Page 112 of Touch the Sky

She pulls out a brown package of kernels and heads for the microwave before whirling around at the last second.

“Oh, hmm. Maybe I should wait if we want it to stay warm?”

She’s flying around at a mile a minute, but all I can do is nod and mumble, “Uh-huh.”

She tosses the popcorn onto the table and plants her hands on her hips, glancing around the room.

“There’s not actually much for us to get ready, is there?”

I shake my head. “Guess not.”

We stand there for a few seconds. Our eyes meet, and I look away. Tess clears her throat.

“Do you want a beer?” she asks, nodding at the four pack.

I need something to do with my hands besides squeeze the life out of this chair, so I reach for a bottle.

“Sure.Pourquoi pas?”

Tess grabs one too and then digs out a bottle opener from a drawer. We take our first few sips still standing in the kitchen before she motions to the couch.

“Um, should we sit?”

I bob my head. “Probably.”

We sit at opposite ends of the couch. It’s a two-seater, so even leaning up against the arm rests, we’re only a few inches apart from each other.

I take another sip of my beer while I look at the thrift store art on the walls and the framed photos of Shel I remember from last time.

“I guess you haven’t been in here since…”

Tess trails off and crosses her legs. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her resting the lip of her beer bottle against her mouth.

“Yeah,” I say.

It’s almost like the echo of the sounds we made that night are still bouncing off the walls. All we did in here was kiss, but the memory of her hands on my body and her tongue in my mouth is like a brand seared straight into my skin.

The marks she left still glow red hot whenever I’m around her.

I take a swig from my beer, but it doesn’t help. The cold liquid just makes me feel even hotter in comparison. The whole room is heating up the longer we sit here.

“We have to figure this out,” Tess says. “Don’t we?”

I risk looking at her and notice she’s got a death grip on her bottle, her knuckles turning pale.

“Figure what out?” I ask, even though I know exactly what she means.

“Us.”

There it is again: two letters roping us together, tightening like a lasso the more we struggle to break apart.

“Right,” I say. “Us.”

Tess takes a long gulp of beer, tilting her head back and squeezing her eyes shut. I can’t help watching the way her throat moves. I wonder what it would be like to feel her swallow against my palm, my fingers cupping her neck.

She lowers the bottle with a sigh and stares straight ahead.

“I don’t know if we can live together, work together, and…sneak around together,” she says, the words stilted, like she’s forcing them out. “That’s a lot of together for two people who aren’t…together.”