Chord

  When our plates had been cleared, they were whisked away and the slightly damp check deposited between us. I snatched it before she could even reach for it.

  “I planned this, I pay,” I said, waving it in front of her.

  “Fine, fine. But on our next date, I’m paying.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  “Kiss on it?” We smooched and I put enough cash on the table for our meal plus a generous tip. We’d timed things right because the line was nearly thirty people deep when we walked out.

  “Look,” Cordelia said in my ear, nudging me. There were two girls in line holding hands. They were probably a few years older than us. I tried not to stare as we walked by them to the van.

  “I hope you don’t have anything that involves running in the near future planned,” she said, rubbing her stomach.

  “Nope,” I said. I plugged the next location into the GPS, hiding my phone so she couldn’t see it.

  “What is planned next?” she said, trying to see. I pulled my phone away and started the music.

  “That’s for me to know and you to not know until we get there,” I said, being careful to maneuver the van out of the parking lot without taking out any other cars. I was doing pretty well for someone who had literally never driven a car larger than a sedan before. I conveniently left that out when I asked Elise to borrow it.

  She huffed in the passenger seat, but she was smiling.

  CORDELIA

  I knew she had planned this down to the minute. Probably to the second. There had also been spreadsheets involved that she wouldn’t tell me about.

  She was having so much fun with this all and it was so fucking cute, I could barely stand it. The diner was just the first part of the date and it had already exceeded my expectations. Not that I’d had any expectations. All kinds of potential scenarios had gone through my head while I was trying to get to sleep last night. Some of them were a little absurd. Like her taking us to the airport and getting on a plane to go to another country for lunch. After all, we were college students. Plane tickets weren’t in the budget.

  Part of me wanted to tell her to pull the van over in a secluded spot so we could make out in the back for a while. If we took the seats out, we could very easily put a blow-up mattress in the back and do all kinds of things.

  The only thing stopping me was the fact that Chase would hate going off the schedule that she’d so carefully planned. Oh, and the fact that we’d borrowed the van from Elise and I wouldn’t be able to look her in the face if we had sex in the back of the van.

  It took us a while to get to our second stop. I hadn’t been in this part of Maine before. I was from the coast, so I stuck mostly there. We were heading up north.

  “We’re not going to Canada, are we? I didn’t bring my passport.” I was only half-joking. I wouldn’t put it past her to drive to another country. I’d never been to Canada and Quebec was supposed to be amazing.

  “Uh, no. We’ll be staying in the country for this one. Although, that would have been a good idea. Fuck, I should have done that.” She slammed the steering wheel with her hand.

  “C, calm down. Whatever you have planned is going to be incredible. I know it.” I rubbed her shoulder. I needed to not say things like that.

  “Are you sure?” she said. Oh, she was so cute.

  “Pull over,” I said. We were still on the highway, but we were getting into a more rural area.

  “What?” she said, looking at me as if I had asked her to set the car on fire.

  “Pull. Over.” She did and put on her warning lights.

  I leaned over and grabbed her face in both hands.

  “This date is perfect. You are perfect. This day is perfect.” I kissed her before she could protest. I kissed her until she melted in my arms and I crawled into her lap and nothing would have dislodged me.

  “You’re perfect,” I said, rubbing my nose with hers.

  “I’m not, but that’s a really nice thing to say,” she said. I tucked her hair behind her ears. The steering wheel was digging into my back and the shifter was digging into my leg and my head was hitting the roof, but I didn’t really care that much.

  “Every time you doubt yourself, I’ll be here to remind you.” She kissed me again and squeezed my ass. I squeaked and jumped a little, hitting my head on the roof.

  “Ow,” I said.

  “Sorry!” I figured I couldn’t stay in her lap for much longer without doing myself serious injury, so I reluctantly scrambled back to my seat.

  “A concussion definitely isn’t in the plan for today, I’m guessing,” I said while rubbing my head.

  “Definitely not. No injuries allowed,” she said, looking over her shoulder to turn back onto the highway.

  We had to stop for gas a little while later.

  “I promised to fill up the tank for Elise,” Chase said. It wasn’t cheap and I winced at the price on the pump, but she paid it with her card. This date was getting expensive. I hoped she wasn’t going to go into debt just to make this special for me. I didn’t need a fancy dinner or fireworks. I just needed her.

  “Where the hell are we going?” I asked a little while later.

  “You’ll see,” she said.

  I sat back in my seat and listened to the music.

  “WE’RE HERE,” SHE SAID as we pulled onto the campus of one of the sister schools to our college.

  “Uhhhh, are we transferring?” I was completely at a loss. What could we possibly see here?

  “Nope. Come on.” She got out and ran around the side of the van to open my door for me. Chase held her hand out to me and I didn’t hesitate to take it. If she was leading me into an open flame, I’d go with her. I’d go anywhere with her.

  Chase tugged me toward one of the buildings.

  “The Northern Maine Museum of Science,” I read. I mean, neither of us was that wild about science, but I figured maybe they had something cool here that I just didn’t know about. I’d grown up on the coast with a ton of lighthouses and colonial settlements and forts. This was completely new.

  She pulled me through the door and down a hall, passing a ton of exhibits, but I didn’t say anything. Chase was a woman on a mission.

  “Here we are,” she said, motioning to a giant yellow arch that went from the floor through to the ceiling.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “The sun. You are looking at the start of the Maine Solar System Model. The sun is here, and the other planets are in other places. It spans 95 miles. We’re going to see it all. Including Pluto, even though it’s not a planet anymore. RIP, Pluto.” Her face was completely lit up and I couldn’t stop looking at her.

  “I thought I could show you the universe, or at least a little part of it.”

  Fuck. I felt like I was going to cry.

  “This is amazing, Chase. Holy shit.” I hugged her.

  “I hoped you were going to like it.”

  “I love it, seriously.” I held her and I felt as if I was going to explode with happiness.

  “Thank you,” I said, pulling back to look at her face. She was brighter than the sun. There were other people coming into the building and looking at the arch, taking pictures, and chatting, but they might as well have been in another galaxy. Right now, there was just me and her. A girl who was my entire world.

  I fucking loved her. I fucking loved her and I didn’t know when it had happened, just like Stella had said. Maybe it had been on that first day. Maybe it had been when we first kissed. Maybe it was when I first showed myself to her. It didn’t matter, really.

  The revelation settled into my bones and I didn’t know what to do with it. Did I tell her? I couldn’t tell her. It was too soon. I was always the more impulsive of the two of us. Granted, I had kissed her first, but everything else had been all her. Kissing was one thing, saying those three words was something else entirely.

  Plus, we hadn’t even finished our first date, my dad knew nothing about what was going on with Chase, and I
hadn’t begun to untangle the mess that was my sexuality.

  It wasn’t the right time. Even though I knew it, now was not the time to tell her. I held the words in my mouth, swallowed them down.

  “Let’s take a picture,” she said, and we posed by the yellow arch, with me tucked under her arm. I made her take one where we made silly faces, as well as a serious one.

  We walked slowly back to the car and I pushed her against the door and kissed her senseless for a little while.

  “Does that mess up your schedule?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I’ll allow it.”

  “You didn’t factor in any kissing breaks? Shame on you, Chase Hillier. I’m going to punish you for that.”

  Her eyes were bright.

  “How are you going to do that?” she asked. In response, I stuck my tongue in her mouth. That seemed like the best way to answer.

  We had a few minutes of breathless making out until Chase’s phone went off. She’d set alarms so we didn’t stay too long at one place.

  “Time to go see Mercury.”

  WE MADE IT THROUGH Jupiter before we had to stop and have lunch. Chase had that planned out too. That one was massive, and had just been repainted. We were lucky they had put it back up or else we would have been missing a planet.

  The restaurant was a nice bistro where we gorged ourselves on brie with mango chutney with crackers, and I had the best grilled cheese Panini in my entire life. She paid again and I let her without much of a fight.

  Then it was on to the other planets, finishing in Houlton with Pluto, which was itty bitty. You could barely see it in the pictures we took, but it didn’t matter.

  Then it was on to an old-fashioned candy shop where we bought too many jelly beans and sour worms and gummy bears and tons of other things. We probably went a little overboard, but we had enough candy for the rest of the school year.

  “This is study food,” Chase said with a serious face. “We need the candy for studying.” I decided to just go with it as I filled a bag with salt-water taffy.

  We were driving back to campus, I figured based on the GPS directions, and I decided it was time for me to change things up.

  “Pull over here,” I said, pointing at an exit. “I have to pee.” That seemed like a reasonable excuse.

  Chase drove until we found a gas station and she pulled in.

  “Okay, so I lied about needing to pee.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I really want to make out with you in the back of this van?” She gaped at me for a second.

  “You could have just said that.” She nearly peeled out of the gas station, which was saying something since she was driving a van. Chase drove for a few more minutes until she found a more secluded place to pull the van over. She turned the key and faced me.

  “Okay. Let’s make out.”

  I laughed and dove into the backseat. She followed me more carefully.

  “Get over here,” I said, pulling at her. I was laying across the bench seats. It was fortuitous that she’d borrowed the van. My small car wouldn’t be as good for this situation.

  “Thank you for this day, Chase. It’s been totally amazing. No one else would have done something like this for me.” The words that I wanted to say, the words that I had swallowed earlier threatened to jump out of my mouth and make themselves sentient. I couldn’t tell her.

  “You deserve all of the best dates, Cordelia. You deserve everything. I know I’m not what you were expecting, but I’m so happy you picked me.” I didn’t feel like I had. I feel like some other force had picked us for each other.

  “So do you. I know I’m a mess and I’m all over the place and I’m a lot to take, but I’m so happy you picked me back.” I had to stop talking or else I was going to say them. Those words were desperate to get out. They didn’t want to be silenced. So I kissed her. I pressed my mouth to hers and then bit her bottom lip. I knew that would distract both of us.

  She moved her hands from my hair to my waist, and started rubbing the front of my jeans. I hadn’t gotten her pants off yet in any of our encounters, but I figured now was as good a time as any to see what she might be comfortable with. I mirrored her movements, putting my hand against the front of her jeans, pressing just a little bit as she kissed me.

  A little gasp escaped her mouth and I wondered if she was going to tell me to stop. But after a second, she moved her hips against my hand. Oh, fuck. If that wasn’t the hottest thing ever.

  I rubbed her harder, wishing there wasn’t anything between us. I was adventurous, but I wasn’t get-naked-in-our-friend’s-van-on-the-side-of-the-road adventurous. Not yet, anyway.

  Her hand kept up a steady rhythm that made my eyes roll back in my head. I was barely able to keep up with what I was doing with my hand. My wrist started to cramp from the angle I was at, so I moved my hand, but put it on her ass, urging her to move so that we were lined up together.

  We both moaned as we pressed our hips together. In spite of the layers of material between us, having the most needy part of her grinding against the same parts of me was enough to make my head explode.

  “More,” I said and she arched into me harder. I rose up to meet her and we set a pace that was both hard and soft at the same time. I dug my hands into her ass and urged her on.

  The friction was killing me and I could barely breathe and I couldn’t stop.

  “Fuck!” I said, and it wasn’t because I was about to come. My calf had seized up. I nearly kicked her in the stomach with my effort to massage away the cramp.

  “What?” she said, her eyes unfocused, her breathing frantic.

  “Cramp in my leg, ow,” I said. What a way to kill the mood. “I’m sorry.”

  “Where does it hurt?” Chase asked, ignoring my apology. I pointed and she started massaging the lump that my calf had become. After a little while, I felt the muscle loosen and go back to normal. I let out a sigh of relief.

  “You okay now?” she asked, and I nodded.

  She gazed down at me for a moment and I wondered what she saw when she looked at me.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Sorry I kinda killed the mood.” I was still horny as fuck, but I didn’t know if Chase wanted to put on the brakes before we got more carried away.

  “You didn’t. I was thinking that we should probably hit the pause button. At least for now.” I raised my eyebrows.

  “For now?” She grinned at me.

  “Yes. For now.” What did that mean? She gracefully extricated herself from me and got back in the driver’s seat.

  “You ready for dinner?” she asked. “We have a reservation.”

  It took me a second to move. My limbs weren’t exactly obeying me. Somehow, I made it back to the passenger seat without any injuries. Well, except for the fact that I was still so turned on that my labia were literally aching with need. I squeezed my legs together and willed the feeling to pass. It was distracting.

  Chase put the music on and we drove back toward campus. This had been a day, and I didn’t want it to end. I had this fear that once this date was over, a spell was going to break. The clock would hit midnight and I’d go back to being a single pumpkin who didn’t have a girlfriend.

  “This day has been incredible,” I said. “Honestly. Best date ever. And I’m not just saying that, because I have been on other dates. Have I told you about the one where the guy ate so much popcorn that he ended up having to go and throw up halfway through the movie? And then tried to kiss me after?” I shuddered at the memory. I’d had quite a few bad dates, but not any good ones. Until now.

  “Yuck. That sounds disgusting. I never really did the one-on-one thing with a guy, but I can tell you about the first time I kissed a guy.” I hadn’t heard this story, and I weirdly wanted to know. I guess I was a little smug over the fact that the guy she had first kissed wasn’t the one who got to kiss her now. That was me.

  “It was this party my parents had made me go to because everyone in my grade had been invited. The only
problem was that my best friend from school was at her grandfather’s funeral, so she couldn’t go. I was basically on my own, and it was a nightmare. We were in this girl’s basement and her parents were pretending to supervise, but not actually doing it?” I laughed because I remembered going to those kinds of parties. I’d always had to lie and tell my dad that we were being VERY VERY supervised. Sometimes I got away with it, sometimes I didn’t.

  “So anyway, everyone was sort of hanging out and there was this one kid, Griffin, and I guess he’d been flirting with me, but I was too oblivious to know that was what was happening. We got talking about movies and that was fine. It was nice because most of the people there ignored me. I think some of the girls were trying to see if they could sneak upstairs and maybe get a hold of some alcohol. I hadn’t been in on that, and I hadn’t wanted to be. So I was talking with Griffin instead.” That sounded about right. I had never really been part of those kinds of shenanigans at parties. I’d been the one to suggest a few adventures, but I’d never participated. My dad would have murdered me.

  “And we were sitting on one of the couches and he just sort of ... went for it? He dove at me lips-first. He smashed his mouth onto my mouth and I was so shocked that I didn’t even know what to do. And then his tongue was doing something and I finally was able to push away. He got all red and embarrassed and basically ran away. I called my mom and begged her to let me go home. I didn’t tell her about the kiss, but she found out about it because everyone at school talked. For a hot second, a few of the other girls thought I was cool, but then they moved on to something else. It was kind of a disaster. Griffin moved away later in the year. I have no idea what happened to him. Might be interesting to look him up online.” I officially wanted to punch this guy. Yes, he was young, but no, that was not a thing that was okay to do.

  “He’d better not ever see me, because I would give him a piece of my mind. That’s awful, Chase.” She shrugged one shoulder.

  “I mean, I think it sounds worse than it really was? Honestly, it wasn’t super traumatic in the moment. It was only later when the complete and utter embarrassment set in.” I shuddered.