“I hope you’re ready to eat,” I tell them, leading them through the garage into the back yard.

The second I turn my back; I hear her voice. “Sorry,” Riley says, and I spin on my heels and face her.

She’s weaving her way through my friends, who part like the Red Sea to make room for her. Her eyes lock on mine and there’s something about the way she’s looking at me that keeps the breath in my lungs and my hands at my sides. Her eyes are filled with tears, but her smile—her smile tells me the opposite. God, I love it when she smiles. She doesn’t speak. Not a word. She simply walks toward me as everything but my heart seems to slow and by the time she reaches me, the only sound I can hear is the the blood pulsing in my eardrums. She places her hands on my chest and rises to her toes. Then she kisses me. Right on my mouth. And now her arms are around my neck and her lips are parting and when her tongue brushes along mine, I pull her into me with my arms around her waist and I kiss her back—our tongues, our lips, our bodies uniting as one and I don’t know how long we stand there, her body bent back from the force of my kiss because time doesn’t exist when it comes to Riley. Neither does the outside world, apparently. After a while, but not long enough, she pulls away, her lips red and raw from my attack. She smiles again, the tips of her fingers going to her lips. “Hi,” she whispers.

“Hi.”

She grins wider and releases me completely. “Bye.”

I hold her tighter. “Stay.”

She removes my arms from around her waist. “Can’t.”

I grab her hand. “Please?”

She pulls out of my hold. “Sorry.”

And just like that, she walks away. But she’s not gone. I can still feel her with me. Every single fiber of my being feels her with me.

I watch her leave. We all do.

“Who was that?” Logan asks when she’s no longer in view.

“That was Riley.”

“Holy shit,” he says, “I thought Riley was a dude.”

“Also,” Amanda joins in. “That was the weirdest verbal exchange I’ve ever witnessed.”

Twenty

Riley

I was twelve when my mom made me go with her to welcome the new neighbors. He and his dad were shooting baskets in their driveway when we showed up.

He stood next to his Dad with a basketball under his arm wearing sweatpants and a Tar Heels basketball jersey. He was wearing a cap, too, one he took off as soon as he saw my mom and I coming toward them. My mother introduced us both and our parents shook hands. Then his dad said, “This is my boy, Dylan.”

Dylan.

Dylan.

Dylan.

His name ran on repeat in my head.

Then he nodded at me and shook my mom’s hand. “Pleased to meet you, Ma’am,” he said to her and the first set of butterflies I’d ever felt swarmed in my stomach. I remember his voice being deep, especially for a fifteen-year-old. He was tall and he had muscles—muscles that shouldn’t belong to a boy his age. His dark hair fell across his brow, and he palmed it away from his deep blue eyes. I think I was drawn to his eyes first. Then he looked at me. Right at me. And he smiled. And for the first time in my life I wondered what it would be like to kiss a boy—that particular boy—and that particular mouth.

When I got home, I went straight to my room and threw myself on the bed, my hands on my lips. Then I imagined what it would be like to kiss him.

Kissing Dylan Banks, the boy next door, was nothing at all like I imagined.

It was so, so much more.

I practically run to my house and straight to my room, where I close the door and throw myself on the bed like I did when I was twelve. Then I place my hand on my lips and close my eyes, reliving the kiss over and over again. It was different kissing him this time. My mind was clear, and so was my heart—clear and open and ready for him.

My phone vibrates on my nightstand and I quickly reach for it, as well as the glass jar he’d left at my door. I read his text first.

Dylan: You stole my kiss!

Riley: Because I’m worthy of it.

I set the phone down and pull out the two notes he’d left in a jar. I unfold the one he had written the number “1” on and take a breath, knowing what his words will do to me. It’ll be the third time I read it, and even though I know I’m going to experience the same things I do whenever Dylan had been involved—Butterflies, emptiness, guilt—there’s one more emotion I can now add to it. Love.

I’d come home for the weekend during my sophomore year of college. When I spoke to my dad earlier that day, he mentioned he was going away so I knew I would have the house to myself, which was something I’d been craving since I moved away. I liked being alone, liked the quiet I knew the house would provide. He was standing outside at the end of our joining fence pacing the sidewalk when I pulled into my driveway. I recognized him from high school but I couldn’t for the life of me remember his name. So it was kind of odd that when I got out of my truck, he looked over at me and stopped in his tracks. I wasn’t sure what he was doing so I walked over and asked him. He didn’t respond to my question. Instead, he said, “Banks, man. How’s UNC?”

I must’ve given him a look that terrified him a little because he laughed nervously and said, “I’m Jeremy. You went to my high school. I played on Varsity with you a few times.”

“Sorry,” I told him, and lied. “I didn’t recognize you.”

“All good,” he said, but he still seemed nervous. And distracted. He kept looking over at your house.

“Is there something I can help you with?” I asked him.

His entire body stilled and he slowly looked from your house to me. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I have this problem,” he told me.

“What kind of problem?”

I remember looking at him, and then at your house, and then at mine, because I just wanted to get inside and away from the world and all the stupid talking and even stupider questions.

“Riley, my girlfriend…” He pointed to your house. “She broke up with me. Again.”

“Again?”

He laughed. “She’s always breaking up with me.”

“Maybe she doesn’t actually like you, dude,” I told him.

He raised his chin. “Oh, she does. She loves me. She has no choice but to love me.”

I laughed with him, which now kind of makes sense. At the time, I was pretty sure Heidi and I were done, though we never vocalized it. It was a just a feeling—the kind you get in your gut, you know? And I remember being jealous of him—that he was so confident in your relationship and in himself that he could say that. “So what’s the problem then?”

“I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m going to leave her when we go off to college or some shit. So she’s trying to get a head start. Which is stupid—I’d never leave her. And I sure as hell won’t let her leave me.”

“Has she said anything to you?” I found myself asking.

He shrugged. “She says she doesn’t feel worthy of me. I don’t know.” His gaze dropped. “I feel like it’s my fault. Maybe I haven’t shown her how much I love her or how much she means to me and how sometimes I walk with her hand in mine and I get that sense of pride, you know? Not because I want to show her off or whatever, or the fact that I think it’s amazing that she doesn’t mind being seen in public with a kid like me but because she’s fucking smart, man. And she’s beautiful, and funny and passionate and opinionated and a complete pain in the ass but, fuck, I love her. I love all those things about her and it hurts she can’t see that. That she can’t love herself the way I do. I don’t know. Is it my fault?” he asked, his eyes back on mine, pleading with me to give him something.