When Sydney Sherwood was thirteen, she fell in love. She was utterly enamoured with Carter Pearson - the cute, enigmatic, brilliant fourteen year old who lived across the street. But, after only a few months, Carter and his family disappeared, leavi...
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My phone vibrated on my desk; I knew exactly who the message was from and what it said without having to check. Grinning, I stood up and headed out of my room, almost running to the front door.
"You're sure they're both out?" Carter asked the moment I opened the door to him, stepping inside.
I nodded, reassuring him, "Alice is away visiting her boyfriend, and Maya told me this morning that she was going to be at the library all day working on an assignment."
"Great," Carter said, breathy and impatient.
The door slammed shut behind us as he grabbed my waist and pulled me close, wasting no time in kissing me. My fingers were already toying with the hem of his shirt, hands slipping underneath to feel the muscles on his back. We stumbled to my bedroom, too caught up in each other to be careful, and fell clumsily onto the bed.
His lips moved to my jaw, my neck, my collarbones. I tugged the thin material of his shirt up and over his head, before beginning to work on the buttons of my blouse.
Noticing me fumbling, Carter laughed. "You really shouldn't have worn that when you knew I was coming over."
He put one of his hands on top of mine, taking over and moving swiftly to undo all the buttons. I shrugged the blouse off then pulled him closer.
"You're good at that," I murmured between kisses.
"Yeah, well, I've had a lot of practice," he replied.
Maybe another time an offhand comment like that might have made me hesitate, questioning the new Carter I'd come to know. But right now, Carter Pearson, whose body was just as aesthetically pleasing as his face, was topless in my bed, so he could have gotten away with saying pretty much anything, as long as it ended with his mouth on mine.
"God," he breathed, pausing for a moment to look down at me. "I'm really glad we gave up on that whole 'just friends' thing."
When Carter had shown up at my door the morning after Thanksgiving and told me that he couldn't stop thinking about our kiss and how badly he wanted to do it again, I'd been hesitant. He was still with Grace and I'd never done casual dating before. Plus, there was the risk of ruining our still new friendship. But then, unexpectedly, he'd kissed me. It wasn't passionate and drawn out like the previous day, just a couple of chaste seconds of his lips on mine, but it was enough to ignite the same feeling in me as before.
Screw it, I'd thought. If college wasn't the time to have some fun, then when was? And Carter was a seriously good kisser.
He continued to prove this in the two weeks that had passed since Thanksgiving, when we'd met up at every possible opportunity. We'd been discreet about it; neither of my roommates knew about our new arrangement, or even that he came over on Thanksgiving. I knew that would mean talking about it, and I was enjoying this being our secret - a secret that involved very little talking or thinking.
