While You're Away (11 page)

I
t was a joke, but also an invitation to meet. Conflicting emotions ran through me. I was thrilled to hear from him, but just a moment earlier he’d had me feeling like a fool. So I replied, but not eagerly. I refused to look like I was desperate and jumping at the chance to get some attention.

Family night first, txt u later?

Ok
, he replied.

The family night excuse wasn’t a lie. With Grace home, we had to have family dinner. She hadn’t seen Ellie on stage in a couple of years, so we caught one of the evening performances at the theater. After that, we had to get dessert and sit in our living room and catch up.

Shortly after midnight, I stood on my front porch and texted Will that it was time if he was still interested.

OMW
, he said. And he didn’t lie. We didn’t live all that far apart, but I was surprised at how quickly his black Miata pulled up in front of my house. There might have been a time when I would have bounded down the walk. Not anymore. I was playing it cool, and I took my time to get to the street.

Sliding in beside him, I smiled as I buckled the seat belt. “My sister’s home from college.”

“Cool,” he said. Throwing the car into gear, he sped down my street. He drove much faster than he needed to, and he looked upset. The furrow of his brows cast shadows over his pale eyes. Leaning back in my seat, I watched him. I waited for him to say something.

As we sped along, it became more and more obvious that he wasn’t going to. Annoyance brewed inside of me. I didn’t appreciate getting called out in the middle of the night for . . . what? An angry, silent drive? As much as my fingers itched to touch his hair, to curl behind his ears, the rest of me really wanted to go home.

Rather than wait for him to deign to speak, I asked, “Did you break up with her?”

“Yeah, I did.”

I paused for a moment, unsure of what to say.

“How did she take it?”

Will cut a look at me. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

My throat tightened a little. Everything about him confused me. I wasn’t happy after I broke up with Dave, either. It was a sad and ugly day. But I hadn’t run to Will and stomped around and refused to speak and somehow expected him to make it all better. Leaning against the door, I peered out at the sidewalk. East River flew past, shadowy and gray in the dark.

“What are we doing?”

Jerking the wheel, Will pulled into a playground parking lot. Cutting the engine, he sat there, staring at the brightly colored swings and slides in front of the car. The swings swayed with ghostly motion. It was after midnight, and the playground looked haunted and desolate.

Will unsnapped his seat belt, but he didn’t move.

I was starting to lose my patience. “Say something, Will. Say anything.”

“No,” he said flatly.

I turned to him. I felt like I’d been punched in the chest. I wanted to catch my breath, but I couldn’t draw one.

“This,” Will said finally. He thumped his head against the headrest in frustration. If he’d been a different kind of guy, he might have punched the dashboard. Instead, all his anger was directed inward. “This is so fucked up.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“If you didn’t want to be with me, then why did you text?” I demanded.

“Graduation is ruined,” he said. It wasn’t cruel when he said it. He sounded desolate. Wounded. Finally looking at me, I saw it all in his eyes a moment before he said it. “I couldn’t invite you to my graduation party, I couldn’t ask you to be my date for the prom, because to the rest of the world we’re
nothing
. That trip to Marblehead, I wanted to take you. I wanted it for us.”

Now baffled, I struggled with my seat belt and said, “Then why didn’t you?”

“Because she was graduating, too. Because we’re friends. Because it seemed too complicated to change everything when I’m about to leave for college soon. Because I’m an idiot, I don’t know.”

He was slipping away. It was a fight to keep space between us, but I fought all the same. “I get that, but I’m not—it’s not okay for you to take your anger out on me.”

Pressing his hand to the window, his fingers skated the glass. “I know.”

Wary, I said, “Do you regret it?”

“I regret everything,” he shot back.

Everything?

Tears welled in my eyes.

“I’m in love with you, and I wasted years standing two feet away from you,” he raged suddenly. “Four years of high school, girl after girl, I kept chasing and catching all over again because it was never right. They were never the right fit.”

Love? It was love? I’d been asking myself that since the very first kiss. It had felt so scary and so hard to figure out. Was love supposed to be comfortable and safe and warm and sweet? Was love supposed to be painful and intoxicating and terrifying? Was love supposed to keep you up at night, craving more? I never found an answer that satisfied me, but I thought I was starting to understand.

“Will,” I said softly, reaching for him.

“Don’t,” he said. The raw, undisguised emotion in his voice startled me. “Because I wasted all that time. I wasted all of
our
time. It kills me to realize how many times I didn’t get to kiss you. How many nights I didn’t know you were supposed to be mine. I know that now, and it’s wrecking me.”

I burst out of my seat belt and fell onto him. Catching him by the front of his shirt, I kissed him. I kissed him hard, and it wasn’t sweet or spiced. It was salted, with tears and heartache. Touching him, my flesh finally woke. All the thoughts that had been frozen by uncertainty melted at once.

On his lips, I murmured frantic whispers. “I love you. I love you, Will. I love it when you get philosophical, and I love your sly sense of humor. I love how
good
you are. You’re so good, Will. You try to hide it and I don’t understand why, but I want to find out.

“I want to write my name on your back with my fingernails, and try to braid tiny braids into your hair even though it’s way too short. I want to write songs about you. I want you to tell me everything that you think when it’s three o’clock in the morning and you can’t sleep. I want to keep your secrets, and I want you to keep mine. But I don’t want you to be my secret anymore—I want the world to know about us. No more hiding, no more whispers. I want to do everything out loud with you. Everything.”

Stunned, Will softened beneath me. The angry fists of his hands unfurled. They touched my shoulders, but tentatively. Like he was afraid if he searched further he might discover I was nothing but smoke. That I would disintegrate and he would be left there holding nothing.

“I have to leave in the fall,” Will said, broken and barely voiced.

The enormity of the moment overwhelmed me. Sitting up a little, I framed his face in my hands. We really did know each other innately, on another level. We didn’t look
at
each other, we looked
in
. If he could see my eyes, he’d know I meant every word. And a million more that I couldn’t even speak. Without Will, I didn’t think I could take another breath.

“So?” I said.

I brushed my thumb against his lips, my gaze inexorably drawn there. But I made myself look up. We were more than our bodies. More than the unmistakable want that danced between us when we touched. I made myself bare in front of him in another way, my eyes wide open and every part of my heart on display.

Quietly, desperately, he pressed into my touch. “Sarah . . .”

“You belong to me. I knew that the first time we kissed. I’m yours, Will. And you’re mine. And that’s all that matters.”

Will kissed my thumb. Then my hand. Drawing me closer, his gaze didn’t waver. He voiced one last dissent. “It’s over with him?”

I swore it again. “Will, I’m yours.”

~

Now that we could be with each other, I wanted to be with him every hour of the day. But it wasn’t enough to just sit in each other’s company. Because Will had once surprised me with the meeting beneath the pool, I was determined to find someplace just as special to show him.

Everything in the school’s theater was out. He already knew where the catwalk was. My house wasn’t an option, because meh, it was my house. It was full of parents and sisters, and that weird outdoor cat that people kept feeding even though it wasn’t ours.

When inspiration struck, I stopped dead. The date muse had finally reached down to grace me with her gifts. It took a few days and two favors from Jane to get everything in order. But I knew it would be worth it.

I texted Will to meet me at the old botanical garden after dark. In the shadow of chestnut trees, I watched for his car in the gravel parking lot. The familiar grinding of tires on stone excited me much more than it should have. The sleek lines of his Miata reflected moonlight and the hazy green streetlights above.

When he parked, I bounded toward him. He was barely out of the car before he had me pressed against the door. Looping my arms around his neck, I rose up to meet his kiss eagerly. The current between us switched on. It hummed and pulsed, our heat pushing away the warmth of a near-summer night.

Reluctantly, I broke away. I had to press my fingers between our lips to ward him off. Laughing, I brushed my nose against his. I felt full of starlight, spilling over with it as I gazed up into his silvery blue eyes.

“You have to wait,” I said.

“Haven’t we waited long enough?” he asked teasingly.

Since I’d blocked my lips, Will dipped to my throat instead. He strung a chain of searing kisses there, following the maddening race of my pulse. His hands skimmed beneath my shirt. Smooth fingertips swirled ornate patterns against the small of my back. Somehow, he made even a lazy brush of thumbs against my waist feel wickedly delicious.

Catching his hands, I wriggled from beneath him.

Using my best, most flirtatious smile, I said, “I’ll make it worth your while.”

That perked him up. One black eyebrow arched high, he tugged me closer. Nimble and sure on his feet, he spun us around. It was a split second, but a split second when I felt every inch of him pressed against me.

“Follow me,” I said. I knotted our fingers together and led him into the old abandoned botanical garden. We passed a
No Trespassing
sign that was weathered gray and black. The arch of ornate iron at the entrance felt like we were stepping into another world entirely.

A lush, tangled jungle spilled out in front of us. Ivy scaled the fences and most of the trees. A glossy green carpet, it spilled over the neglected walkways, which had never been paved.

“Let me guess,” Will said. “We’re going to meet the apothecary that lives in the woods. She’s going to make a potion to stop time for us.”

With an incredulous laugh, I looked back at him. “Where do you get this stuff?”

He answered with a playful shrug. His eyes were so keen in the dark. I could tell he was trying to figure out why I chose this place. What my plan was. He failed, completely. There was no way for him to guess what waited for us when we ducked through the alley of overgrown willows.

Surfacing through the delicate green veil of leaves, I stopped. Watching his face, I waited for him to take it in. For surprise to register. I wanted this to be just like that moment I’d had down in the boiler room, when I realized what he was showing me.

A gazebo trailed gracefully toward the sky, confident in its place in the middle of the sitting garden. With Jane’s help, I had hung a white sheet on the side of it. Battery-powered white lights sparkled on the ground, illuminating a path on the lawn. I’d laid out a quilt and some pillows. Bags of microwaved popcorn waited to be torn open and poured into the outsized bowl I’d liberated from home.

“What—” Will started, but I pressed a finger to his lips.

“Shh. Sit down, get comfortable.”

Because once he did, I could switch on the laptop and projector I’d hidden in a fall of clematis. I had three hours of battery power for both, so I hit play and hurried to sit on the quilt with Will. Light poured from the projector, and the sheet became a movie screen. Tingling in excitement, I turned to study his profile.

His lips were parted in surprise. Wonder played over his features, smoothing some of his sharp angles. There in the dark of the botanical gardens, heavy roses hanging their heads around us, he was
beautiful
.

Without words, so much passed between us. I still felt urgent beside him. Like my flesh needed his, all dewy and ripe. My head was dizzy with the realization that
I
was the architect of this moment. I didn’t have to wait for him to give me what I wanted. This was my fantasy, and if I wanted to touch him, I could. And I would. But first, I wanted to savor him. Affection tempered all that need and want now, a fledgling bud of something sweet to complement the spice.

It had been easy to fall into his arms. It grew harder to stay out of them. I wanted to brush his hair back from his face. My fingers longed to trace the dark slashes of his eyebrows, the thin and knowing tilt of his lips. But now, I wanted to put my ear to his lips; if he’d whisper his universe to me, I’d listen to it all.

Rubbing a hand down my back, Will let the previews play for a few minutes before he faced me. Light reflected off his clear skin, colors from the screen dancing like a kaleidoscope across his face.

Finally the movie started, and Will dissolved into laughter when he realized what I had picked.
Clash of the Titans
splashed across the sheet, the fabric adding wavering curves to Liam Neeson’s already questionable costuming.

“It was this or Disney’s
Hercules
,” I said, snuggling closer.

Pressing a kiss to my temple, Will pointed out, “
Percy Jackson
.”

With a smile, I glanced up at him. “Oh, good one. Maybe next time.”

I slid closer to him, hip to hip. My shoulder curving into his. A quiver ran the length of my spine when he gently twisted my hair out of the way. I wanted to be shameless. Suddenly, heat coursed through my veins, and I
wanted.
I wanted him to mark me, to leave some evidence of him that I could touch in the morning. The thought came from nowhere, or from some darker part of myself I had never met. I was still mostly untouched, but my body didn’t care. Tingling and sensitive, every inch of me was awake and aching for Will.