He kisses his way back up my limp body, and I wrap my arms and legs around him.
“Just think of all the time you wasted being self-conscious,” he says with a grin.
“Shut up.” I squeeze him with my legs and he laughs and kisses me more, brushing my bangs off my damp forehead.
“Told you I had a few new moves,” he says, kissing me again.
“I’m worried about your ego,” I say, a goofy smile on my face. He nips at my shoulder, then my ear, and then Sam is above me. Pressing against me. Looking down at me. I’m not sure I’ve been this happy in more than a decade, so I push aside the nagging voice in the back of my head, even though I know I can’t ignore it much longer. I feel frantic for him. We’ve never had sex, and I want to erase all the others, so that it’s only ever been him.
I bring my face to his and kiss him slowly, rolling my hips against him. I work his underwear down and feel him hot and hard against my hip. He reaches up behind my head and pulls a condom from his nightstand drawer, rolling it over his length, and with his forearms beside my head, he lies back over me, holding my eyes with his.
“Are we really doing this?” I whisper. He pushes into me and I inhale sharply. He holds still, and we look at each other for several seconds.
“Yeah, we are,” he says, and pulls out almost all the way, and then thrusts in again, and we both groan. I capture his waist with my legs and raise my hips to meet him, following the unhurried rhythm he sets, my hands on his shoulders, his back, his ridiculously firm ass, and his eyes never leave mine. He hikes my knee up, pushing himself deeper inside me and moving his hips in infuriatingly slow circles that inch me toward release but don’t take me there. I growl in frustration and pleasure and ask him to please keep going, to please not stop, to please go faster. I’m very polite, but he only grins and pulls on my lip with his teeth.
“I’ve waited a long time for this. I’m not in a hurry,” he says.
And he’s not in a hurry, not at first, not until his back is slick and his muscles are taut and he’s shaking from restraint. He holds back until I grow impatient and needy and bite on his neck and whisper, “I’ve waited a long time for this, too.”
After, we lie on the floor facing each other, the early evening sun glowing golden over us. Sam’s eyes are heavy, a tired smile on his lips. He’s running his fingers up and down my arm. I know I have to tell him. The words run in a loop in my mind. I just have to say them out loud.
“I love you,” he whispers. “I don’t think I ever stopped.”
But I barely hear what he says, because at the same time, the words I should have said twelve years ago bubble up my throat and out of my mouth.
16
Summer, Twelve Years Ago
By the time I finally heard from Sam, it was two weeks after he’d left for school, and I was furious. He was apologetic and full of how are yous and I love yous and I miss yous, but he was also off. He evaded my questions about the workshop, his dorm, and the other students, or gave one-word answers. Five minutes into the call, a knock sounded in the background and a girl’s voice asked if he would be ready to leave soon.
“Who was that?” I asked, the words tight.
“That was just Jo.”
“A girl Jo?”
“Yeah. She’s in the workshop,” he explained. “Most of us are on the same floor. We’re having a potluck, and, well, I should go.”
“Oh.” I could hear the blood rushing through my ears, hot and angry. “We haven’t even done three updates.”
“Listen, I’ll email you later. I finally got my internet working this week.”
“You got your email working this week? Like, earlier this week?”
“A couple days ago, yeah.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t write because there really wasn’t much to say. But I will, okay?”
True to his word, Sam did email, dashing off quick, unsatisfying notes, promising fuller updates in the future. He even sent a couple of texts. I relayed everything to Delilah—who promised to keep an eye on him when she got there and report back on any “skanky-ass losers” she saw him with—and to Charlie, who listened but didn’t offer much feedback.
“You need to start swimming again,” Charlie said as we pulled up to the restaurant one drizzly evening after I told him about Sam’s latest message. He would be switching to a two-person dorm room so Jordie and he could bunk together in September. “Like you did with Sam,” Charlie continued without a look in my direction. “Get out of that head of yours. We’ll start tomorrow. If you’re not at the dock by eight, I’ll come drag you there.” He hopped out of the truck, not waiting for a response, and swung open the back door to the kitchen, while I watched him with my mouth open.