Page 84 of The Best Worst Mistake
I stand there, too stunned to respond at first, and then, I give in.
When I do, her lips slow down against mine, pulling back enough to take her time, tasting my tongue slowly, running her fingers along my jaw, pressing her body into mine. I cup her waist, squeezing her closer. Then when I know she’s not going to run, I drag both hands up her back and find her neck, the crook of her jaw, hooking my thumbs in that soft spot just in front of her ears to cradle her face in my palms.
Then our lips pause, less than an inch away, both of us panting like we’ve just completed a half-marathon over the course of the last ten years, and I force myself not to move. To let her bring herself back into me for more, or to step away, questioning everything.
This has to be her choice.
It has to be her wanting me as much as I have always wanted her in order for us to keep going.
For one solid moment and too many extra heartbeats, I think she might actually pull away.
Our breath mixes in the dark, crickets and waves suddenly coming back to life loudly in my ears — before all I can hearare my own thoughts screaming and cheering and wondering whether any of this is going to be okay.
Another ten seconds pass, but it feels like an hour. And then I feel her easing back from me, bringing both eyes up to meet mine.
She touches a few fingertips to her bottom lip, rubbing them absentmindedly, like she’s already remembering what it felt like to have my lips there just seconds ago.
“Silas, I—”
“Don’t,” I tell her, smiling gently, hopefully. “Don’t think about it. Don’t try to figure it out yet. Not right now. It’s just another moment that—”
“Shouldn’t be happening—” she whispers.
“But is,” I finish for her.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” she says to herself more than me. But when our eyes meet again, she inhales sharply. “Fuck it,” she whispers on the exhale, then presses her lips back to mine, and I wrap my hands up in her hair.
One hint of doubt can ruin everything.
Turn our mess into something more. Something neither one of us will recognize.
I won’t let her question it.
Not now, not ever.
She responds by grabbing my belt with both hands, pulling me into her, hooking her arms behind my back, then dragging them up toward my shoulder blades. My entire body turns to fire, wanting her, like the electric current that’s been simmering beneath the surface of my feelings for Jules has finally been allowed to reach maximum capacity. Coursing through each and every vein beneath my skin. Pulsing at her touch, shooting embers from behind my eyes. As if something inside me has been lying dormant my whole life, waiting for this exact moment when she decides that it’s us.
I forget that we’re standing in the middle of a sidewalk in Italy.
Forget why we’re even here.
All I can think about is her arms wrapped around me, her lips pressed into mine.
I don’t want to feel anything else in this moment but her. Like she’s the only thing keeping me grounded in a hurricane.
Breathlessly, she backs up from me again, this time stooping down to grab the two lemons she dropped a moment ago.
“I — I can’t forget the lemons,” she says, picking them up, nearly laughing, like she doesn’t know what else to say.
She holds them up between us, blinking, but her face shifts into something new. She’s grinning, looking at me in the way I’ve always been too afraid to imagine.
It makes me laugh — knowing that my face must look the exact same way as hers.
“No, I wouldn’t want you to forget those,” I tell her, grinning too, taking another step toward this most beautiful woman in the world.
She drops the lemons to her sides and we each take another step. It’s neither her nor I closing the gap alone, but both of us doing it together, and our lips entwine again.
The lemons must be back on the ground because suddenly her hands are everywhere. Pushing against my chest, wrapped around the back of my neck, pulling me closer to her, fingertips raking over my scalp, sending waves of yearning all the way down through my legs, bouncing off the pavement, and racing back up my body again. She can’t hold still. Leaning against me, then arching her back, fisting my collar and yanking me to her, as if I will never be close enough.
