It was a miniature version of the Fosters’ house—a peaked wooden roof and glass panes that ran the length of the house, a balcony on the second story. I thought Jesse was going to go in the main door, but he continued to carry me over to the staircase that led up the side of the house to the second floor. He set me down on the bottom step, but he did it slowly, not dropping me, his hands sliding up my legs to my waist. “After you,” he said, and I could hear that his teeth were chattering. Now that we were no longer kissing, I was starting to feel just how cold it was, that my feet especially were getting numb. I hurried up the stairs, Jesse behind me, and then he led the way across the balcony and opened the unlocked second-story door.
Jesse didn’t turn on any of the lights, and I blinked as my eyes adjusted. It was an open loft space—maybe the kitchen and living room were downstairs—just a king-size bed in the center of the room with nightstands flanking it and a bathroom off to the side, the door slightly ajar. Before I could even get my head around the implications of this—because a bed, like an actual bed, seemed somehow really different from a couch—Jesse had shut the door behind us and was in front of me again. He kissed me—this was never, I decided, not going to feel miraculous—but I could feel how cold his lips were and that his teeth were full-on chattering now.
“Maybe,” he said, pulling his T-shirt away from his skin—it was practically transparent with the rain—“we should get out of these wet clothes?” He raised an eyebrow at me as he said it, and even though I laughed, I couldn’t help thinking that it might not be the worst idea, just from a practical standpoint, all too aware of how my clothes were soaked, heavy and dripping on the beige carpeting.
Jesse looked down at me and, not breaking eye contact, reached back and pulled his T-shirt over his head. I just blinked at him for a second—it was all I could do not to reach out and touch his bare chest, trace my fingers down the ridges of his abs. There was a question in his expression, not quite a challenge, but almost. I stood there, my hair dripping, shivering in Jesse’s sweater, aware all at once of the implications of what was happening here. I was in a room that was mostly bed with the boy I’d loved practically all my life—a college sophomore, who had experience, who would never have taken weeks to try to hold somebody’s hand. He’d kissed me. He’d carried me through the rain. I knew I could leave now—everything that had already happened was so far beyond what I’d ever dreamed might happen tonight—and go home happy, with enough to think about and hold on to for months.
Or I could stay.
I stood there, wishing I didn’t have to decide this right now, that I could take a time-out to think about it and get back to him sometime next week. Suddenly, I thought about the guy I’d been talking to earlier and his parallel universe theory. Maybe there had been another version of tonight, where Jesse had waved good-bye to me from the couch and I’d put my coat on and had just gone home, thinking about him like always, not even daring to imagine the situation I was in could even be possible. What would that Charlie have said to me right now, somehow in the throes of indecision because the thing I’d always dreamed would happen to me was actually happening to me?
I took a breath, telling myself that I could change my mind at any time, that this didn’t mean anything, while knowing full well that I wasn’t going to, and that it did. I pulled Jesse’s sweater over my head, and he looked at me, his eyes searching mine, and I nodded.
Jesse found the guesthouse thermostat and cranked it up and we dove under the covers together, him helping me out of my jeans and then kicking his own off, both of us cracking up at how frozen all our extremities were. I’d touch my foot to his calf and he’d yelp, and then he’d place his hand just over my collarbone and I’d shriek. But soon, as we started kissing again, our legs and feet tangling together, my hands exploring his neck, his chest, his leg, suddenly we weren’t so cold any longer. And it didn’t seem that funny anymore.
While this was happening, while everything was just his lips and his hands and the spot I’d found on his left side that made him straight-up giggle like the Pillsbury Doughboy, a thought flashed into my mind before I could stop it—Mike wouldn’t like this.
But a second later, I pushed this away. I didn’t at all care what Mike thought. As far as I was concerned, he had given up having his opinions matter. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want to be part of our family, when he hadn’t come home in a year. And even though Jesse was Mike’s best friend, and on some level I knew this was crossing a line, it wasn’t like my other siblings hadn’t done it.
Mike and I had grown up seeing Danny and Linnie and J.J. basically star in their own soap opera called Hey, Is Your Friend Dating Anyone? in which they all dated each other’s friends, with disastrous results. So I’d kept my Jesse crush secret from Mike and had never told any of my other siblings either, not even Linnie, because I knew that at some point it would become too valuable to keep. The five of us traded secrets like baseball cards—it was the highest form of currency we had. And I knew that this—me, nearly naked with Mike’s best friend—would have been a big one.
“You okay?” Jesse asked, breaking away and looking down at me.
“Yes,” I said quickly, trying to focus on him—the last thing I wanted to think about right now was my brother. “I’m good.”
And he smiled and kissed me again and then, not very much later, he was stroking my hair back from my forehead as he looked into my eyes and asked, “Ready?” and I nodded as he reached down to the floor where he’d tossed his jeans and found his wallet in the back pocket.
There was a pause, and then Jesse muttered, “Shit.” I looked over, not sure what was happening, but not sure if I should ask, or if it would just highlight the depth of my inexperience.
“Are you, um . . . ?” A second too late, I realized I had no idea how to finish this sentence and just let my voice trail off.
“So here’s the thing,” Jesse said, swinging his legs back under the covers and looking at me, propping himself up on one elbow. “I thought I had one in my wallet—I was almost sure that I did. But . . .”
“Not there?” I asked, and Jesse shook his head. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed—I seemed to be feeling both equally and at the same time. Outside the guesthouse, I heard thunder rumble somewhere off in the distance and then the sound of the rain picking up again.
“I could get dressed, go out and buy some,” Jesse said. “And—oh shit, my car would need a jump first. My battery died last night. We could take your car. . . .” But even as he was saying this, the conviction was ebbing from his voice, and it seemed like he was feeling the same thing I was—that the moment was passing right now, slipping away from us.
“Or maybe,” I said, “another time would be better? Like tomorrow or something?” I was warming to this idea even as I was saying it. Tomorrow would give me enough time to talk to Siobhan, get her take on this, let me think about it in the light of day, away from Jesse and the way my brain seemed to turn to mush around him.
Jesse groaned and shook his head. “We’re leaving to go skiing tomorrow,” he said. “And then I’m heading straight back to school from there.”