Charlee has my arm. She has my arm—my arm that’s rigid from pleasure, from her touch—in her little fingers. She holds my other one, too and she’s right there, that sweet candy perfume stripping the rest of the strength from my body, and it escapes in a soft, breathy sigh.

Finishing my thoughts aloud meant saying how my dad had passed, and I had failed. How I had smoked joints and lay in bed enabling my hopelessness. I’d been the ugly in my world.

You know there’s this gaping space between us, and if I leaned forward I’d grab Dex’s shirt without ever touching him. You know there’s a three-inch-thick glass wall separating us.Now we know, too.

His kiss was light but lingering, like smoke from shivering lips on a freezing winter morning.

He pries me from his chest and drops his hand from the back of my head, tracing my ear, along my jawline. He snatches his fingers a moment before they press into my lip.