I WENT STRAIGHT TO his house.
Handel was sitting on the front porch when I arrived, staring out at the water across the street, smoking a cigarette. It was like he’d been waiting for me.
“There’s no one home,” he said, like a warning.
“Is that a problem?” I asked with a laugh and some relief, too.
“No. I suppose not.”
I stood in front of him, willing him to admire the Jane I’d just seen in the mirror, wanting him to think the same thoughts I’d had only a few minutes ago. He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray on the table, and when he looked up again, he smiled in that way that did me in.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, and I believed him.
I sat down on the wicker couch. Let my fingers dance on the cushions right near his leg, but not so close that we touched. “Me too.”
“Is there anything you want to talk about?”
This question caught me off guard. Maybe Handel wanted to know about my dinner at the O’Connors’ house, but I didn’t feel like discussing it. “Not particularly,” I said. My fingers stopped their dance. “I just needed to see you.”
This made Handel smile again. “Needed?”
I nodded. Smiled back.
Then we talked for a long time as we sat there, the sky growing dark. We talked about all kinds of things. My relationship with my mother. His relationship with his father. My going to college. His going to college. What books we loved and which ones we didn’t. Music. Movies. Hopes and dreams. Mine. His. The conversation went on and on, vibrant and lighthearted at points and full of feeling and sincerity in others.
I thought to myself on more than one occasion:
There are so many ways to love someone, sometimes just with words.
The moon came out, the stars were bright, and both soon provided the only light in our comfortable darkness on the porch. Handel got up, and I followed him around to the back of the house, down the steps into a lush garden I never would have dreamed was there, a beautiful secret thriving behind it. Flowers growing everywhere, vines winding around trellises, penned in by a tall fence that could barely hold it all back. It was something out of a book. Too magical to be real.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“It’s my mother’s,” Handel said. “She calls it her haven.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, and thought about how Handel may be related to those brothers of his, but he’s related to the woman who created this, too.
Handel looked at me, traced a finger down the side of my face and along the curve of my jaw. “I’ve never shown anyone before. I’ve never brought anyone here.”
“No?” I asked, everything about me like petals opening to the sun.
He shook his head.
“Thank you for sharing it with me,” I said.
“Jane, there are things I want to tell you,” Handel began. “Things you need to know before we can—”
But I couldn’t wait anymore, and I kissed him then, in the cloak of the garden, kissed him in this way that was . . . suggestive. Pressed myself against him all the way to my knees. I felt delirious with love after all our talk, intoxicated with the sweet scent of flowers hovering in the air around us, freed by the darkness. I stopped being Jane altogether in this surreal place, alone with this beautiful, mysterious boy named Handel, and instead became some wild, confident nymph. Put his hand to my chest and made sure he found out quickly that I hadn’t worn a bra. I wanted whatever came next.
I was ready.
“Jane,” he said, lifting his lips from my neck, his voice hoarse.
But I pressed into him, my head thrown back, hair falling over the arms that held me, exposing neck and collarbone, handing myself over willingly. I wanted his touch on my skin, and I wanted it everywhere. “I’m all yours,” I said, and I meant it.
I put my trust in him completely.
I wanted to try everything with Handel.
“Follow me,” he said, taking my hand and leading me through an opening between two short, thick pines into a tiny, private space canopied with ivy. There was a bench in the center, and Handel sat down and waited for me to join him. Instead I went and stood in front of him, put my hand along the side of his face and leaned forward, stopping just short of his lips.
“This is fun,” I said dreamily.
“You’re driving me crazy.” He sounded pained.
I smiled, eyes half closed. “Oh, am I?”
“Like you didn’t know.” His laugh was low.
But he hesitated to touch me. Something was stopping him.
“I won’t break,” I told him, and inched closer, and it’s true, too, that in this place and time with Handel, in this secret garden behind his house, I felt unbreakable.
He slid his index finger along my collarbone and down until it hooked over the top button of my shirt. This time he didn’t hesitate or ask. With one quick twist, he slid it open. His other hand went to my thigh, to the skin just below the hem of my skirt, and stopped. Rested there. We kissed a million times more, it seemed, exchanging whispered words and murmurs before his fingers traveled up along my leg until they grazed the edge of my underwear, and a million times more after that, it seemed, before they slipped underneath it, moving leisurely across my skin to what I thought must be the very center of my self.
“Oh.” I sighed, with the surprise of his fingers. My eyes were closed, and I could feel the drunken smile on my face.
“Do you want me to stop?” Handel asked, his voice a mix of concern and desire.
“No,” I said. “Definitely do not stop.”
He laughed at this, and I melted into him like I might have become the ocean itself in this one moment, letting myself be changed by so much pleasure, so much attention that was all for me. I was definitely a new Jane by the time I opened my eyes and looked into Handel’s, who watched me like he’d never seen me before.
And he hadn’t, I suppose, not this Jane at least.
He blinked once. Again. Then, “I love you,” he said to me amid this beautiful, moonlit garden, a world away from the town we lived in day to day.
“I know,” I told him. “I do, too. Love you, I mean.”
Then we lay down next to each other in the grass and didn’t speak again.