CHAPTER THREE
Alex
Then
We parked the bike on the shoulder of a two-lane road that wound along the mountain’s edge.
A NO PARKING sign stood posted a few feet away warning of sheer cliff that it protected the unknowing from wandering into it.
Half a mile below, the road we’d climbed threaded through the canyon like something that had been dropped and left there.
I followed Riley up the rock formation beside where we had parked. From the top, saguaros stood scattered across the foreground like sentries for the mountains stacked along the horizon behind them.
“The farthest range looks blue,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”
“Atmosphere,” he said. “Same reason the sky’s blue. It scatters the light.”
“Impressive that you know that.”
“I wondered about it as a kid, so I asked my dad. He’s got an answer for everything.”
“Do your parents live near here?”
“Twenty minutes. In Tucson.” He glanced at me. “Are you close with yours?”
It wasn’t a simple answer. We didn’t fight. We just weren’t close, and I didn’t know how to say that without it sounding worse than it was. Fighting at least meant someone stayed in the room.
“We’re okay,” I said.
“Okay?” He almost laughed. “What does that mean?”
I wanted to tell him something better. That we ate dinner together, that they hadn’t missed my last fifteen birthdays. Instead I told him the truth, or close to it.
“It’s complicated. They’re gone for the next six months, so it won’t be so bad for a while. And after that I’ll be a thousand miles away at school. We won’t see much of each other for the next four years either way.”
“Six months? Where’d they go?”
When I was seven or eight, I’d started marking my parents’ trips on a world map with push pins, certain that eventually I’d be old enough to go too. By eighth grade I had thirty countries marked and hadn’t left the United States once. By high school, I’d stopped expecting an invitation.
“Melbourne, I think. Somewhere in Australia.”
“That’d be a cool place to see. My family is from Sicily. Do they travel for work?”
“No. They just travel.”
“You ever go with them?”
I nudged a pebble off the edge with my shoe and watched it disappear without a sound. “They’ve been to more countries than I can count. I’ve never left this one.”
Something in his face softened. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry I asked.”
“It’s fine.”
I’d known him for four hours, and he’d already been kinder to me than my father had in years. I let my shoulder rest against his arm. Kindness should not have been that easy to spot.
It was.
His hand slid to the middle of my back. I didn’t move. Losing the view, or the warmth of it, wasn’t something I wanted to do.
“I don’t really know what the deal is,” I said, finding another pebble with my toe. “My parents just aren’t around much. I was mostly raised by an au pair. She’s great.”
“Is she still with you?”
“Martina? She’s at their house right now. She’s been around as long as I can remember. She took me to my first day of kindergarten. She was at my graduation. Everything in between, too.”
He went quiet for a second, like he wished he hadn’t asked. “Oh.”
His hand moved lower, past the waist of my jeans, resting under the denim, against my skin.
Neither of us said anything about it.
I wondered if he meant to kiss me. If he did, his face wasn’t giving it away. It didn’t matter much. Just standing there with him was doing something to me that I wasn’t in a hurry to name.
We stood quietly at the edge of the rock. He waited for me to say something. I waited for him to close the distance.
Neither of us did.
The sun slipped behind the farthest ridge. The sky went from blue to something darker, and then darker again. Orange and pink catching along the mountaintops the way a fire catches the underside of smoke. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d watched a sunset.
By the time the color drained out of it, leaving nothing but indigo, the temperature had dropped hard enough that I shivered. The mountain air was a good forty degrees cooler than the desert floor.
I turned to him. “Should we—”
Before I finished the sentence, he tipped my chin up with two fingers. His other hand, still resting against my skin at the waist of my jeans, moved lower, coming to rest against the curve of me.
There was nothing unclear about what he wanted.
He kissed me.
It wasn’t hesitant. His mouth found mine like he’d been waiting all day to do it, and I kissed him back the same way, my fingers finding the muscle of his back and holding on.
He pulled me in against his chest until the mountain, the sky, and the cold fell away, kissing me all the while.
It didn’t last long enough to feel ordinary, and it didn’t end fast enough to leave me wanting.
When he finally pulled back, he caught my bottom lip lightly between his teeth before letting go, like he was putting a period on the end of a sentence.
It was unoriginally perfect.
Perfect in my house always came with a receipt. This didn’t.
I stood for a moment, trying to catch a breath that wouldn’t come easily. In the dark I couldn’t see much of his face.
I didn’t need to.
I gazed at the mountain range. Beyond it, in the valley, Tucson’s outline was illuminated. The scene was photo worthy.
A shallow breath escaped me without asking permission.
The mountains. The smell of him. The kiss. The distant Tucson skyline. The stars. The motorcycle. The day had the makings for what might become a very good summer.
I closed my eyes.
I let it be everything it was.