“I’m sorry,” he said, kissing the top of my head.

“What are you apologizing to me for?” I kissed his lips. “He’s a fucking asshole. Enough to kill anyone’s buzz or orgasm.” I brought my hand out of the water and flicked droplets at his face. “You can finish with me later. However you want it.”

For a second, it seemed Elias was just going to smile and join in with my impish gestures, but I saw something shift in his eyes when I said that last part. He looked at me with a deep curiosity.

“However I want it?” he asked, searching for further explanation.

I rested three of my fingers on his nose and then dragged them down his face and onto his lips, where he kissed each one individually.

“Yeah,” I responded coyly. “You know you can do anything you want to me, right?”

He still looked incredibly curious, that sidelong look in his darkening gaze, but I could sense that he was as afraid to come out and say what he was thinking as much as I was. We were still feeling each other out. Testing those boundaries. Hoping that there were no boundaries. But we were each afraid of scaring the other one off. We should’ve known that nothing could ever do that. It would’ve saved us a lot of pent-up sexual frustration a lot earlier on.

A giant gush of water covered us like an angry ocean wave. Elias and I broke apart from each other’s grasp. I couldn’t see; the water burned my eyes as well as my nostrils and the back of my throat.

“What the fuck, man?!” I heard Elias shout.

I pushed the heavy, wet hair back away from my face and finally got my eyes open. I saw Elias first, and he had a murderous look on his face. I swam back over to him and draped my arms over the back of his shoulders, wrapping my legs around him from behind.

Mitchell was grinning enormously, proud that he’d splashed us.

“Let’s just go to our tent,” I said.

He ignored me. “You’re twenty-seven years old, man,” he snapped at Mitchell. “A little old to be acting like that, don’t you think?”

“Seriously, baby, let’s just go.”

Mitchell laughed and laid on his back, floating on top of the surface. He spit water into the air. Jana, floating upright next to him, dodged it and made a face. Mitchell didn’t say anything else, but there was no shortage of spiteful looks exchanged as Elias and I left the water and got as far away from him as we could.

“We can go home if you want,” Elias said to me. He pushed back a low-hanging tree branch to clear the path for me, and his other hand rested on my lower back.

“No,” I said. “I want to stay. Screw him. I can’t believe he’s even acting like that. I feel like we’re back in junior high school.”

“Well, it’s like you said, it’s the drugs. He’s definitely not himself.”

We made our way up the rocky path leading back to our tent, hand in hand. But before we got there, my left flip-flop broke.

“Shit.” I bent over to fool with the strip between my toes, trying to make it hold long enough so I could walk the rest of the way through the woods.

Elias lifted me up, swung me around on his back, carried me the rest of the way. My arms were hooked around his neck and his were hooked around my thighs. We hung out at the tent for a long time, but neither of us could sleep. We had uncomfortable sex inside the tent, and then we talked for a while until we decided to explore the bluffs. I “borrowed” a passed-out girl’s flip-flops from another tent nearby, and Elias and I headed deeper into the woods.

Chapter Eight

Bray

“What if we get lost?” I asked, gripping Elias’s hand. “We didn’t exactly bring any survival gear.”

“We’re not going far,” he said. “I saw a ridge when we were swimming. People were hanging out on top of it.” He pointed. “It’s just up ahead. Jared and a few of the other guys went this way to get to it.”

I had seen it, too, and wondered how everybody got over there.

After several more minutes of pushing our way between trees and bushes and stepping over dead branches and stray rocks, we emerged from the woods into a clearing at the top of the ridge that overlooked the river many feet below. A campfire had burned here recently; I could smell the leftover heat and smoke still rising from the charcoaled sticks on the small pile. A few empty beer bottles were strewn about the ground.

We walked to the edge of the ridge and looked out at the river; the moonlight was reflected off the water like hundreds of little diamonds. Some of our friends were still in the river below, floating on small plastic rafts, but it was fairly quiet everywhere, as the party had begun to die down for the night.

I sat down near the edge of the ridge and drew my knees toward my chest, wrapping my arms around my legs. The breeze blew through my hair, and I closed my eyes and raised my chin to the sky, taking in the tranquility of the night.

Elias sat down next to me, propping his wrists on his bent knees. “I almost went to South Carolina after you,” he said.

I glanced over. He was looking out at the water. “Why didn’t you?” I asked.

“Mitchell told me you were engaged.”

I started to turn to him, shocked by what I’d heard, but I realized it didn’t surprise me much. “Well, he lied,” I said in a calm voice instead. After a pause, I added, “I wish you would’ve come after me anyway.”

Elias looked right at me, the emotion in his eyes pulling me in. The breeze brushed through the messy dark hair that framed his beautiful, stubbly face. “I know,” he said and looked away. “And you should’ve called me instead of Mitchell.” There was no blame or resentment in his voice.

“I know,” I said.

“I guess there are a lot of things we could’ve and should’ve done differently,” he said. “But you came back regardless. And we’re together now, despite all of that. And that has to count for something.”

Silence fell between us for a moment, giving us both time to reflect.

“Did you love her?” I asked about Aline, and I knew there was no need to clarify who I was talking about. I knew enough about her from Mitchell.

“Yeah,” he said and I felt an uncomfortable twinge in my stomach. “But she wasn’t you. I can love a lot of people. Aline. My parents. Hell, even Mitch’s dumb ass. But I could never love anyone the way I love you.”

The twinge softened and became something warm.

“Did you love him?” Elias asked.

“No,” I answered honestly. “I, uh…” I sighed and looked out ahead of me again. “I think I used him,” I admitted to Elias and to myself. And while I felt like a horrible person for it, suddenly I felt the need to spill the truth because I had been holding this inside for so long.

I went on:

“Even before I left, before we got together on your twenty-second birthday, every guy I was with, I think deep down was a substitute for you. It’s why none of them lasted, why I couldn’t date anyone for more than two months. I told you before, Elias, I was always scared of being with you. Of ruining what we had.”

“I know,” he said, but it was all that he said. I got the sense he wanted me to continue.

And so I did. I took another deep breath and began to tap my fingers against my knees out of nervousness.

“Lissa introduced me to Garrett,” I said. “He was a friend of her brother’s. I don’t know what the hell was wrong with me, or how I managed to stay with him for a year, but I did. I didn’t love him, but I guess I needed him. He wasn’t you, but he was there.”

And I needed sex, I wanted to say, but couldn’t. I didn’t want to sleep around with a bunch of different guys, so I found one and stuck with him. I used him for sex. I used him to pretend that he was you. I used him. I’m awful.

I couldn’t say these things out loud. I wanted to. I wanted to so bad that every word was on my tongue, pushing against the back of my teeth. I needed to get the truth out—about Garrett, about all of the other guys after him—to feel the impending relief. But I was still scared. I knew that I could trust Elias more than anyone in this world, that Elias would stand behind me no matter my flaws. But it was a double-edged knife, because I was terrified of losing that one person. And I had seen people lose others over much less.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” he said, surprising me.

My gut twisted in knots.

“You know you can always tell me anything,” he went on, but I couldn’t look at him. “There is absolutely nothing you could ever say or do that would make me leave you.”

He knew I was hiding things from him, and he was desperate to know my secrets. And I was desperate to tell him. But he didn’t want to push me. He wanted me to tell him when I was ready, but he was letting me know that it would be OK.

And I believed him. I looked over, into his eyes, and he smiled warmly back at me.

I was going to tell him right then. Suddenly, it felt right. That small window a person is given in which to say or do something they’ve always been afraid to had opened up for me in that moment. I felt elated and alive and longed to not feel suffocated anymore by the weight I carried on my chest.

But the window closed too quickly, and I shut down.

It was as if he could sense it right away, too, because I saw the hope and determination in his eyes fade seconds after the window closed. But he wasn’t mad. Disappointed, yes, but never mad at me. That only made me love him more.

He reached out his hand and cupped the back of my neck, pulling my head toward him. He pressed his lips to my forehead.

“Y’know, I think I’d rather sleep up here than in that stuffy tent,” I said after a minute of quiet.

Elias pursed his lips and thought about it, then his head bobbed in agreement. “Not a bad idea,” he said and stood up. “Let’s go back and get the blankets.” He reached out his hand to me.

“I can wait here,” I said. “Unless you want me to go with you.”

“No, I can go,” he said. “It’s not that far. I’ll be right back.”

He leaned over and kissed me on the lips, then walked across the opening and disappeared among the trees.

It was so peaceful sitting on the top of the ridge all alone, looking out at the dark landscape and how the river snaked a path through the trees below. I gazed up at the sky and closed my eyes again to savor the wind on my face. It had been a long time since I felt this free, not since I was kid. I hated that with growing up came the knowledge that life won’t always be like it was when we were children. I wished we could just grow backward.

I heard footsteps behind me coming from the trees, and I thought initially that Elias was back sooner than expected. Two figures emerged from the woods far away from where Elias had gone back in.

As the two moved closer into the moonlight, I saw that the skinny blonde-haired one was Jana. The other was a girl with supershort black hair whom I had never seen before.

I stood up as Jana stumbled toward me, the black-haired girl following close behind.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” I thought I heard Jana say, but I wasn’t completely sure, as her words were slurred and choppy.

She was clearly drunk. And maybe high on something, too. Her more so than her friend, who didn’t have any trouble standing up straight.

“Are you all right?” I asked, peering at Jana.

Her black bikini top sat sloppily over her breasts, barely containing them. The straps were left untied from around her neck and hung freely. She had on a pair of men’s shorts, and she wore no shoes. I noticed one of her big toes was bleeding.

“I’m fanfuckingtastic,” she said with a big drunken smile. “Hey, aren’t you Elias’s girlfriend?” Her finger unfolded from her hand and pointed at me shakily.

Then she looked over at her friend and said, “This was the girl I was telling you about.”

Jana stumbled again and almost fell. I grabbed her instinctively and held her up by the elbow, but she shoved my hand away. “I got this,” she snapped. “Don’t… I’m great, I told you.”

I didn’t really want to help her anyway, so I was happy to let go.

“Yes, I’m Elias’s girlfriend,” I finally answered.

She attempted a grin, but it was quickly overrun by the lazy fluttering of her eyelids as though she was struggling to keep her eyes open.

“He’s a good lay,” she said to me and then smiled at the black-haired girl, who looked bored, or just ready to get back to the party rather than stand up here with the two of us.