Save the Date(4)

“I’ll be fine.” He held out his hand to me, making the world tilt on its axis a little, and led me to the door that opened onto the Fosters’ backyard. But when Jesse opened it, I took a step back. The rain was coming down harder than ever, and the temperature seemed to have dropped since I arrived; I felt myself start to shiver, and I realized a little too late that I’d left my flats over by the couch.

“Ready to make a run for it?” Jesse asked, squeezing my hand.

“Wait,” I said, taking a step toward the couch. “Let me get my shoes.”

“It’s okay,” Jesse said, and he pulled me back and then closer to him. He leaned down to kiss me and then, a second later, lifted me into his arms. “I got you.”

I let out a sound that was halfway between a shriek and a laugh, and before I even had the chance to be mortified, Jesse was opening the door and carrying me outside, into the rain.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and he was kissing me as he walked. Jesse stopped for just a moment, both his arms around me tight, and we kissed as the rain poured down on us. It was like I could practically feel his heart beating against mine through his T-shirt. Then Jesse swung my legs over his arm—when had he gotten so strong? He was carrying me like I weighed nothing—and started to half run, half walk across the grass to the guesthouse.

It was a miniature version of the Fosters’ house—a peaked wooden roof and glass panes that ran the length of the house, a balcony on the second story. I thought Jesse was going to go in the main door, but he continued to carry me over to the staircase that led up the side of the house to the second floor. He set me down on the bottom step, but he did it slowly, not dropping me, his hands sliding up my legs to my waist. “After you,” he said, and I could hear that his teeth were chattering. Now that we were no longer kissing, I was starting to feel just how cold it was, that my feet especially were getting numb. I hurried up the stairs, Jesse behind me, and then he led the way across the balcony and opened the unlocked second-story door.

Jesse didn’t turn on any of the lights, and I blinked as my eyes adjusted. It was an open loft space—maybe the kitchen and living room were downstairs—just a king-size bed in the center of the room with nightstands flanking it and a bathroom off to the side, the door slightly ajar. Before I could even get my head around the implications of this—because a bed, like an actual bed, seemed somehow really different from a couch—Jesse had shut the door behind us and was in front of me again. He kissed me—this was never, I decided, not going to feel miraculous—but I could feel how cold his lips were and that his teeth were full-on chattering now.

“Maybe,” he said, pulling his T-shirt away from his skin—it was practically transparent with the rain—“we should get out of these wet clothes?” He raised an eyebrow at me as he said it, and even though I laughed, I couldn’t help thinking that it might not be the worst idea, just from a practical standpoint, all too aware of how my clothes were soaked, heavy and dripping on the beige carpeting.

Jesse looked down at me and, not breaking eye contact, reached back and pulled his T-shirt over his head. I just blinked at him for a second—it was all I could do not to reach out and touch his bare chest, trace my fingers down the ridges of his abs. There was a question in his expression, not quite a challenge, but almost. I stood there, my hair dripping, shivering in Jesse’s sweater, aware all at once of the implications of what was happening here. I was in a room that was mostly bed with the boy I’d loved practically all my life—a college sophomore, who had experience, who would never have taken weeks to try to hold somebody’s hand. He’d kissed me. He’d carried me through the rain. I knew I could leave now—everything that had already happened was so far beyond what I’d ever dreamed might happen tonight—and go home happy, with enough to think about and hold on to for months.

Or I could stay.

I stood there, wishing I didn’t have to decide this right now, that I could take a time-out to think about it and get back to him sometime next week. Suddenly, I thought about the guy I’d been talking to earlier and his parallel universe theory. Maybe there had been another version of tonight, where Jesse had waved good-bye to me from the couch and I’d put my coat on and had just gone home, thinking about him like always, not even daring to imagine the situation I was in could even be possible. What would that Charlie have said to me right now, somehow in the throes of indecision because the thing I’d always dreamed would happen to me was actually happening to me?

I took a breath, telling myself that I could change my mind at any time, that this didn’t mean anything, while knowing full well that I wasn’t going to, and that it did. I pulled Jesse’s sweater over my head, and he looked at me, his eyes searching mine, and I nodded.

Jesse found the guesthouse thermostat and cranked it up and we dove under the covers together, him helping me out of my jeans and then kicking his own off, both of us cracking up at how frozen all our extremities were. I’d touch my foot to his calf and he’d yelp, and then he’d place his hand just over my collarbone and I’d shriek. But soon, as we started kissing again, our legs and feet tangling together, my hands exploring his neck, his chest, his leg, suddenly we weren’t so cold any longer. And it didn’t seem that funny anymore.

While this was happening, while everything was just his lips and his hands and the spot I’d found on his left side that made him straight-up giggle like the Pillsbury Doughboy, a thought flashed into my mind before I could stop it—Mike wouldn’t like this.