We drive down Second Street until it hits PCH, and I try not to think about what my parents would do if they knew I was skipping school. It would probably just add to the narrative they’re building in their heads about what a messed-up teenager I’m becoming. But today was traumatic, and I can’t imagine going back into that school and dealing with the whispers and stares for the rest of the day. I’m just glad Sam was there to save me. And hold my hand. I wish I could reach over and take his hand again.
“Uh . . . it’s just . . . I—ugh!” I choke out, trying to make sense of the garbled mess in my head. My voice is scratchy and hoarse like I’ve been screaming for hours.
Sam doesn’t push. He drives down a long street with cute shops and cafés and then pulls into a parking lot facing a beach I haven’t been to yet. Seal Beach. When he finally clicks the car off, though, he turns to face me, a sympathetic smile on his face.
“It’s just what?”
I take one more deep breath. “It’s just that I think I can get over what she’s trying to say about Nico and me . . . being obsessed or whatever.”
He makes a face that I can’t decipher. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, I wrote that story before I ever met him. I know that. And he can know that if we ever talk again. . . . I don’t care if we do,” I say, even though I’m not sure if that’s true. “And maybe I deserve it.”
“You didn’t deserve that.”
I wave that thought away. “The part I can’t get over, what’s making me so upset, is that it was all the worst of my writing. That everyone is going to see that and realize what a terrible writer I am.”
“That won’t happen,” he says, smiling at me. His hand goes to my shoulder again. It feels like it’s full of electricity, charging my whole body. “How do you think she even got it?”
“It was probably in my portfolio. And I mean, who knows how she got her hands on that? I guess her parents are on the board, so she has access—and of course she chose the worst stuff! But who am I kidding . . . it was probably all crap. I made this easy for her—”
“Tessa,” he cuts me off. His voice is stern, so out of character it makes me look up, and I see that his face matches. “I really need you to stop talking shit about my friend.”
“Since when is Poppy your friend?”
“No, you!” He laughs, the face breaking. He leans in closer to me. “You’re always so down on yourself and your writing. But let’s look at the straight facts. Those were the writing samples that were sent in. And the creative writing department read them and accepted you into the school, so I think we can conclude that the writing was, is good.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I don’t want your buts!” He blushes and says quickly, “You know what I mean. It’s just . . . you need to get out of this mindset that you don’t deserve to be here. You’re here for a reason. As a writer, an artist, you belong here. And nothing, not some mean girl, or even your own inner critic, can take that away from you.”
His words envelop me, warming up my entire body. How can he feel this way when . . .
“You’ve never even read my writing.”
“I haven’t. But I want to, and I hope you’ll let me someday.” I’m not sure how it happened, but we’re only inches away from each other. I can see every one of the freckles below his eyes. “I do know that you’re incredible, though, so your writing must be too. If you’ll believe in yourself as much as I believe in you.”
Something unlocks between us with those words, and then he’s closing the remaining space, brushing his nose against mine. There’s that question in his eyes again, and I nod. I want this. He brings his hands to the sides of my face, holding me delicately like I’m something precious and important, and my eyes flutter close as our lips press together.
And I realize I’ve been describing kissing all wrong. In all my years of writing—kisses with Harry and Edward and Thad and Thomas—I never got it right. That was mechanics, logistics . . . and this, this is completely different. This is intuitive, this is urgent. This involves everything, my whole body, even though the only parts of us touching are our lips and his hands on the back of my neck, fingers woven in my curls. My heart has left my chest and is beating in my ears and my stomach is doing triple backflips. I think I’ve reached my limit. That I can’t possibly feel any more. But then his hand trails down the side of my body, his lips move to my cheek, my neck, the side of my mouth, and it all gets dialed up to a hundred.
This is what kissing is.
And I get the urge to take out my laptop, write down every last detail. I could write entire novels just about kissing Sam.
He pulls away and stares at me, eyes wide.
I can’t find any words, except: “Whoa.”
Redness is creeping up his neck and to his cheeks. “I don’t know what I . . . I know you like Nico—”
I grab his face and kiss him again.
And we keep kissing.
Eventually, after our lips are swollen and the car windows are starting to fog, Sam suggests, sheepishly, that maybe we get out of the car before someone calls a security guard or something. And I laugh way too much at the idea of that happening and the phone call my parents could get because now I’m ditching school AND making out in a car with a boy. It’s hilarious what a turn my PG life has taken.
We walk down Main Street to a tiny bakery and order cinnamon rolls as big as our heads, taking them down to the beach. As we walk barefoot in the cold sand to the murky blue water, my hand brushes against his, and he takes it, confidently, like this is the way it always has been.
The beach is pretty empty, most people scared away by the cloudy sky, so it still feels like we’re in our own little bubble. Just me and him, and all the other worries—like my words floating around the hallways or whether or not the school will call my mom or what everyone at school will think about me and Sam—they all just float away.
We sit and watch the waves, taking gooey, sweet bites of the pastries, our legs outstretched on a blanket he had in the back of his car. And I keep catching him out of the corner of my eye, staring at me instead of the water in front of us, like I’m more deserving of his attention than the Pacific Ocean. It makes me feel like the biggest treasure.
“What?” I finally ask, grinning and nudging him with my shoulder.
“I just can’t believe that we’re here. Like this. You and me.” He laces his fingers through mine.
“I know,” I say quickly. “It probably seems like it came out of nowhere—”
“It didn’t for me,” he says solemnly. “I’ve thought you were the most beautiful girl in the world from the first day I saw you.”
“Oh yeah? Even when you were paying for my brother’s pizza?”
“That wasn’t the first time,” he says, and I look up at him, confused. “I saw you when your family was moving in—you were carrying in a big box of books, and your dad kept trying to help you, but you just pushed him away, even though it took you twice as long . . . sorry, this probably sounds kind of stalker-y, doesn’t it? Me watching you without you knowing?”
“I know aaalllll about being stalker-y.”
He rolls his eyes. “Anyway, when your brother sent that pizza to the wrong house, I was actually pretty grateful. Because it gave me a chance to meet you. Ever since then I’ve just been waiting . . . well, desperately hoping that you’d catch up.”
I go through the past few months in my head: all the treats he brought me every morning and what a jerk I was to him in the beginning—so worried about what other people would think, when that shouldn’t have been my focus at all.
I trace the center of Sam’s rough palm with my thumb. “I don’t know,” I say. “Sounds like just a line to me.”
He reels back for a second but then smiles when he sees my smirking face and realizes I’m quoting him from that day with Caroline in his kitchen. “I’ve got all the lines for you, as many lines as you could possibly dream of, because you are deserving of lines from here to eternity.”
He kisses my forehead. “Are you tired? Because you’ve been running through my mind all day.” He kisses me on one cheek and then the other. “Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?” He tugs on my shirt and then kisses me on the nose. “You know what this shirt is made of? Girlfriend material.”
“I don’t think that’s how that one’s supposed to g—”
He kisses my chin. “There must be something wrong with my eyes because I can’t take them off you.”
“Okay, stop,” I say, cutting him off with a kiss on the lips. I lean into it, knocking him down on the sand, and he wraps his arms around me, pulling me close to him. The kisses start slow and tentative, but then his left arm goes down to my lower back and I run my hand through his hair and we both open our mouths, taken by this frantic energy, and the kisses become more urgent, quick, and—
Someone clears their throat, and we both spring up to see a mom in a one-piece, holding a beach chair and diaper bag in one arm and a dark-haired toddler in the other, giving us the death glare.
“Um, uh, sorry, ma’am!” Sam calls, waving at her. She does not look amused.
After she stomps off down the beach, Sam and I both just stare at each other, and it’s like neither of us can stop grinning.
“Do you want to, uh, cool off?” he asks, gesturing toward the water.
I nod quickly, my heart beating too fast.
We stand up, and I realize he’s wearing the khaki cargo pants with the zippers at the knees. I used to think they were so embarrassingly dorky before, but I don’t care now.
Now I just see him. This kind, funny, cute boy who I want to make out with a lot more, preferably somewhere in private. He leans down—I think to roll up his pants—but instead he zips off the bottoms, converting them into shorts. So people do do that.
I laugh so much, I snort a little bit, and when he looks up at me, self-conscious, I meet him with a kiss. We grab hands and run off into the waves.