“Ari, I—”
“Because you’re so important to me. You have no idea. You’re kind of the best thing to happen to me in a long time.”
“You said that already.” His eyes move across her face.
“I did?”
The arch seems to be rocking back and forth like a seesaw. She puts her head back down on his chest and closes her eyes. That helps. Neil Finn sings about counting the steps to the door of your heart.
The fuzzy sounds of revelers on Central Park West become louder. A noisy group stops on the bridge directly above them, over the arch.
“I think it’s almost midnight,” she says, lifting her head. The cheering in the distance grows louder.
“You said that already, too.” Friends don’t look at each other like that, eyes darting down to her lips every so often. “You’re so—”
“Are we going to—you know…” Ari trails off, feeling him breathing through his tuxedo jacket, heavy and even. “Um…after the countdown?”
“Yes.”
The song seems to grow bigger, the bass line of the chorus echoing off the stone over their heads.
There’s chanting from the buildings across the park. “Ten!…Nine!…”
She swallows. “Like, a peck on the cheek or—”
“No.”
“Eight!…Seven!…”
“So, quickly, but on the lips?”
“No.”
“Six!”
“I just want to know—”
“Five!”
“—so we don’t do something awkward, because—”
“Four!”
“—it’s kind of a one-shot deal.”
“Three!”
“It is.”
Ari feels his right hand move up her spine all the way to the back of her head, and God, she really can feel everything through this coat. They stop the half-hearted swaying, even though the song isn’t over. His fingers twist slightly in her hair.
“Two!”
The prickly sensation running along the back of her neck is probably from the wind kicking up. It’s not because he tugs her head back a little bit and looks at her in that way that makes her feel completely exposed, even though she’s wrapped in a thick layer of polyfill and down. She closes her eyes.
There must be a “One!” but neither of them hear it.
Her head tilts to the right and she feels Josh’s lower lip graze hers. That tiny amount of contact ignites something in her chest. Ari grabs at his lapels, pulling him closer, parting, opening, inviting. He obliges with a trace of caution, pressing in again.
His lips are soft and tentative against hers, the friction warming them against the winter air. He pulls back for a moment, just far enough to search her face. His expression is resolute but he’s waiting for something. Ari lets out a shaky exhale and nods.
He doesn’t move yet.
“Josh…” She’s about to tug at his coat again, when he suddenly lowers his head, moving just past her left cheek.
Her breath hitches as Josh’s nose brushes behind her ear, followed by his lips. He pulls her hair again, this time to the right for better access to her neck. Her whole body shivers as his mouth passes over a thousand tiny nerve endings, all of them firing at once. Her stomach tightens. How is he doing this? Why does he have this innate sense of where and how she wants to be touched?
Some first kisses are hurried—an awkward tangle of hands and noses.
But Josh takes his time, spurred on by little whimpers that she can’t hold in, moving lazily down her neck and kissing along her jawline until they come face-to-face again.
This is the first point at which they could—should—stop.
But they don’t.
The celebratory roar of a million strangers recedes into the background. Ari murmurs his name just before she pulls his head down, so their lips meet again. Some element of his restraint snaps as he slides his tongue into her mouth with an urgency that leaves her breathless. Josh’s fingers move across her collarbone, thumbs meeting at the base of her throat.
That’s the second point at which they don’t stop.
The third is when his hands find their way under her puffy coat, meandering down the bare skin of her back, and then slipping beneath the silky fabric of the dress. He palms her ass and she can’t help moaning into his mouth and he could take one step and back her up against that wall.
There’s a part of Ari’s mind that’s throwing caution tape all over the encounter. The acceptable boundaries of “just friendship” are getting pulled and stretched to the point of imminent tearing.