal to metal. I’d forgotten to take mine off.
He stares down at them. “God, why is this so hard? Why can’t one fucking thing in our lives be easy?”
“I wish it could be easy too,” I whisper.
He links his fingers with mine, brushing my knuckles. “Maybe you were right. About there being something between us.”
My heart is a kick drum in my chest, my mind unable to fully process what I am hearing. “Y-yeah? Because, Peter, I—” And then I finally get the courage to say it, because I cannot bear to keep it inside any longer. With him in my bed, I am so close to getting what I have wanted for so long. “I don’t know if I can be just your friend. I’ve tried. I’ve been trying . . . but it’s too hard.” He squeezes my hand, and I keep going: “I don’t want to lose you, but—do you have any idea how hard it is to be this close to you without being together? Without—without touching you the way I want to?” I’m crying now too, salty tears dripping past my lips and onto my chin.
“Who said you were going to lose me?” he manages to say, eyes wide. “That can’t happen.”
“It feels like I’ve been losing you this entire year.”
He shakes his head. He seems even smaller now, fragile. “Sophie. Sophie. You have me,” he says, his hands coming up to grasp my back. “You’ll always have me.”
I press my face into his neck, where the exposed skin is starting to warm up. Slowly I brush my lips against the dip between his ear and shoulder. One small kiss. A reassurance, if anything else, that we will be okay after tonight. A curiosity. One turns into two, three, four—
“Sophie,” he says again, my name a rumble in his throat.
I lift my face to look at him. There’s something in his eyes besides sadness, something I haven’t seen before. I feel so small in his arms. Like he could swallow me up, make me disappear. His face is still a little cold, the tip of his nose a tiny iceberg as it bumps mine.
“Please don’t cry.” He brings a thumb to my cheeks, erasing a tear. “We’re going to figure this out.”
Suddenly Peter’s mouth is on mine. He is kissing me, cold and then wet and then warm. He must taste the salt from my tears, because I taste it from his. There’s an urgency in the way his lips move against mine, one that I have been craving for years.
I feel a tug, and his hand is wrapped around my necklace like when we kissed at Montana’s party. I knew he felt it too—that connection we share—though I know it means something different to each of us.
It ignites a hunger in me. Suddenly, I need him closer. I roll myself on top of him, my legs on either side of his. I kiss his neck as I unbutton his shirt, wanting more, more, more. He slides down the thin straps of my tank top until we are skin to skin.
“God, I want you,” I say. In my effort to be quiet, everything comes out as a breathy, desperate whisper.
His hands land on my hips, and when I rock against him, I can feel that he wants this too, and the realness of it makes my head spin. A hiss escapes his lips.
“Is this really happening?” he asks, a dazed look on his face.
Panic flashes through me for an instant. “Do you—want to stop?”
He shakes his head.