Page 44 of A Night to Remember

“Yeah?” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “You may be the only person in our generation who knows how to read one.”

She chuckles slightly, looking at her lap again. “It’s a dying art.”

I take a risk and reach out to grab her hand. “I know, even if we had one, I still wouldn’t know where we were going.”

“I’m guessing the Navigator has built-in GPS.”

“You know it does. Come here.” I tug on her arm until she climbs, somewhat awkwardly, across the center console to sit in my lap. I can feel her relax now that we’re closer, looking at each other face to face. “It’s going to be okay,” I whisper, running my fingers through her silky hair. She curls her hand around my coat’s lapel, pulls me towards her, and brushes her lips against mine. We kiss tentatively at first, carefully, then increasingly hungrily. My hand finds the hem of her sweater underneath her unzipped coat. I slide it up to caress her warm skin. There’sa new tenderness to our embrace, as if, with every kiss, we’re trying to communicate all the things that both of us are too scared to say.

She acts like she doesn’t want a relationship, yet her entire being seems to be yearning for me just like I’m yearning for her. I feel an ache that starts deep in my chest and slowly spreads throughout my body.I’m falling in love with her, I realize.This is love.The feeling is so qualitatively different from what I felt for Gretchen that it seems like there should be an entirely different word for it. I wonder if she feels it too.

I close my hand over one soft breast, peeling back her bra to run my thumb over her nipple. She moans into my mouth and clutches my coat tighter before breaking away.

“We can’t do this here,” she says breathlessly.

“Why not?” I ask, still circling her nipple.

She giggles a little. “Because there arepeople, coming and going, from therestaurant. Which isright there.” She gives her head a little jerk, and, yup, we’re parked about ten feet from the door, under bright lights. Part of me couldn’t care less. Another part of me doesn’t want to be arrested for indecent exposure.

“I would take you to my place…” I start, bending down to nibble her neck.

“...but your family is there,” she says, arching towards me. “We can’t go to my place…”

“…because your mom is there,” I finish. “Car sex?”

“No!” she says adamantly, pushing away again. “We arenothaving sex in this car. I spent eight years imagining you having sex with Allison in this car.”

“Mm, tell me more about that,” I joke, pulling her into another languorous kiss.

She smacks me playfully in the chest without taking her lips off mine.

“But seriously,” I continue, “the second and third rows of seats fold down, and there are lots of access roads and deserted trail heads.” I take my hand out from underneath her sweater and begin running it from her knee up the inside of her thigh.

“No! That’s so seedy!” But then she starts kissing me again and fingers the buttons of my shirt.

“Motel sex?” I ask when I come up for air, just to be sure we’ve explored all our options. As I touch her between her legs, she groans slightly and leans into my hand.

“No,” she insists. “That would be all over town in an hour.” But as I begin to stroke her through her clothes, I can tell she’s close to giving in. “Okay,fine,” she says finally, breath ragged.“There’s a trail head down a gravel road not too far from here. I’ll tell you where to turn.”

I grin at her as she scrambles back to her seat. “Buckle up, Johnson,” I say, as she tries, and fails, to look put out. “We are definitely having sex in this car.” My tires squeal as I peel out of the parking lot.

I arrive back home aroundeleven, having done my best, in the rearview mirror, to make myself look like someone who did not just spend two hours making love in the back of a car. The Navigator makes for an uncomfortable bedroom, but I just couldn’t quit Kayla. She looks so beautiful when she comes that I wanted to please her over and over again, to taste and touch and stroke every inch of her. I don’t tell her that I love her—that would terrify her—but I think it every minute. I just want her to know that I’m here for her, ready and willing to give her whatever she needs.

I’m hoping that everyone else has gone to sleep, but when I walk through the front door, I hear my mom on the phone in the living room. I catch phrases like “…none of your business…” and “…grown man…” and “He’s here now, I have to go.”

“Gabe!” she says cheerfully as I attempt to sneak upstairs. “How about a nightcap before you go to bed?”

I force a smile as I follow her to the kitchen.

“Adam’s got himself all worked up,” she says as she pours each of us two fingers of scotch. I sink down onto one of the stools that ring the big granite-topped island in the middle of the room.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I say. “He’s got no right –”

“I told him that,” she replies sharply, sliding a crystal tumbler to me. I take a sip, eyeing my mom out of the corner of my eye. She’s staring off into space, drumming her manicured nails on her glass. Adam and I look more like our dad, but I recognize my brother’s angry expression in her face. I brace myself for a scolding, like I’m a wayward teenager who’s just come home with alcohol on his breath. Or in rumpled clothes that smell like his girlfriend.

But instead of lashing out, she shakes her head and takes a sip of her drink. “He’s worried about you,” she says.

“I don’t think so,” I retort. To me it just seems like he’s being controlling. I haven’t spoken to him since we fought about Kayla and he acted like she was some shiny new toy that should have been offered tohimbefore being passed on tome.

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