“I want you.” It’s freeing, telling him. Letting it spill out. Letting herself feel an untempered, raw emotion. “I. Want. You. I wish I could’ve said it a long time ago.”
Josh nods and holds her face in his hands, tilting her chin up in a way that makes her automatically part her lips. But instead of going in for the kiss, he closes his eyes, and touches his forehead to hers.
“I really fucking missed you,” he says.
“I really missed fucking you.”
He sighs into her mouth.
“Brat.”
“Your brat?”
He nods, stroking his thumb up and down her cheek. She moves her head against his hand, drinking in the feeling of being cared for.
She can’t feel the falling snow. She can’t feel the vibrating bass of the cover of “Modern Love” that’s playing over the sound system. She can’t feel the deep booming sound of the fireworks in her chest. The thing she feels—the only thing—is Josh: his lips brushing hers, his hands tangling in her damp hair, then moving down her back and under her ass, lifting her over the metal bars.
Her feet don’t touch the ground on the other side. She wraps her legs around his waist, crossing her ankles, and holding tight as people continue to jostle past them and the snow continues to fall.
She breathes him in. The softness of his mouth, the way his long nose juts into her cheek, the faint trace of his nonsense cologne. She wants to capture his bottom lip in between her teeth and keep it for a few seconds. Like there’s finally something that belongs to her.
“It’s matzo ball soup,” he says, when they come up for air. “Not chicken noodle.”
“That was a test. I had to make sure you actually read it.”
* * *
JOSH IS VAGUELY aware of the constant flow of the last of the joggers and race walkers streaming past, gazing at the fireworks exploding behind the trees. Nobody seems to notice a couple （a couple!） passionately making out against the unsteady metal barrier.
They’re the only two people in a crowd of two thousand who aren’t looking up.
He doesn’t care that the weight of the melted snow in her clothes and hair has made her a little more challenging to carry. He doesn’t care that the PopSocket on her phone, stored in her bra, is cutting into his collarbone.
She’s here. Her ass is literally in his hands.
And she loves him.
“I want to hear you say it,” he says between messy, snow-soaked kisses and heavy breaths. “Out loud.”
She doesn’t pretend not to know what he means this time. It’s a fucking miracle.
“I love you,” she says, almost shyly, into his ear, like she’s still getting used to it.
He nuzzles into her neck, closing his eyes.
“What was that?”
He pulls his head back to see her face.
“I love you.” She blinks against the snowflakes, but she’s meeting his gaze. Finally.
Maybe he’s pushing his luck, but…
“Say it again.”
Her eyes narrow a bit and he feels her hand slide down into his jacket pocket and pull out his phone, turning it around for him to unlock it with facial recognition. It takes a couple tries.
“Wow. Your phone is unfamiliar with you actually smiling,” she teases.
“Pointing out when someone is smiling is the fastest way to get them to stop, you know.”
“Oh, I’m positive I can get you to do it again,” she says, the corners of her mouth curving up into what is—objectively—the most beautiful smile in the world.
She types for a few seconds before holding it out to him, with the Notes app covering the screen.
Take me back to your place and make me scream it
Well, she’s not wrong about her ability to produce smiles.
Ari kisses him again, as he allows himself to feel something like honest-to-God optimism without trying to rationalize his way out of it. For once.
Ari gives Josh one of those looks like she has another quip to add, but she bites her slightly swollen lip instead.
“So, should we go back to the apart—”
“Yes.” She just looks at him with a soft little smile that he’s certain he’ll never get sick of seeing. “There’s something I’ve been waiting to do with you for literal years.”
30
“YOU NEED A STAND MIXER to make breakfast?” Three minutes into the cooking lesson the next morning, Ari has already splattered vanilla-infused egg custard on the stuyvesant high school model u.n. T-shirt Josh let her borrow. “What is this sorcery?”