“Wait,” he says.

His fingers graze my wrist.

I turn toward him. He’s still taller than me, even with him sitting and me standing. His feet are on the ground, knees slightly apart. I step between them, drifting my free hand over his knee. My other hand holds my drink, and the plastic cup cracks at the tightening of my grip. His hands. One of them finds my face. The other, my hip.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks me.

The yes snags somewhere in my throat. The want of the moment has warped all sensation. I feel everything and nothing. I’m numb and on fire. I manage to nod, but he waits. He looks at me. This is the closest we’ve ever been, I think. So close that my breath fogs up his glasses. He runs his thumb softly along my jaw, and then his lips press to mine.

I don’t think it’s lost on either of us that he’s waited fifteen years for this. Now that it’s happening, now that I’m here inside this kiss with him, it’s no wonder why it took me so long. This is a game-over kiss. It’s an electric, world-stopping, heart-cartwheeling, you’re-totally-fucked kiss.

Maybe deep down I knew all along. That if I allowed myself to feel anything for this person, the feelings would be too much, immense and unwieldy, impossible to contain, to control. I wasn’t ready for this kiss when I was an idiot teenager. I’m not sure I’m ready for it now at twenty-seven.

He pulls back just a little, so we’re still close but no longer in the kiss, which is good, because I forgot to breathe, and now I’m light-headed. I press my forehead into his and inhale.

I want to climb onto his lap, burrow into him. I’ve never wanted to surrender myself to someone, to just let them hold me and not think twice. My eyes are closed, and I can hear “Monster Mash” playing in the distance. My breath smells like cinnamon; we both reek of bourbon.

The first time he told me that he liked me, we were loitering outside the movie theater, waiting to get picked up. Scarlett and Rich were making out, so Ian and I sat on the curb eating the candy we hadn’t finished during the movie. I forget what movie, but I remember the candy. Sour Straws and Peanut M&Ms.

“Blue raspberry,” I’d said, sucking on one of the straws. “A superior flavor.”

“I don’t like anything that changes the color of my tongue,” he told me. “Freaks me out.”

“What?”

“When I was younger, I had some blue candy, and it turned my tongue blue, and I looked in the mirror and lost it. I thought it would be like that forever.”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this,” I said. “But you were a really stupid kid.”

He laughed. Then he said, “You know I like you, right?”

“I know,” I said. I remember being mad at him for ruining the moment, for telling me something I already knew but didn’t want to be held accountable for knowing. “I’m just really busy.”