“Okay,” he whispered, his breath hot against my cheek. “Here we go.”

His mouth came down on mine gently, without pressure, and I don’t have words to describe what it was like outside of warm and wonderful and alive, and none of those words even come close. After a minute our mouths opened and my tongue touched his, and the furthest thing from my mind would have been the words ew or no or gross. He tasted like red curry and sweet tea. Electricity zinged down my body and pooled low in my belly and I thought, Wow. So this is how it feels. All this time, I’d wondered. I was almost 18 years old and I’d never felt so connected with another person.

I curled my hand around the solidness of his shoulder and pulled him closer. He made a small rough noise deep in his chest and changed the angle, and our glasses banged against each other. We broke away from each other, laughing.

“That was . . . ,” he started.

“Spectacular,” I breathed.

“Spectacular,” he repeated, his brown eyes sparkling. Because the results of our experiment were conclusive:

Me + Steven + dating = spontaneous combustion

He tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear, his thumb lingering on my cheek. I shivered. I wanted to kiss him again.

“Good night, Lex,” he said, and then he turned abruptly and jogged back to his car. He sat there for a few minutes without driving off, and I wondered what he was doing until my phone buzzed with a series of rapid-fire texts. Which read:

There are some things I didn’t get to say before.

You are an amazing girl, Lex. You’re smart and funny and kind and beautiful. You’re the whole package.

Thanks for saying yes.

I’ll see you tomorrow?

I texted back that yes, I would love to see him tomorrow. We grinned at each other through the glass of his car window, and he drove away, and I went inside.

It was June 20.

I’d get six months with Steven, six months to the day, 183 days of kisses, before the equation would change again.

9.

TY AND I ARE WALKING IN THE WOODS. There aren’t a lot of woods to choose from in Nebraska—we’re more of a plains-type state—but when we were kids Mom and Dad took us to this one part of the Nebraska National Forest where there were tall trees and a lake and a campground. We camped in tents, Ty and me in one and our parents in another. I can’t remember how old we were, but little, I think. Little enough that our very own tent with just the two of us seemed like the greatest adventure. We stayed up half the night whispering, making shadow puppets with our flashlights, gazing up through the see-through mesh at the top of our tent at the dark shapes of the tree branches swaying over us, imagining the stars. The next morning, we got up early to fish on the lake. Ty caught five fish to my four, but he threw his back into the water. He was tenderhearted, even then, too sweet to murder an innocent fish. But Dad bashed mine in the head with a special hammer and fried them up over the campfire for lunch. And then he said to Ty, “This is reality. Eat up.”

Dad’s not so much with the sentimentality. My apple didn’t fall far from his tree, I guess.

Anyway. It’s those woods, I think. Where Ty and I are walking now.

He’s wearing a white tee and dark jeans.

The sun is going down somewhere behind us. I don’t know where we’re walking. I’m wearing my backpack, and it’s heavy. I want to stop, just so I can get a good look, in the fading light, at Ty’s face. I’m starting to forget it. The shape of his nose. His ears. His lips, which were perpetually chapped. I used to say to him, “Dude, invest in some ChapStick already.” Now I just want to memorize him, every detail I can get, chapped lips and all, to push the image of him yellow and stiff and covered in a layer of funeral-home makeup out of my brain.

“Hey,” I say to him. “Can we rest for a minute?”

He turns to me. “You’re tired already? We only just started.” But he sits down on a large rock. “Give me some of your water.”

I find I’m carrying a large water bottle. I hold on to it. “What’s the magic word?” I tease.

“Puh-leeze,” he says, reaching, smiling, and I shake my head.

“Nope.”

“Moist,” he says. “The magic word is moist.”

“Ew. No.”

“It’s not delusion, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Shut up. I was improvising.”

“What word are you going to write your essay about?”

“I’m not planning to do that assignment,” I inform him.

“You. Aren’t going to do your homework. You.”

“How do you even know about that?”

He shrugs. “What word?” he persists. “What word would you write about?”

“Doofus,” I retort.

“Brilliant. It fits you,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “Now give me the water, Lex. I’m dying here.”

I arch an eyebrow at him.

He smirks. “Figuratively speaking.”

I hand him the water. He gulps down like half of it, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand in a gesture so familiar it makes my chest ache, and hands the bottle back.

I miss you, I want to say. It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I think, If I call attention to the fact that this is a dream, then I’ll wake up.

I don’t want to wake up.

Something snaps in the woods. A flock of birds startles from a tree and takes flight, their wings crackling in the air. The light is fading by the minute. I look at Ty. He’s staring off into the darkest part of the woods.