PRESENT DAY
When the clock strikes midnight and marks two days left, Britt leans forward and whispers in my ear, “Hey, Lost Girl.”
I turn onto my side, curled toward her. “Hi.”
We bridge the gap between us, and there’s a rhythm to kissing, a pattern, a lyricism that only comes when it’s with this one girl. It’s a song we perfected long ago, and a tune we practice now, in my room. We rest next to each other on my comforter, legs intertwined, and lips meeting. This is not a countdown; this is not a last kiss. This is a new beginning and, for the first time in my life, that weight forever on my heart lifts all the way off.
Britt shifts so she’s over me, sweeping my hair behind my ears. I arch up, kissing her cheek, her neck, her collarbone. Burying her face in my shoulder, she smiles against my skin, and we’re at it again. Our words from the stage and the cove brought us here. Our laughs through the dark streets and footsteps through my window and stumbling paces into the house became this.
Grams and Nana were having dinner with Dania and Mile, and so Britt and I had asked to sleep over here. I still need to tell them my choice, but I’m ready. I’m ready.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to be sure,” I tell her for all the wasted time I spent.
“Stop saying that word. Tell me what you’re sure of.”
“I’m sure of you.” My fingers move to her back, and she squeezes my hips. The kisses get harder, hotter.
“What else?”
“I’m sure I want to follow the music. I’m sure that I want to see something outside this town.” She bites down softly on my lip, and I pull her nearer, needing her as badly as I need my next breath.
There’s a silence bridged only by the give and take of our lips against each other’s, and there are no veiled truths, no almost-lies, no almosts at all.
Britt whisper-sings our songs between kisses. Her humming wraps around us, pulls us into the song, into every one I’ve written for her and with her and every one that made me think about her too.
Grad night comes back, memories of being behind that stage together, where I’d come from just before that. The words I ran from beat so loud alongside my pulse I’m sure she can hear them already, feel them when she touches me. I’ve never said them to anyone but my grandmas, swore to myself I never would, but the music is so strong now. The melodies are so much. And she is everything.
So I let myself do this, picturing the beach, picturing my head on her shoulder, flying out Jess’s window, my cap soaring away. “I’m sure I love you, Britt Garcia.” It comes out, tears from the bars of my rib cage, and makes its way between us like it never has before even through all the kissing-in-the-dark, the falling fast and hard, the days and songs together.
She pulls back, and her eyes are wide. It’s just the two of us in the little world of my room, in this roaring moment, and then she’s kissing me like she needs me too. “I knew that.”
“Oh yeah?” I almost laugh. All this time and she knew. Of course she knew.
“Did you know I love you?” It’s said like a challenge—like most of the things she says are—and somehow that breaks and heals me at the same time.
I begin again and again and again. I’m done planning for the end.
“I hoped,” I say right as our breaths collide and our lips connect all over and those words become the only thing that matters. “I didn’t know. But I hoped so bad.”
More and more, we’re deepening the kiss. I’m deepening the kiss, and she’s deepening the kiss. Suddenly, fingers are reaching for buttons and buttons are loosening and shirts are slipping off one by one.
“Are you sure about this?” she says, pulling my tank top down a little more and pressing her lips to my shoulder.
“I’m so sure.” I cup her cheeks in my hands. “I don’t think I’ve ever been surer.” Between our kisses—our aching, mesmerizing kisses that wreck me so completely—I whisper against her lips before we go any further, “Are you? Sure?”
“Yes, Mi. I am.”
We end up sliding beneath the sheets, clothes slipping off, touch soft and fading, kissing freckles and constellations across one another’s skin. We become something we’ve never been before. Beneath the moonlight and the starlight and the streetlights, I love her so much it consumes me as I whisper everything against her skin and she smooths my hair back and we make promises we can finally keep. She’s over me, then I’m over her, and then she’s over me again as the digital clock on my nightstand loses the night, time slipping through its grasp. We’re tangling fingers in hair and finding something undiscovered in each other and making it so undeniably clear that we made this, us, real.
This week might be ending, the open road might be unknown, I may only have one of my mother’s clues left, but as the last clothes come off and the last secrets are bared, I’ve never felt more found than I do here and now with her.