3:28 a.m.

THE POWER IS still out, and Neil McNair is in my room, and that is somehow not the strangest thing that’s happened today.

After we finished our list, I asked if he wanted to come back to my house, since he never got a chance to see my room. It’s the right ending to this day: letting him into my little piece of the world, the way he let me into his.

I am extremely grateful my parents are downstairs and heavy sleepers. I’m sure they won’t be up until after noon, but I don’t want to take any chances, so we tiptoe inside, and I have to force myself to whisper.

My phone has some juice from my car charger, so I find a soft but not too mopey Smiths song and hit play.

“So this is Rowan Roth’s room,” he says, trailing a hand along my desk. I love the way he looks in my room, softly lit from a flashlight. He glances from the photo collages and academic awards on my walls to the books stacked on my nightstand to the dresses spilling out of my closet.

“Yep. All the magic happens right here.”

“I like it. It’s very you.” He turns so his back is to the desk. “What do you feel like doing?”

“Hmm… I was thinking Monopoly.”

“Monopoly?” There’s that lazy grin. “Okay, but I’m really good at Monopoly, and it’s going to be embarrassing if I beat you aga—”

My lips are already on his. This kiss feels heavier than what happened at the museum, in the gym, at Kerry Park. Like someone stuck us in an electric socket or lit us on fire. He buries his hands in my hair, propelling me backward. When the backs of my knees hit the bed, he whispers, “Sorry,” and I have to hold in a laugh as I tug him down next to me. Climb into his lap. Then we’re kissing again, and his glasses keep falling down, so he whips them off and places them on the nightstand. He is so adorable and so hot and so sweet, always so sweet.

“I want to see you,” I say, my fingers flirting with the hem of his T-shirt.

“I’m warning you, it’s a lot of freckles.” But he pulls it off, revealing, to my delight, the wonderfully freckled stomach I got a glimpse of earlier.

“I love your freckles. Really and truly.”

I leave invisible handprints all over his chest, learning exactly where he’s ticklish. He skims his hands up to my knees, my hips, beneath the dress that has suddenly become a straitjacket. I twist on his lap, trying to reach the zipper. He has to help me with it, and together we tug it off.

Once I’m in just my bra and underwear, he stares.

“I’m not unattractive, right?” I say, because teasing him will never stop being fun.

“Now you know why I was wholly incapable of paying you a compliment. You are spectacular,” he says, leaning in to kiss down my neck. “And stunning. And—sexy.” There’s a beat before he says that last one, and the word makes me shudder. God.

“You are going to destroy me,” I whisper.

Losing my dress makes me kiss him with even more urgency. I run my hand over the front of his jeans, and he sucks in a breath through his teeth. It’s maybe the best sound I’ve ever heard, at least until I unzip and unbuckle and cast his jeans aside completely, pressing him deeper into the bed, and he releases another breathy groan again. Yep, I’m destroyed.

For a while we dissolve into a blur of lips and sighs and touches. The occasional mattress squeak when we reposition, a thin layer of fabric separating us. With every new touch, he’s timid at first, and it fucking kills me.

His hand slips between my legs, stroking the inside of my thigh and up, up. “Would this… be okay?”

“Yes. Yes.” What I really mean is please.

It took me long enough to figure it out for myself, so I give him some guidance. It turns out, he is an excellent listener. He whispers my name into my ear, slowly undoing me, and then I’m at the edge and falling, falling.…

I’m still recovering when the power suddenly returns and the house flashes to life, every light in my room blinking on at once.

He does have freckles everywhere.

I absolutely love it.

We’ve spent so much of tonight in the dark that I can’t help laughing, and he joins in, squinting at the bright lights. “Shhh,” I say, but it’s no use.

“Too bright,” he groans. “There’s plenty of natural light coming in from outside.”

And he’s right, so I peel myself out of bed to turn everything off and then wait a minute to make sure my parents aren’t moving around downstairs. When I’m confident they’re still safely ensconced in scotch comas, I crawl back to him.

He reaches for me, but I place a gentle hand on his chest.

“Hold on,” I say. “How far are we going here, exactly? We should talk about… whatever it is that we’re doing. Or not doing.” Anxiously, I tug at my bangs. “Because I’m kind of on board with all of it, but I know you haven’t, you know. Had sex.”

The weight of it hovers between us. Neil pushes into a sitting position, the sheets pooled around our ankles. This isn’t like with Spencer, where, because I’d already done it with Luke, I figured, why not. I want this, with Neil. I want to talk about it, and I want him to feel comfortable talking about it with me. The idea of being with him in that way makes me dizzy with desire. I want more than this one night, but I can’t think about the future right now.

“Trust me,” he says, his hand settling on my waist like it’s the most natural thing in the world, “there is literally nothing I want more than you. Not even valedictorian.”

“I don’t know if having sex is better than being valedictorian. And I’m also not sure that’s the correct usage of ‘literally.’ You should know that.”

“With you, it might be.” Worry flickers across his face. “I have to be honest. I’m a little nervous. That I’ll, like, mess up or something, or make it horrible for you. And then you’ll never want to do this again, which would be devastating, given how much I like you.”

His nerves endear him to me even more. I like that he doesn’t immediately become this smooth, overconfident guy.

“I’m nervous too,” I admit. “Excited, but nervous, and that’s normal. That’s why we’ll talk to each other. We’ve always been good at that, right?” I say, and he nods. “The first time with someone is usually imperfect. That’s part of what makes it fun: figuring out together how to make it good.”

“It’s not going to be romance-novel perfect,” he says, but he’s not admonishing me.

“No. Not the first time, and probably not the second or third either. Maybe not ever, honestly, but it’ll be ours. And… that might be better.”

His thumb draws circles on my hip. “Are you sure you want this too? We haven’t—I mean, we’ve known each other awhile, but we only just kissed tonight, and…” A rambly Neil McNair is almost too adorable.

It’s an easy decision. “I’m sure.”

“And hey, you still have a condom in your backpack.”

I groan. “Oh my God. I was so mortified.”

“Chekhov’s condom,” he says, and then I’m laughing along with him.

“I do, in fact, have some that haven’t been sitting in Kirby’s locker for God knows how long.”

It takes only a moment to slip out of bed and grab them, a moment to shed our underwear. Another few moments to help him put one on before realizing it’s inside out. Into the trash it goes, and then we try again.

Once we get it right, it doesn’t last extremely long, because we’re tired or because it’s his first time or some combination of both. Every so often, he checks in with me, asking if it’s still good, if I’m still good. And yes. Yes. We try our best to be quiet, but we can’t stop whispering to each other. We’ve only just become friends, real friends, and there’s so much we want to say.

He finishes first, and then his fingers drift down between us and he gets me there for the second time tonight. Another thing I’ve learned: Neil McNair is exceedingly generous.

Then we’re quiet, quieter than my sleeping, darkened house. It’s a peaceful, appreciative kind of quiet. I burrow close to him, resting my cheek against his heartbeat while he plays with my hair.

“Earth-shattering,” he says.

“What just happened? Agreed.”

He kisses the top of my head. “Well, yes, but I meant you.”