“That’s…kind of true,” I said.
I took a sip of my wine to hide my reddening face as he raised his brows.
“Kind of?”
“I actually—” I closed my mouth.
Asher leaned in farther, eyes wide, a smile on his face.
“You what?”
“Last day of camp, our second year. After color war, I really wanted to—you know.”
He shook his head in a laugh. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because I knew you weren’t ready to have sex yet.”
He smirked into his drink. “Oh, I was ready.”
“Shut up,” I said, shocked as I swatted his arm. I shook my head at his wide smile. “You know what though, I’m glad we didn’t that night.”
“I think we got a lot of things right,” he said, with eyes cautiously scanning mine. I nodded, my chest pounding as he shifted in his seat, sitting up taller. “Look, Mags, I don’t want you to regret anything here. And the only regret I would have would be any you might carry.”
I stared at him harder, trying to see the shoreline past Asher’s eyes, which seemed to carry the tide. I wanted to lose myself in him, but instead, I scooted back into the booth.
“It’s strange…” I breathed, shaking my head.
“What is?”
My eyes floated over his face, wowed by the way the amber light cast a glow over the curve of his top lip.
“You became the kind of man I knew you’d become,” I said.
He tilted his head.
“Is that a compliment?”
“Asher, it’s the best compliment I’ve ever given anyone.”
He held my eyes for a long moment, then looked down at the table with a big grin. No part of keeping my mouth from meeting his was a safe bet. At the same time, sharing a room with Asher wrapped my heart in something it hadn’t felt in years: a safety net.
26
ALMOST SIXTEEN
I LOOKED AROUND, MY BIG eyes taking in the most immaculate living room I’d ever seen. It smelled as clean as it looked, like Windex and ocean air. Everything inside the Reyes mid-century-modern ranch house in San Diego was stark white and glass—spotless—with the only brush of color coming from the outside—the ocean’s horizon meeting the La Jolla shore through floor-to-ceiling windows. Even Asher’s long-haired dachshund, sniffing my shoes, smelled brand-new.
“You’ve been in this home since you were seven?”
Asher rolled my suitcase past the living room with one hand, leading me down a narrow hallway. He glanced back to see my scrunched-up face.
“Yeah…why?”
Asher had moved to California from the Philippines when he was seven, and it was as if every object had been unboxed, set in its proper place, and never touched again. Everything in his house was just waiting to be worn well—it was unsettling.
“It just looks…very new,” I said, with eyes on a blank white wall—where a lone, tiny hole sat at eye level.
A nail used to live there, probably holding something rich with color. Maybe art. Maybe a family photo.
“My mom likes things a certain way,” Asher noted.
“Was she always like that?”
He stopped in front of a closed door at the end of the hallway, silently shaking his head.
“Oh,” I said quietly.
I guess surrounding herself with emotionless objects was an easier way to live after heartbreak. I didn’t know tragedy, but I surmised I’d be the type of person to make a shrine out of the memories, to wear a dead person’s clothes, to hold on to their presence long after they were gone. I was one extreme, and this was another. I wasn’t sure if either approach was healthy.
Asher opened his bedroom door, and my shoulders dropped. I exhaled, beaming, loving it instantly, just like I had loved him instantly. I walked inside, my hands and eyes running over the worn spines of novels on the bookshelf, a collection of shells and geodes, framed classic movie posters on the wall—Casablanca, The Graduate. The room smelled like Asher: musk and citrus—woods and wildflowers.
“I can’t believe I’m in your bedroom,” I said, standing in the center of the room, giddy. My eyes met his—then floated to the queen-sized bed behind his body.
Getting here had been seven months in the making. In September, I took an after-school job at a café on the Upper West Side. Every Thursday was open mic night, populated by undiscovered singers. While I was making minimum wage so I could afford a flight to California, I was also getting an education. In between trying not to trip over Birkenstocks while holding hot beverages, I took note of how my favorite singers sat in front of the mic like they were about to tell it the most important story of their existence, and then they’d close their eyes and do just that. They’d pull chatting customers away from their own bullshit, forcing eyes on them. It left me with a proclivity for personal storytelling. And it left me with enough money to fly and see Asher for winter break. My mother shot it down instantly—there was “no way” she was going to let her fifteen-year-old daughter “go get pregnant in California.” The months that followed in our tiny apartment were ice cold—lots of slammed doors and curt answers. The joke was on my mother, because my father got me for spring break, and when I asked if I could spend the second half of break by myself in California on my own dime visiting a “friend,” he didn’t even call the “friend’s” parents to see if it was okay. He simply said, “Of course.” He trusted me implicitly. Which I recognized made him an untrustworthy parent. At this moment, standing across from Asher Reyes in a bedroom all to ourselves, I was grateful for my untrustworthy father.
“Are you sure your parents are okay with me staying in your room?” I asked, my eyes still on the bed.
Asher walked over to me and pulled me close to his warm body.
“They don’t care. They both have trials going on right now—they won’t even notice. I doubt they’ll be home before midnight.”
“You got taller,” I said, measuring the top of my head to the base of his strong jaw.
He took my hand off his jaw and clasped his fingers in mine, studying all sides of my face.
“Hi,” he said softly.
My lips stood ajar, my heart pounding in my throat, and suddenly my mouth was on his mouth, his tongue was on my tongue—our chests racing against each other, our hands knotted in each other’s hair. He helped me remove the cotton shirt from his body, and I tugged the tank top off my chest. Lips back on mine, his fingers fumbled with the clasp on my bra, finally yanking it off me—my breasts now against his solid torso. His skin on my skin was like riding a wave at sunset—it untethered me. I felt the wooden bedpost hit my spine, and he slowly pulled back from my lips, staring down at my flushed face and sucking in air.
I sidestepped away from his disarming stare—my shaking fingers searching the CD tower. He watched, shirtless from the edge of the bed, a soft grin on his face.
“Your mix is in the CD player,” he said.
Asher wasn’t a big music guy, so once a month, I sent him a mix CD in the mail, hell-bent on shaping his taste in music. I turned on the CD player, to the “I Fucking Miss You” mix I had sent him two months prior. My cheeks reddened, hearing Deana Carter croon. It was kind of cheesy, but I loved it. Yet, I wasn’t sure it was the right song for a guy to get naked to, so I went to change it on his behalf when I felt Asher’s hand around my wrist, pulling me back. “Strawberry Wine” thickened the air as the heat of his mouth went onto the curve of my neck, warm musk radiating off his olive skin and into my lungs, his fingers slowly grazing the side of my breast and sending a pulse through my entire body. His hand clenched over my hip bone, spinning me around so that my mouth could find his, so that I could feel him harden against me, so that our helpless bodies could find the bed.