Page 46 of While the Sun Shines

No, he should say. Try to sweep his words away, like the water that swirls past him, shut the door on this conversation, and claw his way back to their ordinary life.

“Yeah,” he whispers.

“And your grand plan is to get over me?”

“Well…yeah.”

“Great,” she says. “That’s what a girl wants to hear.”

“Pen, I just—you’re so important to me and I—”

“No,” she says, and she’s laughing now, a hard edge to it.

She’s drunk, he thinks, hearing the slam of her shot glass on the counter all over again. And he’s not much better, thoughts tumbling, mind numbed.

“No, I’m not fucking important to you ’cause I’m not a sheep and I’m not a block of cheese and I’m not a goddamn bale of hay.”

“Penny,” he says, reaching for her. Don’t, he thinks desperately. Don’t cry, he wants to tell her. Don’t touch her, he wants to say to himself. His fingers brush her shoulder. “You have no idea, Pen, you—”

“I have a perfect idea,” she says. “Because, trust me, you couldn’t make it any clearer.”

“Pen—”

“God, just shut up, would you?”

“But Pen, I—”

“What I wouldn’t give, Drew. Fuck you, you know that?”

He doesn’t know. Not what she means, and certainly not why she’s staring at him like she is. Or why she’s leaning toward him. Pushing off the bank to come closer.

Oh shit, this is happening, he has time to think and then—oh. Oh.

Her hands grip the back of his neck and her mouth presses to his. She’s kissing him. Really, actually kissing him. Hard and slow, a firmness to it that nearly hurts.

She presses close to him too, close enough that when he raises his hands, clumsy and slow, her body is right there. Her back, with wet hair loose from her bun, the strap of her bra to work his thumb under. Her mouth opens, and a perfect, soft sound rises from her throat.

Drew can smell her skin and the clear, clean water. Feel the softness of her hair and the hollow of her waist when he sets his hand there. He touches his tongue to her lip and her mouth opens farther, and oh fuck this is perfect, exquisite, slow and thorough, as they find a rhythm to how their mouths move together, and it’s Penny caught up in his arms, kissing him right back.

He pulls her onto his lap, and she moves with him, her arms circling his neck and her teeth scraping over his lip. This is what he wanted. All these years, for fucking ever, this is what he was waiting for, and it’s here and it’s real.

He draws back when his lungs burn. Holds her waist with both hands and pulls in a breath that shakes. He should say something. Tell her how he feels.

That she’s it, that this is perfect, this is finally, finally—

Penny jerks away.

Stands up, water coursing off of her. Quickly, stumbling once, she climbs up the bank, out of the pool. Grabs her clothes and jams them under her arm, her sandals smacking against her feet as she pushes into the trees.

Her shirt catches on a branch and she jerks it free, shoving through the saplings, the arms of their branches reaching up toward the golden sky.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Drew doesn’t wake up as much as give up on the idea of sleep as his bedroom lightens into the first gray of dawn.

His eyes are gritty and his limbs too heavy, a counterweight to his spinning thoughts. His mind tumbles, bouncing from wet skin to the sigh of exasperation, to deep, coursing confusion and back again to the familiar churn of worry.

Soon, the rooster will stir, heralding a day Drew’s not ready for, and the pink and gold of sunlight will break through the gloom of early morning, glowing bright enough in his window that he has no choice but to heave himself upright.