I looked down at my phone again and realized that it was now safe for me to join him. I crossed through the living room and headed toward the basement, making sure to lock the door behind me.
Sometimes, making out with Topher was like quenching a thirst, and sometimes it just made me thirstier. Thankfully, tonight it was the first one. After we’d been kissing for a while, the intensity faded and our kisses grew slower and more lingering. I broke away and rested my head on his chest, and he smoothed my hair down absently with one hand.
I looked up from the couch where we were lying. This seemed to be more like a converted garage than a basement, with the couch and TV jockeying for space with workbenches and tools. Someone in Kevin Castillo’s family was clearly really into cars—there were three in the basement/garage and two more covered with tarps, tools stacked neatly next to them. I looked at the one nearest to us—a red vintage Mustang, and felt a sharp pang, the way I always did when I saw one. My mother’s had been yellow, a ’65 convertible that had been her pride and joy. But I hadn’t seen it in years—I assumed that it had gone wherever all her things had gone, either sold or to storage somewhere. All I did know was that when I moved into the new house, there was no trace of my mother in it.
I turned my back on the Mustang and ran my hand over the fabric of the couch. “This was surprisingly comfortable,” I said, and heard Topher give a short laugh.
“Well, it’s no laundry room.” I pushed myself up slightly to look at him, and he smiled as he pulled a lock of my hair forward, winding it around his finger. “I was thinking about that night a few days ago, actually.”
“Were you?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Just about how lucky we were.” This made me sit up a little straighter, and I looked him in the eye, starting to get nervous, worried that he was suddenly changing the rules on me. “Lucky because we didn’t get caught,” he clarified, and I felt myself relax.
“We really were.” It was three years ago, but I could remember so clearly what it had been like—the thrill of my first real party, then the flashing lights streaking in through the window and my utter panic when I realized that not only was I in trouble, but I might have wrecked my father’s career. I was desperately searching for an exit in the chaos, and then, out of nowhere, was Topher Fitzpatrick, taking my hand in his. I didn’t know him—we went to different schools, and I’d said only about five words to him the year before, at an event at the governor’s mansion. But I saw in his eyes the exact same thing I was feeling—the paralyzing fear that comes with knowing just how high the stakes really are. He leaned closer to me to be heard above the noise of people running, panicking, bottles and glasses breaking as everyone tried to get out, and fast.
“Want to get out of here?” he’d asked. I nodded, and he held my hand tighter as we ran through the house. He stopped in front of a door that I would have run past and pushed it open. It was a laundry room, a tiny space with a folding table, a stacked washer and dryer, and barely enough room to turn around. Topher pulled me inside, and we shut the door behind us and stood in the dark and waited.
We weren’t discovered right away, and after a few minutes of both of us panicking that cops were about to fling open the door at any moment, we both relaxed a little and found our way to the folding table. We sat side by side next to a stack of fluffy, neatly folded towels, moonlight streaming through the tiny window above the dryer and the smell of fabric softener all around us. And when the panic that I was about to ruin everything had started to subside, I let myself appreciate this situation for the first time—that I was sitting very close to a cute gray-eyed boy in the moonlight.
We started talking, about school, about our parents, about the counter-spin we’d have ready in case we were discovered—that when we’d realized there was underage drinking happening, we’d removed ourselves from the situation immediately—until I realized that enough time had passed that we could probably go out safely. I turned to Topher to tell him this and saw that he was sitting closer to me than I’d realized and was looking at me thoughtfully, like he was studying my face. My heart started pounding hard, but I made myself keep looking into his eyes as he brushed a stray lock of hair from my forehead and then wound it around his finger once before tucking it behind my ear. And then, moving so slowly, he leaned over and gave me my very first kiss.