I close my eyes. My back arches off the mattress on its own. My breath is coming in uneven hitches now. There’s a threadtightening in my belly with every place his mouth lands, and I’m dizzy with it, dizzy, my hands fisting in his sheets, in his hair, anything I can reach.
He pauses.
He stops with his mouth on my sternum and his hand at my ribs, and he lifts his head and looks at me.
“Melly.”
“Yeah?” It comes out small.
A long beat. His eyes hold mine. His chest is rising and falling fast. His mouth’s parted. The line between his eyebrows is gone, smoothed out, replaced by something I don’t have a name for.
“I love you.”
The room stops.
The whole world goes quiet. The sound coming from downstairs goes quiet. My heart, which has been hammering, goes quiet for one long suspended half-second. Then it slams back to life so hard it hurts.
He said the three little words.
So soon.
He said it first.
He said it before me.
He said it without even a full hour into a real relationship with me.
He said it like a fact. Like a man stating something he knows in his bones. Like a man who’s been holding the sentence in his mouth and couldn’t hold it for one more second.
My eyes flood.
They flood before I can stop them, hot and sudden, and the tears escape down the side of my face into my hair. I look at him through the blur of it. I have one hand on his chest where his heart’s going so fast under my palm, and I have one hand at the back of his head where his hair’s between my fingers. I look at the boy I’ve loved since forever, and I say it back.
“I love you too, Blue.”
He drops his head, resting his forehead on my shoulder. His breath’s hot on my collarbone. His shoulders shake once — just once — the smallest possible shake, the kind of shake that isn’t crying but a man releasing a thing he’s been carrying for a long time. I lift my hand to the back of his head and hold him there.
My eyes are streaming now. I don’t bother stopping them.
He lifts his head, and he kisses me deeply.
He tastes like salt.
He reaches into the nightstand drawer and pulls out the small foil packet. He sets it on the pillow next to my head. He looks down at me and kisses me again. His mouth on mine. His mouth on my neck. His mouth on my breast.
I whimper — a small broken sound I couldn’t have stopped if I tried. I’m shaking.
He sighs into me. His hand on my ribs slides down, and his fingers find the band of my underwear.
I nod when he looks at me. I can’t speak.
He hooks his thumb and pulls them down. I lift my hips. He gets them off me. He drops them off the side of the bed, and they land on the floor.
He looks down at me for a long time and doesn’t say fuck this time. He doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me like I’m the only thing in the world, and then he closes his eyes for half a second like he’s praying, and then he opens them again.
He kisses my hipbone.
I jump.
