Free Autumn Unlocked (Summer Unplugged) by Amy Sparling

Chapter 1
     
     
     
    Jace's sandy brown hair flows through my fingers as I grip the back of his head. He hasn't had a haircut in a few weeks, so he's all scraggly which is perfect for me to latch onto as he whips his tongue across my lips. I pull him closer to me as he presses his lips to mine, kissing me with all the fury you'd expect from someone who is about to leave for a whole freaking week.
    His hands grab my hips, his fingers spread ing wide across my back as he pulls me closer to him. His feet shuffle, and mine go backwards until my back presses against my closed bedroom door. If I had it my way, the door would stay closed forever and he'd never leave. I kiss him and breathe in the scent of his body wash, trying to hold on to every bit of him, forming his essence into a memory for me to think about when he's gone.
    We stay like this, wrapped in each other’s arms, making out like the teenagers we are, until my neck hurts from looking up at him, and the smell of Mom's burned dinner seeps under the door, startling both of us.
    "What is that smell?" Jace asks, pretending to choke on the stench. He leans in and kisses me softly on the neck before I have a chance to answer. When he pulls back, my knees are too wobbly from his kiss to bother saying anything. My brain simply doesn't function in a state like this.
    The ear-splitting sound of the smoke detector blasts through the house, and I yank open my door and head to the kitchen with Jace following. Mom stands next to the stove, two blackened oven mitts on her hands and a dejected look on her face. A stream of black smoke flows from the open oven door, covering the entire room in an awful-smelling fog.
    "Well kids," Mom says, even though Jace is almost nineteen and totally not a kid. "Looks like we're ordering takeout for dinner."
     
     
    Later, Jace sits on the floor of the living room with his back pressed against the couch with me sitting between his legs, my back against his chest. Two empty pizza boxes sit on the coffee table. My little brother Bentley sleeps in Mom's lap while we finish watching the made-for-TV family movie he had insisted we watch. The movie is ridiculously awful, but I don't mind it because I spend my time twisting my fingers around Jace's and sneaking glances of him over my shoulder.
    Nothing is boring when Jace is with me.
    "Thank you for dinner, Ms. Maize," Jace says, glancing over at Mom.
    "You're welcome, dear," she says, grabbing the remote control. A grin bursts across my face. Mom never called Ian dear . She flips through the channel guide, looking for something not as annoying to watch. "Sorry I ruined the real dinner. Maybe next time I'll be able to serve you two a home-cooked meal."
    "Or I could take ya'll out to the Taste of Texas," Jace says, popping up from the couch. Mom and I both roll our eyes because the Taste of Texas is an incredibly expensive steak house that Jace recently visited with his new boss and hasn't stopped talking about since.
    Jace helps Mom contort my brother's sleeping body into a manageable shape, by placing him over Mom's shoulder so she can carry him to bed. Mom walks to the hallway and then glances back at us. "Thirty minutes," she whispers over Bentley's shoulder, extending my time with Jace by twenty extra minutes. She's in a really great mood today. To Jace, she says, "See you next weekend, dear."
    Mom disappears into Bentley's room and then her own room. When the coast is clear of all sibling and parental units, I slide my hands up Jace's chest, hooking my fingers together behind his neck. "That's the second time she's called you dear today," I muse, closing my eyes when he kisses the top of my forehead. "She really likes you."
    "That's because I'm not a dropout druggie douchebag," he murmurs with his lips still pressed to my forehead. Alliterations aside, he's right. Jace is a high school diploma-holding non-drug user, full time employee and owner of a paid-off house, thanks to his late grandfather