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“And then I’ll buy you new knives from Ikea.”
Ben fake-shuddered and let more of his weight sink onto her, lowering his head until he was breathing in her ear. “I promise,” he whispered. “I promise I won’t.”
May guessed, from the way that the last little pile of pebbles rolled off her heart and clattered uselessly to the floor, that those had been the words she needed to hear.
She smiled, and she kissed him.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
They sat side by side on the front porch swing and took turns being the motor, rocking slowly from toe tip to heel cusp and back again—first May’s pajama-pant-clad leg and slippered foot, then his own leg in jeans and sneaker.
The weather was perfect—sunny, the temperature somewhere in the sixties—but he was sweating through his T-shirt. When he wiped his hands on his thighs, indigo lint stuck in the grooves of his palms.
“So,” he said. Because they had to start this conversation somewhere, even if they’d kind of done an end-run around it on the living room floor. “New York.”
“It’s not because of you,” she said quickly. “It’s because I like it there.” She let a moment pass, considering. “And sure, that’s because of you. But I like it independently of you. The main thing, though, is that I want to find out who I am, and New York seems like the best place to do it.”
He waited for that to feel like too much, too fast, but it didn’t. It felt excellent. Big, but excellent.
“I think it’s a great plan.”
She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. The sun lit one side of her face, and her smile lit everything.
“New York likes you a lot,” he said.
“New York really hurt me.”
“That wasn’t New York, May. That was me.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I am, too. I should have called Dan right away, and I should have stood up for you. I was being a people-pleasing weenie-coward.”
“Weenie-coward?”
“It’s a thing. I invented it. But I’m done with that now.”
“Good to know.”
“If you catch me backsliding, stop me, okay? Call me a weenie-coward.”
“I’ll try to remember, but it’s not a very manly phrase.”
“Fine. You don’t have to use the phrase, so long as you’ve got my back.”
“I’ve got your back.”
They rocked. Her slippers scuffed over the boards of the porch.
“What made you come here?” She turned more fully toward him. “Because if you tell me that it’s only because you forgot your knives—”
“There was nowhere I wanted to be but with you.”
She looked away. Ben stroked his hand over her temple. Her neck. He ran his palm down her shoulder and over her arm, and she said, suddenly, “Don’t. My mom’s right, it’s really quick. I don’t need you to say it if you don’t really mean it.”
“I mean it.” He took a chance and turned her face toward his. Then he took another chance and leaned close to kiss her. A different sort of kiss this time—one that was more about his sweaty palms and all the trouble he was having stringing words together than it was about lust and reunions and night after night of hot, sweaty sex. “I love you.”
