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“I’ve never come like that before,” I admit. My cheeks heat at the admission.
“Good.” He tweaks my nose. “Maybe you’ll want to keep me around.”
“Your dick is huge, by the way. You really should have warned a girl. Just saying.”
“Flatterer,” he says, and kisses the tip of my nose.
“Well, that’s all there is to it,” I tell him. “You’ll have to marry me now.”
He freezes.
“I was just kidding.”
“Don’t,” he says. He leans closer so he can kiss my lips. “Don’t kid about that. I’d marry you tomorrow if you wanted me to.”
“I want you to,” I suddenly blurt out. I cover my eyes with my palm. “Forget I said that!” I am still married, after all, to Charles.
He pulls my hand down. “So what do you want to do now?” he asks as he rolls onto his side and lies with his face against his upturned palm.
“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
He looks around the room. “Do you want to show me what’s in your memory box?” His brow furrows. “Or is it too personal? You said you had some of our stuff in there.”
I get up and pad naked across the room. I grab his discarded shirt and pull it over my head.
He pretends to pout. “Killjoy.”
I grin and grab my box and go back to the bed, and I place it between us. “You have to promise you won’t laugh,” I say.
He lays his hand over his naked heart. “I do solemnly swear.”
And I open the lid.
I lift out a little rubber bracelet. “Do you remember this day?”
He nods and takes it from me slowly, smiling as he runs it through his fingers. “I still have mine. It’s at my mom’s,” he says.
“Do you remember where we got them?” I watch his face as I ask.
“Of course, I do,” he replies.
31
Ethan
The last day of summer was a hot one. We’d just spent Labor Day weekend at the lake, and my mom and dad were taking down our tent so we could go home. I was, as always, on Abigail’s front porch with her.
“Why do you have to leave?” she asked. She sat in the glider on the front porch, the metal kind that slides back to front and if you rocked it just right would go from side to side too. Her feet were across my lap and she lay back with her forearm over her eyes. I could hear her sniffle. “School doesn’t start back for another week.”
“Not for me,” I said as I tickled the bottom of her foot. She jerked her foot back and almost kicked me in the face, but it did make her lift her arm long enough to look at me. “I go back on Tuesday.”
“Your school district is stupid.”
I didn’t like it any more than she did. “I know.”
“But why are your parents ready to leave so soon?” She glanced down at the Swatch watch she’d gotten for her last birthday. “It’s not even noon yet.”
“My dad has some chores he wants to do before he goes back to work tomorrow.” I pick up a helicopter seed, one of the dry little seed pods that fall off the nearby trees, and I toss it off the porch. It flutters to the ground in a spiral. “I’m supposed to cut the grass.” I would have to push the mower, and I hated that. It always made my hands itch when the bar vibrated. “I’d rather stay here, but I can’t.”
