“I missed you too,” I say, my voice low and scratchy, not at all like I’m used to hearing. “I had no idea. That you felt that way.”
It’s too hot in this room, but I don’t dare make a move to leave.
Now his eyes on me are so far from steel. They’re flint, maybe. Something that could start a fire. He gives this strange scrape of a laugh, one that indicates he doesn’t find this all that funny. An anxiety-laugh—the kind of laugh I am very familiar with. “Quinn, I was crushing on you last summer too,” he says. “The boat I rented—that was for you.”
I have to clutch the wall to keep from swaying. It must be the choppy water beneath us, the lullaby turning frantic, that’s messing with my stomach.
“Oh.” At first I can only manage a single syllable, my mind racing to fit this final piece into our relationship puzzle. “Oh my god. I didn’t—I had no idea.”
For me. The boat was for me.
That doesn’t make it any more romantic, or at least it shouldn’t. He didn’t know me well enough to know I wouldn’t have liked it, and obviously I made that clear to him. But something happens in the upper-left section of my chest that indicates otherwise. Maybe it was all performance, maybe it didn’t mean anything—but it was a performance for me.
“Yeah,” he says, a little sheepish now. “I kind of figured. My parents have friends that rent it out, and I thought it would be… the opposite of what it turned out to be.”
“I thought it was for Elisa.”
“Wait. What? Why would you think it was for Elisa?”
Ugh, now I have to spell it out. “You’d seemed close for a while. I just… I just assumed.”
“Elisa and I are friends,” he says. “Good friends—there’s a certain bond you develop when you have to explain to ten kids in a row that no, we don’t have any macaroni and cheese. But that’s it. I’ve never had feelings for her, and that boat wasn’t for her. Is that why you keep bringing her up?”
Slowly, I nod. I’m still trying to understand all of this. “Holy shit. I shouldn’t have said those things about it. I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I know that wasn’t what you wanted, and the timing was off. Guess we wound up on a boat together anyway.” I can’t tell if he’s inching closer to me or if the heat has made me delirious. “I never laugh more than when I’m around you. And you were—you are so damn cute.”
Cute. Tarek thinks I’m so damn cute.
“I’m eighty percent sweat right now,” I inform him. “Ten percent ginger ale, and ten percent Whitney Houston songs.”
“I stand by what I said.” He reaches a hand toward my forearm, and it is not the innocent, calming gesture I made earlier. It’s electricity, white-hot, and it sparks up my arm and down to my toes. “I thought you knew. I thought that was why you sent that email—which I loved, by the way. That’s what I would have said if I’d responded the way I should have. I would have told you I liked you.” Another step forward. “That I’d been wondering what it would feel like to kiss you since last June.”
He says this so breezily, like kissing is a completely normal way for the two of us to interact, as opposed to the firework it is in my head.
Now there’s only a whisper of space between our bodies. He could burn me up with how warm he is, and I wouldn’t care. After all this time, I need to know what he feels like. I want a hand in his hair and a thumb on his cheekbone and my hips right up against his. “Do you… still? Want to do that?”
“Yes.” That single syllable is a demand and a plea at the same time. It turns my throat dry, pushes me that final inch toward him. The walls could be closing in on us, and I don’t think I would notice.
“That’s a shame, because I was actually about to go—”
He traps the rest of my words between us, his lips meeting mine in a desperate clash. For a moment I entertain the thought that No-Boy Summer has been a spectacular failure. Then I kiss him back.
There isn’t a sense of longing in the kiss, at least, not the kind of longing “I missed you” might convey. It’s fast, deep, punctuated by rough breaths that do little to give me the air I need. I find I don’t care. His mouth is warm, and he tastes like frosting and spearmint gum and all of our past summers.
He places three fingertips on my jaw, gentle at first, before his hands drop to my waist, settling on my hips. I weave my fingers through his hair, that wonderful hair, run my hands along his ever-present scruff, like a razor just can’t keep up with his genetics. When his fingers hook through my belt loops, he tugs me closer before pinning me against the washing machine. I have never before loved belt loops this much. A dial digs into my back—another thing I can’t bring myself to care about.
“Sorry, sorry,” he says with a sheepish laugh, a thumb rubbing my hip bone through the fabric of my slacks.
Before I can pounce on him again, our phones buzz in rapid succession, and we trade apologetic looks as we reach into our pockets.
“We’re being summoned,” I say, holding up my B+B chat. Where are you? Docking in fifteen.
He shows me an almost identical message from Harun, and I step back to give us both some space. Between
