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

make sure she is being safe – Dad put me on the pill almost immediately after that visit. I was still several
months away from turning eighteen, and Dad told me he planned to call my “female doctor,” but only after
giving me a stilted, awkward lecture that it wasn’t permission to have sex with Elliot, per se, but that he
was trying to protect our futures.
Not that he had to worry. Despite seeing each other every weekend throughout October, Elliot and I
never came that close to sex. Not since that day on the floor of the closet, his body over mine, working on
instinct. And Elliot was the one taking things slow, not me. He kept telling me it was because every tiny step
was a first, everything we did together we would only do for the first time, with this one person, our whole
lives.
It seemed a foregone conclusion that we’d be together forever. We hadn’t said love yet. We hadn’t made
promises. But it was as impossible to imagine falling out of love with Elliot as it was to imagine holding my
breath for an hour.
So, we were winding our way carefully through exploration. Kissing for hours. Swimming together in the
river: my legs slippery and cold around his waist, my stomach covered in goose bumps, sensitive to the feel
of his bare torso pressed against me.
Weekdays back at school became infused with this desperate anticipation. We agreed to Skype once a
week – Wednesdays – which made it painful to sit through classes that day. Those nights, he would look at
me through his camera, eyes wide. I’d think about kissing him. I’d even tell him what I was thinking, and
he’d groan and change the subject. Afterward, I’d climb into bed and imagine my fingers were his, knowing
he was doing the same.
And weekends, whenever we had the smallest window, were a blur of kisses on the floor, our mouths
moving together until our lips felt raw, our breaths shallow from the exertion of wanting.
But that was it. We kissed. Clothes stayed on, hands stayed put.
Until they didn’t.
Late October. It was pouring rain and miserable outside. Dad took the car into town to get groceries,
leaving me and Elliot alone in the house. It wasn’t premeditated. He didn’t even spare a glance back at us,
reading in the living room by the wood-burning stove. He simply called out that we were out of milk, and he
was getting stuff for dinner.
The door closed with a quiet click.
The car tires crunched on the gravel until the sound disappeared.
I looked up at Elliot across the room, and my skin flushed hot.
He was already crawling across the floor to me, and then he was hovering over me in the shadows of the
flickering fire.
I still remember the way he lifted my shirt, kissing a path from my belly button to my collarbone. I
remember how – for the first time ever – he figured out the clasp of my bra, laughing into my mouth as his
fingers fought with the elastic. I remember the reverence of his palm as it slid from the open fastening,
around my ribs, beneath the underwire. His hand came over my bare breast, his thumb and finger closing
over the peak. It seemed like light flowed out of me from every pore; the pleasure and need were nearly

---

blinding. He followed with his tongue, wet, his lips closing over me, sucking, and I pulled his thigh between
my legs, insane for the relief, rocking against him until I melted, coming in front of him for the first time.
He stared down at me, pupils huge and black, mouth slack.
“Did you…?”
I nodded, smiling, drugged.
The car tires crunched back up the gravel driveway, and Elliot let out a sharp, frustrated laugh, pulling
away.
“I should go home anyway.” He nodded down.
I looked down, too, at the heel of his hand pressed to the front of his jeans, seeking relief.
He started to stand, but stopped, still kneeling between my legs but now staring down at my bare chest.
It was the first time he’d really looked, and the intensity of his gaze was like a match to the fuel in my veins.
I reached for his free hand.
The car door slammed shut.
“Macy,” Elliot warned, but his eyes remained unblinking and his arm moved without resistance when I
pulled his hand down to my skin.
“He still has to get the groceries.” I put his fingers on my stomach, ran them up my body.
The trunk slammed, too. Elliot jerked his arm away.
Slowly, I sat up, fastening my bra and pulling my shirt down.
Dad’s keys fit into the lock, and he let himself in, glancing at us in the living room. I was exactly where
he’d left me. Elliot hovered near the other end of the sofa, hands deep in his pockets.
“Hey, Dad,” I said.
He stopped, arms loaded with groceries. “Everything okay?”
Elliot nodded. “I was just waiting until you got back to head home.”
I looked up at him, grinning. “That was sweet.”
“Thanks, Elliot,” Dad said, smiling at him. “You’re welcome to join us for dinner.”
Dad walked into the kitchen, and I looked down at Elliot’s button fly with a nearly obsessive need to feel
him beneath the denim.
He bent low, so that I had to look at his face. “I see where you’re looking,” he whispered. “You’re
trouble.”
I stretched, kissing him. “Soon,” I said quietly in return.

---

T
now
sunday, december 31
here are more than eight acres of grounds at Madrona Manor, and I swear we walked every single one of
them. Two hours we spent strolling, catching up, talking idly about tiny things: our favorite delis, late-
blooming obsessions with Castelvetrano olives, books we’ve loved and hated, political fears and hopes,
dream vacation destinations.
And still, the last New Year’s we knew each other feels like a chunk of radioactive meteor held in a jar in
the palm of my hand. I feel it every second. I’m doing everything to avoid opening it until later.
The afternoon sun dips behind the trees and a chill descends. Car tires crunch on the gravelly driveway
in the distance, luring us back to the great lawn, which is decorated with flowered garlands and dotted with
heat lamps, cocktail tables, and waitstaff circulating hors d’oeuvres before the ceremony.
“I need to head upstairs to get ready. You okay?”
I nod, and Elliot bends as he cups my face, kissing my forehead and then my cheek seemingly out of
instinct. He doesn’t register what he’s done as he pulls away, smiling down at me. Not once on his journey
to the house to meet up with the groomsmen does he turn back, eyes wide in realization that he’s just
kissed me the way he did so many times when he was mine.
Once he’s gone, I look around, realizing I don’t know anyone here. The entire Petropoulos family is
inside, and although I’ve seen the cousins, aunts, and uncles on occasion, I don’t know any of them well
enough to just walk up and break into conversation.