I didn’t respond for fear of the noise that would leave my mouth if I opened it. Instead, I tilted my head, silently asking for an actual kiss, but Noelle only smiled, gently brushing the hair out of my face with one hand while she was holding herself up with the other. Basketball practice had paid off; the sight of the muscles straining in her arm only made my head spin more.

“Still sure you’re okay with this?” she asked.

“Noelle,” I said, my voice coming out breathier than even I had expected, enough to make her eyes widen almost unnoticeably. “I think I’m going to die if you don’t touch me soon.”

The concerned expression on her face morphed into a disbelieving grin at that. A moment later, she dipped her head again, pressing soft kisses to my neck before moving lower, warm hands slipping under the hem of my skirt. I tangled my fingers in her hair and closed my eyes, unable to keep them open any longer.

Before, I had always been a little scared when I had imagined my first time, and even when I had thought about how it would be with Noelle, I had still felt shaky with nerves.

Reality was so different from anything I had expected.

It wasn’t scary. It was soft and careful and a little clumsy, but never awkward or painful. It was nervous chuckles and quiet reassurances, breathless smiles and uncertain hands learning their way across uncharted territory. It was Noelle, who accepted my trust like it was a treasure and gave me hers with the same earnestness, who gently directed me when I didn’t know what to do, who called me love and beautiful and whispered my name like it was a prayer.

That was really what it felt like, I dizzily thought between kisses: worship in its purest form, like we had carved out a space in heaven that was just for us, that began and ended with this bed, built from the sound of Noelle’s shaky breaths and the reverent look in her eyes as she watched me come apart beneath her.

For years, I had feared what it meant to want this, had dragged the thought around like a ball and chain. Now, with Noelle tracing shapes onto my arm and hiding her grin against my shoulder, my skin still tingling everywhere she had touched, the weight was finally gone; she had coaxed the guilt right out of me, taken me apart and put me back together without leaving a single crack for it to ever creep back in, and it hadn’t hurt a bit.

18

Seth

The road through the woods always felt scary the few times I’d walked with Evelyn. The pair of us jumped at every snapping branch, every little sound coming from the woods, and usually dashed down the hill as quickly as possible to put the looming trees behind us. Internally, I cursed myself every time for watching so many true crime documentaries that made it that much easier to imagine faces and silhouettes in the shadows as we made our way through the woods.