Branch really wants to kiss Poppy but she immediately reads his mind.
The moon stares down at Poppy and Branch's heads as they lie back in the grass together on top of a picnic sheet and try to watch the stars but find themselves transfixed by the moon instead. The moon is round and beautiful like an eye in the night, warm yellow, sheathed in a bright rim of gold, and the pale stars surround it just to adorn it.
Having grown bored of the moon and stars because he has already seen them up close so many times Branch might as well have memorized every bump and crater on the sides of them, Branch props himself up on his elbows against the picnic sheet to face Poppy. Poppy is still naming each star after a friend. One for Guy Diamond, one for Biggie, another for Dj Suki. Branch opens his mouth to speak.
"Hi," Branch says, his voice almost cracking on the first word he had spoken to her in about an hour since they had laid back there on the grass, sitting in companionable silence. He had been itching to speak, to talk to Poppy, to let his fingers crawl down her forearm and wrap around her wrist, but now his fingers are dry and his hand shakes. "Poppy," he says in a small voice, "can you come here?"
"I'm already sitting beside you, silly," Poppy says, the ghost of a smile creeping over her pretty pink lipglossed mouth, but she crawls over to where Branch is sitting, folding her hands on top of her lap. "What did you want?"
"Can I kiss you?" Branch blurts out. It isn't Poppy and Branch's first kiss. Not even close, and yet every time they bring their faces close together, it always feels like this is their first date, like this is the first time they have ever been so close even though Branch has been saving her for longer than he has even known his name, for longer than she has even been a friend of his. Branch averts his gaze from Poppy's eyes when he sees her pupils go wide like two moons at his words. He fumbles in his jacket pockets and fiddles with his fingers, too nervous to even touch her, but she leans forward and wraps her fingers around his collar.
If Branch just leans closer, if he just pulls Poppy closer to him, they would be kissing then, and Poppy would have been swallowed up by the black holes of his blue eyes.
"Hold still," Poppy tells Branch, her bony knees digging into the soft earth, crushing the damp grass, as she crawls on top of his lap and straddles his hips. "Let me do it."
Poppy clings to Branch, her hands cupping the nape of his neck and running up the back of his head, her small fingers carding through the dark of his sweat-slick hair, and kisses him hard, desperate. The kiss startles Branch. This is a side of Poppy that he has never seen before, a side of her he would want to see everyday from now on.
Branch gives and gives, the long, hard lines of his body moving against Poppy's soft curves, and Poppy takes and takes, taking Branch's lips into her mouth bit by bit, until he disappears and disippates against the softness of her mouth, allowing himself to be swallowed up by the red sea of her tongue as Poppy pushes her tongue past his lips.
The pink, pointy tip of Poppy's tongue darts out like a cat searching for milk, and she swipes it across the endless seam of Splendid's mouth, and Branch just wants her to be greedy for the first time in her life and take everything he has in him. He just wants her to take everything he has left in him to give, because when he looks at her face, her bright, moon-dappled cheeks and her sweet pink lips, he sees the world. He's young and naive, but it must be love.
"I want you to be greedy with me," Branch whispers, his voice soft against the shell of Poppy's ear, so she does that. She does just that. She kisses him hard enough for his braces to brush against her lips and nearly draw blood if she just bit down on him. She kisses him hard enough for him to remember her taste for days on end and never want to wash it away. Poppy kisses him hard enough for her to be able to map out where his molars go when they break away from each other in a tangle of arms and legs.
"Wow," Poppy says, breathing hard as she pulls away from the kiss, the tip of her tongue rubbed raw by the brackets of Branch's braces, her body uncontrollably warm as she leans into him, her head still reeling. "Wow."
"I didn't know you had that in you," Branch says as he runs the pad of his thumb over his lips, impossibly fond. He has all but memorized every tooth in her mouth. He has all but memorized every line in the plane of her body.
They settle, the earth shifts, and they turn back to the sky.
Poppy points to the sky at a bright star, bigger and brighter than any other star she has ever seen. "That one's for you," she says softly, cupping Branch's cheeks in her hands, her palms warm and firm against the sides of his flushed face. "Every star in the sky reminds me of you."
