She might have been my best friend’s sister, but I couldn’t stay away from her. That much was clear since I’d been seven years old on that beach at a birthday party.

Blake Sayer was … hell, I didn’t really have words for what she was. I’d been half in love with the girl since I was nine, and she’d gone out into the surf in the middle of a thunderstorm to rescue a mangy dog. She’d brought that animal home, shaking and shivering with half its fur missing, and forced her family to keep it.

Daring, headstrong, smart, funny, beautiful … so damn beautiful. Blake wasn’t cute or pretty like some of the other girls at school. She wasn’t hot like the girls who offered themselves up with their low-cut shirts and Friday night party habits. She was beautiful, with an otherworldliness about her that no one could ever put their finger on.

When I’d started sniffing around her during the middle school years, Joel had launched a right hook into my chin. As I laid on the ground, writhing in pain, he’d told me that if I ever hurt her, he’d pull my balls off and shove them in a blender.

Needless to say, I’d gotten the picture.

But I’d been twelve, nearly invincible, and I’d known what I wanted. So I’d gone and got it.

Blake has been my girlfriend for three years, and while a lot of our peers think we’re nuts, and our parents say it’s not real … we know better. I love her, and she loves me. Since the moment I laid eyes on her, I knew she would be with me for the rest of my life.

“Just because you have a free period doesn’t mean I can skip class.” Blake giggles as I nuzzle into her neck, oblivious to the other students around us eating lunch.

Especially her twin brother. “Fuck, can you not. I’m trying to eat.”

While Blake is my girlfriend, the person who knows me best, her brother is right there with her. We’re a unit, the three of us; my best friend, my girlfriend, his twin sister. He may joke around, talk about us like it makes him nauseous, but in reality, he loves us together. I love his sister, and he knows it. And when I’m not spending time with her, I’m hanging out with him, shooting the shit like high school best friends do.

Blake taunts him more, laying her lips on mine and kissing me softly. What starts as a tease turns into more, her body so close to mine and her tongue in my mouth driving me wild.

“Let’s get out of here,” I whisper as catcalls rise up around us.

I’m serious. She still has a couple more periods to go of the day, but I just want to get her home and under me. Thus far, we haven’t had sex. We’ve come close a couple of times, and I’d never push her into something she wasn’t ready to do, but I’m having trouble holding back. I love her, and the more she climbs on top of me in private, sweetly taking off her clothes and giving me the one thing no other man has had … the more I can’t resist.

“I have to go to class.” She laughs again. The tinkling melody hits my ears, and I can’t help but stare at her serene blue eyes, the way her blond hair falls over her shoulders and back.

“You don’t have to do anything. You’re smart, babe. Missing a class or two is the least of your worries. Live a little.”

And she is, so smart. Same with Joel. They’re two of the smartest kids in the entire junior class, and it’s only October. My girlfriend is in all advanced placement classes; hell, she’ll have an entire year’s worth of college credits before we graduate.

Me? I’m smart, sure. But my focus isn’t on school. I’d rather be outside, doing something or going somewhere. The walls of this high school are like a jail cell, containing me. And today, I really want to take her over my shoulder and bust out of here.

“Dude, are we doing the bonfire on the beach this weekend?” Joel has been trying to become the go-to party guy around here ever since we turned sixteen, and he’s finally getting some traction.

The three of us are popular, but then again it’s a small community. We’ve all known each other since birth basically, and with less than a thousand kids in the whole high school, there aren’t many others to outrank.

As we’ve gotten older though, Joel has become more obsessed with perfecting his party hosting. He wants to throw a rager every weekend, either in the woods behind their house or on the secluded beach down in Carova. I don’t mind; it’s a time to unwind and get my girlfriend in the bed of my pickup under the stars.

“Sure, man. You plan it and we’ll be there.”

Blake sighs. I know she doesn’t exactly agree with the idea of Joel drinking and partying so much. “Can’t we just like, watch a movie?”

Joel pops the last bite of his Italian sub in his mouth. “And watch you two grope each other the whole time? No thanks! This way, you can still grope each other but I’ll be able to get laid.”

My best friend wasn’t shy about the fact that he’d slept with half the girls in our school. Of course I couldn’t talk to him about my sex life, but I was itching to start one. Not just because my balls were bluer than the ocean floor, but because it was the last shred of something left between Blake and I. I was ready to have nothing between us, to be at the most intimate place a man and woman could be.

I didn’t think of us as young. We shared too deep of a connection, had watched each other stumble and fall, but also fly. There was nothing that could happen in this world that could tear me from this girl, from the woman she would become.

“We can spend the whole party in my truck,” I whisper in her ear, but loud enough for those eating around us to hear.

Blake’s body melts into my own. “That sounds like a plan.”