Always Forever Maybe by Anica Mrose Rissi

Author:Anica Mrose Rissi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Three

SPRING FEVER HIT OUR SCHOOL AT FULL TILT, AN orgy of madness and hope, more frenzied than even in years before. My classmates were like wind-up toys that had been cranked slowly, all winter long, and were now finally released to their literal and metaphorical flips, spasms, and somersaults. The hallways and lunchroom were mayhem, and half the teachers seemed to give up on even trying to make us learn. We were seniors. That was fine with us.

I didn’t know if my parents felt sorry for me after squashing my romantic prospects, or if, like everyone else I knew, they were distracted by the slight lift of winter’s grays and forgot to be total dictators for a minute, but now that I had decided to ignore them and their rules, they were being uncharacteristically lenient. When I wasn’t at school or working my shift, I was “studying with Jo” almost every waking moment of the next few weeks, and my parents barely said a peep. Of course, no real studying got done. Kissing, though: A lot of kissing got done. Caffeinated walks by the river, chilly picnics in the park, and hot chocolate and games of Uno with Aiden’s little brother and sister, who were even cuter in person than in their pictures, and adorably in love with him. Kendra was prone to misty tears over games she didn’t win, and to fits if she thought you were letting her, but Aiden was a master at both sneakily playing to lose and turning her frowns into giggles. I loved being his coconspirator in it.

From everything I knew about Aiden’s history with his mom, I’d kind of expected the whole family to be damaged by how she’d left them. But Alex and Kendra seemed like normal, happy kids, and their dad, though I rarely saw him, always offered an easy smile and a laid-back “Well, if it isn’t the famous Bee.” Maybe Kendra and Alex had been young enough when it happened that they weren’t as affected as Aiden. Or maybe once Aiden cleaned up, he’d been able to help them adjust and get through it. He was an attentive big brother and it was clear just being near him made them feel safe and free—much how I felt on our long rides to nowhere, the motor humming through us, my arms wrapped around him, our hearts and bodies flying.

There was more sex happening, too. We were getting good at it, I thought. Most of our afternoons were spent naked in his apartment, exploring every inch of each other’s skin, sharing every random thought in our heads. We were doing exactly that in the stolen extra hour after one of my shifts, when Aiden’s kiss to my kneecap was punctuated by the sound of a car door closing in the driveway—his father returning home from work. I rolled onto my back. “Do you think your dad knows we’re having sex?” I asked.

Aiden kissed his way up to my hip bone. “I doubt he thinks about it.

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