I want to spend every day like this, with Lennox’s arms wrapped around me under the glare of the hot July sun. Just as I nuzzle my face into her neck, she jerks away and sneak attacks me with a wave of tickles. I gasp for air as I try to dodge her poky little fingers, but when dodging her doesn’t seem to be working, I tickle back. We end up falling onto our towel like something out of a cheesy commercial, a tangle of limbs as we land side by side. The only thing that redeems us from being an utter cliché of youthful love is that when we land, her nose beaks me right in the eye and I have to hold a Coke from the cooler on it for the next ten minutes to keep it from swelling.
“I’m so sorry,” Lennox keeps repeating and she takes a turn pressing the can into my socket whenever my arms get tired from holding it. I just laugh and pucker my lips up with an expectant look on my face. She kisses me and after a few short months together, she doesn’t even look around to make sure there aren’t people watching. She is only focused on me and just like it’s been since the day we met, all I notice is her.
“Get a room,” Jake teases as he and Marley walk up behind us. I never would have imagined they would make it to the summer when Marley decided she liked him; I kind of figured Marley would chew him up and spit him out and then we’d have a new friend group dynamic to negotiate. It hadn’t turned out that way and the two of them kept exchanging sheepish grins as they stood in the sun with their fingers locked together, droplets of water cuddling down their bodies.
“Us first,” Marley teases him back, with a quick pinch to his hip. He responds to her nipping fingers with tickles and they collapseon the ground in a heap. I roll my eyes, but it makes me happier than I’d admit watching the ease of their relationship. It kind of feels like it was meant to be.
That night, Lennox drives us back to my house and I pretend not to be terrified of the way people tailgate us as she creeps down the highway. I resist the urge to lecture her about the way she overuses her brakes and stops the car when she should really just slow down. When she pulls into my driveway, I release a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding, and she snorts back a laugh.
“That bad, huh?” she asks, and I try to play it off, but I find myself laughing as I try to fib.
“You’ll get better,” I say as I weave my fingers between hers.
We walk over to the park and, without even a plan, gravitate to the bridge where we first met. The sun has set, and the sky is all violets and fuchsias: a perfect summer sky. We lean on our elbows against the bridge’s railing.
“I wanted to kiss you the first day I met you here,” I confess, much more direct than usual. I don’t see the point in wasting any more time keeping things unsaid.
For once, hers is the face that’s painted in a soft crimson, but she doesn’t look away from me like she always has. Instead, a little grin crosses her face and she snakes her arm around my waist.
“Ditto,” she says, and I giggle. “The next time we saw each other here, I’d been waiting for three hours hoping I would see you again.”
I think back to the way I’d hoped she’d been waiting that day and how I’d played Sherlock Holmes, investigating her cracked hands and pink cheeks like they were clues. How I had been so sure I was wrong about her feelings after she’d made the comment about wanting to make a friend. I play that off and try to make it seem like I’d seen right through her.
“I knew it,” I say with what I hope passes for a knowing smile.
This time she giggles and shakes her head. “No, you didn’t. As much as I did like you, I got a kick out of what a mess you were that day, trying to saunter over to me like a kid playing dress up in her mom’s heels.”
Embarrassment washes over me, but I shrug it off. What does it matter now? I might’ve looked silly then, but I got the girl, and now here we are full circle from where we started. With a light tug of Lennox’s bangs, I pull her face towards mine. Our lips meet and the warmth that spreads between us radiates through my whole body.
We haven’t said it before now, but in that moment, it comes out so easily that I don’t give it a second thought: “I love you, Lennox.”
Her eyes fix onto mine, no staring at the ceiling, no looking at a place behind me. Instead of a smirk, she smiles a wide smile. Her face is against mine again and she’s kissing so hard that she’s breathless when she pulls away and says it back: “I love you, too, Hannah.”
I think about how it all started between us, how all I wanted the day we met was to disappear into some world where something would happen and how awesome it was that my wish was just granted. How awesome it was that that was the day when everything started to change and my boring, nothing life became so full. My arms certainly were full: full of this strong, intense person that I almost wanted to inhale so that I could just have all of her.
As if she can read my mind, Lennox tilts her head at me, her arms still wrapped around my waist. “You know what I think?” she asks me. As I shake my head, she goes on, “I think we should make a new list. Things we want to experience and try together.”
My cheeks feel stiff from smiling and I nod again, scared that I will stumble over the words if I try to form them now. How can I tell her that the list would be one word? Everything. Looking into the eyes of this girl I love, I know there’s not enough paper in the world to list the experiences I want to share with her. Every touch, every kiss, everything that spreads across this world of ours, I want to share it with her.