Page 9 of Who We Were

She smiled.

He smiled.

I swear it could have been a scene from freakingLeave it to Beaver.

And if the smile stare down hadn’t been broken by Quinn calling his mom a dork and her telling him that it made him a son of a dork, and a tear of riotous laughter, I might have thought I’d actually been transported to another decade.

“Forgive me,” she said through her laughter.“But my son can be a jerk sometimes and forget his manners.” She turned her attention to Quinn. “I’m sure he would have invited you eventually. Sometimes, he just needs a kick in the tush.”

Again, every word falling from her mouth was ridiculously sweet. But there was something so genuine and kind about her that I knew I would never be able to turn down an invitation.

“Can we not talk aboutmy tush?” Quinn cut in, his cheeks reddening a few shades.

And while his mom laughed, he shooed her away.

And I was stuck there thinking only about Quinn’s ass.

In addition to the tentative plans for dinner sometime, we made plans to meet the following weekend. As I walked home, I found myself already counting down the hours before I could be alone with Quinn once again.

And it wasn’t thethought of being alone with him that scared me. No. What scared the ever-living shit out of me was that I wasn’t scared of being alone with him at all. It petrified me to think about what I might let myself do when I was around him. Because if the instincts I’d fought most of my teenage years were true after all, then I had no control over what I might let myself become when I was around Quinn.

That was the most frightening part of all.

Being myself.

It was impossible to be yourself when you didn’t even know who that person was.