She lays her head on my shoulder, and worry and hope punch and throttle in my chest with vicious intensity. I bet she can hear how hard my heart is beating, and I wonder if she realizes it's all because I'm here with her.
"Where are you going to college?"
I mentally calculate the number of months I'll have with her before she leaves and, probably, starts a new life that I won't be part of.
I can't be part of.
It's been hard enough to be with her just the last few weeks when we live ten minutes away from each other. How the hell would I manage years and possibly hundreds of miles?
"My grades are pretty bad." She cranes her neck to look up at me. "I'm not dumb."
I tug on a piece of her hair and narrow my eyes her way. "I know. I don't date dumb girls."
She twists in my arms so we're face to face, the tip of her nose brushing my cheek, her big blue eyes staring into mine.
"Are we?"
"Are we what?" I struggle to keep an even handle on my breathing as she wraps her legs around my back and twines her arms around my neck.
"Dating?" She brushes her lips over mine while she asks, and my brain feels like it’s been in an industrial explosion.
"Yeah." I manage to keep my voice calm. "We're dating."
"You didn't even ask me." She pops her bottom lip out, I kiss it, she smiles.
"I'm not asking. Asking means you might be crazy enough to say 'no,' and I'm not taking 'no' for an answer."
I kiss her hard, pulling at her until she's firmly on my lap and caged in my arms. I kiss her until I feel the breaths rasp out of her mouth and taste her sweet little moans. I run my hands over her body, hot and smooth under the practically nonexistent shirt and shorts she's wearing.
When she drops back, her swollen lips part and her eyes, slammed wide open, look almost black with too much pupil.
"I think you may have made some really good points about you and I being in any kind of a relationship. I don't really remember them, though."
She sucks the corner of her bottom lip in and bites down just enough to make all kinds of insane, sexy images run through my head.
I tug her hips closer, and she nudges her lips onto mine. This time I make sure that I slow down and keep things steady until she's imprinted against me without an inch of space. And then her hand goes down to my fly, and I hit the brakes.
Not yet. Not before she's totally mine and it means what I want it to mean to her.
"You never answered my college question." I grab at her wrists like we’re just playing, but hold her hands back with real intent.
Her scowl is full-faced and looks like it may turn into a bite. "I don't want to talk right now."
I slide my hands down so I'm holding hers and run my thumbs over the skin of her wrists, where I can feel the excited drum of her pulse. It's hard for my pulse to resist getting infected by that beat.
"I do wanna talk. I wanna know about you. So get talking."
"You're pretty damn bossy, and I don't know if I like it."
She softens that gorgeous mouth, bats those pretty eyes, and leans that curved body close.
I give her one quick kiss and say, "Bossy is how I am, take it or leave it. Now quit trying to seduce me, and tell me about college."
She sighs, rolls her shoulders, crosses her arms, glares, but I'm stone. I bounce her on my legs, 'cause it's damn hard to look tough when you're getting shaken all over the place. I give her major credit; that stubborn little ass tries like hell to keep a pissy face, but she finally laughs and swats at my arms.
"Fine! Stop! I give up, and you're shaking my brains." She presses her hands on either side of her head. "Okay, college is weird right now. I applied to Trinity--"
"In Ireland?" I ask, and love the way surprise widens her eyes.
I'm unexpectedly informed about world topics for a delinquent.
"Yes, in Ireland. Because I wrote this essay in a program they hosted over the summer, and I guess it impressed the bigshots there--"
"Can I read it?" I interrupt.
"Stop interrupting. Yes. Not now, though. So I applied to Trinity, in Ireland. And I applied to Rutgers in New Jersey, because my best friend lives there and it's one of her safety schools. Plus it's huge and close to New York City, which I feel, weirdly, might be like a second home for me. Plus it's a state school, so it's not as grade-crazy as some of the private schools."
She takes a hair thingy off her wrist and puts her hair into a sloppy ponytail. "I applied to SCAD for dance, but I don't know if I want to do that. I've fallen behind in the last year, and I don't know if I'm as passionate about it anymore."
"What about Armstrong or Georgia Southern?"
I run my fingers up and down her arms for the pure joy of seeing all the dots of goosebumps that prick up on her skin, while I pray she decides to stay local next year.
She wrinkles her nose. "SCAD is bad enough. I want to get out of here. I figured art school will at least keep me away from all the preppy silver-spooners I've been around all my life."
She makes her two fingers walk up my arm and do a little jig on my bicep.
My laugh feels like an old shirt shaken out of a suitcase, wrinkled but still wearable. I nod at her
