Maybe thousands.
I pushed myself between his legs, and he opened his eyes. “Hey babe,” he said, spreading his arms to me.
I sat facing the sunset with my back to him, wrapped up in Jake and the comfort of our silence. His cheek rested on mine as we watched the last of the sun disappear into the horizon.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said. “I made this for you.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out an ornate metal charm attached to a simple stainless steel chain.
“You made this?” The pendant was a collection of interwoven silver wires. If I looked closely at the middle of the pendant, I could see his initials JFD where the wires connected. “It’s beautiful,” I told him. And it truly was. In fact, it was the most beautiful piece of jewelry I had ever seen.
“I made it for you a while ago, but I was afraid to give it to you.”
“What’s a while ago?”
Jake’s face reddened a little. “Shortly after I met you that night in the yard. I couldn’t get you out of my head. I asked around about you a little bit, too, and before I knew it, I was standing there with a welder in my hand at the shop, making this.”
“Why did you want to make this for me back then? We never even talked that night.” I thought back on the night just two weeks ago that involved me being homeless and Jake threatening me with his gun. “It was more like a fight.”
“It was the best fight I’ve ever had.” Jake opened the clasp and motioned for me to turn around. I lifted my hair so he could put the chain around my neck and close the clasp. His fingers brushed against the back of my neck. Goose bumps popped up all over my legs from the contact, and I shivered at the sensation.
I held my new gift between my fingers and inspected it. I wouldn’t have believed he was so talented. His work was so detailed and delicate. “Thank you,” I said. “For everything. I mean it. You’ve done so much for me.” Jake lifted my chin to him and looked me in my eyes. I continued, “You deserve way more than I could ever give you in return.” I meant it. He deserved more than me, I had nothing to offer him. Nothing he would want anyway.
“Why does this sound sort of like a goodbye?”
“It isn’t... not yet anyway.”
“I’m not leaving until tomorrow, Bee. Let’s save it for then.” Jake didn’t understand that I wasn’t talking about this trip. I was talking about him leaving for good.
Without me.
His beautiful blue eyes sparkled. He looked at me with such intensity, such fire. I wanted to know what he saw in me that made him look that way, because I didn’t see it. Maybe, he was delusional. He turned me to face him, tilted my chin up, and slowly, very slowly, closed his lips over mine.
My very first real kiss.
I didn’t pull away. Instead, I surprised myself and leaned into him. I closed my eyes, the sensation was like nothing I’d expected. The feeling didn’t end where our flesh met. It was so much more than mouth-on-mouth.
It was like our kiss had started a wordless conversation between our bodies.
It turned out that desire was a funny thing for me. In all my seventeen years, I never thought I’d be able to feel it. I always thought it was one of the feelings that’s been dead inside me. It wasn’t that I was searching for it. I didn’t want anything to do with it. But it was within me all along, I guessed. I’d just never met anyone capable of stirring it strongly enough to break through my determination not to feel it at all.
Until Jake.
He kept the kiss soft but short. I had a feeling that was out of consideration for me. I knew he didn’t want to push me, but when he pulled away, I felt the emptiness between us. It was like a crater had been left in the space he just occupied, cold and dark and empty. The rush in my veins was similar to the feeling I got after riding his bike wrapped around the back of him.
I wanted more.
More what? What was I capable of giving him? Could I take it further?
I had no idea. I just knew I wanted more of him.
“Jake, what are we doing?” I asked, breathless from the smallest of kisses.
“I am sitting on a beach, holding a very beautiful girl,” he said. I don’t think I was ever going to get used to him calling me beautiful. I had to remind myself he was only calling me beautiful because he hadn’t seen all of me. “And you?”
“No, really,” I persisted. “What are we doing?”
He was still confused. “Kissing?”
“Jake.”
He smirked. “I like the way you say my name.”
And, I thought I was the President of the United States of Avoidance.
“You know what I mean. With us. What’s going on with us? It’s important. I need to know now because at some point I’m not going to be able to give you what you want. And then what?”
He nuzzled his nose into my neck. “What is it you think I want?”