“I disagree,” said Sam. “Tell me more about how smart I am, Delilah.”
“I’d find you a lot more intelligent if you told her to up the sex and romance content,” she said, laughing.
“What are you all giggling about?” Mason piped up.
“Percy’s stories. What do you think of them?” Sam asked, and my stomach dropped. I still hadn’t shown Mason my writing.
“She’s never let me read one,” he said, eyes narrowing at Sam.
“No? She’s incredibly talented,” Sam told him, eyes sparkling. “She asks me for feedback on them all the time, but she really doesn’t need it. She’s a natural writer.”
“Is she?”
Sam went on like he hadn’t heard him. “You should read ‘Young Blood.’ She wrote it a couple of years ago, but it’s still my favorite. God, remember how late we’d stay up talking about character names, Percy?”
Sam was marking his territory, and all I could do was murmur in agreement.
“I didn’t realize how close you two were,” Mason said, eyeing me now. “It’s so nice Percy has a friend up here to keep her company.”
He pulled me down onto his lap, turning me at the same time, so that I was straddling him.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“You don’t mind, do you, guys?” He tilted his head to look around me. “I haven’t seen my girl in ages.” He took my face in his hands and brought my mouth down to his, kissing me sloppily. When he let me come up for air, Sam was already halfway to the door.
“I should head out if I want to run tomorrow,” he said, not looking at me. And then he was gone.
Sam kept his distance for the the rest of the weekend, and I was itchy for everyone to leave so I could see him. The summer was already half gone, and I was resentful that Mason’s behavior meant I lost time with Sam. He had been particularly handsy the entire visit, like he was trying to lay claim to my body. It made me anxious. Even his goodbye kiss was a groping, tongue-filled affair.
Sam was different after Mason’s visit. Reserved. Sometimes our eyes would meet across the kitchen or when we were hanging out in the basement, and the air would crackle. But otherwise, it was like he had put a lid on his feelings for me, which was exactly what I’d asked for. But as it got closer to the end of summer, I realized it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to crack the lid open.
I broke up with Mason the last week of summer break in an awkward You’re a great guy! phone call. He was surprised but took it better than Delilah, who pouted about the end of our double dates before I reminded her she was planning to pause things with Patel for the school year.
Sam and I were sitting on his bed reading in our damp bathing suits the last day before I’d be heading back to the city with my parents. It was hot, and Charlie and Anita had annexed our usual basement hideaway. Sue had refused to put on the AC, so Sam closed his bedroom blinds and set up a fan to oscillate between us, he at the end of the bed, his back pressed to the wall, and me at the head facing him, knees drawn up toward my chest. He was studying a diagram in one of his anatomy textbooks while I was reading The Stand. Or I was trying to. I hadn’t managed to make it through a page in the past ten minutes. I couldn’t stop looking at Sam: the tan line around his ankles, the muscles of his calves, the bracelet around his wrist. I stretched my leg out to rest it on his thigh, and as soon as my foot made contact, he jolted.
“You okay, weirdo?” I asked. He eyed me and then sprung off the bed and dug through his dresser drawer.
“Do me a favor,” he said, throwing me his old Weezer T-shirt. I pulled it over my head while he sat down, his nose back in the textbook.
I prodded his leg with my toe and noticed an apple blush creeping into his cheeks. Getting a rise out of Sam was one of my top three favorite things to do, and it was a rare thrill these days. But something had punctured a hole in his calm reserve, and I wanted to rip it wide open with my teeth.
“And you’re kicking me because . . .” he said in a deep monotone, not looking up from the page, brows knit. I put both feet on his lap, feeling his whole body stiffen.
“That must be a fascinating book—you’ve been reading it all summer.”
“Mmm.”
“Really good plotline?”
“Riveting,” he deadpanned. “You know, I can usually count on you not to give me shit about studying.”
“No shit-giving here,” I swore, then dug my heel into his thigh. “Lots of sexy parts, huh?” He finally looked at me from the corner of his eye, shook his head, and then returned to the book.
“Actually,” I said, moving my feet off his lap and sitting up with my knees bent out in front of me, pressing my toes into his thigh, “the human body is pretty sexy. I mean, not the picture of that skinless man you’re looking at . . .”
“It’s a diagram of the muscular system, Percy,” he said, turning his face to me. “This”—he put one hand around the back of my leg—“is a calf muscle.” His voice was sarcastic, but it felt like someone had replaced the blood in my veins with caffeine. I wanted his hand on me. I wanted his hands on me.
He looked down at where he gripped my leg and back to me. His eyes were a question mark.
“Calf muscle?” I said. “Good to know . . . I’ll be sure to try to use it one day. I’ve heard of this thing called running.” I laughed, and he moved his hand away.
We sat with our books open for several minutes, neither of us turning a page. I felt the promise of something more between us slipping, to be tucked away like the old box of embroidery floss in my desk drawer. So I tried to hold on.
I pushed my toes under his thigh.
“Learn anything else from that book of yours?” I asked. His eyes snapped to mine. He nodded slowly.
“Want to enlighten me, genius?” I made my best attempt to sound playful, but my voice was shaky.
“Percy . . .” It took every ounce of confidence I had to not break eye contact.
“I guess I’ll just have to get some other future doctor to educate me,” I teased, and he blinked rapidly. And then I knew. I knew that this was his weak spot. He hated the idea of someone else touching me. When he moved his hand back to my calf, I wanted to scream in triumph.
He didn’t grip it this time. Instead, he ran his fingers back and forth over the muscle, shooting electricity through my body, every nerve ending sparking to life. Sam’s lips were set in a serious, straight line, his face a mask of concentration. We both watched his hand moving over my calf and then slowly down my leg. He grasped it at the bottom. He looked up at me with a grin.
“Ankle,” he said.
I let out a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a gasp. He shifted so that he knelt at my feet and took my other ankle in his right hand so that he was holding on to both my legs. He looked into my eyes for one, two, three seconds. I swallowed. And then, watching my reaction, he skimmed a finger slowly up my leg.
“Shin.”
I had plotted, dreamed, obsessed about Sam touching me. I had lain on my bed with my hand between my legs fantasizing about his hands and his shoulders and the crease in his bottom lip. I wanted so badly to touch him, to move my fingers along the faint line of hair that led from his belly button and into his bathing suit. And now I was frozen. I was terrified of ruining the moment, of shaking Sam out of whatever magic had come over him.
He cupped his palm around my knee following with his other hand on the opposite knee. He pushed them apart and crept slightly up the bed so he was between them, then grabbed my ankles and pulled my legs flat against the bed. He leaned over me, and my arms shook from holding myself upright. I could feel his breath on my face. Without moving his eyes from mine, he whispered, “Lie back, Percy.”