For a long moment, we stay like that, pretending to watch TV.
“What’ll you do with that dress?” he asks after a while.
“Burn it, probably.”
He laughs, jostling my head.
“I just couldn’t stop thinking about how I was failing,” I say, staring at the ad playing on the screen. “And then suddenly there was something I could do to fix it.”
“Mm.” Greg’s finger traces the ridge of my ear, and somehow this touch reverberates through my entire body.
“But I was wrong. I totally lost my bearings. And…” I nestle against his side. “I couldn’t do it.”
“Why’s that?” His voice is taut, but he keeps tracing the shape of my ear.
“My heart’s been somewhere else.” I put a hand on his chest and feel his own heart beating, fast and forceful. “So I slept on it, like you said. You heard me snoring.”
I’m still not looking at him, but I can feel him swallow. “And?”
“Greg…I never would have cracked the door open for him to begin with, if I’d known how you felt. But you seemed unavailable. And uninterested. And my undying crush on you had gone well past the point of being sad, like, several years ago already. I felt like I was delusional, clinging to that.”
A strained laugh escapes from him, so breathy it sounds like a wheeze. “I can relate. The delusional, undying crush part.”
My chest warms at those words, and I cross my arms, tucking myself into his side. “We should form a support group.”
He caresses my ear. “When you came back, I thought you hated me.”
“Oh, I do hate you. You ruined me for kissing.”
“Oh yeah?”
“It probably sounds stupid, but…” There’s a prickling in my gut, the sensation of crossing a threshold by admitting this. “Every time I kiss someone new, I still compare it to our first one.”
We’re quiet again, just the low sounds of the TV filling the room. And after a while, I take the remote out of his hand and turn it off.
I tilt my head up toward him, and he’s already staring at me. A rush of déjà vu hits me. The memory I pushed down, that surged up when I didn’t call for it, that I couldn’t escape—now it’s like we’re living it a second time.
Greg’s head lowers and his lips touch mine, a gentle brush that makes all my nerves pay attention, blows out my center of gravity, stomach weightless. My eyes close, and all my muscles relax with that full-body sigh:This is what you’ve been missing.
His tongue slips into my mouth, and I breathe in lemon zest softened by the scent of him underneath, sun-warmed skin and a hint of salt. All the years I avoided him tumble through my mind—the uncomfortable conversations I was scared to have, the times I thought I could grit down and plow through it. And now I’m here with Greg, not running from myself anymore, coming home after years of aimless wandering. It’s such a relief, I want to cry—oh no, Iamcrying—and he pulls back and catches the tears with his fingers.
“That bad?” He cracks a smile, even though his eyes are concerned. “My technique’s gone downhill over the past decade?”
It makes me laugh, like he wanted.
“I’m sad for all the years we weren’t doing that,” I manage to get out. “All that lost time.”
He gazes at me protectively, like he’s been feeling the same way but wants to cheer me up. “When you lose something…don’t they say to retrace your steps?”
Greg cups my face in his hands—the way he did the secondtime we kissed, sitting on this same couch—and presses his lips to mine. Without breaking the kiss, I shift so I’m straddling him, and he laughs into my mouth.
“Oh hi,” Greg murmurs, blinking up at me. “Am I dreaming right now?”
I pinch his earlobe. “I don’t think so.”
Greg kisses me again, deeper this time, and I can feel him getting hard beneath me. Suddenly I’ve never been so turned on in my life.
He reaches up and undoes my bun, and my damp hair tumbles down over my shoulders as his fingers rake my scalp. It feels so good, I let out a soft moan, and his other hand drifts down to my neck, my pulse pushing into his palm, meeting it like it’s saying,Hi, I’ve been waiting for you.
