I fidgeted in front of the blue SUV as he stared me down, a sly grin on his face. In nothing but my tiny shorts, a t-shirt, and flip fops, I couldn't help but feel naked in the cool October night air.
"So are you gonna give me my charger or what?" I quipped, trying to portray a confidence I didn't feel.
"Sure," he said. "Get in." His voice bore no room for argument.
I stepped onto the pavement and crossed to the passenger side, hefting myself into the seat. The indescribable, masculine scent of the car washed over me and made my stomach flip. I could sense that something was going to happen between us, and my virgin mind didn't know how to feel about that.
"Did you forget your phone charger on purpose?" he teased. The light from my brownstone's porch light cast a halo behind his dark hair and cast the rest of his features in darkness.
"And why would I do that?" Luck was with me: my voice didn't tremble.
"So you would have an excuse to come back down here and see me again, of course." He laughed, and I couldn't help but grin back at him.
"No, I wouldn't do that, at least not consciously." I wasn't lying. Luck had led to my lapse in memory. Of course, I had taken advantage of that by asking him to come back to return it after I had already changed into my scant outfit. I looked at him in the dark and blushed, thankful that he wouldn't be able to see me, as I recalled our day together.
He had come up to visit me at college for the long weekend, as friends sometimes do, and we had stayed up all night driving through Chinatown and singing foreign music at the tops of our lungs. We had finally passed out on the red couch of the common room in the basement of my brownstone, knowing we wouldn't likely be disturbed there. We held each other for hours under the guise of being asleep, until he had finally asked, "Kate, how asleep are you?"
"Not at all," I admitted.
"Neither am I." Those words made my heart soar.
After that, he followed me to my psychology lecture and held my hand. After dinner, we sat in his car on the side of the road, whispering sweet nothings, caressing each other, and kissing until the windows had fogged and we were breathless. My body yearned for his touch in a way I had never experienced before; my past experiences with intimacy extended to kissing and nothing more. I wanted him badly, and I could see that he wanted me as well.
