Snark and Stage Fright by Stephanie Wardrop

hair all tussled and his eyes glazed, listening to his uncle on the answering machine talk about some clambake we were invited to. He groaned and smoothed out my rumpled T-shirt with one warm hand.
    “I have to admit that I’m starving,” he said, running his hand along the length of my leg from knee to ankle, then, waggling his eyebrows in comic lasciviousness, adding, “and not just for you, baby. Do you want to go into town for food or just find something here?”
    “Let’s stay here,” I said, and he smiled, so we rummaged and found some crackers and soup and salad and ate quickly, like we were going to be late for something really important. I guess Michael already felt we were late for it, after my chickening out last night, and despite the pleasures I’d just experienced on the family couch, I remained torn between wanting to do everything with him, wanting to feel that we belonged to one another completely and utterly, but feeling terrified of giving so much of myself, even to Michael. As we rinsed out our soup bowls, it was getting harder to act cool with my heart threatening to beat down the walls of my chest. Maybe that’s what made me decide to test the level of his commitment by playing truth or dare—or, rather, daring to reveal a truth.
    As we climbed the whitewashed stairs hand in hand, I said, “I have a confession to make. You remember last spring, when you caught me at your house on that historic homes tour my mom made me go on with her? Well, I wanted to see your room so much that I tried to sneak up there. I’d have made it all the way, too, if you hadn’t come in.”
    He stood motionless long enough for me to worry, then let out a bark of a laugh.
    “Ha! I suspected as much when I found you in the foyer. But why?” He resumed the climb, then opened the door to his summer room and waved me in with a flourish. “What did you think you would find in my room?”
    “The secret to who you are,” I answered as if that were the most obvious answer in the history of questions. He led me to the bed, which was, like everything else in the room, white and wooden and vaguely nautical, with a light quilt of various squares in stripes and plaids. Unlike his cousin Megan’s room back at the Glass Boat, this one looked like it belonged to someone. To Michael. There were books lined up neatly on the low white shelves—Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories, Dave Egger’s first book, a collection of Spiderman comics bound in three volumes, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy —and a gray polo shirt draped over a cane-backed chair. There were photos and ticket stubs from Red Sox games tacked to a small bulletin board with navy blue wood trim.
    He sat down next to me and began nuzzling the back of my neck, murmuring, “And have you found the secret yet?”
    “Not yet. But I’ve learned some new things on this trip. Like … you play poker … go to drag bars … sleep with supermodels … you’re a total rock star.”
    He frowned for a second and then ran a hand through his hair. “I thought we were past that,” he said.
    “We are,” I assured him. “Just a little nervous.”
    “Don’t be,” he said, distracting me by running a smooth, warm hand up my spine beneath my shirt.
    I was determined to be past fear, past jealousy, past everything, so I nodded and ran a hand along his back underneath his shirt and felt the muscles and bones glide past my fingertips. He wriggled out of his shirt and I gasped a little at the sight of the hard planes of his chest even though I’d seen them before. And then he was easing my own T-shirt over my head and soon we were kissing each other everywhere with a hunger and ferocity that frightened me. I didn’t know I could feel these things. They seemed dangerous.
    “Make yourself comfortable,” he invited, pulling back the quilt and top sheet, and I wriggled out of my shorts and slid between the sheets with my heart hammering away in my chest. He wriggled out of