I took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have done that to you,” I said. “I shouldn’t have left like that. And I’m really, really sorry.”
He nodded. “I just didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know if I’d done something….”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “It was all me. I just… tend to run away when things get to be too much.” I shrugged. “I’m working on it.”
“I couldn’t believe it when you showed up on the dock,” he said with a laugh. “I thought I was hallucinating for a minute.”
“Me too,” I confessed. “I thought you’d never speak to me again.”
“I tried,” he reminded me, and I smiled at that. “But seriously,” he said, looking right at me, his tone a little more measured, “you’re a hard habit to break.”
I looked into his eyes and could feel my heart begin to pound a bit faster. The air around us suddenly seemed charged, and it felt like we were standing at a crossroads—that things could go either way from here, but there was a decision that had to be made.
Slowly, inch by inch, Henry moved closer to me. He reached down and touched my hand with his, making me shiver, even though I was no longer cold. He picked up my hand and looked into my eyes, as if making sure this was okay. It more than was, and I hoped he could see that in my expression. He leaned a little closer to me and tipped back my hood and I didn’t even care what my hair looked like. He placed one hand on my cheek, stroking it with his thumb as I shivered again. And then he leaned toward me and I could feel my heart beat hard, and we were so close, just a breath apart. I closed my eyes and, as the rain and wind whipped all around us, he kissed me.
It was soft at first; his lips touching mine lightly. Then he pulled back and cupped my cheek under his hand and kissed me again.
This time it wasn’t so tentative, and I kissed him back, and it was a kiss that was both familiar and brand-new, making me remember a kiss from five years ago, and making me feel like I’d never been kissed before in my life. And I realized that maybe Lucy was wrong—maybe sometimes there was such a thing as a perfect moment. His arms were around my back, pulling me closer, and I looped my arms around his neck and ran my hands over his jawline, suddenly not able to stop touching him. And while we kissed, up there among the trees, the rain tapered off until, at long last, the sun came out.
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times
chapter thirty
“TAYLOR!” I OPENED MY EYES AND SAW LUCY, LYING ON MY DOCK IN her bikini, waving at me. “Hello?”
“Sorry,” I said, sitting up and trying to remember what Lucy had been talking about. I had not been paying attention in the least. “What was that?”
“Let me guess,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “You didn’t hear what I was saying.”
I smiled involuntarily, causing Lucy to groan. “Oh, my God,” she said. “It’s so hard to have a conversation with you when you keep slipping into makeout flashbacks.”
I thought about denying it, but I had a feeling it would be pretty useless. I pulled my sunglasses down to cover my eyes and lay back down on my striped towel, stretching out in the late-afternoon sun.
It was almost July, a little over a week after Henry and I had kissed in the treehouse. And Lucy wasn’t entirely wrong to complain. In fact, she’d been right on the money—while she’d been talking, my mind had been drifting to the night before, when Henry and I, once we had been sure our respective families were asleep, had made out on this very dock, stretching out on a blanket under the stars. At one point, we’d paused to catch our breath, and I’d looked up at the sky as I rested my head on his chest, feeling his breath rise and fall. “Do you know any constellations?” I asked, and I’d felt his laugh rumbling in his chest before I heard it.
“No,” he’d said, and even without looking, I could hear the smile in his voice. “Want me to learn some?”
“No,” I said, my eyes still on the stars above us. “I was just wondering.” He’d smoothed his hand over my hair, and I’d closed my eyes for just a moment, still a little amazed that this had happened, that we’d somehow ended up here.