If Only I Had Told Her(21)

“I’m sorry too,” I say. We’re both so many years late.

“For what?”

She must still be part asleep.

“I’m sorry for kissing you.”

“Don’t say that.” She sounds sadder than I’ve ever heard her sound before. “Don’t say you’re sorry for that.”

Do I owe her an apology for something else?

It turns out I don’t really know who Autumn is, and I don’t know who I am either. A dark laugh escapes me. No matter how I try, I always seem to end up hurting her.

“I never know what to do to make you happy, do I?”

She answers so quickly that it surprises me.

“You make me happier than any other person ever has.”

The conviction in her voice is unmistakable.

“Do I?” Like Jack said to me: her story doesn’t make sense.

“Every day,” she says.

We sit.

Autumn wasn’t ready for me to kiss her.

Autumn doesn’t want me to apologize for kissing her.

I make her happy.

These three new facts roll around in my head, bumping against each other until suddenly they line up together in a way that makes sense.

Except it can’t be true.

Do I know how to make Autumn happy?

Before, I kissed her without asking.

“What if I kissed you right now?”

She takes a quick breath, and I am already dead.

Autumn says, “That would make me happy.”

I’m almost not sure what to do next.

You aren’t facing her, my brain gently nudges me.

I turn on the bed, tucking a leg under me, waiting for her to stop me, to clarify what she said, because there’s no way she meant it.

Autumn raises her face to mine, and her expression steals my breath.

I reach out a hand, ready to pull back at any moment. Gently, I rest my hand on her hair, just above her neck. She relaxes against my touch, and something breaks inside me.

Greedily, I pull her toward me. As I lean in, I hit her nose with mine. I’m about to apologize when she turns her face, and her lips are so close.

All apologies, every apology, is forgotten, and my lips are on hers.

I am only my lips. No other part of me exists.

Autumn.

I’m kissing Autumn.

The urge comes to push her back against the bed and feel her beneath me, and I begin to think actual thoughts again.

Don’t fuck this up, Finn.

I rest my hand against her hip so that my thumb can stroke that little spot that divots inward below her ribs, the glorious shape of her. Autumn sighs the sigh from a thousand of my fantasies.

I’m kissing her, and she’s leaning into me.

This is real.

This is happening.

Autumn.

Her hand is on my shoulder, and I think she might push me away, but instead she pulls me closer, even though we’re as close as we can be sitting like this.

She wants this. She wants me.

Autumn puts her hand on my knee, and I stifle a groan.

“Ow,” she says.

Her head shifts and I realize my grasp has tightened in her hair.

I pull back.

“Sorry,” I say and begin to take my hands off her.

“No. Don’t stop,” Autumn says. Her hand is still on my shoulder. She pulls again, says, “Lie down with me.”

Autumn stretches out on my bed. She holds out her arms to me.

“Oh God,” I say.

She wants—

She said “with,” not “on,” but her arms—

I pull myself over her, leaning on my right elbow. One of her breasts is pressed against me. When I look at her face, her eyes meet mine. Her arms close around me, and she raises her lips toward mine.

I’m kissing her.

She’s kissing me.

It’s strange to feel as if I don’t have a body, but that’s what it’s like. I’m simply a soul existing ecstatically in the universe. Time and space are meaningless, temporary, inconsequential to me.

And then I crash back into myself. My body, her body, the actuality of the moment: they all hit me at once.

She is kissing me passionately.

Autumn is kissing me.

I cup her face in my hand.

I’ve wanted to touch her face so many times; every smile, every frown has tempted me. The lines of her face have haunted me as much as any other part of her body.

Her body.

Autumn holds on to me tightly, pressing against me. She moans softly as our lips part to inhale and exhale. If our brains weren’t so good at balancing needs, we probably would have suffocated by now.

I hope I’m kissing her right. It seems like I am. Maybe my instincts can finally be in charge and my frontal lobe will relax before I overthink this and find some way to mess it up.

Autumn is kissing me with the same intensity that I am kissing her, fast and hard. I try to slow down, worrying that perhaps my fervor will become tiring. But Autumn shifts to match my pace like we are dance partners and the music has changed. She doesn’t loosen her grip on me. Her sounds of pleasure are dizzying.

How did we get here? Unscrambling the last few minutes is too much for me right now. I need to be in this moment while it lasts.

Her.

Her.

I want to touch her breast.