She pulled her chair closer and our knees grazed each other. That tiny contact was like a lightning bolt of want slamming through me, but I tamped it down, always keeping things in check, as I reached my hands around her neck, fastening the necklace, letting it fall against her chest. The restaurant narrowed to only us; all the other patrons, the waiters, the hostess, the cooks were a blur of noise. She was my world. I let my hands linger for a moment, barely tracing her soft skin with my fingertips. She held my gaze the whole time, then touched her new necklace.
“I love it, Noah,” she said, her eyes open and wide, never leaving mine. “I just love it.”
“I love it too,” I whispered, and I knew, and she knew, that we weren’t just talking about the necklace.
After dinner, we walked a few blocks over to Madison Square Park, framed on one side by the Flatiron Building, on the other corner by the MetLife Tower. We sat on a bench at the edge of the park, soaking in the warm air and the dark sky, as we watched the other New Yorkers walking by.
“They’re on the way to a hipster party. You have to wear pencil jeans to get past the door,” she said, pointing to a pack of skinny, goateed twenty-somethings.
“Soul patch gets you a free beer,” I added. Then I tipped my forehead to a tired-looking couple in their early thirties. “They’re wondering if it would be bad form to crash on the couch when the babysitter leaves.”
“Sleep is definitely going to win,” she said, as a fortyish woman in a purple satin dress and silver sparkles braided into her hair walked past us. The woman held a wand with a star at the point. Kennedy raised an eyebrow, and the corner of her lips curved up. “Either she entertains at children’s parties or she really is a fairy godmother.”
I fixed a serious look on my face. “She’s totally a fairy godmother, Kennedy. She’s the real thing.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she said, then she spotted a girl who looked to be about twenty holding hands with a guy who seemed a few years older. They were our reflection, and we both turned to each other at the same time, recognition in her eyes. She laced a hand through my hair. I leaned into her hand. “They’re just happy,” she whispered.
My heart tripped over itself in my chest. I was no longer man against the world. I wasn’t a guy holding tight to a job because it was all he had. I was a guy crazy for a girl, and the girl was crazy for me. There was no other way about it.
“Very happy. Like us,” I added.
“Like us,” she echoed.
I traced her jaw with my thumb and I watched her reaction. Her eyes floated closed, and her breath hitched. I kept my hand on her face, touching her cheek as I brushed my lips softly against her, gently at first, a barely there kind of kiss. Her lips pressed harder, hungrier, and lustier, and soon, my arms were all around her, and her hands were all over me.
I knew then in the feel of her hands, in the way they roamed my chest, gripped my arms, trailed along the front of my shirt. I knew in the sweet taste of her lips, in the sexy little murmurs she made, but most of all I knew deep inside of me.
She was the one. She was the only one. She filled me in ways that no one and nothing ever had.
It pained me to break the kiss, but then it was also necessary. I had to tell her, had to let her know. “Do you know why I’m so happy?” I said, my voice low but strong, matching the way I felt.
Her eyes widened as she asked me softly why.
“Because I’m completely in love with you,” I said, with all the certainty in the world.
Her smile was as wide as the sky. I swore I could see her soaring, as she cupped my cheeks, brushed a kiss on my lips, then whispered. “I’m so in love with you.”
I tugged her in close. “This will always be our place,” I said because I’d never forget how it felt here in Madison Square Park, on a warm September night, surrounded by the sounds of Manhattan, to be in love with her.
Here, with her, I was … complete.
Our Stolen Kisses
I’d never forget how it felt to say those words. To be in our place. In love with you, in love with us, in love with our secret, with the island we were building, keeping out the whole wide world.
There with you, I was … safe.
Chapter Twenty
Kennedy
Now here I am again. Safe again.
And I don’t want it to come crashing down this time. Not when I am so close to the finish line I can see it. Not when my get-out-of-jail-free card is within reach. I’ll be eighteen in mere days. I’ll be at NYU in three months. I just need to get through June, July, and August.
Then I will be free of my parents. Once I’m in college, I can do what I want.
When I get out of bed Sunday morning, I take off Noah’s orange shirt, fold it carefully, and stuff it at the bottom of my backpack to return it to him later today. I text him: Shirt’s off. Giving it back to you today.
He replies seconds later. off? What’s on then?
We banter like that for the next ten minutes, then he tells me he’ll be thinking of me when he heads to the library shortly for an event, and I’m sure you’d need an industrial-strength mop to wipe the ridiculous grin off my face, especially when I tell him I’ll see him later, since we’re going to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden this afternoon. My mother never goes to Brooklyn. My father doesn’t either. No one who knows me will be there.
I hear my dad walk down the hall, so I click over to the home screen on my phone, then double-check to make sure my backpack is zipped up. Not that he’d ever look through my bag, but once burned, twice shy. I so don’t need my dad seeing a sliver of orange fabric and then freaking out again. I shower and get dressed, counting down the hours until I see Noah this afternoon. As I turn off the hair dryer, my phone blasts out its ringtone for Amanda.