Page 26 of 50 First Skates

“You okay, baby?”

“Yeah. Go hard,” she says, looping her arms around my back.

Placing my hands flat on either side of her neck, I do. I go hard. I thrust my hips with all the vigor I promised her I was capable of the first time we met.

The air mattress is bringing a fun kind of extra movement, and the new tires have great shock absorption. This truck is rocking, and there’s no one around to knock. Our wild animal grunts and moans echo around the terrain. Somewhere above us, tiny bits of comet debris are burning up as they hit this planet’s atmosphere at high speed. But there is no way there’s anything on this earth that’s creating more heat than the two of us fucking our brains out right now.

I can barely register that my girl is going out of her mind beneath me because my face feels like it’s melting. I might create a sonic boom when I come, and I am definitely about to explode. Soleil’s orgasm is milking my cock, and that’s it—a hurricane of intense pleasure tears through me. I am a fireball, blazing through the darkness, vaporizing into the void, emptying out. And then reassembling myself for Soleil. The center of my universe. Somehow filled up again with more love than before.

Her skin, her blonde hair, her eyes. They’re radiant, even in the dark. My glowing goddess. This is her realm, and I don’t ever want to leave it.

When I finally catch my breath, I tell her, “You are so fucking beautiful. You’re beautiful in the daylight, pretty under arena lights, you’re a vision in candlelight, but in starlight? Baby, I see you, and you are the most stunning thing I have ever laid eyes on. I will never get tired of your face.”

“I love you, Dean,” she says quietly.

“I love you, Soleil Barrett. I love you so damn much. I can’t imagine life without you, and I’m not going to.”

She nods slowly, her eyelids heavy.

Suddenly, my heart is gripped with fear. “Don’t fall asleep.” I shake her. “Baby, don’t fall asleep yet, okay?”

“’Kay,” she says.

I kiss her. I kiss her hard to wake her up. She snakes her arms around my neck, kissing me back.

I’m not ready for this night to be over yet, and I want her to remember who I am long enough to get into bed with me like we planned.

“You’re not done fucking me yet,” she says in between kisses.

“Beauty,” I say. Beauty.

13

SOLEIL

April 24th

Dear Diary,

I woke up late and discovered there was a man in my bed this morning.

At first, I was startled.

I felt warm muscly man arms around my torso. We were spooning. I was the little spoon.

But my body remembered him a few seconds before my brain did.

Maybe because I was sleepy. But I knew this feeling of being held by this person. I felt safe. I felt loved. I also felt thoroughly fucked.

Soft beams of sunlight danced through the part in the curtains of my bedroom window. I tilted my head down to kiss his hand and saw that he had something written in blue ink on his arm.

Morning, beautiful. I’m Dean, and I love you. Watch the video on your laptop or read your journal.

And that’s when I realized—I didn’t have to watch the video or read my journal entries. Because I watched the video yesterday morning. I read my journal entries yesterday. I remembered being told that I have short-term-memory loss because I slipped and hit my head on the ice. On February sixteenth. I remembered that yesterday was April twenty-third because that was the peak of the Lyrid meteor shower. I remembered seeing shooting stars in the sky last night and then feeling shooting stars in my body in the back of Dean’s truck. Dean. I remembered him telling me he loves me.

Dean’s arm twitched. I realized a tear had fallen. I turned to face him.

He was so handsome. I hadn’t seen him this unshaven before, and I liked it. His light brown hair was all mussed up. It was hardcore fuckhair, but let’s just say it was messy from sleep.