Bundled Up

Sunday night we were sprawled on the couch, his head in my lap while he read a psychology textbook. The TV was tuned to a survivalist show on Discovery, but mainly I was focused on the warm weight of his head and the silky feel of his freshly showered hair under my hand. He’d pulled the quilt I kept on the back of the couch over us and the coziness wrapped around me like a drug. I’d never thought of myself as a particularly snuggly person, but Lance made it something I craved, something that warded off more than just the chill of a drafty apartment.

“I have a question,” Lance said, looking up from his book and breaking my pleasant fog.

“Do you ever think . . . maybe we could keep things going?” His eyes were like a puddle I’d encountered once at a truck stop in rural Washington—looked all harmless and almost cute until I stepped in it and found myself up to my pits in deep mud.

“What?” My heart started galloping, like I’d chugged two of his favorite extrasweet mochas. I’d been dreading this question. “You’ll be in Cali, right? Or some other state?”

“Yeah. But it’s only for three years. I’ll be back after that, most likely.”

“Three years is a long time.”

“Not really.” He looked away, studying the cracked leather of my couch. “There’s Skype and texting, and I’ll be back for all the holidays—my mom’ll kill me otherwise. But anyway, I was thinking, there’s really no good reason to stop this . . . friendship. If I go away, I mean—”

“If. There is no if. You will get into your top schools,” I said firmly. My heart couldn’t handle if.

“Some of the people I know online have acceptance letters already.” He frowned. I patted his chest.

“You’ll get into one of your picks. And yes, there is a reason not to do the long-distance thing. It’s called your life.”

“Well, what if I want this to be my life?”

My heart cowered behind my ribs, its shaky rhythm rattling my chest. I couldn’t trust myself to speak for several moments.

“No. You’re going to school. Explore a new city. Meet all sorts of new people. Make friends. Go party. Do all the things you’ve dreamed about for years. You don’t need to be tied to Oregon.” My voice was thick as oatmeal and about as enthusiastic.

“I don’t want to stop . . . being friends,” Lance said softly. “I hate thinking about that.”

Me too. “Brat, I’m always going to be your friend. And I’d like to hear how you’re getting on.” Happy things would make me miss him more, but silence might suffocate me. And I knew Lance, knew he’d feel better about being able to text, even if the day would eventually come when he wouldn’t.

“This . . . this is special, right?” His fingers twined with mine. I pressed our joined hands against his chest, like maybe together we could feel what was right below the surface of this conversation.

“You have no idea.” I had to squeeze my eyes shut. “But that’s just it; you need to be free to find . . . special at school, too.”

“What if neither of us ever finds this again?”

I won’t. “You will. You’ll find even better friends wherever you’re heading. You’ll find guys who love Katy Perry and going out dancing and bacon on pizza. And I’m not going to hold you back from that.”

“I’m not itching to party or anything.” His grip on my hand tightened.

“I want . . .” I had to swallow hard. “I want you to look back and have this time be an amazing memory, not a burden with an ugly ending.”

“I don’t think it would end ugly.”

I opened my eyes. He was so earnest. So sweet. So damn tempting. I would be the worst kind of heel to take advantage of his blind trust.

“I know it would. Distance never works. And honestly, most relationships don’t either. I’d rather part friends.”

“Yeah.” He looked far from convinced, his eyes distant and sad.

“Look: I’m going to treasure every single moment between now and August.” More like I was going to hoard the memories like squares of a quilt I’d use later to wrap myself in, make myself a blanket cave I might never leave. “And then I want you to go off to the next adventure of your life.”

His eyes squished shut and his mouth was tight, his lips a barely visible line. All it would take would be a single tear and I’d be promising him stupid, selfish things. I leaned down and kissed him. I tried to put everything into the kiss—how much I cared about him, how much parting was going to kill me, how much I already missed him. He smelled like my shampoo and tasted like my beer and felt like mine. But he wasn’t. He couldn’t be, but I drank up the illusion, greedy for every last drop he could give me.

Eventually, kissing led to touching, him in my lap, us grinding all that emotion out. We made our way to bed, shedding clothes as we went, still kissing. Always kissing. His lips turned punishing as I fumbled for supplies, and still I couldn’t stop kissing him, couldn’t stop my lips from tracing the chiseled angles of his jaw, couldn’t stop my hands from exploring every inch of him.

“Give me everything,” he whispered as I pushed inside.

“Always.” I held his face, watching him the whole time.

“I need you.” His hands dug hard into my shoulders.

“You’ve got me.”

We’d had a lot of sex in our short relationship, but this was making love. I’d never say the words out loud, but my body couldn’t lie. Love glimmered off every touch, every glance, every thrust. Our bodies joined in a way that was sweet and slow and more than a little sad. I tried to memorize his face as he came—the way he kept his eyes open until the last second, the way the tendons in his neck went taut, the way his lips formed my name. The end seemed to be sneaking up on us, coming faster than I was ready for.