I hear her breath pick up, dry and ragged, as the candle flames grow and the light increases. Her face looks scared, kind of, but excited, like we’re in a haunted house, waiting for some terrible surprise.

“Okay,” she says. It’s so soft, I almost don’t hear her. But then she tilts her head back and shuts her eyes as my face moves closer, and it registers with me just as I kiss her.

I’ve dreamt about kissing Mel since we were twelve years old. I think that was the day I fell in love with her, actually: we were at track practice behind our middle school, sharing our complex with the high schoolers while their track got repaved.

Since I’ve always had a little bit of asthma, I wasn’t exactly the fastest kid. Actually, I was the slowest on the team.

But Mel—she could fly.

That day, she was getting better times than anybody. Every practice run, even against the high schoolers, she’d finish way ahead of everyone else. I was watching her so closely I tripped over my second hurdle, earning a lecture from Coach about focus that, ironically, I didn’t listen to. I was too caught up in her.

Why had I never noticed this before? How good she was, how graceful? She was absolutely beautiful, whereas I’d always thought she was just pretty, at best. I didn’t think of her much at all, until that day. She was just Mel.

Our kissing gives way to touching. She’s got one hand on my stomach; I’ve got one up her shirt—my sweatshirt—toying with her breasts, firm and bouncing freely in my hand as I cup one, then the other. When I roll her nipple between my thumb and forefinger, she whimpers against my mouth.

God, I think I’m gonna lose it.

I want to ask if I can fuck her, but this sounds too crass for our first time. This is Mel, after all. I’ve thought about this for years. She deserves way more than a fuck.

But “making love” sounds a little too crazy, right out the gate. Instead, I ask, “Should I go get a condom?”

She breaks the kiss, breathing hard. “I...I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” she says. Her brow is furrowed; she seems afraid to say no, like she doesn’t want to disappoint me.

I want to tell her that she could never, in a thousand years, disappoint me. When you want all of someone, even the smallest piece feels like they’ve given you everything. When you love them, just knowing they love you back—or could, someday—is enough.

“That’s okay,” I tell her, and she relaxes.

So instead, I focus on her. I slip her out of my sweatshirt and put my mouth on her nipple, swirling my tongue and pinching the other lightly with my fingers.

I’ve never touched a breast before, at least not on purpose, and always through a shirt or sweater. I’ve definitely never had my mouth on one. As eager as I am for more, I think I could stay right here, doing just this, forever.

“God,” she sighs, letting her head fall back against the armrest. “That...that feels amazing.”

I can’t help but smile. She doesn’t know what amazing is yet.

Even through fabric, Blake’s touch between my legs is dizzying. I actually lose my breath, it surprises me so much.

But this is Blake, I think. This is the boy I caught tadpoles with in the creek behind our church, splashing each other until our parents found us and yelled. Who I made cry that time we went sledding, when I threw a chunk of ice in his face and bloodied his nose. Who played M.A.S.H. with me in the back of the classroom, dooming each other to lives of one-dollar salaries and shacks with the ugliest, grossest people in school.

But…it’s Blake.

Blake, who knows everything about me. Blake, who’s lied to my parents for me more than once, his trustworthiness outweighing that terrible poker face. Who sent me a carnation in Algebra on Valentine’s Day, so I could make Carl Linkheart jealous. The boy who can kiss me and make me feel amazing, or at least try, for one afternoon, and not care whether or not he gets my virginity.

He releases my nipple from his mouth to look up at me. The candlelight flickers across his face. The same face I’ve stared at for years, memorizing features that now, somehow, electrify my nerves: his pink lips, the slope of his jaw. Blue eyes like ice, so clear and intense, I suddenly can’t understand how they’ve never made my heart thrum like this before.

“You’re wet,” he whispers, kissing me again. The words, simple, but so unlike anything I’ve ever heard him say, ignite something inside me.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to mess up your sweatpants.”

“They aren’t messed up,” he says, his voice low, kind of gravelly. Good God, when did he get so smooth? “I think they’re my new favorite pair, actually.”

Blake rubs me harder, until soon I’m lifting my hips, asking—begging, really—him to take the pants off.

He does.

In the candlelight, it’s hard to read his face as he looks at my sex. Does he like it? Is something wrong with it? Does he think it’s weird or gross I haven’t trimmed in a week?

But all he does is smile and move farther down the couch, backing up until he can bend down and put his mouth against me.

I actually gasp. In all my years of failed self-pleasure, I’ve never even gotten close to this kind of feeling. When he slips his fingers inside me, I practically scream, pushing my face into the throw pillow.

He looks up. “Does it hurt?”

I shake my head, panting, eager for him to hurry up and do it again, yet needing to know just what “it” is. How is he doing this to me?

“I’ve…” The word “fingered” comes to mind, but I can’t make myself say it in front of him. “I’ve done that to myself, before,” I manage, “but...but how are you.... What are you doing with your mouth?”

He laughs, but not in a mean way. “Um…licking you? You know, your clit?”

I stare at him. “My what?”

He reels back a bit, fingers still inside me, now motionless. “You seriously don’t know what that is?”

I shake my head. It’s familiar, something thrown out in movies and overheard at parties. I know I’ve read something about it in Cosmo. But growing up in such a strict Catholic household meant no Sex Ed for me. Mom never gave me much of a sex talk, either: just some pamphlets from the doctor’s office on periods and abstinence.

“I mean…I know it’s, like, part of…everything,” I backpedal, hoping by the grace of God I can play off my naiveté. “I just don’t know where it is.”

“Look,” Blake tells me. “I’ll show you.”

I sit up a little. He uses his other hand to open my sex, like forcing a flower to bloom. There, in the candlelight, I see a small peak.

“That?” I ask, incredulous. “That’s nothing.”

Blake cracks up again. “It’s so not ‘nothing,’ Mel. God, no wonder you’ve never orgasmed! That’s, like, the one thing that sets women off.”

“How do you know that?” I ask, offended.

“Uh...because I took Sex Ed? And watch porn?”

I sit back against the armrest, the pillows sighing behind me. “Oh.”

“It’s okay,” he adds, gentler now. “You’re right, it looks like nothing. But it’s actually got a ton of nerve endings in it. So…so, yeah, that’s what I’m doing, I guess.” He blushes, his cheeks this pretty, sexy peach color in the light, and then slowly lowers his head again.

“You know,” I say, as I come up for air, “I’ve thought about this so many times.”

She’s completely lost in the fuzzy world of pre-orgasm. The sight of her neck sloped back, head weak against the armrest, drives me crazy. How many times did I see her eyes flutter like that, while she made out with other guys and thought I couldn’t see, or didn’t care?

I was pitiful. All this time, I watched them flirt with Mel and get her, just like that. It took most of them one afternoon, maybe two, before she’d latch onto their arms and call them her boyfriend. Sometimes, they didn’t even have to try: she’d flock to them like a moth and hover until they noticed, finally, just how amazing she was.

I kept thinking, That’ll never be me. She never looked at me the way she looked at them. She didn’t sigh dreamily when I walked into a classroom, or dress up when we were lab partners.

That, I’m learning now, was my problem. I waited for her to like me back, out of nowhere, or give me some sign that it was safe to make my move. All along, I should have just gone for it, like I did tonight. I’d be angry at myself for waiting so long, if I wasn’t so incredibly, stupidly happy right now, to have it happening at all.

“You have?” she asks.

I nod and kiss her, my erection flinching when she moans against my mouth; I’ve sped up my fingers. “Actually, when you asked what I was into?” The fear grips me, but I push it away: I’ve wanted to tell her this for too long. “When I touch myself…I’m always thinking about you. Even when I watch porn, I—I’m imagining doing that to you, instead.”

Mel smiles with her lips against my chin. “Really?”

“Really.” I slow the pace of my fingers and hover over her, giving us both a breather. “Have you...you know, ever thought about me?”

“While I touch myself, you mean?”

I nod again.

“Um…no.”

“Oh.”

“But I haven’t done it in so long,” she adds quickly, “because I figured, what was the point? If I couldn’t…you know.”

My disappointment could cripple me, if I let it. It doesn’t matter that she’s never thought of you like that, I tell myself.

All that matters is, she will now.

When I move my fingers faster, working them against her tightening muscles as she writhes deeper into the cushions, she winds her hands up into her hair and bites her lip.

This is what I fantasized about the most: bringing her to the edge, making her feel so incredible, she can’t control herself anymore.

“Blake,” she pants, as I back up and put my mouth on her again, “something’s happening....”

God, she’s adorable.

“You’re gonna come, Mellie,” I tell her, smirking against her skin. My fingers move in a relentless rhythm, until suddenly, she lifts her hips. Her thighs shake and she’s giving this loud, drawn-out cry as her orgasm, her very first one, begins.

I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what’s happening. All I’m sure of, in that terrifyingly high, beautiful moment as the sensations shake me to my core, is that Blake is doing this to me.

“That’s it,” he whispers. “You’re okay, Mellie. Let it happen.”

I think of that night behind the carport, the memory distant, my brain still disconnected and floating. When I open my eyes, his face is right above mine.

“Blake,” I whisper, because I have to tell him how incredible that felt, how he was right—how I think I might love him.

But when he kisses me and I shut my eyes again, I suddenly feel so tired. It’s a good feeling, that moment when you’re fully aware of your consciousness slipping, sleep drawing close. He rests his head on my chest, and I let myself drift.

* * *

When I wake up, the power’s back on. It seems like every light in the house is blazing. I hear the rattle of the dryer down the hall.

I sit up and check the time on the cable box, surprised to find it’s only seven p.m. Outside, the sky is an eerie shade of orange.

I realize two things as I stand: there’s a blanket across my lap, and I’m nude.

Then, I remember why.

Blake’s sweatshirt is on the floor in a heap, the sweatpants underneath. I slip into both and head for the laundry room.

“Hey.” He has this giant, dazed smile, like no expression I’ve ever seen him give. “You’re up.”

“Um...yeah.” I fold my arms across my chest, feeling exposed, even though I shouldn’t in these baggy clothes. “What are you doing?”

“Just switched your clothes over,” he says. “You fell asleep. I didn’t want them getting that gross mildew smell, or...or whatever.” His smile dims when he realizes I’m not smiling back. “You okay?”

My throat’s become a rolled-up strip of sandpaper. “I don’t know.”

“Oh. Are you hungover? You only had two shots.”

I hesitate, then shake my head. I notice the tequila I shoved under the couch, now perched on the detergent shelf.

“You know,” he says, “the master bathroom has that huge tub, with the jets. We could…go upstairs and use it?” His voice drips with that honey, that smoothness from earlier. For some reason, it unsettles me, now: it isn’t what I’m used to. “I know you’ve always wanted to try it.”

I close my eyes. “Look, Blake…we need to talk about what happened.”

While I speak, he grabs the tequila and swigs it straight from the bottle. When he tilts it towards me, my “no” snaps out.

“Sorry,” he says softly, putting it back. “I just thought....”

“It was a mistake, what we did. I don’t want you getting the wrong idea.”

His brow creases like I’ve asked a riddle. “A mistake? Mel, that was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. How can you say that?”

He steps forward, but I step around. He pivots. My back presses against the rumbling dryer.

“So you’re telling me,” he says, his voice low as he closes the gap, just a few inches between our faces, our bodies, “that you didn’t like it.”

“Of course I did,” I answer. I can’t look at him. “But it was just, you know, a physical thing.” I take a breath. “Look, bottom line, we can’t let it happen again.”

“Why?”

This question catches me off-guard. “Because we can’t,” I say, and run my hands through my hair, snagging a tangle and wincing. “You’re Blake. I don’t think of you that way.”

“You did a few hours ago,” he counters. How much closer is he going to get? His body is right against mine, and I’m bending back against the dryer, the metal hot and rattling on my spine.

“No,” I say, “I didn’t.”

Blake stares at me. I see a heaviness in his features that isn’t usually there, and I realize he’s drunk. That explains the boldness, I guess, but I’m still shocked when he lowers his face to mine and, right when I think he’s about to kiss me, whispers, “Liar.”

Then, so fast that my brain can’t make sense of it, he’s got his hands around my hips, gripping the back of my thighs. He lifts me onto the dryer, tugging down the loose waistband of the sweatpants. The ones he touched me through. The ones he called his new favorite pair.

He pushes two fingers into me before I can protest, and then his mouth is on me again. I grab his hair, ready to push him off, but then I stop.

Because damn it, he’s right. I am a liar.