Chapter 23

Thorny for You

It helps that the lights are off.

Not that I’m not liking being in bed with Ben, because I really am, it’s just…disorienting? No, that’s not the right word. It’s a lot. My head is making so much noise, my self-consciousness is at an all-time high, and I’m just so grateful that my face can process these thousand different emotions without Ben having to see how overwhelmed I look.

What am I feeling? Let me count the ways.

I’ve had sex since Micah—but this is the first time where the stakes have been high. These might be even higher, because it’s Ben. With Micah and Dylan before him, they were so inexperienced, my stress was more about making sure they felt safe, comfortable, and turned on. With Ben…he’s got more moves than me, so I’ve gotta bring my AP-level skills. Not only that, but some major brain wackiness is also happening, because I’ve never touched Ben like this before. We were kids together. We slept in side-by-side sleeping bags and played with Nerf guns. Now my hands are peeling a shirt off the taut little rib muscles of some dude’s body—and you’re telling me this is Ben? Impossible. The heavy warmth I feel rising against my leg is Ben’s dick? The last time I hung around Ben this much, the word “dick” would’ve made us giggle like hyenas.

The very idea that I’m holding Ben’s toughened, grown body against my own is so ludicrous I have to stomp down the laugh rising in my throat.

It’s almost too much to comprehend that I have a grown body. Lately, when I’ve been hanging out with Ben, my brain remembers being little, scrawny, and childish. Yet his strong hands are swirling down my broad back and destroying that childlike image. His palms grip my thighs firmly but carefully, like I’m a clay pot he’s molding. But when his fingers find my waist, I flinch, like he’s touched a fresh scrape. My waist has gotten softer since the last time a boy held me.

I don’t mind getting bigger. I know I’m beautiful—I’m just not ready for my body to change.

Everything’s changing.

Ben is starting to look like a man. Our adulthood is coming, but I’m not ready. I don’t have college figured out. I can’t live on my own without spiraling. For fuck’s sake, I can’t even get over my eighth-grade boyfriend. Everyone is okay moving on but me.

You’re not a kid anymore, Grant.

You’re not the Band-Aid baby.

You’re not the star Instacouple boyfriend.

You are Grant Rossi, a handsome young man who has fought many demons but still finds the beauty in life.

Like beautiful, all-grown-up Ben.

Light from the city cuts inside our hotel’s fifth-floor window, painting silver around the edges of the darkness. I can’t see Ben’s face, only the outlines of his high cheekbones, dimpled chin, and strong nose. Gripping his bushy hair, I pull his lips to mine. They’re the only part of him that’s soft. Everything else is hard, rough, or bristling with hair.

Ben climbs on me, squeaking the cheap hotel’s cheaper bed springs, and lowers himself onto my lips again. As he kisses me, his breath sweet, his spare hand reaches across my chest and draws circles around my nipple.

I inhale a quick gasp, and he pauses.

“You all right?” he moans, his Scottish accent growing stronger.

“Just surprised me,” I say breathily. “When’d you get moves like this?”

He chuckles darkly and his hand grips my shorts again. “When’d you get an ass like this?”

I moan happily, enjoying his hand there, until he slowly moves it up, swirling over my stomach. Instinctively, my body tenses, and he notices again. “You okay?”

“Fine!” Except my words come out tight and falsely chipper.

“Liar.”

“It’s nothing, just ignore me.” My body turns rigid against his, everything is stiffening except my junk, which is deflating. “I’m just…sensitive. I got bigger this year.”

Ben lowers himself to me, nose-to-nose. “I know big boys who would give you a smack on the tit for calling yourself fat.”

He flicks my nipple, but this time, it’s not sexy, it’s boyish teasing.

Laughing, I squirm underneath him. “Stop! I didn’t say fat, I said bigger!”

“They would still smack you in the tit! You are a buff young homo. Okay, so your tummy’s out of bounds, got it. Anywhere else?”

“No.” I smile, easing comfortably into him. The sounds in my head finally quiet. “Ben?”

“Mmm?”

“What if this is it? The Rose Festival ends, and we don’t see each other for another five years?”

Sighing, Ben rolls off of me, plopping his head next to mine. He pinches my cheek, and a rush of warmth enters me. “I don’t know what you’re trying to get me to say,” he says, “but I don’t plan on letting it get that long again.”

I brush my nose gently against his. “Yeah?”

“I like that you still want me in your life.”

The room falls into a crackling silence, broken only by the loud whir of the hotel air conditioner. I kiss him quickly. “I don’t ever want you out of my life again.”

“I missed you, Grant. It was…really fucking hard watching your last relationship over Instagram. Watching this happy, grown-up Grant I didn’t recognize be so loved. All those people seeing you how I always saw you.”

Memories of my ex—and our all-too-public relationship—tighten my throat. Instagram lies. It makes everything look happier than it is.

“And how did you always see me?” I ask.

In the dark, Ben’s chest rises sharply and falls shallowly against my shoulder. He’s tense. Emotional. “Just a magical guy,” he says. “My parents used to fight so much, I felt like such a piece of shit. Like I didn’t matter because I couldn’t stop them. Like my family was just fucked, and that I’d be fucked, too. But then hanging out with you, it was all right. You made me so calm. Then I went and…lost you. I wasn’t calm ever again after that.”

My cheeks are burning hot, and I don’t want to cry on him in such a vulnerable position, so I pull him into another ferocious kiss. He kisses back just as powerfully, and then when we separate, I press his forehead to mine. We breathe each other’s hot breath.

“I wasn’t happy in those pictures,” I say. “Not even once. I couldn’t be calm with Micah. I tried so hard to hold on tight to him, I don’t even know why. But I know when I lost you, I stopped being me. I didn’t realize it until we started hanging out again, but I’ve been in a goddamn coma for five years. It’s like I can finally be me again.” I smile, even though I’m sniffling back tears. “But turns out the real me is still super chaotic.”

“HELLO.” Ben roars with laughter, his shoulders bouncing against mine. He pokes my chin and snuggles closer. “Well, whoever you are, I’m glad you’re back. I won’t lie, even though I knew how busted up you were after your breakup…I was hoping this would happen, you coming back. I thought about messaging you a million times.”

“I wish you had.”

“You were so angry at me…”

I nod, collecting a deep, knowing breath. “I was out of my mind last year, I probably would have blocked you. We needed Vero Roseto.”

Ben’s fingers stroke behind my ears, and he stares at me, his eyes shining like crescent moons in the city light. “No more scratching your face out of pictures, okay?”

A powerful blanket of shame lowers my head as I nod. He saw my weirdest, most serial-killer behavior—my thorniest thorn—and it only made him want to help me more. Ben and I really are different people now, and that’s a good thing. We’re not kids anymore. With each passing day this summer, Adult Ben and Adult Grant have emerged from our childhood ashes like phoenixes.

“Thank you for seeing me,” I whisper, and we fall asleep in each other’s arms.