Page 107

Olivia

His mouth crashes into mine.

I don’t get to finish the question. I don’t get to finish the thought. One second I’m pinned against a brick wall asking what he’s doing, and the next his mouth is on mine and the question answers itself, completely, all at once.

And I stop thinking.

That’s the part I’ll marvel at later, when I have my brain back. That for the first time in my entire carefully managed life, every single thought I’ve ever had just picks up and leaves, and there’s nothing left in me but this. Him. His mouth on mine, warm and sure and overdue, and my hands finding the front of his shirt and holding on like the ground moved.

It’s not a careful kiss. We are both done pretending. It’s the kiss of two people who have been holding their breath since a coffee shop, who circled and stalled and drew lines and are finally coming up for air.

Except there’s no air. There’s just him.

His hand slides from the wall into my hair. My fingers curl into his shirt and pull him closer, which shouldn’t be possible, there’s no closer, and somehow there is. There’s just his mouth and my hands and the brick against my back and three weeks of everything we didn’t say pouring out of both of us at once.

I have been so careful for so long.

I am not being careful now.

When we finally break apart, it’s only an inch. Neither of us goes farther than an inch. We just stop, both of us breathing hard, foreheads nearly touching, and I open my eyes and his are right there, blue and close and looking at me like I’m the only thing that has ever happened.

He lifts a hand and brushes his thumb across my cheek, slow, the same way he did in his driveway a lifetime ago, except this time he’s already kissed me and there’s nothing left to hold back.

“Wow,” he says, rough. Barely a word.

“Yeah,” I manage.

Neither of us moves. I couldn’t tell you how long we stand there, foreheads together, breathing each other’s air, my hands still fisted in his shirt because I have apparently forgotten how to let go of him.

And then it lands. On both of us at the same time. Where we are. What we just did.

We are pressed against the side of a church. On fall fest Sunday. Thirty feet from a bounce house.

And we just kissed like the world was ending.

The laugh comes up in me before I can stop it, and I feel him feel it, his chest starting to shake against my hands, and then we’re both laughing, foreheads together, helplessly.

“We’re at church,” I whisper.

“I’m aware.”

“There are people everywhere.”

“Aware of that too.” He pulls back just enough to look at me, grinning now, that whole crooked, wrecked, beautiful thing. “I couldn’t wait anymore. I tried. I’ve been trying since your kitchen.” He shakes his head.

“You cornered me against a wall.”

“After extensive restraint.”

I laugh again, and he’s laughing, and I’m standing in the shade of a church I walked back into three weeks ago on a dare, kissed breathless by a man I met because of a wrong number. I have never in my life been this happy and this out of control at the exact same time.

And for once, I don’t reach for the controls.

Eventually we have to go back.

We can’t stay hidden forever, no matter how much I’d like to, and Luke has a son somewhere winning ducks. So we straighten ourselves out, and by that I mean he watches me try to fix my hair with no mirror and finally reaches over and smooths a piece of it down himself, which does not help my composure at all.

“You look fine,” he says.