What Happens Now(49)

I’d been in this situation before. Knowing you’re there for the wrong reason. So aware that the way you want something is completely screwed up, but not caring. Sometimes wanting is a buy now, pay later deal.

I knew I should tell him to stop, that we needed to talk about the whats and the whys.

I could not.

When we got to the stairs, he let go of one hand to walk forward, but kept the other. We walked like that to the top, past the big picture window, across the landing. Through the door Camden opened for me.

He stood aside so I could look around. The room was small, with a slanted ceiling and a skylight. Each wall was painted a different color: forest green, teal blue, burgundy, and white. The combination felt random, yet harmonious. In one corner was his bed, which I only glanced at quickly before feeling my skin flush. It was just a tiny twin, but it may as well have been a king-size water bed with velvet pillows and fur throws, under a banner that said SEX! in fifty-point font.

An overpacked bookcase filled the opposite wall. A beanbag chair sat in the corner, his laptop sunk into it. He had no posters or pictures up. Only a huge map of the world, dotted with plastic thumbtacks. Next to each thumbtack was a tiny slip of paper with writing that I couldn’t read from a distance.

“Nice skylight,” I finally said, leaning against the doorframe. I hadn’t come all the way inside the room. I wasn’t committing to anything. Right?

“Thanks,” he said, staring up at the skylight. “My mom put it in for me when she bought the house.” He paused, maybe snagged by a memory. “We’d been moving around so much, and now we were going to stay still. She wanted me to have a spot to watch the stars change position and remind us that at least the planet was still moving.”

“How old were you? When you finally stopped moving around?” I asked, glad to be talking and sharing again, hungry for more pieces of him.

“Thirteen,” said Camden. “And tired. Happy to be on solid ground.”

I looked at Camden’s face, which was still raised upward.

“Leave all the time-and-space traveling to the Arrow One,” I said.

“Exactly.” He smiled knowingly. “That’s probably why I got so into the series, when I met Eliza and she showed me the reboot.” He lowered his gaze to me now. Back in the present, returned to the here.

He went to the door and closed it slowly, then pushed me against it even more slowly. We kissed like that for a while, and I kept my eyes open, reminding myself this was Camden and not Azor. This Summer Camden and not Last Summer Camden. I realized I’d been shivering, then realized I’d stopped. Since that first true, unbound kiss at the Ferris wheel, we’d somehow already developed our own language of kisses. A knowable rhythm of soft, hard, here, there. Everywhere, anywhere.

Lost, and found.

Finally, Camden tugged me over to the bed. A little voice locked behind a miniature steel door in my brain started whimpering No wait but. I could barely hear it as I lay down on the black sheets.

Camden stretched his body on top of mine and leaned on his elbows, then paused for a moment to look at me. I took that moment to feel the excruciating safety of his weight, the warmth of his limbs mixing with the slightly different warmth of mine.

“I didn’t expect this,” he said, and I didn’t know what he was referring to. Being here like this? Us in general? Me?

“I didn’t either,” I said, which was the truth any way you sliced it.

Camden kissed my neck, then my collarbone. He moved farther down, touching me through the plaid shirt, finally unbuttoning it, tugging it off my shoulders. It felt strange to shed that layer, even though I still had the purple tunic and white top underneath.

The voice in my head was trying harder to be heard now, and I started to see flashes of Lukas. The old couch with the rip up one side. The empty wine cooler bottles standing in clusters on the coffee table, like spectators. Ditching myself for a little while in the dim claustrophobia of Lukas’s basement.

If I kept my eyes open, wide open, these flashes went away. I was here with Camden. There was only the Possible, surrounding us with hue and light.

I was waiting for Camden to lift up my shirt or slide his hand under the waistband of my leggings. But he just laid his head sideways on my belly, as if listening for something.

“Can I help you?” I joked.

“I’m a little overwhelmed.”

Me, too. “Let’s take a break.”

He sat up at the end of the bed, then pulled me onto his lap so I was straddling him. Another combination of warmth, limbs, weight. He put his hands on either side of my ribs and with a bit of alarm, I could feel how aroused Camden was. It was scary yet amazing, knowing I could do that to him. That he belonged to me in this one way.

“God, Ari,” he said, his eyes searching my face. “You make me feel . . . like I’m joining the human race.”

“You’ve been with girls before,” I said teasingly, stopping myself before adding I’ve seen you with Eliza.

“Not where I found myself doing this.” He held out one hand in front of me. It was trembling.

I grabbed it, steadied it. We both stared at our hands as if we expected them to start acting on their own.

After a few moments, Camden said, “I’m sorry about tonight.” He bit his lip. Pulled his hand out of my mine, which shrank back to my side. “It was so perfect. And then it was totally not.”