His smile softened, widened into something that should have been knowing but instead held a hint of wariness. “Not exactly,” he repeated. “I figured you’d forgotten about that.”
Never. That was the thing about nevers. You remembered that you broke them, or you remembered that you didn’t, that you’d clung to your word like a toddler with his binky … and regretted it. That spring with Jamie was characterized by all the nevers she’d clung to, afraid of getting pregnant and screwing up her one chance to get out of Lancaster.
She knew she’d never let herself have sex any time, let alone for the first time, on the patchy grass in City Park, so she’d met him there, never anywhere else, only there, and all she’d let herself do was kiss him, tree bark digging into her back, his hands pulling the elastic from her hair, on her face, her throat, her breasts, her hips, but never inside her clothing. She’d never gotten into a car with him, or let him come over to her house, and she’d certainly never climbed the dark, steep staircase disappearing into the trees on the Hill.
Most importantly, she’d never let herself fall in love with him. Even then she knew sex and love could be disconnected; she saw it happen to her mom three or four times a year. But the only thing worse than getting knocked up by Jamie Hawthorn was falling in love with him.
“I didn’t,” she said, her mouth dry. “I didn’t forget.”
Before she could say something she’d regret, she turned her back on him and walked across the court to pick up her ball. It had rolled to a stop between two thick roots anchoring a big elm tree. She bent over and grabbed it, straightened, turned.
Right into Jamie’s chest.
They were about the same height. He had maybe an inch on her, five eleven to her five ten, but he had a new, neat little trick of making himself seem bigger than he was because she caught her breath. Once again she was reminded of all the ways they’d been playing at being adults when they were just kids, and how they were all grown up now.
Then he bent his head and kissed her. For a long moment she froze, caught by the soft, hot pressure of his mouth on hers like a fish hooked out of the water. Then she dropped the ball, fisted her hand in his shirt, and pulled him close. She opened her mouth under his, felt the slippery hot touch of his tongue to hers, suggestive and tempting. His hands came up to cup her jaw as he backed her up a step, then another, until her back hit the rough bark of the elm and there was nowhere else for her to go but into him.
He stepped into her body, notching his thigh between hers, his hips shifting so she could feel how hard he was in the loose basketball shorts. He worked the fingers of one hand into the elastic holding her hair in the ponytail, tightened them, and pulled her head back to expose her throat. The difference between kissing then and kissing now was like the difference between buying a loaf of Wonder Bread at the Safeway where her mother worked and buying a baguette from Maison Kayser in the Rue Monge. Then he’d kissed with a boy’s desire and eagerness. Now he kissed with a man’s experience, closing his teeth over her jaw, the delicate curve of her ear, her pounding pulse, all the while holding her still for him.
Her hands went to his hips, her fingers tightening reflexively before one slid up his back to his shoulders and the other slid down to cup his ass and squeeze. It was all hard muscle, and as she curled her fingers into the cleft between his buttocks, he groaned and ground up against her.
Then he stepped away, putting space between them. “That hasn’t changed,” he said, breathing hard.
“Did you think it had?”
He shot her a look, half smile, half grimace, and adjusted his cock in his shorts. “Actually, I thought it hadn’t.”
“But you wanted to be sure.”
“If anything, it’s worse.”
“Yeah,” she said, ripping out her elastic and redoing her ponytail, just to have something to do with her hands. “You’re probably … you know…”
“Horny after a deployment?”
“Something like that.”
He shook his head, slow and sure. “It’s not that. That’s easy to take care of. This”—he gestured between them with a hand that she suddenly, irrationally, wanted to feel on her naked skin—“has been going on for over a decade, and it isn’t going away.”
“Just because we feel it doesn’t mean we have to act on it,” she said.
“That’s the best reason to act on it,” he countered.