Kissing I’ve proved I can handle tonight. Being held is something I’m not quite ready for, and he already knows how I feel about it.
I press my forehead against his shoulder and close my eyes.
I can hear his breaths, labored and deep as he rests his head lightly against mine.
We stay like this for a while and I don’t know what to feel or what to think. I don’t know if it’s normal to feel a thousand pounds heavier after you kiss someone.
I feel like I’m doing this all wrong, but at the same time, it feels like maybe Samson and I are the only people who are doing this right in the whole world.
“Beyah,” he whispers. His mouth is right over my ear, so when he says my name, goosebumps run down my neck and arms. I keep my forehead pressed against him and my eyes closed.
“What?”
There’s a pause that feels way longer than it actually is. “I’m leaving in August.”
I don’t know what to say to that. It was only four words, but he drew a very deep line in the sand with those four words. A line I knew would eventually come.
“Me too,” I say.
I lift my head and my eyes are drawn to his necklace. I touch it, running my finger across the wood. He’s looking down at me like maybe he wants to kiss me again. I would take a thousand more of those tonight. I didn’t feel anything negative this time. It was all good, yet chilling. It’s as if he kissed me backward, from the inside out—the same way I think he looks at me sometimes. Like he sees the inside of me before he notices what’s outside.
He tilts my chin up with a finger and presses his lips to mine again, this time with his eyes open, soaking me in. He pulls back, but not very far. All his words seem to seep into my mouth when he speaks. “If we do this, it stays in the shallow end.”
I nod, but then I shake my head. I don’t know if I’m agreeing or disagreeing. “What do you mean by shallow end?”
His stare matches the tightness in my chest. He slides his tongue over his top lip like he’s thinking of how to elaborate on his thoughts without hurting my feelings. “I just mean…if this becomes a thing. A summer thing. That’s all I want it to be. I don’t want to leave here in August in a relationship.”
“I don’t want that, either. We’ll be on two different sides of the country.”
He slides the backs of his fingers down my arm. When he slides them back up again, he doesn’t stop at my shoulder. His fingers glide up my collarbone until he’s touching my cheek.
“People sometimes still drown in the shallow end,” he whispers.
That’s a dark thought. One I think he probably meant to keep to himself. But here I am, pulling back those layers whether he likes it or not.
So many layers.
I don’t know how kissing him felt like I bypassed every layer and burrowed right into his core, but it did. It’s like I see the real him, despite all the unknown that still surrounds him.
“Who was that guy at dinner?” I ask.
He swallows hard, glancing away, and it makes me want to run a soothing hand down his throat. “I don’t want to lie to you, Beyah. But I also can’t be honest with you.”
I have no idea what that means, but the thing about Samson is, he doesn’t seem to be the type to want attention or manufacture drama. So by saying something like this, it makes me think it’s even worse than how he’s presenting it.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” I ask him.
He brings his eyes back to mine with another predictable shake of his head.
“It’s that bad?”
“It’s bad.”
“Worse than what I did with Dakota?”
Samson presses his lips into a thin, irritated line, and then dips his head, looking at me with intensity. “There are two different kinds of wrong. The wrong that stems from weakness and the wrong that stems from strength. You made that choice because you were strong and needed to survive. You didn’t make that choice because you were weak.”
I grasp on to every word of that because I want to make it my truth.
“Will you just answer one question for me?” I ask. He doesn’t say yes but he doesn’t say no. He just waits for my question. “Was it an assault of any kind?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
I’m relieved by that. He can tell. He brushes my hair over my shoulders with both hands and then presses his mouth against my forehead. He kisses me there, then leans his head against mine. “I’ll tell you the day before you leave for college.”