First & Then

loving Ezra were all their own pages.

“Well, you were always something.”

It is, I replied. Did you sleep well?

No.

But in a good way.

I was too happy.

And he had texted me, early: Good morning.

After a while, we kissed again and said good night, and then kissed some more, and then, finally—just another long kiss, three short kisses, and a scattering of little ones—Ezra got into his truck and drove away. I watched his taillights disappear in the distance, and then I headed back in, my insides feeling like warm honey, my lips red with fun new sensations.

And yet, when Ezra and I kissed, there weren’t fireworks igniting the night sky, or an orchestra swelling, or any of the other hackneyed clichés that feature prominently in tweenhood imaginings of first kisses. We didn’t proceed to ride off on horseback to his sprawling estate and ten thousand pounds a year. We just kissed, and it was … thoroughly awesome … and then I leaned against him and we stood that way for a while, arms around each other. Ezra didn’t count to three hundred this time. His breathing was even and steady, and there was just this pure, unadulterated, highly concentrated happy. Baking chocolate for the soul.

A vague thought skirted through my mind of so this is what kissing feels like, but then all I could really focus on was Ezra, his mouth, his hair, those arms circling around me and holding tight.

The remaining space between us disappeared. Ezra and I kissed.

And for a moment more there was space between us and I was acutely aware of it, and then suddenly there was significantly less space. Ezra moved, or I moved, I don’t know—it doesn’t matter, because there was Ezra Lynley, eyes turned down as he slipped his hands around my waist. I rested my hands on his shoulders as if we were going to dance a middle school dance, but there was no room for the Holy Ghost, or being nervous, or awkward; it just felt right. Intensely right, intensely excellent, and then he looked at me and it was that most golden moment of Jane’s books sprung to life. It was the getting-together part.