I stop and turn to face him, immediately wanting to fight the kind words. But I know Allister won’t take denial of my greatness for an answer. So I shut up.

“Say thank you, or else,” he says.

“Thank you, or else.”

“You’re annoying.”

Around the corner from a pizzeria, where smells of Italian meat and seasonings are wafting from the windows, Allister grabs me by the hand and pulls me down a dark alley.

He leads me over a glistening puddle and toward the dead end. “Your parents know about you?” he asks.

“Not exactly. Yours?” I check behind me to make sure no one’s following us and that the dead end is really a dead end and not a drop through dead world into some other century.

“Not exactly.”

This could still all be a dream. Or maybe, for once, it’s real, and temporarily perfect, and nothing terrible will come next.

I let my hand fold down so it locks through his fingers, and my heartbeat accelerates.

We’re holding hands. We’re holding hands.

Then I realize what he was walking toward—a dusky orange glow beaming from a light stuck in the mortar.

His cheekbones look soaked in a beach sunset as he cups his thumb in front of my ear, his fingers behind my head. He pulls his face closer to mine, so that the only thing left to do is what I’ve wanted to do ever since I first saw him. We kiss, and I grab on to his jaw, drawing him in.

We break apart suddenly and look at each other. It’s almost like we should fight. Or kiss harder?

We decide on the latter and rush back together. It’s an excited, open-lipped kiss, with tongue and the intoxicating flavor of menthol.

He tears his lips off mine, and I trip sideways, but he catches me, interrupting the danger with his safety.

He throws me lightly into the wall for support, and the bricks knock the air to the front of my lungs.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah. I’m great.”

“Do you like stuff like that?”

“Honestly, yes.”

Allister grins as he licks the taste off his lips, pulls out lip balm, and applies it. All I want is his lips. So I go for it—a third kiss. In this one I put my hands on his chest, and around his neck, because I like how that feels.

Let someone see. Let someone jump out of the darkness and kill me. If there’s anything I’d want to be doing on a loop forever, it’s this.

It’s like everything that came before doesn’t matter anymore, and everything that comes next won’t either, because his mouth and our hands around each other trap me in a moment, a rush. Like the jolt I get after an astral glide, when my body reminds my soul that it’s alive.

Acknowledgments