I’m thinking I’m going to have to figure out some more Luminescent Juliet lyrics when an awful thought occurs to me. “Are any about me?” My tone sounds pathetically fraught.
His lips twist into a frown.
“Sam?”
He glances out the window while I try to stay patient. He finally says, “There’s one.”
My teeth clench and grind until I let out a deep breath. “How bad is it? How bitchy am I painted? How—I mean I get it, I hurt you and you had every right to speak the truth, but . . .” My mind starts flipping through songs. None of them are about a heartless bitch. But I haven’t dissected all the lyrics yet.
“Hey,” he says, as his knuckle lifts my chin, “it’s not that bad. Really not bad at all. I wrote it remembering the sweet girl who’d filled my thoughts and spent time talking and joking around with me. Not the girl—”
“Who left you in the barn without a glance,” I say, finishing for him. “I’m sor—”
His fingers cover my mouth as he shakes his head. “No more sorry. You were right. The past is the past.” He scoots toward me, his knees sliding across the leather. “We’re here now. I want to live in the now, and let the past go.” His hands cup my face. “You were my first, and now you’re mine.”
Am I? When we’re intimate, there’s no doubt. Outside our passion, things aren’t as clear. I search his steady gaze, and drown a bit in the bright blue sea of it. Okay, fine. I am his. I rub a thumb over his bottom lip. “You’re mine too.”
He smiles softly and leans forward.
The swish of the curtain opening has Sam pausing.
“Hey, lovebirds,” Gabe says. “Lunch is served. Hot lunch. As in Gabe’s simmered steak and potatoes. The Crock-Pot with the battery inverter thing worked like a fucking charm.”
Sam’s gaze stays on me while he tells Gabe, “Great. We’ll be there in a second.”
“One last smooch?” Gabe says with a laugh, walking away.
“Several,” Sam says, reaching for my face so he can kiss me thoroughly. Standing, he grabs my hand. “One and a half more days, and we’re off this damn bus.”
“Wait,” I say, pulling him back. He looks down at me. I bite my lip, then ask, “When you said I was your first, what did you mean?”
A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “You were the first girl I ever slept with.”
I blink at him. “Really?”
He sits down. “Seth was the playboy.” He points to the book on the table. “I was the geek. We didn’t do the band thing for real until senior year, and, well, I wasn’t used to the attention.” He adds with a frown, “Yet.”
“You were my first too,” I blurt.
He cocks his head. “You and Seth?”
I shake my head a bit too violently. “No, never.”
“But he said . . .”
My gaze turns glaring.
“Yeah, well, it never mattered even when I thought that you two—” He slaps his forehead. “Fuck. How did I not know that you were a virgin?”
He looks so unhappy with himself, I reach for his hands. “Maybe because you were a virgin too?”
“Still,” he says, wincing.
“And we were kind of lost in the moment and drunk. I mean, we didn’t even use a condom.”
His hands tighten on mine. “I would have stood by you if you were pregnant. Seth falling off the deep end or not.”
“I know. I knew it then,” I say, realizing that I did. Sam would have been there for me.
He nods, but his eyes are troubled.
Probably because I’m slowly seeing the past through a different, more mature lens, my emotions are as troubled as his gaze.
“Hey, assholes!” Gabe yells from the front of the bus. “I didn’t peel potatoes for nothing!”
I stand. “We keep saying it, but we really need to let the past go. We’ve got now and the future,” I say with a bright smile, and tug him out of the room before Gabe loses it.
After performing, signing a few autographs, and having pictures taken with fans, Sam leads me to the bus. He drags me past snoring Gary to the back of the bus, which is parked behind an arena in Salt Lake City. And after shutting the curtain to our little cave, he drags me to the couch and pulls me onto his lap.
“We’ve got about forty minutes,” he says, pushing his hands under my shirt.
He goes to kiss me but I turn my head. “We’re not having sex with Gary sleeping in the front room,” I whisper.
His lips slide along my cheek. “Who said anything about sex?”
“Sam,” I warn.
“Just want some semi-alone time.” He tugs my head down and kisses me.
Though the kiss pulls me into the passion his mouth always creates, I push at his chest. “Wait, wait,” I gasp. “I need to tell you something.”
Sighing, he falls forward, his forehead against my shoulder. “What?”
“Well . . .” I say slowly, trying to collect my thoughts, even though the topic I’m about to bring up has been on my mind all day. During their sound checks, while I ran the booth—and as I shot photos of them performing, of Sam performing—that was when the lightbulb clicked on and everything made sense. “I know we both said to leave the past in the past, but . . .”
He looks up at me, his lips turning into a thin line.
“I slowly came to realize something today. I didn’t ever truly like Seth. I was in love with the idea of him. The idea that the lead singer, the guy all the girls wanted, wanted me. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a total airhead, there were times that Seth was charming—”
“I don’t want to talk about my brother and you,” Sam says, interrupting in a tight tone.
I put my hand up. “Wait. Let me get to the point. Seth and I were superficial. He’d call and text me all week, then ignore me until the end of the night at the parties I rushed to.”
Sam groans against my shoulder.
“During most of those parties, I was with you. Until today, I’d forgotten about the party at the lake, where we lay on the dock, looking at the stars, talking about music and college. Or the time you drove me all the way home when Jill took off with some guy. You introduced me to the Violent Femmes and Moby. Remember that night we lit those firecrackers—”
Sam leans back and looks at me. Despondency lines his features. “Peyton, are you telling me that until now you didn’t remember any of our time together?”
“I had . . . maybe not forgotten, but I tried to block everything after the fallout. I felt guilty because why would I sleep with you but not my boyfriend? I didn’t understand myself at all. I know that now.”
He grabs my shoulders. “We need to leave this shit alone. We were kids.”
I shake my head. “I was superficial, Sam. I’m certain, looking back, I was falling for you, but I was blinded by what Seth represented—the attention, the other girls being jealous of me. It went to my head.”
“I’m okay with the past, Peyton. You don’t have to do this.”
“It was always you.” I grab his hand and clasp it to my heart. “You were here even then,” I say, leaning toward him and making our gazes level. “No one else has ever been.”
He stares at me, lets the truth of my words settle. His other hand trembles slightly as he pushes a strand of my hair back. “It’s the same for me. The girls between then and now are a haze. It’s always been you for me too.”
I can’t help smiling as I press my lips to his.
We’re content to hold each other, kissing softly and sighing into each other’s mouth, until Sam pushes gently on my back. His hands settle on my thighs. “Your boots are hot,” he says in a whisper, bending to kiss a knee. His hand slides up my thigh, brushing the edge of my panties. “And I love this skirt.”
As his mouth, warm and sweet and soft, slides up my inner thigh, I pant out, “Sam?”