I smiled and sat up again so I could lean toward him and run my fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes. “What happened?” I asked him.
He opened his eyes and looked at me quizzically. “Happened?”
“You and I have known each other a long time, but suddenly this.”
He started to shrug and then stopped. “You changed,” he said.
“What? I changed? Why? How?”
“Or I should say I changed.”
“To what? From what?”
“From being frivolous to being . . . older, more serious. And when that happened to me, I wasn’t just drawn to you by your good looks. You seemed to be there already. It was like you would understand,” he said. I waited for him to say more, but he just shook his head. “I guess I’m not making any sense.”
“You are. And I’m glad,” I said.
He sat up, turned, and kissed me, softly but long. I lay back, and he sprawled beside me. We kissed again. His lips were on my hair, my eyes, my cheeks, down to my neck.
I was kissing him, too, each kiss a little longer, a little more demanding.
“Kristin,” he whispered. I was sure he could see the yes in my eyes, the yes that was echoing through every part of me.
Was I ready? Was it my time? I wondered. Could I feel this special with any other boy? Should I “cross the Rio Grande”? The resistance that was in me, which came from fear and from an uncertainty about what was right and what was wrong when you were with someone for whom you felt deep affection, was weakening. Perhaps he sensed that. He was moving quickly, finding his way under my clothes, touching me as if he were pushing invisible buttons on my body, softening it, molding it. My breathing quickened. I felt captured, but willingly. It was going to happen. I knew it, and I didn’t resist, which only drove him to be more intense.
“I want you,” he said. “So much.”
Were those the magic words, the keys to the kingdom?
“Don’t you want me, too?”
The yes in my body reached my lips, but just before I was going to utter it, I imagined I saw a teenage boy standing just a few feet away, looking down at us with an almost scientific detachment.
Christopher, I thought, would look at us this way, and my body tightened when the boy didn’t avert his glance or even smile.
“I want to. I do, but I’m not ready yet,” I whispered. “Please understand.”
He paused, and I supposed the way I was looking past us caught his interest and attention. He turned fearfully, wondering if someone was there, perhaps even my father. I could feel the passion recede like an outgoing tide. He sat back, brushed back his hair, and took a breath. “I don’t know if I can keep myself from being any different when I’m with you, Kristin,” he said.
“That’s not a bad thing,” I whispered. “If we give it time.”
He nodded and smiled. “Well, no harm done,” he said, working on as quick a recovery as he could make. “It’s made me ravenous in another way. I’m starving.” He turned on his iPod and Bluetooth speaker. He looked in the direction I had been looking again. “Did you see something that frightened you?”
“No,” I said quickly, sat up, and began to unwrap our sandwiches.
“Thought you might have seen one of those famous Dollanganger ghosts,” he joked.
I looked at him. “What if I did? Would you want us to leave?”
“Not if you weren’t afraid,” he replied. “Whatever you wanted to do, I would do,” he added.
Would he? Did passion and affection bring trust along? I wondered. Was I willing to risk it to find out? He saw how deeply I was thinking.
“What?”
I looked up at him. Not yet, I told myself. It wasn’t just me.
It was Christopher, too, that I was risking.