“You two are as subtle as elephants,” she told us once.
By late September, the leaves were changing and the water was already too cold for swimming, so we created a new morning routine. It involved me sleeping late until Sam knocked on the back door after his run. He’d make weak lattes while I fixed bagels or cereal and we’d eat at the counter talking about the story I was working on or Finn’s new girlfriend, whom neither Sam nor Jordie could stand, or university applications, which were due in January.
Delilah, Sam, and Jordie all had their hearts set on Queen’s in Kingston—the university had a beautiful, historic campus and was considered one of the top schools in the country. Delilah wanted in for poli-sci, Sam for premed, and Jordie for business （Queen’s was renowned for all three programs）。 Sam was still gunning for a scholarship; as hard as Sue worked, there wasn’t enough to put a dent in the hefty tuition and residence fees. Unless my grades took a sudden nosedive, I would be heading to the University of Toronto, as per my parents’ dream, fueled partly by their allegiance to the school and partly because half of my tuition would be covered by their faculty discount. I was applying to the English program and wanted to take as many creative writing courses as possible if I got in. U of T was a great school, but needless to say, I would have preferred if Sam and I were planning to go to university together. Toronto was almost three hours away from Kingston by car, two and a half if I drove fast and traffic was good. A small, parasitic worm of worry was burrowing inside my brain—telling me that this wouldn’t last once Sam went away to school.
My parents came up for Thanksgiving, and our families spent the holiday meal together, with the addition of Julien, whom Sue had finally persuaded to join us. With Charlie back for the long weekend, there were seven of us around the Floreks’ dining room table, and between Charlie and Julien, Sam and I were subjected to relentless jokes about our relationship. Not that we minded. We held hands under the table and laughed at my parents’ initial shock over Julien’s sharp tongue and Charlie’s innuendos about teen pregnancy.
We were all together again at Christmas, but my parents returned to the city for New Year’s while I stayed and worked at the Tavern. At midnight, Sam dragged me downstairs to the walk-in refrigerator and kissed me against the boxes of citrus.
“I’m so in love with you,” he said when we pulled apart, his breaths escaping in cold puffs of air.
“Swear on it?” I whispered, and he smiled and kissed the inside of my wrist over the top of my bracelet.
With my parents’ blessing, Sue agreed to let me stay the night at their place, and after we all showered and changed into our pj’s, she popped a bottle of prosecco, poured herself a fishbowl-sized glass, and headed to her room, leaving Sam and me with the rest. We put something in the DVD player, then cuddled up under a blanket on the basement couch.
I waited ten minutes to make sure Sue wasn’t going to check on us and then crawled onto his lap, my knees on either side of his thighs. I was wired from work and my insides fizzed with his I love you and also with prosecco. I pulled his T-shirt over his head and then kissed my way up his chest, his neck, and then to his mouth, where our tongues found each other. He began to unbutton my pink flannel top, his fingers shaking with excitement, and then stopped when he saw there was nothing underneath. He looked up at me, his pupils swallowing the blues into a midnight ocean. With the exception of what had happened in his room in August, we hadn’t gone further than making out with shirts off, bra on. I opened the remaining buttons.
“I’m so in love with you, too,” I whispered and shrugged out of the shirt. His eyes dropped to my chest and he grew harder beneath me.
“You’re perfect,” he rasped when his eyes found mine again, and I smiled brightly then moved against him. His hands grabbed my waist, then roamed over my breasts, and he groaned.
I leaned close to his ear so our skin was pressed together, and said softly, “I want to show you how much I love you.” I moved my hand between us and put my fingers around the shape of him. He bit down on his lip and waited, his chest moving with his deep inhalations.
“Okay,” he breathed, and we both worked his pants off his legs. “I’m not going to last long,” he said, his voice deep and gravelly. He moved his hand across my breast, pinching the stiff pink peak. “I could come like this just looking at your hard nipples.” My eyes flashed to his. I’d never heard him talk like that, and it sent a hot current through me. I pulled at the waistband of his boxers and then shifted so he could slide them all the way off, watching wide-eyed. I put my hand around him, tentative and unsure. I had no idea what I was doing.