Sully
She kisses me, and I forget every single thing I know.
I'm the one who offered. I'm the one who stood on this beach and told her I would selflessly help her as a friend, like my heart wasn't trying to punch its way out of my chest the second she stumbled into me.
I had it all under control until her hands fisted my shirt and her mouth was on mine, and my control turned out to be something I made up.
I kiss her like I've wanted to since the housewarming, against the cliff with my hand in her hair and her body pressed along the length of mine.
She makes a sound into my mouth that I'm going to hear for the rest of my life, and somewhere in the back of my head a voice says slow down, that this is a favor, it’s not real for her, and I tell that voice to get fucked and kiss her deeper.
When we finally break apart, we're both wrecked.
Her lips are swollen, her eyes are huge and dark, my heart is going like I've just done back-to-back shifts, and she's staring up at me like she doesn't recognize me.
"Em …"
"No." It comes out of her on an exhale, barely a word.
Then her hand comes up to her mouth, her eyes go wide, and it arrives all at once, whatever it is, like a wave breaking over her face.
"No, no, no, no." She steps back out of my arms, out of reach, shaking her head. "You shouldn't have done that."
I flinch, my whole body doing it before I can stop it, like she swung at me.
"Em …"
"What have you done?" It's not even a question aimed at me. She says it to the space between us, to herself, to the ocean, with one hand pressed flat against her chest like she's holding something in.
“I thought …”
But she's already moving, disappearing right in front of me, and all I can do is stand there in confusion. Then she’s gone, up the stone stairs with her dress gathered in one fist, and she doesn't stop, she doesn't look back.
I stand there with my jacket in the sand and the taste of her still on my lips, watching her run from me.
Like she has done before.
And just like that, I'm seventeen again, and we’re at Danny Kowalski's lake house, the summer everybody had somebody except me.
The party was raging, the music was thumping out over the water, and I'd taken my drink down to the dock to get away from it for a minute, which is what you do when your best friend has ditched you for his girlfriend, and every room is full of couples.
That's when I noticed someone was already out there, sitting at the end of the boards in the dark, knees pulled up to her chest. I hesitated for a moment and then realized who it is. It’s Ember and she’s crying.
I nearly turned around, not wanting to get involved in girls’ business.
But it was Em, so I walked out and sat down next to her on the boards.
"Kevin kissed Rachel Meyer," she finally said. "Just now, in the kitchen, in front of everybody. I’m humiliated.” Oh yeah, I saw that. Dick move. "We're on a break, so I'm not even allowed to be mad."
"You're allowed to be mad," I told her.
"Rachel Meyer, Sully." Her voice cracked down the middle. "He knows what she is to me. Out of every girl at this party, he picks the one who's hated me since seventh grade, and everyone saw, and then everyone turned around and looked at me."
Behind us, the party kept going like nothing had happened.
Some song everyone loved that summer rattled the windows, and Kevin was up there somewhere in that noise.
I remember exactly what she looked like.
Bare feet, hair fighting out of its ponytail, moonlight on the water behind her, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life, crying at the end of a dock, while the party carried on without her.
I remember thinking Kevin was the single dumbest person in the state of Wisconsin.
"He's an idiot," I said.
"But I love him.”
Urgh, her statement made me want to be sick. “He’s still an idiot,” I grumbled.
"I know," she said sadly. "Stupidly, I love him anyway. That's the worst part."
I didn't have anything to say to that, because it wasn’t her fault, she had no idea how I felt, so I didn't say anything.
We sat there while she cried in my arms, the lake slapping at the pilings under us, and the party glowing up the hill.
I was seventeen, stupid, and so in love with her I could barely breathe around her, and she had no idea.
She was crying over the dumbest boy in Wisconsin, when she could have had a guy like me who would never have done that to her, sitting right beside her.
Then she went still. She turned her head and looked at me for a long moment, moonlight on her wet cheeks, and to this day I don't know what she was looking for, or whether she found it.
Then as if in slow motion, she leaned across and kissed me.
I had dreamed of this moment, and it was happening.
Finally, I thought, she’s truly over that loser.
The kiss was soft at first, barely there, just the trembling press of her salty lips against mine.
I froze, every muscle locked, because this was Ember.
My Ember. The girl I’d been quietly pining for since we were kids.
The one who’d always been off-limits, my best friend’s sister, the one who’d spent years looking at Kevin like he hung the damn moon while I stood in the shadows, crushing after her so hard it felt like my chest was cracking open.
But she was there. Kissing me. And I couldn’t hold back anymore.
I poured everything into it. Every stolen glance, every sleepless night imagining that exact moment, every time I watched Kevin break her heart and I wanted to burn the world down for her.
My hand came up, shaky, cupping the side of her face like she was made of glass and wildfire at the same time.
I tilted my head and kissed her deeper, slower, like I was trying to tell her with my mouth what I’d never dared say out loud.
Choose me. Let me be the one who never hurts you.
A broken sound escaped her, half sob, half sigh, and it undid me completely.
I slid my other arm around her waist, and pulled her closer on the rough dock boards until her body pressed against mine.
Her knees brushed my thigh, and I could feel her trembling.
The lake lapped quietly beneath us, cold and dark, but everything between us was burning.
I tasted the salt of her tears, the sweetness that’s just her, and I kissed her like a man drowning, like this might be the only chance I’d ever get.
My tongue traced her bottom lip, gentle but desperate, begging entrance.
When she parted for me on a shaky exhale, I groaned into her mouth low, raw, full of all the years I’d kept this locked inside.
I kissed her like I was stupidly, painfully in love.
Like I would trade every future I had just to stay right there on the dock with her forever.
My fingers threaded into her messy ponytail, holding her to me as the kiss turned deeper, hotter, more urgent.
Not practiced or smooth, just honest, clumsy, and aching real.
She kissed me back, tentative at first, then with a hunger that matched the storm in my chest. Her small hands fisted my shirt like she was afraid I’d disappear.
For one perfect, shattering moment, the party noise faded, Kevin didn’t exist, and it was only us, Ember and me, moonlight on the water, her tears drying on my skin.
I loved her so much it hurt. I kissed her like I could make her feel it.
Like if I just gave her enough of me, she’d finally see what’s been right in front of her all along.
But even as I lost myself in the warmth of her mouth, in the soft press of her body against mine, a cold whisper crept in at the edges …
She’s still crying over him, this isn’t about you.
I shoved the thought down. This time was different, she’d never made a move on me before.
I kissed her like tomorrow didn’t exist, like this kiss could rewrite everything.
Because for me … it already had.
And then she pushed me away as she scrambled to the other side of the dock.
“Connor,” she gasped, holding her fingers to her lips. “What have we done?” I didn't get to answer her that night either. She was on her feet before I found a single word, straightening her shirt, wiping her face, already backing up the dock away from me.
"I have to go," she said. "I'm sorry. I have to go."
And she went back up the dock, into the lights and the music, gone.
I sat out there alone until the party died, staring at the water, my lips still burning, playing it over and over, telling myself it meant something.
It had to mean something. Girls don’t kiss you like that over nothing.
A week later she was back with Kevin. I found out the same as everyone else, walking into school and seeing them at his locker, his arm around her, her laughing at something he said like Rachel Meyer never existed, like the dock never existed, like I never existed.
She caught my eye across the hallway for half a second, and I stood there waiting for something, anything, a flicker, an apology, a secret.
She just smiled at me, giving me her normal smile, and then turned back to Kevin.
That was it. That was the whole conversation we never had over that kiss. She pretended it never happened so completely that eventually I started to wonder if I'd made it up.
Guess history is repeating itself again tonight.