You Have a Match(89)
He presses his lips together, his eyes searching mine. “You say that now, Abby, but it’s a year. Thousands of miles. And I want this. I want you.” He takes my hand in his, tight enough that I know he means it, but loose enough that it would be easy for me to let go. “But you’re … you’re a forever kind of person to me. You always have been. And I don’t want to start something this important when it might be ended because of things we can’t control.”
I can’t claim to know what the future holds—whether the two of us will be equipped to go the distance, or what kind of people we’ll be in a year or two or more on the other side of it. I can’t even say where I’ll be, let alone where he might.
But it isn’t the knowing that matters. It’s the feeling that does—and this is deeper than the miles between us, more enduring than any odds we might face.
“Our lives are going to take us a lot of places,” I say softly, tightening my grip on his hand. “Like you said—things happening for different people at different times. But the way I feel about you … that’s never going to change. So if you really feel the way that I do…”
“I do,” he says. “Plain as Day.”
We both start to smile, but our grins snag on each other, pulling us closer than we expected—then as close as we can get.
Kissing Leo is so easy that I almost miss the moment it happens, the way you don’t remember opening the front door when you come home, or how you don’t wake up in the middle of the night to the same loud noise you’ve heard a thousand times. Like this isn’t the important moment, not the one that really defines anything; it’s just a moment built smack in the middle of all the other ones. A moment that carries you through to the next but isn’t any more or less important than the others because the end result will always be the same.
What isn’t easy is once it starts happening, because there is no way to make it fit—it isn’t just the clench of my gut, the heat pooling out of it, the tingle of skin on skin. It’s the overwhelming flood of sensations, and everything they’re built on. Knees knocking on top of the jungle gym. Late-night texts under the covers. Stolen bites of still-cooking meals. This current that has hummed under me my whole life, roaring and breaking the surface, crashing into every part of me. I could kiss him and never find the start of it, never find the end. I could kiss him and lose myself in a world we already share, now lit up in colors I never thought I’d see.
When we pull apart we’re both grinning, foreheads pressed together, eyes with identical sparks.
“I can’t even tell you how long I’ve wanted to do that,” says Leo.
Confidence blazes through me, making me feel like I could snap fire into existence, strike lightning at will, control the tides.
“So show me.”
Leo laughs, and so do I, and he catches my laugh with his lips and this time when we kiss, I know I’ve finally reached the one height he’ll never ask me to come down from.
thirty-seven
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen an actual drunk person, courtesy of never going to any of the student government parties Connie always invites us to, but I imagine that this is what it feels like: stumbling like the earth’s axis tilted, sneaking glances at the person next to you and giggling for no reason, stealing kisses every few steps just because you can. By the time Leo and I start meandering back to camp, I am distinctly aware that we are insufferable, but not aware enough to know if five minutes have passed or five hours.
“Want to make a pit stop?” Leo asks at one point, turning his head toward a clearing up ahead.
I nod, but mostly because he could ask me if I wanted to swim in a cage with an unfed shark right now and I’d probably do the same. I’m so wrapped up in us and this weird bubble of things we’re allowed to do—for some reason I’ve been touching his forearm constantly, like that’s a totally normal thing—that I don’t notice where he’s taking me until we’re directly in front of Make Out Rock.
And its current status is very much occupied.
“Oh shit,” I blurt first, without a shred of decorum.
Savvy’s ponytail is not even ponytail reminiscent anymore, and Mickey’s shirt is so askew that I can spot a temporary Flounder tattoo peeking out from the Ariel on her shoulder.
“Hey,” Mickey squeaks, spotting us first.
Savvy whips around, mouth open like she’s poised for damage control. Victoria’s rules about staff romance are probably something along the lines of “don’t.” When she sees it’s me, her eyes go wide.
“Well, look at you,” she says, and it occurs to me that my face must be every bit as red as it feels. That, or I’m being extremely unsubtle about my newfound talent of glomming on to Leo, which has manifested in my good arm roping around his torso and his around my shoulder.
“Excuse us,” says Leo, “we didn’t realize this spot was already, uh, taken.”
“That’s the glory of becoming an unrepentant summer camp cliché,” says Mickey, gesturing for us to take their place. “The ability to pass the torch to the next. Go on, my children.”
“Nah. I gotta get this one back to camp,” says Leo, his grip tightening on me. I sink into it, and Savvy catches my eye, the both of us looking a little delirious.