Remember This Part

18. ...And Ends on a Beach

Alex.

I never thought I could be so content kissing a girl and talking to her. But with Thea, I'm content just being in her presence. And the fact that she's right next to me—her hand in mine and her voice in my ear—is enough to make me absurdly happy.

I'm only acutely aware of how much time has passed. The time of year and the amount of light in the sky tells me that we're probably nearing five o'clock by this point. We kissed for a long time, we ate, we kissed again. I've paid close attention to how she likes to be held. Sometimes she'll smile against my lips. I don't think she even notices when she does it, but I do. It fills me with a pleasure I've never known. I love it when she smiles—and not just when I kiss her.

I love the way she's smiling right now as we talk. We've been laying on the sand for a while now, recounting stories from our childhoods and playfully arguing about insignificant things. We've talked about our favorite shows, our classes, our career goals. She told me she wants to get a job in Special Ed. I told her I want to work with the FBI.

Every time a cold breeze hovers over us, she moves closer to me and my chest tightens because it doesn't know what else to do—it's never been this full before.

I can't even bring myself to ask her about what happened last night, when we kissed for the first time. At the moment, her eyes are alive and shining with enthusiasm. The thought of watching that light fade is unbearable.

We'll talk about it at some point. We have to. But for now, I don't want anything depraving us of this.

"Okay, okay, I got a good one," Thea says, shifting to look at me. For the last half-hour, we've been playing a variation of Would You Rather, coming up with impossible scenarios to choose between. I'm already smiling, because I know she's about to say something ludicrous.

"Alright, I'm ready," I reply, my eyes still fixed above us. She props herself up on her forearm to get a better look at me, her hair falling around her face.

She's beautiful. She must know she's beautiful.

"You have to go to outer space for a month with only a chimpanzee companion and two hundred cans of Spam to sustain you—"

"—Absolutely not," I interrupt.

"You haven't heard the or."

"I don't think I have to know the or. I hate outer space and I hate canned meat."

"That's not how you play," she protests. "You have to let me say the or."

"Okay, say the or."

"Or, you have to be in a group project with James Corden, Scrappy-Doo, a suburban mom, and that kid from Even Stevens...what's his name? Cob? No, Beans. Oh, and the project is half of your final grade."

I take a second to think, and then, finally, I say, "Fine. Put me in space with the monkey and the Spam."

Thea's eyes light up all of a sudden and she says, "I just realized that could be a show! Space Spam!"

"That would be a terrible name for a show," I tell her, unable to hide my grin.

"Why? It's got everything. It's got alliteration."

"It sounds like you're saying Space Pam," I point out.

"What if that's the name of the chimpanzee?"

"You're sending a chimpanzee named Pam into space?"

"Why do you sound so surprised? Because she's a girl?"