When We Meet Again by Kristin Harmel Page B

“I know. I want to lose my virginity to you,” I’d said firmly.
    His response was a guttural moan as his lips fell on mine again. After that, he’d taken his time, slowly peeling my clothes away from my body. He’d run his fingers and then his lips over every inch of me until I was practically begging, although I was terrified of what it would feel like. He’d felt my fear, and he’d waited until it had melted away in a haze of anticipation and ecstasy before he finally slid between my legs.
    I’d cried out, and his face had filled with concern for a second, but I’d pulled him toward me before he could say anything, and my body took over, rising and falling in rhythm with his. I’d never felt so close to someone before, so intertwined with another person, and when we were finished, lying sweaty and smiling and tangled in his sheets, I swore I would never forget the way I felt that day.
    And I hadn’t. I’d tried to, because it wasn’t normal to be thinking all these years later of the night I’d lost my virginity. But that day had been a force that changed my life in more ways than one. And at the times I’d felt the loneliest over the last eighteen years, I’d sometimes retreated to those lost moments, to that feeling of total and utter belonging and connectedness I’d felt with him that night.
    But my mother had died three weeks later, and after that, everything had changed. It had to. I didn’t know how to believe in anything anymore. Even Nick.
----
    After my run, I showered, changed, shook my thoughts of Nick off, and walked to Dexter’s, about a half mile from my house. Unsurprisingly, Scott was twenty minutes late, but he hurried in full of apologies about how he’d closed the bar down last night and had slept through his alarm this morning. Instead of making me feel annoyed, his excuses—a reminder of the way things had been between us—just made me weary.
    “Look, Emily, I’m really sorry,” he said after he’d ordered a cup of coffee and looked at the menu.
    I just looked at him.
    “For everything,” he elaborated when I didn’t say anything. “For the way things ended between us. I was wrong, and I’m sorry. I was a crappy boyfriend. I see that now. I took you for granted, and I screwed everything up.”
    I took a deep breath. “I’m not very good at the girlfriend thing either,” I admitted. “It wasn’t all your fault.”
    He nodded, accepting this. “What do you think about trying again?”
    I blinked at him a few times. “Why would it work this time around?”
    He shrugged. “Maybe it would, and maybe it wouldn’t. But I always felt like we were good together, Emily. We had fun, at least.”
    “But there’s more to a relationship than having fun, isn’t there?” I hated the way I sounded, but I knew I was right. “There’s that feeling of really getting each other. And I don’t think you ever really got me.”
    Scott shifted in his chair. “I could try harder. To get you, I mean. Maybe we should just see.”
    We were interrupted by the arrival of our waitress, who took our breakfast order: the restaurant’s specialty eggs Benedict and a glass of orange juice for me, a breakfast BLT and Bloody Mary for Scott. When she walked away, I dove right into my request before Scott could return to the subject of us, because frankly, I didn’t know what to say.
    “I was hoping you could do me a favor,” I began.
    “Ah, the mysterious favor that summoned me here at the ungodly hour of nine a.m.” He glanced at his watch and grinned. “Well, nine thirty. So what is it? What can I help with?”
    “It’s about my grandfather.”
    “I met him, right?”
    I sighed. I knew I’d told him about my family, about how Grandma Margaret had raised my dad alone. I’d also told him that my mother’s parents had died before I was born. If he’d given a shred of thought to it, he’d realize there was no way he could have met my grandfather—but that was Scott in a nutshell.