His voice cuts off with a hitch when I lunge forward, dropping Bridge to Terabithia at our feet as my hands find his cheeks, cradling his face. Distantly, I hear the thump-thump-thump of my heart as it drowns out everything else but him. Waylon.

A voice warns me to slow down, to take it easy, wait, wait, wait, but I’ve been waiting for years for this moment. Don’t you see, don’t you see?

“I was so scared,” he whispers. His tongue pokes out to wet his top lip. “So fucking scared you’d laugh at me. Or push me away. But you didn’t.” He swallows, and I feel it in my thumbs. Feel his pulse fluttering against my skin, mirroring my own. “You didn’t, and everything was so perfect, and all I wanted to do was keep kissing you. All I want is to fucking kiss you—”

Waylon gasps as I crash my mouth to his and I catch it with my tongue. We both freeze—mouths and tongues paused in a still-frame of warm, wet contact. Eyes wide and unblinking, and it’s like we’re suddenly eleven fucking years old again as we stare into one another, wondering where we go from here.

For one dreadful, stretched out second, I fear I fucked up. Misunderstood. That he’s frozen for a whole heap of other reasons. Bad reasons. Reasons that involve rattling breaths and dry heaving into a toilet and—

No. Nonononono.

I start to pull back. “I—”

Waylon moans and then he’s sinking, sinking, sinking into me. His eyes fall shut and mine aren’t far behind as I gather his body against me. We nearly trip over each other as I all but drag him toward me, lining us up perfectly. The doorknob digs into my back, and the towel can’t be more than one measly tug away from falling.

But we are kissing. God, are Waylon and I kissing.

He grumbles something into my mouth before gripping the back of my head. Long fingers curl into my hair, pulling my face impossibly closer to his. Our noses bump messily as I stumble forward, meeting him halfway as we come together in a tangle of limbs.

“I’m sweaty,” he mumbles against my lips.

“Don’t care.”

I wrap my arm around him to try and steady us, but there’s no use as years of pent-up desire and denial and repression snap away into nothing. My elbow smarts as it collides with the corner of the dresser in my haste to hold him tighter, but I hardly pay it any notice. Something falls to the floor, and it could be the sky crashing down around us for all I care.

“The guys?” I mutter in between greedy kisses.

“Not here. Gone all day.”