“Say the word,” I say, and I press the tops of my fingers lightly against his. I watch as he spreads open his hand, making room for me. I slide my fingers into his, flesh against flesh at last. The touch of his skin is at once a relief and a thrill. He locks his hand around mine and holds on tight.
“I miss you so much,” he says, looking at me like he did in the car on the way to the Yankees game, like he did at the café, like he always said he would.
I am happy. I am hope. I am no longer at war with myself. He is where I belong.
“Me too,” I say, gripping his fingers so hard as the slow-motion connection of the moment snaps in a second. In a blur, I move. I straddle him. I climb on top of him, dropping his hands, and lacing my fingers through his hair. He exhales sharply, and his chest tightens. He grips my hips, holding them close, but not too close, keeping a sliver of distance between us, as he always did. We stare at each other. The months melt away and I fall back. Into his blue eyes. Into his touch. Into his arms.
Here in Manhattan, on a bench in the park, the spring night slinking behind us, we are poised to smash into each other. To crash back into orbit.
His lips crush mine, and it is a wild rumpus of kissing, a chaos of lips and tongues and teeth. A pandemonium of sighs and moans and breaths and names. I grip his thighs tighter with my own, pressing against him, chest to chest, body to body, everything aligned. Everything fits, especially me with him, and him with me. He is the puzzle piece that slides into place in my heart, filling all the sad and empty spots inside me.
He tugs me closer, and I move with him, wanting to eradicate any negative space still between us. I erase the final millimeters with more kisses, deeper, hotter, needier.
I don’t know how long we kiss. All I know is it’s long enough for the kiss to threaten to turn into too much more, and that’s why he finally pulls apart, gently, but firmly, pushing me off.
I follow the cue. I’m not ready either to go too far. I slide off him but stay as close as I can, arms around him, laying my head on his shoulder. He strokes my hair, murmurs my name in my ear. The sound of it whispers across my skin, setting off another round of goose bumps.
“Kennedy, you have ruined me for anyone else.”
I can’t help but smile. I’ve never had any power. I’ve never craved the power like that. But I have it because it comes from the one thing we have that no one can touch.
I crane my neck, look up at him. “I’ve been ruined for a long, long time,” I said, threading a hand in his soft hair, and pulling him back to me for another kiss, telling him with my lips that he is mine, that I own him, and the way he kisses me back is all the confirmation I need that he wants to be possessed by only me. The warm air drifts softly across the bare skin of my arms as a car screeches to a stop somewhere on the busy street. The sounds of New York don’t stop us, not when we are caught up in our favorite hobby—deep kisses that make your head foggy.
Sometime later, I don’t know when, we stand up to leave.
“I have something for you,” he says.
“What is it?” I ask, but he’s already unbuttoning his shirt, revealing his white T-shirt underneath. The T-shirt fits him like a dream, stretched tight across his strong chest, showing the muscles in his arms. My heart skids against my rib cage. He is beautiful. He is mine.
He hands the crisp orange shirt to me, and I press it to my nose, inhaling him, inhaling our secret. Then after another searing kiss that is a promise of ten thousand more to come, I unlock my bike and return home, to my bedroom, where I lock the door, and put his clothes on, falling asleep in his orange shirt, feeling safe once more.
Chapter Eighteen
Kennedy
After our first date at the Chocolate Cafe, we went to the Frick, one of my favorite museums in the city. He bought the admission tickets and we walked into the galleries on a quiet summer afternoon when the crowds were thin.
I leaned in, speaking almost in a whisper. “I think this is the perfect museum. Want to know why?”
“Tell me why you think this is the perfect museum,” he said.
“Because you can do the whole museum in under an hour.”
“Ah, so you’re not one of those people who needs to spend an entire day looking at art, considering it, staring at every single painting?”
I shook my head. “I’d rather know the story behind the art. That’s why I want to study art in school—to look at history through art.”
He moved closer as we walked past the first set of paintings. “I like that idea. It’s a cool way to look at history.”
“Right? Through paintings. Through what they tell you about people.”
“It’s kind of like psychology, in a way,” he said, as if he were mulling over the idea. “It’s all about understanding people and what matters to them.”
“Exactly,” I said, and smiled.
He nudged me gently with his elbow. “Tell me some art history then.”
“So, this museum used to be a house,” I began, launching into a history of the Frick. “The house of Henry Clay Frick, who was some sort of Pennsylvania businessman at the turn of the century and a huge art collector. This was basically his personal collection. And he bequeathed it all at his death as an art collection for the public.”
Suddenly, I stopped talking. Noah probably knew this. He grew up near New York, he spent tons of time in the city as a kid, and he’d lived in Manhattan his whole adult life. I didn’t even have an adult life, and here I was, trying to teach him something he probably knew. Hell, he looked the part today, cool and sophisticated in his forest-green shirt, his dark-black pants, his fancy shoes, and trace of stubble.