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With one foot still on the floor, she leans down so her face is inches away from mine again, the gap between our lips slowly closing. Despite the heat rushing through my body, I’m ironically frozen in place, afraid that if I move or say something, she’ll run like the last time she did when we were face to face like this. But this time, she doesn’t.

Instead, she leans down until our lips meet, pulling her other hand up to my waist.

Laine kisses me like she’s using her last breaths to do so. Like I’ll disappear if she doesn’t. I kiss her back, bringing my hands up to hold her face. She tastes like herbs, surprisingly. Like a mix of basil and mint, and rosemary.

I let out a heavy breath as she holds my bottom lip between her teeth, moving her hand from my neck and up through my hair. My lips burn, and my head feels pressured, but in the best way possible.

My body feels electric as I learn her lips in ways I’d been yearning to for months. Ways I’d only learned her body through holding it for comfort.

I undo the side of her overalls that hadn’t already been hanging before and slip her shirt off, running my hands down her upper body and stopping to rest them on the sides of her abdomen,gently guiding her body as it moves into mine, each kiss getting more passionate than the last.

Even though she’s seen me in less than I have on right now, my cheeks burn bright red from giddy embarrassment now that she’s seeing it in this context.

Laine pulls away, looking into my eyes and making everything around me a dizzy blur. Paint splotches are stained all over her face, and most of her hair has fallen out of her messy bun.

She looks deathly attractive even when she’s a disheveled mess. Her lips are swollen, and her eye bags have sunken even further, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

I study her face, dropping my gaze from her eyes to her lips, then back up to her eyes again before gently grabbing the back of her head and moving my other hand to her waist, pulling her into me.

Her body is warm against mine, and despite never having much of an interest in art before, I’ve never wanted to be a starving artist more than I do right now.

14

Laine

I’m not sure what came over me when I texted Drew to

come over. I told myself I wouldn’t call her, no matter how stuck I felt on my project. I wouldn’t pull her across the line I drew in the dirt that fogs my head.

Part of me is disappointed with myself that I became so desperate. So desperate that I let her infiltrate what wassupposed to be my distraction from her. So indulged in my own feelings that I lost my artistic touch without her.

The more I hung out with her, the more the yearning inside me grew. But the more I went to Holy Trinity, the guilt came back. I can’t help but feel like there’s something wrong with me. I can’t figure out why I harbor these feelings, I know I’m not supposed to.

I stare down at the canvas, studying the smudges of the torso I drew perfectly fifteen times before finally settling for the sixteenth. I’d made Drew lie in a mermaid position for close to two hours, stalling the final outline, doing anything to keep her here with me. At my house, in my room.

The original plan was to use her for my project, then distance after. Dick move, I know, but I figured I was already a villain in her story after walking out on her at the playground, so what’s one last hit to the heart? After all, it would be easier to distance myself from her if I told myself she already hated me.

But seeing her actually showing up at my door that evening, laying on my bed in only a bra and sweatpants, watching her eyes narrow in concentration as she laid still as a stone for me, while studying each freckle on her body so intricately, I couldn’t ignore the butterflies swarming in my stomach.

I’ve never been a bold person, but with Drew, I find myself taking control. I can’t even begin to describe the feeling as it comes over me.

All I know is the fire in my chest that took over me at the lake when I suggested we go skinny dipping was the same fire thattook over me when she came to model for me. It made me do things I never would have imagined I’d do, neverplannedto do.

I’ve always had my whole life planned out ahead of me. Until Drew came along. With Drew, all of the things I thought I wanted to feel dull, and suddenly I don’t know what I want for myself or my future.

The plan was to move back here, get through senior year, go off to college with a fresh start, possibly meet my husband there, settle down in a copy-paste picket fence house in the suburbs, have maybe two and a half children, raise them, then grow old, die, and go to heaven.

I didn’t plan for Drew to be such a big part of my last year before I went off to live the life I had etched out for myself. To go forth and achieve all of the things I thought I wanted. But despite knowing deep down that I shouldn’t, all I know I want now is her.

It scares me, considering I’ve never been one to hold doubts. But I’ve never felt more uncertain than I do with Drew, and I’ve never loved it more than I do right now.

******

The more I stare at my canvas, I’m flooded with memories of the night everything changed. The painting now only brings reminders of the feeling of her lips on mine and her hands on my waist, and I feel guilty for just the act of painting it.

I crouch to a low squat, spinning the canvas around to find an angle that doesn’t feel like it holds the weight of that evening, but I just can’t get it. Pacing back and forth in my room withmy hands perched on my dizzy head, I think about a sermon Father Robert gave us this past Saturday evening—only a few days before I kissed Drew.

Don’t hate the sinner, hate the sin. We mustn’t cast out our confused youth but rather help them realize their sin before it’s too late.