Bobby rested his forehead against my shoulder, as if pained to deliver the next news. “I haven't told my parents yet, but, I'm leaving school again. I'm going to do some traveling.”

“What?” I said, turning to face him. “You already took time from school. What about your future?”

“It's out there, no matter what,” he replied. “College isn't for me. Well, at least not now it isn't. I want to see the world. I want to study it. I'll make a living. I've always managed to make things work.”

“You've managed because of your parents. It's different out there.”

“I know it is. Which is why I want to see it. I thought you wanted to see the world.”

“I do. I just want to do it the right way.”

“The right way . . .” he snickered.

I shook my head. “Don't leave me here, Bobby. I don't think I can do this without you.”

“I'm always going to be here for you. Always.” He ran his hands through my hair and mussed it up the way he always liked to do to annoy me, but this time it was gentler. “We'll always be in each other's lives.”

I rested my head on his shoulder as we sat side by side, still nude, our bodies gleaming in the humid attic.

“Lil, I don't know how to do the right thing. I feel like convincing you to be with me is selfish. I was never going to tell you. I was going to live with this pain alone and I feel like now I've included you in it. I was just going to come up here and numb my sorrows. And then you were there. And you looked so beautiful in that nightgown. Like an angel who came to take the pain away.”

“Did I? Make the pain stop?”

“For a while. As long as we're up here. But it won't last because when you leave here you're someone else's love.”

“I can't do this.”

“My brother is a good guy. He'll take care of you. He'll give you a great life. That's the only comfort I can take in this.”

“Please. Let's just go. I'll travel with you.”

“Are you willing to wake up Rory right now and tell him that? Our parents? And that's not even including the people out in the cabins, all our cousins and our friends . . .”

I sighed, collapsing my head between my knees.

“You'll have a good life. You will.” Bobby tucked a wisp of my dark hair behind my ear. “You love him.”

“Not like you. Never like you,” I said.

Bobby kissed the top of my head and I turned to meet his lips. Our first encounter did nothing to sate the hunger we had for each other as I climbed on top of him and we explored each other's bodies again.

As the navy sky started to pale to shades of violet, I knew I had to leave. Bobby slept peacefully beside me and I watched each breath, each flutter of his eyes, each time he moved his lips when he murmured subtly in his sleep. I tried to ingrain the picture in my mind of the time when my life had reached perfection, albeit briefly. I couldn't wake up Bobby to say goodbye because it would mean tears and protests, and it would hurt too much. I would see Bobby again, back out in the world, where I was someone else's love.

Bobby said in the lake that he had hoped his happiest moment was ahead of him. Well, that moment was right here for me, in this attic as he whispered he loved me against my lips. If I could have grabbed that moment and held onto it and kept time from pulling me away, moving me forward, I would have latched on and never let go. I would have lived in that moment eternally.

But it was already tomorrow. And I had made promises and Bobby had loyalties and the world makes other plans for you. I wept silently as I kissed him on the cheek, I grabbed my white nightgown, stained red where I used it to clean the evidence of my virtue, and slid it on. There was a small, faded mirror on the wall behind the couch, and I caught a glimpse of myself. So young at the time, but I already felt like my life had been laid out for me; plans that could not be changed.

I looked at the deep red stain on the belly of the white gown that would never wash out, just like the memory of this night would always leave its mark.

And then I left to prepare for my wedding.

Summer 1957

Bobby kissing me, seven years after that first time, felt just as apocalyptic. Earth-shattering, enlightening, frightening, hopeful, alpha, omega, death, life—it all erupted from the forbidden union of our lips. My heart jolted like it had been stunned with an electrical current.

I knew I had made vows to Rory. I knew this was wrong. And yet, I was sick of being miserable doing the right thing. I picked the right boy. I was the loyal wife. I woke up every morning and cleaned, ran errands, and cooked. I fed the insatiable beast of Rory's insecurity by not pursuing a career and waiting for a pregnancy that never came. And what had it gotten me but an empty marriage and a life that was nothing like the one I saw for myself that night I swam with Bobby under the moonlight. I had become an accessory to Rory's ambitions. We had things: a nice house, cars, good clothes, money. But they were nothing. They were just things. Things could be disposed of, people couldn't. I had gotten it backwards. I had disposed of the love of my life for the promise of a life full of stuff but void of experiences.

This was right. For me. For Bobby. We deserved this. We had suffered long enough. That bullet missed his skull so he could return to me, and I wasn't going to miss this opportunity like I so foolishly had as a naive 20-year-old.

I kissed Bobby back, our lips ferociously linking as he stumbled back towards the house, towards the light. Bobby lifted me off the ground as I wrapped my legs around his hips, one shoe falling to the grass as the other one dangled.

Bobby tripped over the porch steps, easing the fall by planting onto them as I stayed mounted on, against his strong grip. My knees banged the hard wood edges of the stairs but the adrenaline rendered me immune to the pain.

“Lil. I still love you,” he rasped, our lips in union.

“I love you,” I responded without hesitation.

“What are we doing?” he asked breathlessly.

“I don't care,” I replied, panting from the fierceness of our passion. “I should have left with you. I should have packed that night and left.”

Bobby’s chest rose and fell like a stormy sea with each breath. “I should never have let you leave that attic.”

I cupped his face and dove back into kissing him as he reached under my dress, running his thick, rough hands along my legs, triggering shivers from the thrill of being back in his arms.

This wasn't my first time. And now it wasn't all about making me comfortable. Bobby had it hard these past few years, and all I wanted to do was make him feel good. I sat up, taking in the sight of Bobby taking me in, a mutual attraction so strong, it fed into the other continuously.

I frantically unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt, and Bobby assisted by pulling it off over his head. The ripples of his abs moved with each breath like the ones on the lake where we had spent our perfect summers.

I reached for the fly of his jeans, pulling open the buttons without wasted time.

“Tell me what you want me to do Bobby,” I begged, feeling again like the girl who found herself in an attic with a boy much more experienced than her. “I want to make you feel good. I want to make it up to you.” I rubbed my hands over the mound in his jeans.

“Oh, Lil,” he groaned, as if my offering as I knelt before him was enough to set him off on its own.

With both hands, I pulled against the open fly with a sharp tug.