I tilt my head back against the pillow and look up at her. “I moved beyond the kiss. Marry me.”
She laughs and scoots down on the bed so that she’s facing me. Her expression is soft with a trace of a smile. She reaches a hand out and presses her palm against my neck. My breath hitches. “You shaved,” she says, running her thumb over my jaw.
I don’t think a single part of me could possibly smile when she’s touching me like this, because there’s absolutely nothing good about the fact that I’m not going to feel this way again after tonight. It’s fucking cruel.
“If I asked for your phone number would you give it to me?”
“No,” she says, almost immediately.
I press my lips together and wait for her to explain why not, but she doesn’t. She just continues to run her thumb back and forth over my jaw.
“Email address?”
She shakes her head.
“Do you have a pager, at least? A fax machine?”
She laughs, and it feels good to hear her laugh. The air was feeling way too heavy.
“I don’t want a boyfriend, Ben.”
“So you’re breaking up with me?”
She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.” She pulls her hand from my face and rests it on the bed between us. “We’re only eighteen. I’m moving to New York. We barely know each other. And I promised my mother I wouldn’t fall in love with anyone until I’m twenty-three.”
Agree, agree, agree, and . . . what? “Why twenty-three?”
“My mother says the majority of people have their lives figured out by the age of twenty-three, so I want to make sure I know who I am and what I want out of life before I allow myself to fall in love. Because it’s easy to fall in love, Ben. The hard part comes when you want out.”
Makes sense. If you’re the Tin Man. “You think you can actually control whether or not you fall in love with someone?”
“Falling in love may not be a conscious decision, but removing yourself from the situation before it happens is. So if I meet someone I think I might fall in love with . . . I’ll just remove myself from their presence until I’m ready for it.”
Wow. She’s like a mini-Socrates with all this life advice. I feel like I should be taking notes. Or debating with her.
Honestly, though, I’m relieved she’s saying these things because I was afraid she would kiss me drunk and convince me we were soul mates by the end of the night. Because Lord knows if she asked, I’d jump right in, knowing it’s the absolute last thing I should do. Guys don’t say no to a girl like her, no matter how unappealing relationships are to him. Guys see boobs coupled with a great sense of humor and think they’ve found the holy fucking grail.
But five years seems like an eternity. I’m pretty sure she won’t even remember tonight after five years. “Will you do me a favor then and look me up when you’re twenty-three?”
She laughs. “Benton James Kessler, you’ll be too famous of a writer in five years to remember little old me.”
“Or maybe you’ll be too famous an actress to remember me.”
She doesn’t respond to that. In fact, if anything, my comment made her sad.