My mind just kept going back to that first kiss on the Fourth of July all those years ago. How she’d been smiling all day because she’d just gotten her braces off so her even white teeth were perfect. She’d been downtown with her friends, and they’d been on some kind of float throwing Sweetarts and waving and laughing together. She had looked right at me from the back of that flatbed truck covered in crepe paper and she’d chucked some candy right to me. I had pocketed a packet of Sweetarts and let the little kids have the rest. I had carried that blue and pink packet in my pocket all day and it got sweaty, but I didn’t throw it away. I remember putting it on top of my dresser with my wallet that night and keeping it there for a while because it was the only thing she’d ever given me. Before we had four years of birthdays and Christmases and anniversaries. I would pick her flowers. She would buy me something expensive that made me uncomfortable. But the time I tried to give back the fitness tracker—they were pretty new and costly when we were kids—it hurt her feelings, so I just wore it. I didn’t like hurting her feelings. Until I had to do it.
I could shut my eyes now and it was like being back there again. Back to a night when I snuck into her house, never through the front door after the umbrella stand incident—but through her window. She slept upstairs, so I climbed the trellis with dark purple clematis blooming on it, crushing it pretty badly with my shoes. She had been waiting, the window open. Her long blonde hair was loose from its ponytail and trailing over her shoulders as she leaned on the windowsill. She’d had on a white cotton nightgown. The gown looked old fashioned, perfectly starched and ironed by their housekeeper, of course. So she looked like an elegant young lady from the turn of the century or something, with her hair loose and those ribbons trailing over her bare, tanned arms. She had untied the bow, let the neck of the gown fall open to show the freckles on her chest and the faint swell of her cleavage. I had climbed that trellis, my mouth so dry with longing for her. When I reached the windowsill, my hands on either side of her arms, I’d leaned in and kissed her right there, hanging off the side of her house under the moonlight.
Those secret nights were magical. I gave in. I let myself think of it. Just once, just this time. I’d shut down those memories for a long time. Locked them away. But now I felt my body come to life as I recalled how the breeze had stirred her hair, a lock brushing against my face as we kissed that night.
I climbed into her room. She stood there, barefoot, her tanned legs disappearing under the loose gown. She crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly a little self-conscious around me. I stepped forward and nuzzled her hair, her cheek.
“You’re beautiful, Chel. You’re better than any fantasy.”
“Now you’re lying,” she’d said with a giggle that sounded nervous.
“It’s us, Mouse, you and me,” I’d said.
Her old nickname, the quiet mouse in grade school, the silent, observant girl who missed nothing, made her smile now, those perfect teeth showing.
“I bet that’s how you get all the girls to say yes. Give them rodent names,” she teased.
“There’s only one girl I want to say yes. To say my name. To sleep in my arms. Just you. For the rest of my life.”
“I wish we could know that for real,” she had shifted from foot to foot.
“Hey, I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere. Unless your dad comes up. Then I’m going right out that damn window and hoping I don’t break my leg,” I had said, making her step into my arms and rest her forehead on my chest. I ran my hand up her back. “You’re all mine, Chel. And all I’ll ever want.”
I made her promises, and, God help me, I meant every word I said to her.
Pressing my mouth to her freckled collarbone, I reached for the ruffled hem of her gown and worked it up her legs. “We have to be quiet,” she whispered, a catch in her breath as I kissed her neck. We broke apart and I dragged the fabric off of her, leaving her smooth, tanned skin bare in the moonlight—small, high breasts, the flare of her hips, the thatch of curls between her legs. I was breathless at her beauty, at her sweet curves in the shadows and moonlight.
Palming her head and parting her lips, I kissed her, my tongue roaming in her mouth, her fingers in my hair. It was longer then and she loved to run her fingers through it, and the soft tug at my scalp galvanized me like a shot of pure electricity. I pulled her against me, held her in my arms and kissed her so fully, so deeply that I felt like my soul had escaped from my body and I’d given it to her. My hands mapped her bare body, the dip of her waist and curve of her bottom, the soft swell of her belly and the delicate peaks of her nipples that hardened under my touch. She pulled my t-shirt and shorts off, and I kicked them away. We were naked in the bright moonlight of summer and couldn’t keep our hands off each other.