“The ones on the wall. What do you want to do . . . with . . . ?”

My voice evaporated. His lips were touching my shoulder. His kiss drew a soft line up my throat and then down again, while his hands found their way under my shirt and around my waist, urging me gently back against him.

I started to reach for one of the neatly written composition pages pinned on the wall, like we were going to keep working—then I gave up and pressed my hand to the rough stucco wall, bracing myself against Oscar as my eyes shut.

“Do you know how much I’m going to miss you?” His voice was so low it made me shiver.

“I know,” I whispered back. “I . . .”

My thoughts gave out. I slid slowly around so I could kiss him, letting my limbs loosen while he held me up, slippery skin and all. I felt his heart beating through his shirt, multitudes upon multitudes shimmering beneath the surface. I pressed my hand there, splaying my fingers, then balling them all into a fist. He drew a sharp breath, leaning back to look at me as if he were about to burst into laughter.

“I love you, Ruby, you know that, right? I’m just . . . gone.”

He wavered, delirious, and I felt dizzy too, from the heat, from hearing those words, from all of this, my skin, my veins, everything crackling inside of me so quickly I felt sure I might fly apart.

Say it, Ruby. Just say it!

“Me too,” I said. Coward.

I stood on my tiptoes to pull him even closer and he glanced at the bed.

“Are you . . . ?” I asked, nervous.

“I am,” he answered. “Ready. So ready. If you are, I’m—”

“Yes.”

A smile flickered over his face, quick as a spark. “Yes?”

“Yes,” I said again, beaming as he gathered me up and walked me to the bed.

Two sweeps of his arm and the pages littering his duvet went flying like frightened pigeons. I took the space they vacated but still felt them fluttering until beautiful Oscar, my Oscar, was above me and everything was us.

And then our world was kissing and hands roving and undressing and sharp need, then reaching for protection and scrambling to open it and awkward giggles, then kissing again while the taste of him changed, undressing more and seeing how we fit, the strangeness of it, the pain, then breathing together, moving together, this way, a different way, ridiculous and serious and better and not quite and perfect and us.

Everything was us and us and us.

33.

the silence here was the loudest thing I’d ever heard—frogs, crickets, palm fronds, dragonflies, a South Carolina audio sampler. Six days in and my mind had gone drowsy, blurred at the borders, body warm to my bones and browner on the outside.