Free How We Fall by Kate Brauning Page B

wasn’t a date and we weren’t together. Still, I sat up. I reached for the water and took a drink.
    “She wants to hang out some time.”
    “I’ll bet she does.”
    “Hey.” He touched my arm, grinning. “You’re jealous again.”
    “I am not.”
    “Bullshit. You totally are. Come here.” He pulled me down on top of him. My hair fell around my face so I tucked it behind my ear.
    “Listen,” he said. “Don’t be jealous.” He kissed my nose, then pressed his lips to mine.
    I was still jealous, but Sylvia wasn’t the one kissing him on a blanket in the middle of the afternoon. I settled more fully on top of him, stretching out until I could feel his foot with mine.
    My bare leg touched his, rough against my smooth skin. Hands in my hair, his tongue brushed my lower lip. One hand moved and slid into the back pocket of my jean shorts.
    I slipped my hands behind his neck and when my hair fell forward around us again, I let it stay there. His other hand moved up and down my back. His fingers found the straps of my bikini top and traced the lines across my back. Not unsnapping it, just touching. I leaned my forehead against his, watching him watch me. His eyes moved over my face and down my shirt. He wound my hair around his finger and tugged.
    Sylvia could text him all she wanted. I moved my mouth to the skin below his ear, and he smelled so good I instantly forgot what I should and shouldn’t want. I touched his arms, his shoulders, his chest. His hands warmed my whole body, and not just because he made these lazy, light circles with his fingertips. Because he treated every part of me like it mattered.
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    My hands. The sensitive skin on the undersides of my wrists.
    My collarbone. I couldn’t think about anything else while he touched me.
    My hands closed around his biceps. This past year, he’d put on a lot of muscle. His shoulders had broadened, giving his upper body a slight triangle down to his waist. I saw him every day, and I still couldn’t get over it. I kissed him with my mouth open, brushing his tongue with mine. He tasted like his vanilla ice cream. I slid my hand down his side and paused at his waist, playing with the elastic band of his shorts.
    His breathing changed. His hands touched my bare skin under the hem of my shirt. My heart thudded right along with his. I shifted up and he found my eyes before pulling the shirt over my head. I was wearing a bikini, so it didn’t matter. I tugged on his shirt and he sat up a little so I could pull it off.
    I moved my mouth down his neck. His skin was hot on my lips; his face was flushed. I loved that I could do this to him, but I loved even more that with my hands and lips and body, I could tell him things I couldn’t say.
    I didn’t want him to leave. Whatever that meant, I didn’t want it to happen. He rolled to his side and I slid off him, him leaning half over me on my back on the warm blanket. This time his lips moved across my shoulder. His fingers played with the strap of my black-and-white checkered bikini top.
    This was why he held my hand sometimes. This was why he touched my shoulder when I was upset and why he looked at me the way he did. My skin tingled as his hand found my stomach. We’d been telling each other things for a year now, just with our bodies instead of words. His hands said he wanted me. Mine pulled him closer.
    He was so handsome sometimes it hurt. I didn’t think other girls saw him this way. Cute, they said. Hot, even. But when I looked at him, I didn’t just see his jawline and dark eyelashes 65
    How we Fall
    and the slight definition in his stomach muscles. I saw Marcus.
    I saw his years of raising his family and trying to bring some kind of order and consistency to the house and him always lifting the heavy crates when we worked and winking at me and pulling over on the side of the road to kiss me where no one else would see us.
    I didn’t care. I was so sick of caring who saw and when I could see