The first time I kissed Vincent, I acted on instinct.
This feels a lot like that first kiss.
And maybe it’s the fact that we already know how good it feels to have our mouths on each other, or maybe we’re just too relieved and too excited to be patient any longer. Because one moment, Vincent is holding my hands in his with tender reverence, and the next, he’s crushing me to his chest with one arm wrapped around my waist. I grab two fistfuls of his black Clement Athletics jacket and arch up onto my toes, determined to meet him halfway. He returns the favor by twisting his hand into my rain-damp hair and giving it a tug—too gentle to really hurt, but firm enough that I gasp as my chin tips back.
He kisses me. Hard.
Like he means it.
Like he’s starving.
I kiss him back and hope he doesn’t mind that my eyes are wet again.
All week, I’ve been shaken up like champagne. Now Vincent’s uncorked me, and all the feelings I bottled up are bubbling to the surface so fast that there’s no way for me to stop the messy overflow.
I really fucking missed him. His smile. His voice. The heat of his body, so big and solid against mine. The soft scrape of his barely there stubble against my skin. The way he smells—laundry detergent and that familiar undercurrent of something warm and spiced that makes me dizzy. The way he grasps at my head and my hips like he won’t be satisfied until he feels every inch of my body against his. We’re kissing like we’re lovers reunited after one of them returned from war or something, which is probably overkill considering we’re just a pair of students standing in the romance aisle of our college town’s local bookstore.
But up until all of ten seconds ago, I really thought I’d ruined everything and let this boy slip through my fingers. So, I think I deserve to be a little dramatic. Just this once.
I’m so lost in Vincent that I don’t hear the footsteps approaching.
But I do hear a scandalized gasp, followed by, “Oop.”
Our mouths break apart in surprise.
There are two girls standing at the end of the aisle, both wearing Clement sweatshirts and both staring at us with wide eyes. They’ve got their phones in their hands in what I recognize as the trademark stance of avid readers who’ve been hunting for recommendations all week and have come to the store armed and ready for battle.
Right. Because it’s Friday night.
And this is a bookstore.
And we can’t catch a fucking break, apparently.
“I’m so sorry,” one of the girls stammers. “We just need to get to the, um . . .”
She trails off, clears her throat, and points to the spicy booktok reads shelf behind us like she can’t stomach the thought of saying it out loud. I feel immediate kinship with this girl. Which is probably the only reason that I don’t tell her and her friend to pretty please take a fucking hike.
“Yeah, no, of course,” I squeak, releasing my white-knuckled grip on the front of Vincent’s jacket and clearing my throat. “Excuse us.”
Vincent doesn’t budge. It takes a few encouraging pats to his shoulder before he relents and untangles himself from me with a tortured groan. I smooth down the back of my hair, which is thoroughly rumpled, and then shake out the wrinkles in my oversized cardigan. Vincent watches me with a look I haven’t seen on his face since Jabari Henderson interrupted our birthday festivities in his bedroom.
Sorry, I mouth.
The look he shoots me back says, Please end my suffering.
Vincent reaches around me to grab his sunflowers off the shelf—and I’m glad for the reminder, because I momentarily forgot about the existence of literally everything except for Vincent. I would’ve been so upset if I lost his note. I snatch it off the shelf and tuck it into the safest part of my wallet, right between my student ID (which I can’t afford to lose) and a gift card to a sporting goods store (which I haven’t touched since it fell out of a card on my seventeenth birthday). I go to reach for The Mafia’s Princess too, but hesitate when a wonderful thought occurs to me.
I won’t need a romance novel to get me through this weekend.
I turn back to the pair of girls at the end of the aisle.
“This one,” I say, tapping the naked abdominals on the cover, “is really good. She’s a lawyer. He’s an ex–hit man. There’s an elevator scene in chapter three where he—yeah. I haven’t gotten to finish it yet, but the dialogue is . . . five stars.”
Vincent’s lips twitch when I turn to face him again.
“Shall we?” he asks, offering me his arm.
I loop my hand around his forearm and give it a squeeze as we begin our walk of shame out of the romance aisle. Behind us, in the least discreet whisper I’ve ever heard, one of the girls says, “This is the most embarrassing cover I’ve ever seen.”
“The sticker says it’s only a dollar,” her friend points out.
“Yeah, because it’s garbage.”
“So, you’re not getting it?”
“Of course I’m getting it.”
The worn-down original wood floors creak under our feet as Vincent and I march to the front of the store. Everything is just as it was when I rushed in here: the well-dressed couple perusing the art history section are still flicking through architecture books, and the old man posted up in the armchair over by science fiction is still deep in what looks like a Tolkien book. The woman behind the front desk is arranging a display of female-led crime thrillers. It’s bizarre. Everyone’s going about their business like I didn’t just have a life-altering experience three aisles over.
Vincent and I slow to a stop by the door. The rain is coming down in torrents, the trees lining the street outside nothing but dark blurs swaying in the howling wind.
“My car’s a few blocks away,” Vincent says. “You wanna wait here, and I’ll come pick you up?”
His chivalrous offer, while appreciated, is a little too late.
“I’m already wet,” I point out.
Vincent lets his eyes take a pointed lap down my body and back up again. I want to laugh. I do. Instead, I sway on my feet, unsteady from the force of how much I like it when he looks at me like he’s just as affected as I am right now.
“Should we make a run for it?” he asks, low and rumbling.
I shake my head and tighten my grip on his arm.
I have a better idea.
Vincent’s face scrunches up in an adorably confused frown as I steer him down the science fiction aisle toward the far side of the bookstore, where a narrow staircase with a wrought iron banister curves up to the floor above us. We have to climb in single file, so I drop my hold on Vincent’s arm. He makes a tiny sound of displeasure. I reach back and let him hook his pinkie finger around mine as we ascend to the second floor.
It’s a barren maze of nonfiction. Nobody in Clement has the motivation to drag themselves through the pouring rain just to browse this section of the store. Cookbooks, health and wellness, philosophy, religion, travel—every aisle we pass is empty.
Vincent gives my hand a gentle tug, urging me to stop here.
I tug back. Not yet.
He huffs but follows without complaint. We weave through the stacks until we reach another set of stairs—narrower and darker and tucked way back in the corner. At the top of them is the attic. It’s my favorite part of this bookstore. There’s a little window bench tucked in the eaves where no one bothers you; you have to time it just right because, without some decent sunlight, it’s far too dark to read without annihilating your eyesight.
I’ve always thought of it as a calm place.
But today, with Vincent behind me, I’m not calm. My whole body is humming with anticipation. I feel electric, like I’m one good spark away from combustion.
“Sometimes I come up here to read,” I explain, feeling suddenly embarrassed as I stop in front of the window bracketed by shelves crammed with battered old paperbacks. This was a stupid idea. It’s not romantic, and it’s not very practical. We’d probably be way better off in Vincent’s car. “It’s a little dusty and, like, aggressively dark academia, but I feel weird sitting downstairs where the staff can see me. It always feels like they’re mad at me for reading for hours without buying something. Which is stupid, because they’re really nice here. But they never come up here. Nobody does. So, it’s . . . private.”
Vincent doesn’t make fun of me or the weird little attic that I haunt.
Instead, he sets his sunflowers down on the bench under the window and advances toward me until my shoulders hit the shelf behind me. He crowds me in, blocking out the cool draft from the old, rain-streaked window and casting us both in soft shadows.
“Please tell me that you didn’t bring me up here to read poetry,” he says.
I feign a frown. “What else would we do?”
Vincent takes my face in his hands, but he doesn’t kiss me right away. Not as urgently as I need to be kissed. He holds me so we’re nose to nose, his warm breath coming in slow, steady puffs against my face while mine gets stuck somewhere in my chest. And, yeah, all right. I totally brought this upon myself by choosing the wrong moment to give him cheek. But this is just cruel.
“So mean,” I whine.
“I thought you said I was too nice to you,” Vincent counters. Then, after a moment of silence that tells me he’s replaying our conversation, he asks, “Could you touch my hair again?”
I open my mouth to tease him, because I’m sure he’s teasing me, but then I catch the little glint of self-consciousness in his face and remember when I ran my hands through his hair on his birthday. Vincent likes his hair played with. I don’t have to be asked twice to indulge him: I reach up, thrust my fingers into the soft thicket of his hair, and graze my nails back and forth across his scalp, tugging softly and then soothing with gentle presses of my fingertips.
I watch, entranced, as his eyelids flutter and his throat bobs.
“How’s that?”
He hums. And then he melts, exhaling a long and heavy breath like he’s finally shrugged some unbearable weight off his shoulders. Seeing him so vulnerable and so relaxed makes me want to say things that I don’t think I’m entirely ready to say.
So, I roll up onto my toes and kiss what I can reach. His chin. His jaw. The corner of his mouth.
“I missed you,” I admit in a whisper. And then, because I’m nothing if not horrible at dealing with my emotions: “See what happens when you ask nicely?”
Vincent ducks his head and catches my lips with his.
And this time, it’s not nice. Not at all.
