Page 80 of Sleepover

About 92 percent of me is convinced. Enough to answer (honestly), “No. Hell no.”

We don’t fall asleep until much, much later.

—

In the morning, Sawyer orders us room service and we eat breakfast in bed. When we’re finished, he takes my plate out of my hands, sets it on the nightstand, and kisses me. We have sex again, this time with me on top, for his viewing pleasure. It turns out to be my viewing pleasure, too. I can’t look away from his face—blown pupils, a flush high in his cheeks, slack lower lip. Toward the end, he closes his eyes and tilts his head back, his fingers digging hard into the flesh of my backside. When he comes, he rocks my clit against his pubic bone and takes me with him. We give our hotel neighbors more audio than we were intending…

Afterward we shower together, where we review the positive attributes of vertical sex (less vocally than the last round). When we’re both clean and dry, sated and fed, we hit the road. We have lunch in Portland at Bunk Sandwiches on 6th Avenue (I practically fall face-first in ecstasy into my meatball parm, and he tells me that watching me eat is really good foreplay), then visit the famous Powell’s Books, where I buy a few novels I’ve been meaning to read and collect a few sexy romances—man-torsos and all—as a gift for Mrs. Wheeling. Sawyer buys a couple of thrillers. Then we head home.

In the car, we swap firsts. First dance, first date, first heartbreak, first time leaving the country, blah blah blah.

We’re almost home by the time I suggest first kiss.

“Age sixteen, in the movie theater, Amy Orella.”

“I’m shocked, Sawyer. Sixteen? I would have pegged you as a child prodigy.”

“Nope. Slow starter.”

“Hasn’t held you back any.”

“No. It really hasn’t. Your turn.”

“Age twelve, truth or dare at Kelly Simon’s house, in the closet with Devon Santiago.”

“Was it good?”

“It was awful. I almost gave up kissing for life.”

“Thank fuck you didn’t. That would be a horrible waste of the sexiest mouth ever.”

There he goes again with the superlative, and here I go with the self-doubt, but this time I rush to fill the potentially awkward moment, not wanting to make him have to assert, once again, that he means what I know is just a flip comment. “What about first time you had sex?”

“You probably won’t believe it, but it wasn’t until senior year of high school.”

I snort. “You were saving yourself?”

“No, but I really was a late bloomer. I was short and kind of pudgy till the end of sophomore year, and then it took a while for girls to actually notice I was no longer short and pudgy—and then it took me a while to figure out that girls actually wanted me. Once I did, though—”

“You made up for lost time?”

“I may have, somewhat,” he says, getting a faraway look in his eye as he pulls up to the curb in front of my house.

I brace myself to say goodbye, but before I can figure out what that should look like, Sawyer asks, “Would it be weird if I came in and met your parents?”

He didn’t meet them before the wedding because I ran over to his house to save time and a round of introductions (since I already knew Lucy’s parents, who were the ones watching Jonah).

“No! It would be cool.”

He cuts the engine and follows me up to the house. Madden answers the door. “Oh, hey, Mom,” he says, like I’ve been gone two minutes and not two days. Jonah is, of course, standing right behind him. “Hey, Dad,” Jonah says with matching nonchalance, and the two of them fly past us out the front door. My parents are right behind them in the hallway, watching them with amusement and affection.

“You can tell those guys missed you a whole ton,” my mother says, coming forward to embrace me. She’s a small, bright-eyed woman with a cloud of curly salt-and-pepper hair, cinnamon scented and warm, as she has been my whole life. I hug my father, too, who smells like coffee and the pipe tobacco he sneaks in the garage while my mother pretends not to know. “Probably the fact that we plied them constantly with treats. Grandparents’ prerogative.”

“This is Jonah’s dad, Sawyer,” I tell my parents. “Also my wedding date. Sawyer, my parents, Elena and Matthew Dunning.”

“Very nice to meet you, Sawyer,” my dad says, extending his hand.

Sawyer shakes it. “The pleasure is mine.”

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