20
Sam
Around midnight on a Thursday in July, Sam was sitting on her bed listening to Wyatt work on a new song in the treehouse. She’d been drawing him there since the first night he kissed her. His legs dangling over the edge, the moon over the water lighting up the space. She’d done eight versions of this drawing and she’d started to think the details of the treehouse didn’t matter as much as the opening she’d seen in his eyes. She wanted to crawl right into that space. The first versions of the drawing were overdone, but this was the one she liked best, with the whole scene in outline and only his eyes drawn in intricate detail.
Sam had gone to town for dinner with her parents and then to a movie, an excruciating four hours, which meant she wouldn’t see him until tomorrow. She and Wyatt had driven all the way to Garnet Bay earlier in the day, presumably to surf, but had ended up making out in the back of the truck instead.
“That’s it,” he’d whispered into her ear, the full weight of his body on her.
“That’s what?” she asked.
“My favorite sound. It’s like you’re catching your breath. It’s my favorite thing in the world. I’m going to write a song about it.”
“You’re my favorite thing in the world,” Sam said, and, although she knew for a fact this was true and that he already knew it, she felt completely laid bare.
He lifted himself onto his elbow so he could look her in the eye. It was an eternity before he said, “I love you, Sam.”
“Are you sure?” she said, mainly because she wanted to hear him say it again.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve loved you my whole life. But not like this, like I do now.”
Sam hadn’t heard anything anyone had said at dinner that night. She’d missed the entire point of the movie. She was scheduled to work in the morning, which meant she wouldn’t see Wyatt until lunchtime. This seemed impossibly long as she grabbed her finished drawing and made her way downstairs and out the back door and through the dunes to the rope ladder. Wyatt was right where she’d drawn him, brow furrowed and legs dangling.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, sitting next to him.
“Good,” he said, and kissed her.
“I drew this. I wanted you to have it.” She handed him the drawing and watched him take it in. “I know it doesn’t look finished, but I was just trying to get that expression, and I didn’t want all the other stuff to take away from it.”
“It’s incredible,” he said.
Sam felt relieved and also kind of embarrassed. “Let’s hang it up.” She got up and found a nail sticking out of one of the side walls. “Here?”
“That’s going to wreck it,” he said. “We can get a frame or something tomorrow.”
She loved that she’d created something that mattered to him. “Let me just stick it here. And if you think it’s wrecked I can make another one. I’m not going anywhere.”
Wyatt smiled at this, and she pressed the paper onto the nail, making a small hole in the top of the drawing. She liked the look of it, rustic on the wood plank.
She walked past him and lay down on the pile of blankets and pillows he now kept there just for this reason. Wyatt lay next to her and took her in his arms. “I really do love you, Sam.”
Sam rolled on top of him. “I love you too. No question.” She kissed him and luxuriated in the feel of the full length of her body on his. She pulled off his shirt and then hers. She was still in her bikini and watched his face as he slowly pulled on the red string around her neck and then the one at her back. She tossed it away and then bent down to him, letting the feeling of her bare chest on his move throughout her body. He kissed her, and she shivered.
He ran his fingers along her spine.
“Tell me again,” she said into his neck.
“I love you.”
“Tell me all the time, okay?”
“Promise,” he said. He kissed her again and moved on top of her. He ran his hands down the sides of her body. She immediately wrapped her legs around his to keep him there. She was astonished by how much she wanted this.
Sam looped her thumbs under the elastic of Wyatt’s shorts and started to pull them down. He caught her hands in his and gathered them to his chest. “Sam, what are we doing here?”
“I want to,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“This is my surest thing.”
Looking back, Sam could think of nothing more natural than the two of them losing their virginity that night. There was no pretense of experience. There was no awkwardness about the hopeful box of condoms he’d stashed in his guitar case. Wyatt was like the ocean, and her body knew exactly what to do. As they lay there afterward in the moonlight, Wyatt whispered, “Sam, I am,” and she thought she knew what he meant.