Page 67 of Old Acquaintances

He kissed my wrist-bones. “Because I don’t normally get handsy on a first date.”

“You don’t?” I didn’t want to think about him with other girls.

“Who do you think I am?”

I blushed again. I anticipated doing a lot of that during the course of the night. “I mean, it’s just, with me…”

“Because it’s you,” he whispered.

“So, you treat your dates with respect?” I surmised. “And you don’t respect me?”

“I respect you more than anyone, except for maybe my mother.” He inhaled long and slow from his nose. “But I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you. And I don’t need to get to know you because I already know everything about you.”

I rolled my eyes and swayed backward. “You don’t knoweverything-”

“Yes, I do.” He snatched me back to him. The stairwell light buzzed. Tucker rested his forehead on mine. “Even the things you think I don’t know, I know.”

I looked at his closed eyelids, the way he breathed me in. He muttered, “Did I tell you how beautiful you look?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Why do you always look so beautiful all the time?” His face contorted in pain.

“I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

We breathed like that together for a moment, Tucker hunched down against the wall, my chin up to meet him. I thought of all the times I’d fallen asleep beside him, the times I’d sat in a car beside him, the times I jumped in the pool naked because he said I wouldn’t do it. I wanted to pretend that the Tucker that played video games in Johnny’s bedroom with me or screamed “I love you, Ella,” in the school intercom was a different version of the boy sharing my oxygen right now.

But Tucker my prom date was the same Tucker who tossed me over his shoulder at a party, dumped my beer into the grass and shoved me in his truck. The same Tucker who let me listen to Taylor Swift and bought me ice cream when he drove me home after a baseball game.

I wanted to ask. I knew I could ask him anything.

I said, “What do you want to do on our first date that you wouldn’t with anyone else?”

He lifted his head. “Well, for starters, I wouldn’t tell you all of this shit.”

I giggled. “You’d play it cool?”

“Yeah, of course.” He focused on my neck. “And I want to dothis.” He dipped a kiss under my jaw.

It made me ticklish and fluttery.

He breathed down the side of my neck. His hands moved to my waist. “And this.” He kissed my shoulder. His hands moved up my sides. They pressed into my back, pulling me closer to him, and my head fell back, allowing him to kiss my throat. When he cupped the sides of my face, steadying my head, a door above us closed. Footsteps walked down the stairs, and I pulled Tucker’s hands from me.

He nonchalantly nodded to whoever was behind me, I refused to look, and he seemed very calm and cool about it all,like he normally made out with girls in stairwells.

He probably did.

“Hey,” I started. “What’s going to happen in there? In prom?”

“Orgies.”

“Sicko.”

Tucker settled his hands back on my waist. “Dancing, hanging out…but you meant something specific.” He squinted. He eyed his hands. “You mean with us?”

I liked hearing him use the wordusto describe what was happening.

---