“Sneaking around, Elle?” Noah said, mock-scolding me. His warm spearmint breath tickled my face. I giggled quietly and went to kiss him, but missed and ended up kissing his chin instead. He laughed, but then he kissed the side of my nose.

I bit my lip to muffle a snort, and Noah stepped back, pulling me along with him, until we were both sitting on the bed.

“How do you always manage to fall over, Elle?” he said, playing with the ends of my hair. My eyes now adjusted to the darkness, I could just about see Noah’s face, and it looked like he was smiling. Not smirking, but giving me that smile that showed the dimple in his cheek.

I shrugged in answer. “Guess I can’t help falling for you.”

He chuckled, and his forehead rested against mine. “You’re such a romantic.”

“Is that bad?”

“Hmm, maybe. But not when it’s you. When it’s you, it’s just cute.”

Suddenly his lips were pressed against mine, finding their target this time, and I curled my arms round his shoulders, trying to draw him closer. Noah’s arms went round me too, pulling me into him, until we were lying on our sides facing each other, our legs tangled up of their own accord.

“Your feet are freezing,” he commented.

“Maybe your feet are abnormally warm.”

“No, it’s just you.”

I laughed again, trying not to be too loud. Then, in that ominous tone that told me he actually wanted to talk about something serious, he said, “Elle.”

I had a feeling I knew what this was going to be about. I half hoped I was right, because we really did need to talk about it, to try to sort something out, but the rest of me wanted it to be something else, because there were so many things he might say that would break my heart.

“What?” I whispered back eventually.

“What…what are we gonna do? When I go to college?”

He was waiting for me to answer him now. Even though it was dark enough that he probably couldn’t really see my expression, I composed my face. I shrugged in his embrace. “I don’t know. I don’t want you to—” I bit my tongue momentarily. “I’m going to miss you.”

“I’m going to miss you too. But we should talk about what we’re going to do when summer’s over.”

Now was my chance—to say that we could at least try long distance, that we shouldn’t call it off after summer just in case things didn’t work out, kind of like his mom had said to me. But I was so afraid that he might not want to, that it might spoil the rest of the time we did have.