Page 31 of A Night to Remember

She seems to accept this. “I guess he hasn’t changed much,” she says, running her fingertips over my chest. I’m surprised I don’t see little sparks of electricity crackle where she touches me. She looks up at me intently, then surprises me by gently stroking my cheek with her soft hand. I close my eyes to savor her touch.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.

My eyes snap back open. “Oh, you don’t have to be sorry about that, I really enjoyed?—”

She laughs. “I mean about ghosting you. About assuming the worst about you. About running away.”

“I missed you,” I confess. It’s such a simple thing to say, but so profoundly true. I didn’t think about her so much over the past eight years just because she’s sexy. Or because I was baffled by her disappearance. It’s because she was one of the dearest friends I’ve ever made in my life, and I wanted more time with her.

“I missed you too,” she replies. Then she lifts up on her toes and kisses me tenderly, her full lips sliding over mine. I reachup to tangle her hair in my hands, kissing her more deeply, when I realize that Allison and Tom are still desperately trying to distract my brother.

“So would you recommend a protein powder, or just eating a whole bunch of meat?” Allison asks.

“And your mother’s family, if I’m not mistaken, set up the first steam mill in the county in about 1850. It would have been in the German colony about ten miles west of Kentwood, right?”

Time is running short. I doubt Adam knows much about protein powders or steam mills.

“Can I take you out to—” I start.

“Do you want to come over tomorrow night?” she asks at the same time. “My mom will be home, but we can say you’re there to fix the garbage disposal.”

“I willnotlet you compare yourself to a garbage disposal,” I joke before I can think better of it. Fortunately, she laughs out loud and smacks me playfully in the chest.

“I’m not! It really is broken!”

“Well then, you ought to have me look at it,” I reply with a smile. “I wouldn’t want you and Joyce to have to pay for a plumber.”

“No, that would be bad,” she says in a soft voice that makes me rock hard again. “Can you come around 10:00?”

Yup, I’m pretty sure I can. But I simply say, “Sure thing,” and start to pull her in for another kiss.

But she’s already broken away. “See you then, Wilson,” she says with a grin over her shoulder. Allison, who has missed her calling as a choreographer, gracefully spins Adam towards me and sweeps Kayla to the door without letting them meet. Fortunately Allison and Tom have redirected Adam enough that he’s no longer fixated on Kayla. He offers to get me another beer, bragging all the while about our ancestors’ prowess as steam mill operators. As we move towards the bar, I hear broken glasscrunch under my feet. Through the Kayla-induced fog in my head, I try to remind myself to ask an employee to clean it up before someone gets hurt. While Adam is ordering drinks, I turn just in time to see Kayla disappear out the door.

Only when she’s gone do I realize that the DJ is playing the song we danced to the night of Steven O’Connor’s graduation party.

16

Kayla

“OMG WHAT THEFUCK WAS THAT TELL ME EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Allison is spun around in the passenger seat of Tom’s Prius, shouting at me in the backseat in a fair imitation of a tweaked-out bottlenose dolphin. It’s a wonder Tom doesn’t swerve into oncoming traffic.

“Um, well, I told him that I had made a mistake, and that I had been attracted to him in high school?—”

“AND THEN HE KISSED YOU? ARE WE TAKING YOU TO HIS HOUSE?!? ARE YOU GOING TO?—”

“No! No, not tonight. Maybe never. I don’t know. But heiscoming over tomorrow night to fix my garbage disposal.” I look down at my hands, trying to hide my smile.

“HE’S GOING TO DOWHAT?!? IS THAT WHAT THE KIDS ARE CALLING IT THESE DAYS?!?!”

“Alli, you havegotto stop shouting at me, I may be going deaf.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Allison makes a visible effort to control herself. “But I’m just SO HAPPY for you, he always seemed like such a good guy, and…” she trails off, looking at me more seriously.

“What?” I ask finally.

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve just never seen you like that before. So excited about a guy, I mean. You’re a pretty sexy bitch, you know?”

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