9. Sunny
I take a cab home from the Cleveland airport this time. I told Mia that my mom had the day off and was picking me up. I feel awful for lying.
It’s not that I don’t want to see her. I just want to see Dex first. I’ve been waiting for this moment for five fucking months, and I don’t want anything to ruin it.
I don’t want to talk to Mia about how hard the distance is, or how I’ll survive another two years of this.
I don’t want to hear about her wedding plans, or schedule a time to go look at dresses.
All I want is Dex.
His flight lands two hours after mine, so I have just enough time to shower and change. I’m slipping on a short summer dress over my sexy new underwear when I hear a car honk twice from the driveway.
I run downstairs and, when I open the front door, I see him leaning against the hood of his car like the dreamy heartthrob in some ‘80’s movie, and when he locks eyes with me and smiles, I swear he’s ten times more handsome than I remember.
“Hey, you,” he says, like he always does. I wrap my arms around his neck and he smells like the exact same soap, but this time mixed with CK One, and it’s everything I can do not to kiss him right here, but I have no idea when my mom will be home.
Dex gives me a soft peck on the cheek, then nods toward the new Volvo parked in the driveway. “Did your mom get a new car?”
I shake my head. “My mom’s at work. That one’s mine.”
He laughs. “You told her you started driving again, and she bought you a car. See? I told you she’d be okay with it.”
I smirk. “She was not okay with it. She was worried sick that I’d buy a clunker with my babysitting money and end up dead in a ditch. Those were her exact words.”
Dex half-smiles. “Sounds like her. But you know your mom. She only worries like that because?—”
“I know, I know. Because she loves me,” I tell him.
Dex cups my face in his palms and nods, his smiling eyes sending chills up my spine. God, I want him. But just as my mind starts wandering to thoughts of us naked, his forehead creases.
“How’d you do on your poli sci exam?” he asks me.
I bite my lip and make him sweat for a few seconds. “I aced it,” I say finally.
“Phew,” he sighs with a smile, wiping imaginary sweat from his brow.
I giggle. “You weren’t really that worried, were you?”
“Nah,” he says, pulling me back into him. “You’re the smartest person I know.”
I squeeze him tighter, and the urge to kiss him threatens to take over again, but this time it’s even harder to fight. “Let’s get outta here,” I whisper in his ear.
Dex takes my hand and leads me to the passenger side of his car. “My parents are home, so I was thinking we could drive to the lake,” he says as he opens the door for me.
When we get there, he parks in an empty lot. It’s a perfect summer night, and we’d been driving with the windows down, listening to Radiohead, but now he rolls them up and turns the music low, even though he’s checked several times to make sure there’s no one else around.
We start kissing, our first kisses in five whole months, and they’re soft and slow. He’s taking his time with me. Savoring me. Toying with me, because he knows how desperately I need him inside me. I let out a tortured sigh and he smiles, enjoying the effect he has on me.
“Back seat?” he finally suggests.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Dex climbs back first, then helps me onto his lap. We kiss and strip off our clothes—everything except my new sheer black bra, which leaves little to the imagination. He leans against the seat and brings one hand to the back of his head as his eyes wash over me.
“You get sexier every time I see you, you know that?” he says, his voice gritty with desire.
He pulls the thin straps off my shoulders one at a time, softly kissing every inch of my neck.
He kisses my collarbone, then moves down, brushing his lips over the mesh covering my nipples.
I reach back to unclasp my bra and let it fall, giving him unfettered access to me.
He takes my nipple in his mouth and circles it with his tongue.
At the same time, his fingers find their way between my thighs, and the pleasure is so intense, I arch my back and moan, my hand on the car ceiling.
“God I missed that sound,” Dex says, his lips meeting the space between my breasts as I run my fingers up his neck and into his hair. Then our mouths find our way back to each other, and his hands are massaging my thighs, and I take his bottom lip between my teeth and bite until I feel him smile.
I pull back and lock eyes with him, and the way he’s looking at me makes me feel wildly alive in a way I haven’t felt in months. In a way I only ever feel when I’m with him.
“I need you,” I whisper, almost pleading, and when I lift my hips he pushes into me, and I let out that moan he likes again without even thinking.
He clasps his arms tight around me and says, “Isn’t it insane how we fit together so perfectly?
” I nod and kiss him eagerly, my hands moving up his body, every part of us touching, even our eyelashes fluttering against each other’s as we move together.
He feels so damn good, I never want this to end.
But eventually our bodies give in, and we surrender.
And we’re smiling, and sweaty, and breathless.
Another little death.
“Jesus,” Dex says into my neck. “That was incredible.”
“I know,” I say with a satisfied sigh. “Although…I’m pretty sure I bonked my head on the ceiling once or twice.”
“Come here,” he says, and I tilt my head to let him kiss the spot I’d just been rubbing. “Next time we’ll do it in my bed.”
“I can’t wait,” I whisper before I kiss him again.
“How about tomorrow night?” he says, his mouth traveling back to my nipples. “My parents are going out.”
“Your mom and dad…they still don’t know about us?” I ask.
Dex looks up from my breasts and shakes his head.
I bite my lip. “What if we told them? I mean, my house isn’t an option for obvious reasons, but we can probably be honest with your parents, right? It’d be nice not to have to sneak around so much.”
Dex’s eyes shift back and forth a couple of times.
He’s thinking about it. My heart sinks.
Eventually, he shakes his head. “It’s risky, Sunny.
I mean, you don’t want your mom to know about us—and I get that.
But what if one of my parents lets it slip somehow?
You know how chatty my dad gets. Remember last summer, when he saw your mom at the hospital and told her you were practically living at my house? ”
I let out a puff of air. “Yeah. That did kind of suck. No…you’re right. Better safe than sorry.”
He does have a point. But I still feel uneasy.
I’m not good enough for him. What if he’s ashamed of me?
“Shit,” he says, leaning back and running a hand over his hair. “I forgot I told Seth I’d hang out with him tomorrow night.” He groans. “Maybe I can reschedule.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say with a casual shrug that I hope masks my disappointment. “I’ll come over on Monday while your parents are at work.”
But it turns out, it’s not that simple.
The next day, Dex’s dad offers me an internship I simply can’t refuse.
I mean, I could—I have plenty of opportunities to babysit again this summer.
But if my mom were to find out that I’d rather hang out with toddlers than get firsthand experience in a law office, she’d disown me.
At least this way I can spend quality time with Mr. Dexter, and my mom can’t complain because it’ll look great on my law school application.
I actually learned something interesting about Dex’s dad when he offered me the internship.
We were talking about his first law job, and I asked if he’d always wanted to be a lawyer.
I was sure he’d say yes, so imagine my surprise when he told me he once dreamed of being a writer.
He said he’d “written it off” (pun intended) as too impractical.
It was like he stuck a pin in my hopeful heart and it deflated. Mr. Dexter is one of the most reasonable people I know, and I’ve always trusted his judgment. If he didn’t think he could manage a successful writing career, it surely doesn’t make sense for me to hold onto that dream.
I’ve all but let it go at this point anyway. Outside of my schoolwork, I have very little time for reading or writing. I’d been thinking about taking a fiction writing course in the fall—just for fun—but after chatting with Mr. Dexter, I think a law seminar would be more sensible.
A few days after I start my internship, Dex lands the role of Lysander in a community theater production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream .
He told me the director was in tears during his audition.
While I’m thrilled for him, of course, his rehearsals run late into the night again, which means we need to get creative about spending time together.
Gone are the lazy days of last summer and the long, blissful, hours we spent in his bed.
Now our meetups are sporadic, last-minute, and often very late at night, which gives them an almost surreal quality.
Sometimes I’ll wake up in the morning, alone in my bed, and wonder if I imagined it all.
A fever dream. Memories of our trysts flash through my mind like a movie trailer.
Dex’s mouth on me in the bathroom of our favorite little bistro.
His hips against mine in the shower while his parents are hosting a game night downstairs.
His hands on my breasts while I straddle his lap in a very small dressing room at the mall.
His eyes, his smile, wispy and ethereal, fading into the next scene.
Apart from hooking up with my maybe-boyfriend, I see Mia about once a week, usually for lunch somewhere near the law office. But that’s about all the time we get, because my nights are always reserved for Dex. Mia understands. Plus, she has Evan. Their summer schedules are perfectly aligned.