Page 14

"I leave Tuesday," she says.

"I know."

"This doesn't change that."

"I know."

"Then why are you⁠—?"

"Because I knew at two minutes after nine yesterday morning," I say. "You walked in and asked about my sign, and I knew. I've never once been wrong about anything I knew that fast. I'm not wrong about you."

Her lips part. She doesn't say anything.

I lift my hand and touch her face, my thumb along her jaw, slowly enough that she can step back. She doesn't step back. Heat runs up my arm from that one touch, and her breath catches. I feel it against my wrist.

I kiss her.

It's soft at first. I'm careful. Her mouth is warm and tastes of cinnamon, and she goes still for one long second. Then her hands come up and fist in the front of my flannel, and she kisses me back, hard, up on her toes, and every careful thing I meant to do goes straight out of my head.

I back her against the wrap counter. Behind her, a roll of paper rocks on its dowel. Her hands slide up to my neck, into my hair, and she makes a small sound against my mouth that I'll hopefully hear for the rest of my life.

She pulls back first, just far enough to breathe. "I've been kissed," she whispers. "That's all. Nothing after that. Not ever."

I go still. My hands stay where they are, one at her waist, one at her jaw.

"Then we stop," I say.

She lifts her head. Her eyes are dark, her mouth swollen, her cheeks flushed, and she looks at me for a long moment, the stopped carousel on the counter behind her.

"I didn't say stop," she says.

5

NOELLE

"Say it again," Arch says, his hand still at my jaw. The stopped carousel sits at my elbow on the wrap counter, and the window glows at the far end of the dark shop.

"I didn't say stop."

He searches my face. Whatever he's looking for, he finds it, because his hand slides from my jaw into my hair and he kisses me again.

It isn't careful this time.

His mouth opens over mine, and he licks into me slow and deep, and my knees forget what they're for. I hang on to his flannel. He makes a low sound in his throat and takes me by the waist, and then I'm off the floor, sitting on the wrap counter with my thighs on either side of his hips. The roll of snowflake paper rocks on its dowel over my head.

"Okay?" he asks against my mouth.

"I weigh more than a box of trains."

"Not by much." He kisses the corner of my mouth, my jaw, the spot under my ear that makes me gasp. "Answer the question."

"Okay," I breathe. "Yes. Okay."

I've thought about this. Not this, exactly. Not a toy shop in the dark, a man I met yesterday, a counter I wrapped forty presents on this afternoon. But I've thought about being touched, late at night on a hundred different couches, and I always figured I'd be nervous. Stiff. Waiting for it to be over.

I'm not waiting for anything. I'm pulling him closer.

His hands find the front of my cardigan and push it off my shoulders. It falls behind me onto the counter. My T-shirt is gray and soft and older than some of the toys in this shop, and he takes the hem and looks at me.