“Just tonight.” The words are pointed.
My heart aches. “So you really have to stay and talk. I want to catch up.”
Tears are rolling down my cheeks as Dash leads me to the water. We sit side by side. He nudges his flip-flops off and I kick off my sandals. How strange that the cool, damp sand between my toes should feel so normal.
I watch as Dash rolls his jeans up his calves.
“Hang on,” he murmurs. Then he’s pulling off his shirt, and I am dying at the sight of his bare chest. He hands the shirt to me. “For you to sit on.”
The sand is damp, so I do as he says. When I’m settled again, he tilts his head toward me and shifts his eyes to mine. “You’re older,” he says softly.
“Yep. That happens.” I can’t help a small smile.
He reaches for me, pausing only for a moment before two of his fingers rub a strand of my hair. “You look good, Am. You had a good summer?”
“Yeah, I guess. I was worried about you.”
His mouth twitches on one side, a would-be smile that never blossoms. “I’m okay.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Just hanging around.”
“Where did you go?” I sense his reticence, so I make it easier. “Name one place you went this summer.”
His mouth softens. “Maine.”
“What was your favorite part of Maine?”
He runs his fingertip along the strand of my hair, then releases it and clasps his hands atop his knees. “I saw some whales.”
“What kind?”
“Humpbacks.”
I try to picture Dash in Maine. My mind’s eye evokes him with binoculars around his neck and straight-front khaki shorts. A pair of Sperrys. “Were you on a boat?”
“I was.”
“Well…did you like them?”
He smiles slightly. “Hated them.”
“Oh really.”
He licks his lips, then bites down on the inside of his cheek for just a moment—nervous habits—before continuing, seeming at ease. “They were majestic. The kind of thing you think you’d never really see.”
“Is it rare, to see one?”
“No. But it seems like it should be, you know? Kind of feels like they’re there just for you.”
“So are you really leaving school?” I ask him.
“Maybe.” He runs a hand back through his hair, looking away from me, out at the streak of moonlight on the water.
“Why?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s just…” He shakes his head. “I’m not sure how much I like to study art.”
“Yeah?” Does that mean he’s not sure he wants to be an artist? I’ve stalked him online, so I know he’s got a web site where he sells his paintings.
“Tell me more about you, Ammy. What’s the best part of your summer been?”
“Tonight.”
He looks pained. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“I’ll feel like shit for leaving.”
“Where are you going?”
“Out to Montana.”
“What are you going to do there?”
He shrugs. “Paint. Work.”
“I thought you liked Providence.”
He gives me a gentle smile. “I said I thought you would.”
“Will you call me? Please?”
“I might not have a phone.”
“Everybody has a phone. Don’t leave me and never call, like you did this year. Please. It…messed me up. It was like you disappeared.” I hold my breath, then let it out. “It was…like my Mom.”
He wraps an arm around me, pulls me close enough so I can feel my hair catch in his chin scruff. “Damnit, Am. I’m so damn sorry.”
“You should be.” I wrap my arms around him. “Will you kiss me?”
“No.” His arms tighten around me. “But I’ll hug you.”
We lie on our sides there on the shore, Dash’s arms around me, my face against his t-shirt, lips brushing the skin-warmed cotton.
I wrap my legs around his. “For how long?” I whisper.
Dash’s hand plays in my hair. He waits so long to answer, I think he’s not going go.
“Remember when I got strep throat? In seventh grade? It was during the summer. I think Mom and Dad were on that long safari—and we had that asshole nanny. Netta?”
“The Norwegian Marry Poppins,” I whisper with a smile, because I do remember. “She thought you were faking sick because she’d taken away your video games. I think you hid her purse or something really innocent and dumb. But it made her really mad.”
“You came over with that smoothie.”
“I knew you were sick, because you hadn’t touched that book you were really into in like two days. The one about the rabbits. Watership Down.”
He nods. “You climbed into my bed and held me. You remember that?”
“Of course.” I’d been too young to understand the concept of a crush, but being near Dash made my heart beat harder.
I shift my gaze upward, so I can see his face, and when I notice tears in his eyes, my stomach clenches.
“Dash…”
And then his mouth is overtaking mine.
Five
Amelia
His hands are on my breasts and hips, his mouth is worshipping my mouth. I can do nothing but cling onto his elbows, then his hips, and Dash is groaning.
Dash is kissing down my chest, teasing my breasts through fabric.
I’m on top of him again and I can feel him where I want to feel him most. Dash’s hand is clasping my neck as our tongues stroke and his hips buck and I bare down against him, moving my own hips out of sheer instinct.
“Jesus Ammy—” between kisses. “You’re…so perfect. Everywhere. Perfect.”
I can’t keep from gasping as he tongues my nipples.
“Sorry. Slower,” he promises, and pulls away, kissing my throat as I go limp atop him. Limp except my legs, which can’t stop moving. I can’t keep from rocking atop him.
“God…”
“Tell me to stop,” he grits.
“Don’t stop!”
His mouth is back on mine, so hard it almost hurts, but then our tongues are stroking, and I’m lost—so awfully lost—in what we’re doing, everything feels good and blissful. I feel Dash’s erection against me and I sit up on him, repositioning myself so I’m rubbing with the throbbing part of me.
“Shit,” he moans.
I grind against him.
“If you…keep doing that…” He squeezes my knees. “I’m gonna…”
“I know.”
“Ammy…”
He tries to move away from me, but that’s not easy with me on top. I run my hands over his chest. His face looks beautiful and rapt, his eyes shut, his lips pressed tight.
Feeling brave, I reach between us, sifting through the folds of my dress until my fingers find their mark through his pants.
Even through the fabric, I can tell he’s long and hard and thicker than I thought he would be. When I rub him, Dash comes off the ground. I find the head of him and stroke there with my fingertips, dizzy with the rush of hearing Dash moan.
I rub my cupped palm up and down him.
“Ammy, please. It hurts…”