summer lovin’ happened so fast

Nate carried Serena up two flights of stairs to his parents’ bedroom. Her dress was in the fountain, a soaking ball of blue silk. So were his pants and his belt. There wasn’t much left to take off. He settled her gently on top of the golden yellow Italian cotton coverlet and lay down next to her, admiring the glow of her smooth skin in the rays of late summer sun beaming through the skylight overhead. Serena turned her head and pressed her forehead into his. “I could just kiss you forever,” she murmured, her lips brushing his. “But I don’t want to just kiss.”

They looked into each other’s eyes with an excited intensity that only excited them even more. This was it: the thing neither of them had ever done before was about to happen, and in the most perfect way—with each other.

Nate pulled Serena close. “I love you,” he said loudly, because he wanted the whole city to hear it.

“I love you,” she replied, even louder. Then she erupted into excited giggles and began tearing his white cotton boxers off with her long, graceful, overeager fingers, followed by her own fountain-soaked white underwear. She tossed the soggy undergarments across the room and they landed on the floor by the door.

Ta-da!

But wait, the condom. Nate rushed away to get one from his room. That awkward, slimy, silly-looking necessity. They’d both played with them before—blown them up like balloons and filled them with water—but they’d never actually used one. Putting it on was like a science experiment in lab class at school, and they wanted to do the experiment absolutely right. Serena tossed the empty wrapper on the floor.

Ready, set, go!

How fun, how right, to be doing the scariest thing for a girl to do for the first time with her best friend, the boy she’d loved forever. Her Nate. There was really nothing scary about it. It was exactly the way it was supposed to be.

He brushed his nose against hers. “Are you sure?” he asked quietly, even though he was pretty sure he knew the answer.

“Yes,” Serena nodded, pressing her body against his. She’d never been more sure of anything. “Please?” she added with a giggle, because it was pretty obvious that he wanted to too.

So they did it. And the fun part was watching each other’s faces, because they both looked so scared and happy and surprised. Serena could not stop laughing. It hurt, it did, but not in the way she’d thought. It was still so much fun, because Nate was so sweet. He didn’t want it to hurt, and every time she flinched he just kissed the hurt away. She loved him so much, hurt was the wrong word. There were no words for how it felt. It was like getting the present she’d wanted for such a long, long time and finding out it was even better than she’d anticipated. It was amazing. He was amazing.

Nate couldn’t believe he got to do this for the first time with the most beautiful girl in the universe. He was damned glad he’d waited, because nothing could top this. He loved Serena so badly it made him feel like he was going to explode. He couldn’t stop smiling and laughing and looking at her. It was amazing. She was amazing.

And their bodies were amazing, the way they fit together and knew instinctively what to do. It was like this was somehow pre-ordained. They’d been built for each other, created to be together, like two pieces from a model sailboat.

Click!

They weren’t laughing anymore, because there wasn’t anything funny. They just held each other, shivering with the thrill of being closer than they’d ever been before, sharing something they didn’t know existed, something they’d keep with them forever.

Eventually they dozed off in each other’s arms. Nate woke up first. It was nighttime now. The stars had come out in the skylight overhead. Without thinking about what he was doing, he reached for the remote on his dad’s bedside table and switched on the TV. It was tuned to the History Channel, and the narrator for a documentary about Moses, who sounded an awful lot like Serena’s friend Isabel Coates’s dad, said in an incredibly loud voice, “Moses saw no alternative but to part the Red Sea so that he and his people could cross it.”

Jesus, it was loud. Nate had forgotten his father was practically deaf. He pressed the volume button over and over again to soften it, but Serena’s long eyelashes were already fluttering open against his chest. She lifted her head and grinned at him. “You parted my Red Sea!”

They both snorted, erupting into giddy giggles until they were howling with laughter. It was kind of a gross analogy but pretty funny too. They wrestled with each other under the covers, their bodies sleek with sweat. Soon they were kissing, unable to stop, and before they knew it, he was parting her Red Sea once more.

There they go again, making history.