Page 108 of The Storm

I settle into him without hesitation, wiggling closer until there isn’t an inch of space between us. I rest the back of my head against his shoulder. Breathe him in.

His arm rests low across my stomach, his fingertips caressing the sliver of bare skin between the waistband of my shorts and my T-shirt.

I’m aware of every inch of him.

The solid weight of him behind me. The steady rise and fall of his chest against my back. The way his breaths brush over the shell of my ear every time he exhales.

I shift the slightest bit, fitting my body against his more comfortably. His arm around me tightens like he’s making sure I stay as close as possible.

There’s another jolt in my chest, this one so intense it almost feels violent, but everything else about this moment is impossibly soft.

It feels like a beginning.

Something real.

Something that’s ours.

I look around. I inhale. I listen. I feel. My hand is on Nick’s thigh. The band is playing a cover of “Nightswimming.” The air smells of salty water and fried food.

I commit it all to memory.

Just to make sure I never forget exactly what it feels like.

To be this happy.

THIRTY

INDY

We don’t go straightto the hotel. Instead, we walk around for a bit. Hours. We’re wandering aimlessly because getting somewhere isn’t the point. Nick links his fingers with mine. Holds my hand.

He smiles at me, and I feel the force of that smile wrap itself around my heart. There’s a light in his eyes when he’s with me. I see it. I see him.

We take photos on the pier. Selfies of him and me with the lights from the hotels reflecting on the ocean behind us. We make faces and strike ridiculous poses, and he kisses me on the beach and takes a photo of it.

He smiles at me. A beaming grin before another kiss.

It’s like a dream world, only better because it’s real. And instead of taking snapshots and trying to remember everything, I sink into this moment fully. Because I don’t have to desperately record seconds with him. I don’t have to hoard those moments. There will be more. I can see it so clearly. The years of him and me that stretch out in front of us.

An endless summer of Nick.

We talk about everything and nothing. I tell him about my life before him. He tells me about his life before me. He tells meabout growing up in Bois Run. About school. About people he used to know.

He doesn’t have to force himself to tell me. The stories come easily. He laughs when he tells me about the time he got caught driving his mom’s car to the store when he was fourteen. About the bloody nose he gave a ref at a soccer game. His first job. His first kiss with a girl. His first kiss with a boy. He laughs and tells me I look like I have a stomachache. I don’t. It’s jealousy. I hate those people who got his firsts.

He talks about his mom. Haltingly at first, but then the stories start to come more easily. A memory here and a story there.

He smiles when he tells me about her, and I smile because he’s smiling.

We stop at a store that’s open twenty-four seven to buy ice cream and then sit on the beach and watch the sunrise.

“What happens in the fall?” I don’t mean to ask. I’ve been too much of a coward to ask. But there’s something about sitting here at the beginning of a new day. I’m brave enough to ask, but I’m not brave enough to look at him while he answers. What if he says it’s all temporary? That those few weeks of August that will go by in the blink of an eye are all we get? What if?—

“What do you want to happen in the fall?” he asks.

I do look at him then. “You can’t answer a question with a question.”

He presses his lips against my shoulder and stays like that for a bit.