Getting here had been seven months in the making. In September, I took an after-school job at a café on the Upper West Side. Every Thursday was open mic night, populated by undiscovered singers. While I was making minimum wage so I could afford a flight to California, I was also getting an education. In between trying not to trip over Birkenstocks while holding hot beverages, I took note of how my favorite singers sat in front of the mic like they were about to tell it the most important story of their existence, and then they’d close their eyes and do just that. They’d pull chatting customers away from their own bullshit, forcing eyes on them. It left me with a proclivity for personal storytelling. And it left me with enough money to fly and see Asher for winter break. My mother shot it down instantly—there was “no way” she was going to let her fifteen-year-old daughter “go get pregnant in California.” The months that followed in our tiny apartment were ice cold—lots of slammed doors and curt answers. The joke was on my mother, because my father got me for spring break, and when I asked if I could spend the second half of break by myself in California on my own dime visiting a “friend,” he didn’t even call the “friend’s” parents to see if it was okay. He simply said, “Of course.” He trusted me implicitly. Which I recognized made him an untrustworthy parent. At this moment, standing across from Asher Reyes in a bedroom all to ourselves, I was grateful for my untrustworthy father.
“Are you sure your parents are okay with me staying in your room?” I asked, my eyes still on the bed.
Asher walked over to me and pulled me close to his warm body.
“They don’t care. They both have trials going on right now—they won’t even notice. I doubt they’ll be home before midnight.”
“You got taller,” I said, measuring the top of my head to the base of his strong jaw.
He took my hand off his jaw and clasped his fingers in mine, studying all sides of my face.
“Hi,” he said softly.
My lips stood ajar, my heart pounding in my throat, and suddenly my mouth was on his mouth, his tongue was on my tongue—our chests racing against each other, our hands knotted in each other’s hair. He helped me remove the cotton shirt from his body, and I tugged the tank top off my chest. Lips back on mine, his fingers fumbled with the clasp on my bra, finally yanking it off me—my breasts now against his solid torso. His skin on my skin was like riding a wave at sunset—it untethered me. I felt the wooden bedpost hit my spine, and he slowly pulled back from my lips, staring down at my flushed face and sucking in air.
I sidestepped away from his disarming stare—my shaking fingers searching the CD tower. He watched, shirtless from the edge of the bed, a soft grin on his face.
“Your mix is in the CD player,” he said.
Asher wasn’t a big music guy, so once a month, I sent him a mix CD in the mail, hell-bent on shaping his taste in music. I turned on the CD player, to the “I Fucking Miss You” mix I had sent him two months prior. My cheeks reddened, hearing Deana Carter croon. It was kind of cheesy, but I loved it. Yet, I wasn’t sure it was the right song for a guy to get naked to, so I went to change it on his behalf when I felt Asher’s hand around my wrist, pulling me back. “Strawberry Wine” thickened the air as the heat of his mouth went onto the curve of my neck, warm musk radiating off his olive skin and into my lungs, his fingers slowly grazing the side of my breast and sending a pulse through my entire body. His hand clenched over my hip bone, spinning me around so that my mouth could find his, so that I could feel him harden against me, so that our helpless bodies could find the bed.
His lips were on my throat, his hands up the side of my ribs, my fingers knotted in his thick hair—knuckles clenched as his mouth traced my shoulder, moving all the way down to my breast. I arched my neck back—eyes closed, heart racing. We’d been here before, many times the last summer, but sex was off the table.
I could feel him throbbing against me, and my hand moved down his chiseled stomach, settling around the belt loop on his jeans. He hovered over me, arms stretched past either side of my face as my finger grazed his leather belt, as if it were a question.
“Hey. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he said softly.
I could feel his brother’s cold necklace dangling on my chest—an antique gold medallion with a lion etched onto it. Asher wore it like a scarlet letter, so that the scar on his heart wasn’t just buried underneath his skin. I knew almost everything about the guy I loved. I wanted to know absolutely everything. I opened my mouth to say three words, but his golden eyes pierced through me, and those words tightened like a knot in my throat. I was too in love to speak. I wasn’t sure what made someone ready, but I wanted every inch of his body to understand mine, the same way our souls already felt like extensions of each other, and if that wasn’t ready, I’d never be ready.
“I want to,” I finally whispered.
He exhaled, a smile on his face. “Me, too.”
A short while later, the setting sun poured in through his window, painting our salt-soaked bodies in a blood-orange hue. My flushed cheek lay on his racing heart, and I was bathed in peace that I didn’t know my body could find. I felt my eyes getting heavier, as he pulled me tighter to his naked body.
“What’s your mom going to do when she finds out your dad let you go off to California?” Asher asked. His fingers traced aimless lines up and down my spine.
“I mean, they live in two different states and she can’t tell him what to do anymore. So she’ll probably take it out on me.”
“I’m sorry that she doesn’t understand you,” he said, kissing my hair.
“She knows exactly who I am. The problem is: I’m not her. I think it’s upsetting to her that I’m so much more like my dad.”
I shifted my body, so my chin was on his chest. He ran his hands through my hair, mouth searching for the words.
“Do you think maybe—maybe you expect your mom to be a little more like you, and she expects you to be a lot like her—and neither of you have gotten your way?” Asher asked.
I shrugged, even though the question made my insides feel heavy. Leave it to Asher Reyes to walk around in everyone’s shoes. My mother was nineteen when she fell in love with my father. She was only a couple years older when she closed her heart off from ever letting another man in. She got swept away by my father’s charm and was devastated by the outcome. The added weight in my chest swirled, knowing that I had also been left heartbroken by my father. But I kept going back for more, hoping the next time would be different. I was filled with hope, because the opposite was too dark and lonely. It’s not the heartbreak that defines who we are, it’s how we react to it. My father left scars on my mother’s heart, but my mother let the pain keep her from making new ones. Norah put up thick walls—walls that made her appear like a tower of strength, when really, she was too weak to allow herself to give up an ounce of control.
Love was her kryptonite. Love was my cherry on top.
“What are you thinking about?” Asher asked, scanning my faraway eyes.
I traced the tiny white scar on his chin with my finger as I felt his hold tighten around my body. I closed my eyes, as if the admission was embarrassing.
“I’ve never seen a man hold my mom. Or kiss her. My whole life, I’ve never seen someone else love my mom. She’s thirty-five, she’s the youngest of anyone’s mom that I know, and she’s made her mind up: her future is set in stone. She’s better off on her own. She doesn’t want this. And I’m—” I went silent, thoughts strangling my throat. My mom knew how to love once. My dad told me sweeping, heart-bursting stories of the way they loved each other. Big. Epic. I could tell by the way my mom met his eyes whenever he came into the city, how she looked away all too quickly, that she was afraid of loving him ever again. How could a young woman bathe in bright sunlight, only to find her thirty-five-year-old self content with partly cloudy for the rest of her days?
I felt Asher sit up under me, bringing me up with him. I held the crisp blue sheet above my breasts as I looked away from him. He turned my face toward his.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his hand cupping my cheek, his eyes wide.
“I’m…I’m scared,” I cracked. “I love you so much, and I’m terrified that you’re going to break my heart, and then I’ll decide never to do this again. I don’t want to become her. I don’t want to be thirty-five, with real love existing only in the rearview mirror.” I felt the hot tears run down my cheek. He wiped them away instantly.
“Come here.” He cupped the back of my head, pulling me toward his chest. I exhaled tears into the curve of his neck, gripping on to the back of his head, as if holding on to something that I would one day long for.
“Love will never be in the rearview for you, ever,” Asher whispered. “I’ll always be sitting next to you.”
“You can’t promise that,” I said, real small, like it scared me to challenge the brightest future anyone had ever presented to me.
Asher shifted my body so my eyes were right in front of his, with his hands on both of my cheeks.
“You plan on breaking my heart?” he asked.
I shook my head effusively. “I could never.”