LITMIR.BIZ

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one kiss, I grab each side of her face and press her forcefully against me, locking my lips around hers with ravenous intent. She moans into my mouth and I kiss her harder, wrapping one arm around her back and pulling the rest of her body closer.

      And then the kiss breaks. Our lips linger on one another for a long moment until she lifts away and looks down at me with an enigmatic expression I’ve never seen before, one that does something to my heart that I’ve never felt before.

      And then her face falls and the expression withers into the darkness, replaced by something confused and wounded, but she tries to hide it by smiling down at me.

      “With a kiss like that,” she says, grinning playfully as if to mask something deeper, “you’d probably never have to sleep with me.”

      I can’t help but laugh; it is kind of ridiculous, but I’ll let her believe what she wants.

      She crawls off my lap and lies beside me again, resting the back of her head in the cradle of her hands.

      “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

      I look up at the stars with her, but I don’t see them really; she’s all I can think about and about that kiss.

      “Yeah, they are beautiful.”

      And so are you …

      “Andrew?”

      “Yeah?”

      We keep our eyes on the sky.

      “I wanted to say thank you.”

      “For what?”

      She answers after a pause: “For everything: for making me shove your clothes into that bag instead of folding them and for turning the music down in the car so it wouldn’t wake me up and for singing about raisins.” Her head falls to the side and so does mine. She looks me in the eyes and says, “And for making me feel alive.”

      A smile warms my face and I glance away and say, “Well, everybody needs help feeling alive again every once in a while.”

      “No,” she says seriously, and my gaze falls back on hers, “I didn’t say again, Andrew; for making me feel alive for the first time.”

      My heart reacts to her words and I can’t respond. But I can’t look away from her, either. Reason is screaming at me again, telling me to stop this before it’s too late, but I can’t. I’m too selfish.

      Camryn smiles gently and I return it and then we both gaze up at the stars again. The hot July night is just right with a light breeze blowing through the wide open space and not a cloud in the sky. There are thousands of crickets and frogs and a few whippoorwills singing into the night. I always did like to listen to those birds.

      The quiet is shattered suddenly by Camryn’s shrieking voice and she’s jumping up from the blanket faster than a cat from a bathtub.

      “A snake!” She’s pointing with one hand and the other is clasped over her mouth. “Andrew! It’s right there! Kill it!”

      I jump up when I see something black slithering over the foot of the blanket. I jump back quickly to keep my distance and then I go to stomp on it.

      “No-no-no-no!” she screams, waving her hands in front of her. “Don’t kill it!”

      I blink back, confused. “But you just said to kill it.”

      “Well, I didn’t mean it literally!”

      She’s still freaking out, her back slightly hunched over as if shielding the rest of her body from the snake, which is hilarious.

      I raise my hands out, palms up. “What, you want me to pretend to kill it?” I laugh, shaking my head at how funny she is.

      “No just—there’s no way I can sleep out here now.” She grabs my arm. “Let’s just go.” She’s literally shaking and trying not to laugh and cry at the same time.

      “Alright,” I say and lean over to snatch the blanket off the grass now that the snake has moved off it. I shake it out with one hand since Camryn’s holding on for life to the other. Then I take her hand and we start to head back toward the car.

      “I hate snakes, Andrew!”

      “I can see that, babe.”

      I’m trying so hard not to laugh.

      As we’re walking across the field, she starts to pull me along a little, picking up the pace. She yelps when her almost-bare foot steps on a harmless soft mound of soil and I see we might not make it back to the car before she faints.

      “Come here,” I say, stopping her in mid-sprint. I pull her around behind me and help her onto my back, holding her straddled around my waist with her thighs in my arms.

       Twenty-Two

      Camryn wakes me up the next morning adjusting her head on my lap in the front seat of the car.

      “Where are we?” she asks, rising up; the sun beams in through the car windows and pools against the inside of her door.

      “About half an hour from New Orleans,” I say, reaching behind me and rubbing a muscle loose in my back.

      We got back on the road last night after leaving the field and intended to just drive on to New Orleans, but I was so damn tired I almost fell asleep at the wheel. She had fallen asleep first. So, I pulled off the side of the road, leaned my head back and passed out. I could’ve slept more comfortably in the backseat alone, but I would rather be stiff in the morning if it meant I was next to her when I woke up.

      Speaking of stiff …

      I wipe the blur from my eyes and move around some to work out a few muscles. And to make sure my shorts are loose enough in the front that my obvious hard-on isn’t a blatant conversation piece.

      Camryn stretches and yawns and then pulls her legs up and props her bare feet on the dashboard, causing her shorts to ride up far past her thighs.

      Not a good idea first thing in the morning.

      “You must’ve been really tired,” she says, pulling her fingers through her hair to break apart the braid.

      “Yeah, if I tried to drive any longer we might’ve ended up wrapped around a tree.”

      “You’re gonna start letting me drive some, Andrew, or—”

      “Or what?” I smirk at her. “You’ll whine and lay your head on my lap and say please?”

      “It worked last night, didn’t it?”

      She has a point.

      “Look, I don’t mind if you drive.” I glance over at her and then start the engine. “I promise, after New Orleans, wherever we go, I’ll let you take the wheel for a while, OK?”

      A sweet forgiving smile lights up her face.

      I pull back onto the highway after an SUV speeds past and Camryn goes back to working her fingers through her hair. Then she starts winding the hair back into a neater braid so fast and without having to look that I can’t wrap my head around how something like that is done.

      My eyes keep trailing back to her naked legs though.

      I really need to stop doing that.

      I turn away and glance out the window beside me, back and forth between it and the windshield.

      “We need to find a laundromat soon, too,” she says, snapping the rubber band in place around the end of her hair. “I’ve run out of clean clothes.”

      I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to ‘adjust myself’ and when she starts looking down into her purse, I take it.

      “Is

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