When the waiter approaches the table to take our drink order, I start to order a margarita when Jesse interrupts with, “We’ll have a pitcher.”

“Very good,” the waiter says as he scribbles down on his notepad before heading off.

“A pitcher? Really?” I say. “Well, I guess we’re on vacation. We need to live it up.”

“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?”

“As we said before, I assume we’re doing more.”

I can’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. I was already saying too much when I was in the shower with him this morning…and even when we were walking down the boardwalk. It was strange talking to my son’s best friend, whom I got off with this morning, about making sure we didn’t hurt Ty, but it was nice to see how much Jesse cares about him and how much he understands the tricky situation we’ve found ourselves in. And nice as that is, it’s also nice knowing that neither of us is confused about what we want to experience more of together.

I’m sure he thinks it was weird when I told him I didn’t want to take advantage of him or for him to think I was just “hitting and quitting it.” I’m glad I made my intentions clear. He can’t understand how important it is to me that he knows that hot as the sex is, I see him as more than that, and I want to see even more.

I feel like I’m the one who’s done all the talking—too much talking—and it’s his turn, so I decide to redirect the conversation. “Going back to what we were discussing on the boardwalk…”

“Are things about to get awkward again?” he asks, still sporting that charismatic, dimple-filled smile of his.

“You’re going to have to stop smiling like that,” I tell him.

His friendliness shifts to confusion. “Why?”

“Because I don’t have a way of hiding this boner in my shorts.”

“I have a few ideas of what you can do with it.”

This is my problem with him. He makes me feel like I’m twenty again and can let go of all my responsibilities and the day-to-day bullshit.

I can forget how serious the world has to be.

That’s part of what makes it so exciting to mess around with him. It’s wild and carefree, me totally losing myself the way I would have back in the days when I didn’t feel so much responsibility weighing me down. But I’m not a kid anymore, and I do like substance. And I’m wise enough to know there’s more to Jesse than he’s let on so far. In the same way I have my barriers, he has his, and he keeps deflecting with that sexy smile of his.

“I was referring to when I asked you about your life,” I press. “I feel like you know way more about me than I know about you.”

He leans back in his chair, stretching his arms out to either side. The sunlight glistens on his brown locks, the bangs clinging to his forehead reminding me of when they were covered in sweat in the bedroom.

“I’m an open book,” he says. “What do you want to know? I already told you about my relationship with Whitney. That’s the only major relationship I’ve had in my life.”

“Well, further back than that, then. Where did you grow up? You mentioned something about foster homes?”

That easygoing attitude he’s donned dissolves with his smile. “Yeah, I grew up in some different foster homes. I can’t complain. I got really lucky when I was in seventh grade. I ended up with this very nice couple, the Morgans, and they’re my family now.”

“Do you know anything about your real parents?”

“As far as I’m concerned, the Morgans are my real parents. I don’t know much about my biological parents.”

He stresses the word like he’s trying to let me know how far removed they are from what he would consider to be parents. He can’t know how much that hurts, not because of him, but because I’ve imagined that Ty must have felt the same way about me.

“When I was little,” Jesse continues, “I had to travel back and forth between different foster parents and a couple of places run by the state. I was a baby when I was put into the system, and they say babies are always the ones that are most desirable to couples looking to adopt, but apparently I was the exception.”

He says it like it’s a joke, but I can feel the pain behind his words. I imagine this little kid running around on a playground at some school, wondering why his parents gave him up, but never having an answer. I know all about not having answers from my own childhood. It feels like shit.

Even worse is always growing up with that burning question: Why did no one want me?

Jesus, he was living with that question while he should have been carefree, not worrying about not being wanted.

I almost feel like I’m projecting my own pain on him until I see the sorrow in his expression, and despite how he’s trying to curl his mouth into that familiar smile, I believe this must be one of the reasons he hasn’t been eager to divulge any information about his childhood.

“So what was that like,” I ask, “growing up like that before you met the Morgans?”

He licks his lips. “That’s strange,” he says.

“What?”

“Usually I mention shit like that and people want to talk about something else, but you just dig right in.”

“I’m sorry. I know I have my own things I don’t care to talk about.”

“No, no, no, no. I didn’t mean to make it sound like I don’t want to talk about it. It’s only that I’m surprised you didn’t immediately change the subject the way most people do. Like I said earlier, subject changes give you an easy out.” He pauses for a moment before adding, “It wasn’t the most fun thing in the world. I had some shitty families I had to stay with for a while, families who wanted another check from the man. But fortunately, I didn’t have to stick around very long. I wasn’t the most obedient kid. I was a little unruly back then. And when I was eleven, I ended up getting into some trouble.”

“At eleven?” I ask, startled by this confession. “What kind of trouble?”

“The family I was staying with lived in this very suburban town in Gwinnett County. I’d made a few friends, whom I guess I gravitated to because they were like me. None of their parents cared about them much more than mine did about me. We weren’t in the smart-kid programs or very active in sports in the town, so we didn’t have many options other than hanging around at the mall after school. The other guys I hung with were looking for trouble wherever they could find it. We’d smoke joints and cigarettes in the bathroom. The other kids would do it too, so no one could really get us in trouble for that. But one of my friends—his name was Danny—I always felt uncomfortable hanging with him because he liked to shoplift. I wouldn’t help him ever, but we’d just be leaving somewhere in the mall and he’d have something he’d collected, maybe a piece of jewelry, maybe a DVD, little stuff really. It was never a big deal, and he was good at it, so we never got in trouble.

“One day, we were walking out of a store and the alarm went off. We all took off, but I was one of the guys who got caught by security. Danny wasn’t. But they checked my backpack, and evidently, he’d slipped an MP3 player into it. Not even like an iPod—some piece-of-shit crap. There was some back-and-forth between my foster family at the time and the state…about what they were going to do with me…if I needed to go to juvie. I got fussed at by anyone and everyone. I ended up getting put back in a place with the state. There was this lady, Judy, who was in charge of me with the state, and she kept telling me how this could ruin my life forever.

“It was shitty, and everyone was pretty fucked up about the whole thing, but I kind of look at it as a blessing. The next year was when the Morgans came to the shelter I was at and ended up taking me in. Charlotte and Stan really made me feel like they believed in me, like they believed I could be more than some problem kid.”

“Oh, wow,” I say, surprised. I sure as fuck wouldn’t be so willing to talk about my past to some complete stranger, but I feel privileged, and I’m glad he shared it. It adds a lot more to the sense that this is kind of a date.

I can appreciate that, like myself, he’s had to deal with a lot more crap in this world than most people, especially for someone so young.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make that a Debbie Downer moment,” he says, like he just realized he was ranting.

“That was definitely not a Debbie Downer moment,” I assure him. “That actually ended on a very positive note. Your whole life clearly has. Look at you now. You’re not some kid smoking joints at a mall.”

“I think I’m a little old for malls in general.”

“So Charlotte and Stan are your parents’ names? They sound like really good people.”

“They are,” Jesse says. “Incredible people. The best. They changed my life, and they always believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself.”

“That’s really important,” I add.

I can definitely understand the value of that, especially having grown up with such a shit father, who never made me feel very special. Never believed I could be anything better, never cared if anything came of me.

Jesse’s gaze wanders toward the beach as if he’s reflecting on what we shared. He already had me intrigued, but after hearing about his childhood, I know if I wasn’t already in trouble, I sure as fuck am now.