“K, I want to be with you always. But it’s college; it’s a big deal. You should make the choice free of me.”
I hit him lightly a few times with my fists. “Stop being the good guy.”
He grabbed my wrists and held my arms in place, shifting me with his legs, so I was straddling him. “You want me to be the bad boy?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t. Tell me what you mean.” His face was just inches from mine, and he was daring me to say more.
“You make me crazy,” I said, and squeezed his hips with my thighs.
“Strong thighs.”
“Just tell me, Noah. Tell me what you want.”
“How about you tell me what you want?” he countered.
“You’re such a negotiator. You always make me go first.”
His blue eyes sparkled. “A good negotiator.”
“Fine,” I said, caving. “I want you. I want to be with you.”
“You’re with me right now,” he teased.
“That’s not what I mean, you goofball!”
“Ooh, name calling. This is going to be a fun negotiation,” he said, tightening his grip around my wrists and easing my body closer to his.
“I want to be with you always. I love you. I’m in love with you. And you’re the one,” I said quickly, testily. “There, I said it.”
“It was heartfelt.”
“Well, that’s what you get for making me go first. Your turn.”
He loosened his hands and lowered me gently onto him, my chest against him, his arms encircling my back.
“I want to be with you for real. For always, K,” he said, holding my eyes with his, no joking, no negotiating now. “But I hate the thought of holding you back from college or in college, and I want you to be happy and to experience life and to enjoy everything and if that means you need to leave me, then I understand. But if you don’t need to leave me, then I will be the happiest man on earth. Because all I want is to be with you. I want you to sleep over, and I want to wake up next to you, and take you to breakfast, and come home to have dinner with you.”
My heart blasted off into another stratosphere. “I want that too.”
“And,” he said, brushing his lips against my neck, sending a shiver through me, “I want to be the one who takes you to the revival of Chess.”
I wrenched back to look at him. My eyes were wide with excitement, I was sure. “Is there going to be one?” I asked, practically crossing my fingers and holding my breath in hope.
He jutted up his shoulders. “Word on the street is Davis Milo is going to direct a revival,” he said, mentioning a Tony-winning director I adored.
Sparklers ignited inside of me. This would be my dream date with my man. “We’re going to go. We have to go,” I said firmly.
He rolled his eyes. Playfully. Oh so playfully. “Obviously, we’re there opening night.”
I pressed my hands against his chest, staring at him. “Do you really think it will happen?”
“I hope so. And when it does I’m going to take the woman I’m madly in love with. And I’m going to kiss her outside the theater, and during intermission, and maybe even when the cast takes its curtain call.”
“Nobody kisses like us,” I said.
“Nobody,” he repeated, then lowered his mouth to mine, claiming my lips in a hazy, heady kiss that melted me from head to toe.
Eventually, we stopped kissing and I sighed happily, picturing our future. “I’m going to write you a love letter. I’m going to write a letter to you about all our kisses, and how much I love you,” I told him, cupping his cheeks.
“Write it,” he said, both an order and a wish. “Write it and ruin me for anyone else forever.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Will a letter ruin you?”
He ran a hand through my hair, sighed heavily. “I’m already ruined for anyone else.”
We kept up during the fall and through the new year, juggling, and managing, and as my mom carried on with Jay Fierstein, I grew closer and closer to her agent, so close we started talking details about the future.
Then those plans came crashing down in three seconds.
*
When my dad saw pieces of my letter in the early winter this year, he could tell from certain words in it that I was writing to an older guy, to someone who worked in an office, who wore slacks and shirts to work, who liked art. He asked if the letter was to Jay, his business partner. I sensed an opening. A chance to protect myself, to keep my own secret, to keep the guy I was madly in love with—Noah—out of the line of fire.
I did what my mom had taught me to do all those years. Spin. Contort. Make a fable of the facts. I made myself look sad, forlorn, ready to cry as I claimed I’d been in love with Jay, but that it was all unrequited, that I just had a crush on Jay from afar. I even said, to make it more believable, that I tried to kiss Jay once. I said the kiss lasted for three seconds max. I said Jay pushed me away because it was wrong. That all the kisses I detailed in that letter were fictional, were wishes for kisses.
That might have been my best performance ever—acting as if I liked Jay, when I hated him. Acting as if Jay was noble, when he wasn’t.
But I knew my dad and Jay had been on the outs already. My dad had suspected that Jay was skimming some money off the top of the company, so their business partnership was already falling apart. I just delivered the punishing blow with those alleged three seconds that my dad could never get out of mind. Then I begged my dad not to breathe a word. I pleaded with him not to say a thing to Jay. I claimed I was so embarrassed over the whole thing. I told him I’d see a shrink. I’d do anything.