I laugh and shake my head. “Okay, Rubenstein. Let’s go.”
His parents’ house is exactly as I remembered it. A large, pleasant split-level in a gated community built on a golf course.
It still smells the same way it did in high school—like clean counters and Seth’s mom’s beloved peppermint tea.
“Feels like home,” I say.
“I’m sure my parents would be happy to have you move in.”
“Great, I’ll consider that.”
“Want anything?” Seth asks. “Water? Wine? One of my mom’s three zillion diet sodas?”
“Just you.”
“As you wish, my lady.”
He takes my hand and escorts me to his bedroom. His parents, remarkably, have not redecorated it in the two decades since he left home. It still has his twin bed with its madras print bedspread. His bookshelf brimming with sci-fi paperbacks. Even his old desk, with the bulbous turquoise iMac he used in high school.
And his bulletin board, tacked with the same snapshots that were there the last time I was in this room. Seth with his friends from space camp. Seth with Jon and Kevin, grinning and sweaty in their soccer uniforms. Seth and Dave, wearing Minnie Mouse ears at Disney World.
And then there are the ones of Seth and me. Our official portrait from homecoming. (I look distinctly uncomfortable, and he looks like he’s having the night of his life.) The two of us sitting side by side on towels at the beach, tangle-haired and laughing. And the one I always loved the most: the two of us standing in his backyard, his arm casually thrown around my shoulders as I lean into him. We’re both smiling, squinting a bit against the sun. We look so happy to be near each other. So in love.
I untack the picture and take a closer look. “I can’t believe you’ve had these in your room all these years,” I say. “Weren’t your girlfriends hopelessly jealous of me?”
“Yes, my girlfriends were all kept awake by the torment of my eternal love for my sophomore year homecoming date.”
“As they should have been. Look at us now.” I pull him toward the mirrored closet door so we can admire our reflection.
“They look pretty good together,” he says.
“Very sexy against the backdrop of your Ender’s Game poster. I’m sure your exes couldn’t resist you ravishing them in here.”
“You never could,” he says. “And actually, when I bring girlfriends home we sleep in the guest room. I’m only staying in here because Dave and the kids are here, too.”
“Okay but for real, why didn’t your parents change your room? This place is like the Seth Rubenstein Museum.”
“Never got around to it, I guess. Or maybe they just pine for the days when I was a snotty eleventh grader.”
“You were never snotty. You were the Platonic ideal of a teenager. You made the rest of us look even worse than we were.”
“And you,” he says, leaning in to smile at our photos on the bulletin board, “were so beautiful.” He turns to me and moves my hair out of my face. “Almost as beautiful as you are now.”
He opens his arms and I step into them and he pulls me on top of him and we collapse down onto his bed. It groans under the weight of two rabidly horny adults, and I hope it doesn’t break as he pulls me on top of him and I open my legs to feel his erection. The friction of the bulge in his jeans through my panties makes me want to cry—both from how good it feels to be connected to him in this way, and from the corporeal memory of grinding against each other in this bed, frantic for each other’s bodies but too afraid of getting caught by his parents to take off our clothes.
Emotion is not a feeling I am used to experiencing in the lead-up to sex. Or during it. Or afterward.
Emotion gives me panic attacks. In contrast, sex gives me the kind of dopamine rush I usually have to pay good money for at the pharmacy.
It’s a relief from emotion—a way to lose myself.
But here, in Seth’s embrace, with the pressure of his lust raging up against mine, I’m not lost.
I’m overcome.
“I’ve missed this, baby,” he murmurs.
“Dry humping is still surprisingly hot,” I manage to get out, shuddering under him.
“Only cuz I’m so good at it.” He’s grinning, but his voice is breathy and I know this is driving him crazy too.
“Well, you did have years of practice,” I say, grabbing his ass and drawing up my hips to get a better angle.
“Who said I ever stopped?” he says, really giving it to me.
“Oh yeah? Is this your signature move?”
Talking is helping me not to come, but he groans, and I love it.
“Jesus fuck,” he says, lifting himself off me. I’m bereft at the loss of that pressure. Until he slides his hand into my panties and slips a finger inside me.
“Not to brag,” he whispers. “But I recently learned how to do hand jobs.”
“Nah. You were always pretty good at it.”
I lean up and kiss him, devour him, dying.
So many feelings overwhelm me. How he taught me to feel this way. How easily I feel myself becoming raw, wanting to let him break me open. How he knows how to touch me, even though we’ve only slept together once, because his body still remembers mine from all those years we made each other ache.
