Page 121 of The ABCs of You & Me

“Out of the five?” she asks, and I nod. She thinks for a minute as if going through experiences with all of them. When she licks her lips I already know what she’s about to say. “Taste,” she says confidently. “Your turn.”

I could say taste, but when I think about the feel of her skin under my fingertips. The way mine reacts every time she touches me, the choice is clear. “Touch, hands down.”

“Touching or being touched?” she asks.

“They’re equally sensual if you’re involved.” She rolls her eyes and slips the card back into the box. “What? I’m serious. If I had it my way I’d spend all my days touching you.”

“May make it hard to do your job.”

“We’d adapt.” I shrug.

The next question is a big one, and I visibly tense as I decide whether or not I should ask it.

“Is it a dirty one?” Sophie scoots closer, and I pull the card into my chest. “Oooh, it is, isn’t it?” She reaches for me, and I cover the entire card with my hand, completely blocking it from her grasp. “Come on, you ordered me to sit on your face last night, Foster. Ask me the question.”

Oh yes, let’s do that again.Instead of asking this question, maybe we can reenact everything we did last night. The way she moved against my mouth as she leaned back, her nails digging into my thighs. How she’d begged me to fuck her harder against the railing of the deck, her cries echoing through the woods. But no, sex is nothing compared to this question.

“Where do you see yourself in five years, Sophie?” I ask, my heart thumping rapidly against my ribcage. I want the ground to open and swallow me. I want to be sucked into the sky. I want to evaporate. All those things would be better than waiting for this answer.

She doesn’t make me wait. “With you. Happy, eating cookies at two a.m., watchingThe Fellowship of the Ringfor the seven hundredth time, at least one dog trying to take over our bed. Still arguing about blue cheese versus ranch whenever we get wings. Watching you cook for me in nothing but those gray sweatpants. Waking up every morning with a smile on my face because your face is the first I see and I happen to like it even more than I do now.”

Holy shit. She hasn’t said I love you yet, but that felt like a bigger declaration.

I know I need to respond, say something equally lovely, but all my words are jumbled in my mouth. All my thoughts fully scrambled. Sixteen- or fourteen- or however-old-I-was-when-I-actually-fell-for-her-year-old me is screaming at me to do something, say something. But I just sit, mouth agape, staring at the woman of my dreams who says things that seemed impossible a couple months ago.

“Was that too much?” she asks, pulling her knees to her chest and looking worried.

All I can do is shake my head while I grasp at coherent thoughts falling like feathers through my mind.

“Are you going to say anything? Technically it’s your turn. You don’t have to say anything about me. I didn’t say that so you’d say anything back. I won’t be upset if you talk about winning a marathon or getting your entire back tattooed. Maybe in five years you’ll be back in Korea, running a school. Or you’ll have a whole running club for kids who have been told they can’t do it. I can actually see you doing that, for the record. You’d be very good at that. Oh god, I made it awkward by being too honest, I’m sorry. I, fuck, I should have just said something like attending an alumni gala without needing a fake date or having a house without doom piles everyw?—”

I cut her off with a kiss. I’m buying time, sure, but hopefully it stops her from worrying. She relaxes into me, and the kiss turns from desperate to slow and sensual.This. This is what I want to be doing. I give her one last long kiss before resting my forehead against hers, catching my breath, trying to slow my heart rate down.

“Kissing you whenever I want to. Holding your hand whenever you’re near me. Waking up to sunshine even on cloudy days. Cooking for you. Laughing with you. Sharing all my good and bad days with you. Taking on the world by your side. Proving to you that you’re worthy of every good thing life has in store. Showing you every single day what it is to be truly loved because you are the most loveable person I’ve ever known. Calling you mine and being yours. Being with you, Sophie, that’s where I see myself in five years, because the alternative is unthinkable. Not loving you is unthinkable.” I take a breath, and when I pull away and finally look at her, there are tears streaming down her face. “Don’t cry, sunshine.” I smile, wiping them away.

“They’re happy tears.”

“I guess those are allowed.”

“Wow, they should put a warning on the box.” She laughs, wiping her face, collecting all the tears I missed.

“Caution, may cause fits of truthfulness and sappiness.”

She holds up another card. “This will be a nice palate cleanser. Foster, what is your favorite kind of foreplay?”

“Easy. Pretending to date you, or pretending I didn’t desperately want to date you. It was like being edged for weeks on end. Why do you think I came without even touching myself?”

“Oh? Is edging something you’re into?”

“If you’re the one edging me, it sure is.”

Her eyes trail down my body, her lip slipping between her teeth before they make their way back to my face. “Noted.”

“What about you?”

“When you kiss or lick me right”—she runs her fingers along her collarbone—“here.”

“Really?”

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