“Not a hair band or a hip-hop band,” I say, returning to one of our inside jokes.
He smiles. It’s a small smile, the tiniest recognition of all our shared secrets. But I’ll take it.
“Definitely not either of those. What about you? What are you up to?”
“Just out causing trouble,” I say, then rest my bike against the fence surrounding the building he stands in front of.
He laughs, and backs up a few inches to lean against the railing next to my bike. He runs his thumb along the rubber of the handlebar, still warm from my hands wrapped around it seconds ago. A spark shoots through me, a reminder of all the times we touched something the other had touched as part of our first tentative dance steps to each other. I don’t take my eyes off him. I study him, even though he’s so familiar to me. The moonlight plays across his face, illuminating half of him. Strong cheekbones, bristly stubble on his jawline, a nose that was cracked once from football. Then his eyes, those navy-blue eyes that are like ink, even darker here in the late evening that inches toward midnight. The air is humid, and the noises of Manhattan surround us—cars, cabs, wind, sirens, and the anonymity of all the crowds.
“You. Causing trouble. I have a hard time picturing that,” he says in a wry voice, the corner of his lips quirking up.
I step closer. The current draws me to him; the air between us is charged with ions and electrons. He is the eye of my hurricane; the calm I am drawn to amid the chaos of my home. Here, a mere block away, we are so close to being caught.
But we are far enough away that I feel both safe and reckless. That’s how I always felt with Noah.
“You can’t picture me causing trouble?”
He shrugs. “Depends on the trouble.”
“You know I’m trouble.”
He nods, the smile erasing itself. “I know, K. I know. Trust me.”
“I do trust you,” I whisper. “With everything.”
He inhales sharply. The look in his eyes says we’re crossing into the danger zone again. It’s the only place I want to be with him. Because when we’re there, nothing between us feels dangerous. Everything feels right.
“I turn eighteen in a few more weeks,” I say, like my birthday is an open invitation for us to slam back into each other.
He nods. “I know.”
A breeze blows by and rustles his hair. A lock falls out of place. Instinct takes over. I raise my hand to reach for his hair.
But he’s faster. He grasps my wrist, and the second he does, the moment expands. It stretches and unfolds into the thing I will replay tonight and tomorrow and the next day. I stare at his hand clasped around my wrist, flashing back to all the times he held my hand, touched my wrist, and ran his fingers along my arm. I shiver as the memories collide, the past slamming into the present.
I look up from our hands to his eyes. Blazing, full of heat. Full of all that restraint from him that I know so well.
“I’m almost out of high school,” I whisper. “Three more weeks till I graduate.”
He closes his eyes. The expression on his face is so pained. I’m supposed to stay away. But all I want to do is be close again.
“I am acutely aware of the dates. Of everything,” he says through gritted teeth. He opens his eyes. “I know everything about you. I know when you graduate. I know when you turn eighteen. I know what we planned. I know you.” Everything comes out like they’re stones in his mouth, hard and hurting. Except the last word, all breath and warmth and whispers. An echo. “You.”
I want it all back, I want to say. But I don’t. I let him drop my hand. It aches from where he touched it.
Our Stolen Kisses
They say you never forget your first kiss, and I never will, but our fifth kiss was pretty spectacular too, wasn’t it? Do you remember where we were? We were on Jane Street. You grasped my hand, and led me into a small courtyard outside an apartment building. You placed your hands on my cheeks, and I practically melted just from the feel of you holding my face. But it was the way you looked at me that truly sent me soaring. I felt like the only one ever. That’s who I want to be with you.
Then you whispered in the barest voice, “You.”
It was all you said, but I knew everything you meant. I felt it too.
You.
Chapter Seven
Kennedy
Noah started as a crush.
He was the first one to visit me in the hospital when I broke my foot from a skateboarding accident in ninth grade.
I was still reeling from the epic phone fight I’d heard my parents having earlier in the day. They were fighting over custody of me. Enough, I thought. Just enough. I grabbed my skateboard, slammed the door, barreled down the steps, and slapped the longboard down on the sidewalk.
I raced east a block or two on the smooth concrete, then jumped off the curb and into the crosswalk without looking. I weaved south on Broadway, sandwiching my body and the board between the parked cars and the cabs, the trucks and buses screeching downtown. I was fast and I was furious. I wanted speed and I wanted distance. There was no more home, and there was no more Mom and Dad, and there was no more normal life, but there’d never been a normal life anyway, and this was the only normal there ever was—me and the New York City streets as I dodged the bullets the traffic threw at me. It was me against the cars, me against rush hour, and I wanted to win. Then someone in a cab opened the door and I didn’t see it coming. The door smacked my elbow, and the next thing I knew the board slid out from under me and my foot slammed into the tire.