At turns hilarious and gut-wrenching, this is a tremendously fun slow burn

together and I’m in this tiny Podunk town. Who else am I supposed to kiss?”
Something shifted in that exact moment, something that would never shift back.
Who else am I supposed to kiss?
I looked at his big hands and his Adam’s apple. I let my eyes linger on the muscular arms that used to be
so thin and stringy, on legs that stretched, defined, beneath his torn jeans. I looked at the button-fly on the
front of said jeans. I blinked away, up at the cabinets. Look anywhere but at those buttons. I wanted to
touch those buttons, press my hand to them, and for the first time I realized I didn’t want anyone else
touching them.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled.
“Then come over here,” he said in that same quiet voice. “You kiss me.”
My eyes flew to his. “What?”
“Kiss me.”
I thought he was calling my bluff, but I was worked up from the Emma situation and the way he looked,
leaning against the counter, watching me. I was warm from the way his hands seemed so big now, and his
jaw so angular… and the buttons on his jeans.
I walked around the center island and stood right in front of him. “Okay.”
He stared down at me, a smile playing on his lips, but it straightened when he realized I was serious.
I pressed my hands to his chest and moved closer. I was so close that I could hear every quickly
accelerating inhale and exhale, could see his jaw twitch.
Fascinated, he moved a hand to my lips, pressing two fingers there and staring. Without thinking, I
opened my mouth and let his index finger slip inside and against my teeth. When he grunted quietly, I ran
my tongue over his fingertip. He tasted like jelly.
Elliot pulled it back sharply. He looked like he was going to devour me: eyes wild and searching, lips
parted, pulse a hammering presence in his neck. And because I wanted to kiss him, I did. I stood on my
toes, slid my hands into his hair, and pressed my mouth to his.
It was different than I would have guessed. Different than – I could admit to myself – I had imagined it
would be. It was both softer and firmer, and definitely bolder. A short kiss, another, and then he tilted his
head, covering my mouth with his. His tongue traced my bottom lip and it felt like instinct to let him in, to
taste me.
I think that was probably his undoing. It was certainly mine. After that the moment dissolved for me into

---

only sensation; everything else fell away. All the forbidden images of him, flesh and fantasy, secrets I kept
even from myself, tore through my mind and I knew, somehow, that he was thinking the same thing: how
good it felt to be this close… and everything else that touching like this could lead to.
One of his hands moved up my back and into my hair, and it was the weight of that touch, I think, that
kept me from floating off the floor. But when his other hand slid up my side to my ribs and higher, I stepped
back.
“Sorry,” he said immediately, instinctively. “Shit, Mace. That was too fast, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s just…” I hesitated, my mouth suddenly crammed with words that I didn’t want to be thinking,
let alone say out loud. “Doing that might not mean anything to Emma,” I said, touching my lips where they
tingled. “But it means everything to me.”

---

S
now
saturday, october 14
ean drops his keys in the bowl near the door and kicks off his shoes, groaning happily.
“Hungry, Applejack?” he asks Phoebe, and the two of them disappear into the kitchen.
I put their shoes side by side on the little shelf near the door and hang our jackets up on the hooks. Their
voices echo back to the hallway; Phoebe is doggedly working on her dad to get her a pet, any pet – frog,
hamster, bird, fish.
I am honestly so unsure what to feel. Sean and I had such a whirlwind start, and we tumbled easily into a
domestic routine, but that routine really only involves me sharing his bed and our schedules rotating
around each other like well-oiled gears.
I moved whatever I needed over from the Berkeley house, but it’s still mostly full, and entirely
uninhabited, while I’m shacked up here. Sean tells me he loves having me in his bed. Phoebe always seems
happy to see me. But I realize, watching him today, that I don’t actually know him that well. He and Phoebe
have their own thing going. But if I want to be a part of it, I need to make myself part of it.
“Want me to cook dinner?” I ask, coming in after them, and they both look up from where they’re
digging into the fridge, staring at me blankly. “Pasta,” I say, feigning insult. “I think I can handle pasta.”
“Are you sure?” Phoebe remains unconvinced.
“I’m sure, you knucklehead,” I say, smooching her cheek.
She squeals, running from the room, and Sean moves to the pantry, grabbing a box of pasta and some
jarred sauce for me. “Need help?”
“You can keep me company.” I nod to the breakfast bar, silently urging him to take a chair and talk to
me. To help me assuage this feeling gnawing at my chest that he and I are never going to make it. We’ve
never really had downtime together on weekends, and I have a clawing suspicion that this is why we’re
essentially strangers outside of bed.
He sits, reading through emails on his phone while I get water boiling.