Hola. This might be short, this might be long. All I know is…it will be grand!

Ha. I'm a dork. And I'm on Oxycotton!

Anyway….recap!

X

-Recap-

I would have gone on listing all the things that weren't wrong with me, but my thoughts were interrupted by a door softly shutting and somebody sitting down next to me.

"Hey." Oh, hey there, Fang. Don't mind me, I'm just sitting in a puddle of my tears.

"Hi." I said weakly. Gotta love that rough, mucus voice you get after a good sob.

"How are you doing?"

"Fucking fantastic, genius." He chuckled and flung an arm around my shoulders…and I didn't pull away.

Yeah, I know. I should have, but I didn't.

"Are you ready to go back in and face the masses, then?" I snorked back some snot (gorgeous, I know) and nodded. He stood up and pulled me to my feet

-End Recap-

X

"Max! Max! Come here!" Ella shouted at me from across the parking lot. I had just gotten out of Grace notes, my 7th period choir class, and was juggling a mixture of sheet music, Chemistry notes and an English lecture while slowly dribbling the soccer ball at my feet. We had been in Chino Valley for about a month and a half, and I had made the varsity soccer team. I was headed to Fang's car to stick all my school stuff in, and then I would go change for practice. Ella was seated on the hood of the Bugster, as we had taken to calling Iggy's car. She was wearing some peachy-colored short-shorts and a flowy white belly shirt that showed off her newly acquired tan. It wasn't hard to see why she had Iggy panting after her looking like that.

"What?" I said as I reached Fang's car, which was parked next to Iggy's, and hefted open the door. Fang and I, despite the rocky start to our friendship, had grown very close over the last six weeks. He was on the boys' soccer team, and he gave me a ride home after practice, since we lived about 20 feet away from each other. Fang appeared behind me and gave me a quick hug as a greeting. I quickly quelled the butterflies that still appeared in my stomach every time we touched, and leaned against Fangs truck.

"Fang and I have something to tell you!" she beamed excitedly.

"You're pregnant and he's your baby daddy?" she gave me an odd look.

"Um, no? Anyway, you're not doing anything for your birthday this weekend, right?"

"Do I ever?"

"No, which is why I planned something for you this year! We got it all cleared with mom, Fang and Iggy can drive, and it's Christmas break! It's perfect!" she was practically bouncing with excitement now.

"Sounds great and all but what is "it", specifically?"

"We're going on a road trip home!"

X

Friday night, all of my things were packed and I was laying in bed, staring at my ceiling decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars. I had forgotten they were there when we had moved back in, but one night I had chanced a look up and seen the eighteen stars on the ceiling. According to my mom, my dad had put them up when I was really little to symbolize the 18 years I was going to live in this house. Obviously, that didn't happen. Sometimes I tried to imagine my dad doing something fatherly like that. All I knew about him were the few meager snippets my mom shared with us. He had left her right around when Ella was born and my only maybe-memory of him was a fuzzy outline of a man painting something, maybe a child's toy, yellow. I wasn't sure if this was truly a memory, though. When I was younger I used to imagine my dad was still with my family and would make up all these scenarios in my head where he actually cared about me, and this could just be the product of something imagined over and over.

I was startled out of my reverie by a light tapping on my window. I flipped over in bed to see Fang arced across the gap between our two houses, tapping on my window with his toenail I smiled to myself as I slipped out of bed and padded across the hardwood floor to crack my window open.

"Can I help you?"

"If you don't let me in in two seconds I'm going to fall."

"One one thouuuuuuusand, two one thouuuuu—."

"I'm going to kill you, Max." I laughed and slid my window all the way open so Fang could tumble inside; he had taken to coming over a couple of times a week. Mostly we would just sit on my bed and talk, sometimes he would help me with math I didn't understand, and sometimes we would just lay next to each other on my windowsill, hang our heads out the window and look up at the stars without saying a word.

He was only wearing basketball shorts, leaving his bare, and suddenly I was very acutely aware of the fact that I was in a sports bra and booty shorts that I usually only wore as a swim suit cover up. Not that we hadn't seen each other's bodies before—we went sprinkler-ing nearly every weekend—but for some reason tonight felt different. My hair was up in a messy bun, which I nervously re-adjusted as he sat down next to me on the windowsill. Cool night air wafted in and tickled my back, and I shivered, more out of nerves and my inner sexual tension (yes, I said it) than anything else.

"Cold?" he raised his eyebrows. I shook my head, but he slid his arm around me anyway. I leaned into his bare chest. (Bad Max. You still have a boyfriend.) His skin was a kind of damp and fragrant from his shower earlier. He smelled like soap and boy deodorant, which doesn't sound that great but, believe me, on him it was the best thing in the world.

Okay, that whole paragraph was defiantly NOT something a friend would say.

Anyway, while I was thinking this, his arm dropped from my shoulders to my waist, and he began rubbing small circles on my stomach with his thumb. I should have pulled away. I should have. But you know what I did instead?

I twined my arms around him and leaned into him even more. He set his chin on the top of my head and captured one of my hands in his own…

…whoa. Friends don't hold hands.

I still didn't pull away.

"Max?" he said after a long moment.

"Uh huh?"

"Do you even like Sam?"

I hesitated.

"…No." His arm tightened around me.

"Then why are you with him?" A valid question.

"Because…I'm going to break up with him. This weekend." His arm got even tighter around me so I was practically sitting in his lap, and little veins of fire were snaking up inside me. I felt him smile as he buried his face in my neck.

"Good." His eyelashes stroked my shoulder and I leaned my head back so my cheek was on his cheek. His brown eyes slid over and caught the gaze of mine, and we just looked at each other for a moment. Then he quickly turned his head and captured my lips in his. I was so surprised I actually gasped into his mouth, but then I quickly regained my composure and kissed him back as he pulled me all the way into his lap and I twined my fingers through his slightly damp hair. Little fireworks were still going through my brain as he pulled away and looked down at me.

"Was… was that okay?" he asked, his voice shaking a little. I smiled up at him.

"Uh huh."

He leaned in more slowly him time, and I could feel his breath caress my cheek before his lips connected with mine and his tongue lightly traced my lower lip. This was nothing like the wild, frenzied kiss in the parking lot that I had dreamed about every night for six weeks. This kiss was sweet and slow and passionate, but I could feel him holding back.

And I didn't want him to hold back. Not at all. Because I was sick of holding back from the person that I was completely, 100 percent, totally in love with.

Yup. You heard me. I was in love with Fang.

I flipped my body so I was straddling him, hoping that this would alert him that I wanted more. It seemed to work, and as I felt him smile against my mouth he hooked his arms behind under me and picked me up, still kissing me, and carried me over to my bed, were he set me down and rolled on top of me, our legs getting tangled and our chests pressed together. I hooked my leg behind his hip as he traced my sides with his hands, teasing the edge of my sports bra with his thumb.

This boy did wonders to me. Dear lord. He was driving me crazy. He feathered kisses away from my lips and down my neck and across my collarbone. He looked up at me, as if asking for permission, and I nodded. The sports bra was off in one deft move and he was back to kissing every inch of my face.

He didn't touch me other than around my waist and face. After a few more minutes of our make-out session, we bother began to get lazy with our kisses and eventually stopped. He curled his body against mine, our bare chests pressed together, and just before I dozed off, he leaned in and whispered, very quietly, "Goodnight, Max."

"Goodnight, Fang."

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