I LIKED THE way Takoda looked at me when he noticed me walk in.

I liked the way he looked beneath the low lights of the music room, the way his fingers froze over the keys, the way his voice faded into the background. It all made me feel like maybe he wasn't used to seeing me. That maybe, just like he had, I'd changed too, and he couldn't wrap his head around how different I looked.

Everything about me had grown much more defined than they were a year ago, and that part of me that wanted to be wanted wondered if he lost his breath every time he saw me. It was incredibly cliché, but it felt nice to imagine that perhaps beneath his calm, composed exterior, he was combusting.

I didn't exactly know where all of this was coming from all of a sudden.

He regarded me for a second longer before gently dragging his fingers over the piano keys and releasing a soft, melodious tune into the room. It seemed to stick to every renovated corner, because long after his hand had fallen away from the instrument, I felt the memory of it thrumming beneath my fingers. Or maybe that was just my thudding heart. Or probably just my nervous system working overtime.

"How did I do this time?" he asked with a light smile that threw me aback for a minute. It was just so pure—so faultless—like he'd never done any wrong. It carried with it a childlike innocence that made my heart ache, and for the first time since I saw him on Thursday, I finally felt like I was looking at the boy I fell in love with all those months ago.

"What makes you think I heard you?" I chose to ask as I made my way to the drawn curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling window that offered a beautiful view of the flowers in front of the house. Coco's car was absent from the driveway, confirmation that Takoda and I were the only ones home.

I couldn't decide if the realization was scary or relieving, neither could I decide if me looking out the window was with the intention of giving him full, unobstructed view of my backside—or full, unobstructed view of me in my very nice, quite short dress.

I could feel his searing gaze on me, though, but not exactly where I wanted.

"Common sense?" he offered after a moment spent either mulling over my question or watching me.

"Ha. That was a good one."

I turned back to face him, nearly backing into the window at the sudden sight of his eyes. His dancing eyes. He looked like a five-year-old discovering something as cool as race cars or space for the first time, all the excitement and curiosity in the world twinkling in them, making them come alive. "You're doing that laugh thing again," he said.

I could only watch him, remaining by the window and wondering what was making him so damn joyful this morning. "What laugh thing?"

"That sarcastic one that makes you you."

"You wanted to talk to me," I reminded him, desperate not to remember how I'd traded my sarcasm for real laughter because he'd made me feel as giddy as a schoolgirl around her first crush.

Takoda looked a little surprised at my tone—as it was a glaring contrast to the atmosphere he was trying his best to encourage—and his smile fell. A little, not completely. "Yeah."

I folded my arms over my chest. "What is it?"

He took a moment, glancing at something behind me, his hesitance making me tighten my arms around myself. Eventually, he settled on, "Are we good, Cleo?" as he met my eyes again.

I felt my shoulders stiffen beneath his gaze. "Why are you asking?"

"I don't like all this tension between us. I just want to know if we're good."

"I'd lie to you if I answer that question."

"Then tell me the truth. I can take it."

I smiled, but it was devoid of amusement. "I think deep down, inside that abyss of yours, Calebs, you know the answer to that."

He tilted his head ever so slightly at me, his eyes getting that kicked puppy look they always did whenever he angled his head that way. Whenever he was disappointed.

I was expecting him to be speechless, to be clueless about what to say to me the same way I was clueless about what to say to him. But he surprised me by asking, "What can I do?"

I had to genuinely think about his question. What can I do? What could he do to what? Take the pain away? Erase months of memories? Stop me from staying up late most nights desperately trying to recall what it was like to be touched, to be loved the way he did? What exactly did Takoda Calebs think he could do?

"What do you mean?"

He turned on the bench, angling his body towards me. That action used to mean, I'm here, and I'm open, but now I couldn't tell. "What can I do to make you forgive me?" he expanded, his voice growing softer than it was ten seconds ago.

"Ever hear the saying, time heals wounds? Oh, yeah—you sang a song about it when you were seventeen. Um . . ." I snapped my fingers, trying to recall the title of the aforementioned song. "Oak Street, right?" He didn't respond. He didn't even react. So I continued, now wondering why I felt nothing but exhausted. I was tired and slightly tense, and I just wanted it all to go away. "Just keep on ignoring me and I guess eventually, I'll realize how stupid this all was and become like that girl on Oak Street that broke your heart."

"Is ignoring you even possible?"

"I probably won't see you after today or tomorrow morning—I'm betting on it, actually—and I can't wait. So yeah, it is possible. After all, you did it for six months. What harm would six more cause?"

"Cleo."

"Stop saying my name like that." Like he was about to break. Like I was breaking him. Tearing him to pieces. "Stop making me feel like I'm the bad guy here."

"I'm not—" He stopped suddenly, changing his mind about whatever it was he wanted to say. "I guess all I'm asking for is another chance, however you're willing to offer it. It doesn't have to be romantic or emotional. I just . . ." His smile was almost completely gone at this point, and the expressiveness in his eyes seemed to intensify. "I don't want to lose you again."

I tried to locate the dishonesty in his gaze, tried to find something that would make me walk out of this room and not look back, but the only thing in there was the raw vulnerability he was showing me. He was opening up to me. That was one of the things I used to really love about him. Whenever he spoke up about something he'd been keeping to himself—or would rather keep to himself—he did it with this mindset that he could only move forward from there. And it reflected in his eyes—in the way he looked at you while he said it—in his voice, in his body language.

It was the reason why when I started listening to his music, I found it hard to stop. It was why I got addicted to everything that had to do with him and hurt myself even more after everything with us fell apart.

When I didn't make any move to respond, he added, "I know it's too much to ask, considering everything that's happened, but . . ."

I remained there, by the window, unmoving, unblinking, just watching him, buying myself time. I couldn't do what he was proposing. I didn't want to. Not only did he not deserve any kind of redo—life didn't come with retry buttons—but I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I did as much as give him a place, no matter how small, in my life again.

I'd been burned once, and it would be extremely stupid for me to put my hand back in the fire.

But I couldn't exactly bring myself to tell him any of those things. No, all I could do was remain there and try to regulate my breathing, try to prevent myself from doing the extremely stupid thing my brain was telling me to do.

We were alone, we had time, and I was still tense from early that morning. I could forget, temporarily, and let him just help me get rid of all of it, let him help in reminding me. Would he?

Wow, I was so stupid.

I knew that, but the way he was looking at me, anticipating my answer, only helped in heightening this . . . this horniness—yes, I was embarrassingly horny—I'd tried so hard to both deny and get rid of since I woke up this morning.

My mind couldn't stop reminding me that we had the house to ourselves for the next half hour or so, depending on when Coco left. She was used to staying out for hours, going from place to place, on spontaneous visits to locations around Los Angeles—or California as a whole—or falling asleep on her friends' couches after having one too many glasses of Château Pétrus, and most of them lived all the way in Beverly Hills.

Before I could stop myself, I was moving forward, not stopping until I was sitting next to him and he was scooting back to give me more room. My reaction was a big contrast to yesterday, when he'd touched me and I'd warned him not to. Now, I kinda wanted him to. Just one last time to get this weekend over with.

I placed my forearm on the piano, unintentionally hitting a few keys as I turned to face him, straddling the bench. I could feel the strap of my dress sliding down my shoulder, could feel my fingers itching with the need to touch his hair or face, to channel all these emotions into something else before I combusted.

He kept looking at me, waiting for me to say something, but my brain was blank, so after a moment of just sitting there and doing nothing other than observe each other, I did the next best thing.

I took my arm off the piano and slid forward until my face was barely two inches away from his. He didn't move, didn't tell me that I wasn't thinking straight, didn't tell me that this was wrong. And it made me think, as we breathed against each other as though we were trying to minimize our oxygen use, that maybe I wasn't the only one feeling this. Maybe he was feeling just as miserable as I was and wanted relief, too.

None of this was a problem for me before. Back when I was still seventeen and considerably naïve to all this, I would just ignore it, bury myself in homework and human anatomy articles online, go out to take pictures, until it felt like it had never happened. But Takoda came along, and I'd let him explore my body, touch it in ways that even I hadn't, and he'd let me do the same thing to him. Then the horniness became harder to control.

My mom had told me something about it during her version of sex ed when I was eleven. It's hard to stop when you start, so don't start—or something like that. I'd felt grossed out back then, because what was sex and why would I want it? If only eleven-year-old me could see into the future.

I inched closer to Takoda, my hands creeping closer to his thighs, and he remained unmoving. The tension in my core grew heavy until it felt like it was thudding, and just as quickly as I'd made my way to him, I closed the gap between us.

My lips brushed lightly against his once before I pulled back and looked into his eyes for any sign of protest. There was none, so I jerked my head forward to kiss him again, only to find myself hesitating when I felt his hot breath on my lips.

"What are we doing?" he whispered, refusing to erase our proximity.

My heart was hammering inside my chest because I knew that I was definitely going to regret this after the fog in my mind cleared up and my body was pleasantly numb. But the reward was overshadowing all my other senses. "One last time. Please," I whispered back, before kissing him again.

And he kissed me back, our lips moving in familiar sync. Now that I was doing this sober, I realized that it wasn't butterflies I was feeling. It was a chill, running down my spine, across my stomach and shoulders, all at once. It told me only one thing, and I listened, drawing myself so close to him until I had no choice but to climb into his lap, straddle him, connect our bodies in that way I'd terribly missed.

Our kisses grew deeper, more wanting, going fast then slow, like we weren't quite sure about the pace we wanted to move with. The heat from his hands burned through the fabric of my dress as he firmly gripped either side of my waist, but not enough to hurt, and I pressed myself into him, the ache in my core growing worse the further we went.

We started to run out of air at some point and had to pull away from each other, and my breath shuddered against his lips as he looked at me with a strange glaze in his eyes, his chest heaving beneath mine, setting me on fire.

"Cleo." He sounded breathless as he said it. "Wait. What are we doing?"

The rational part of me told me to stop whatever madness this was, told me that I'd had enough, but there was no way I'd had enough after getting that kind of taste. So I leaned down and ran my nose along the side of Takoda's neck, inhaling that intoxicating smell of his as my grip on his shoulders tightened.

"Going one last time," I responded against his skin, like that answered everything.

"Maybe we should think about this."

I raised my eyes to his, adjusting my weight so I was flush against him. "I have."

"And you're sure?" I didn't know why I thought so, but he was looking up at me like he was beholding the solar system or something equally magnificent.

"I haven't been able to focus all weekend, so yeah. I'm sure."

I studied him for a few more seconds, waiting for something else to come out of his mouth, but he remained quiet, and I took it as a sign that we could go on, end this once and for all.

His lips trembled against mine as we went agonizingly slow this time, just like old times, savoring the moment and everything it brought. His thumbs started to draw circles on my sides, on my stomach, creeping up under my dress to caress my thighs. My fingers found his hair, sank into the softness of it. Then his lips left mine and traced a hot trail along my jaw, down the side of my neck, and my eyelids grew heavy. My breathing was out of control, every nerve ending going up in flames.

As Takoda did what he did best—aside from create music—I took the hem of his T-shirt and tugged until he assisted me in getting it off him. Then I was feeling that skin, that grown-up but familiar body, the hardness of his warm, broader chest, of his stomach, and I couldn't believe we were about to do this in front of my sister's piano, in the most sacred room in her house. I couldn't believe we were about to do this at all.

As I kissed the skin on his left shoulder, I mumbled, "Upstairs," without breathing.

I went first, and when he joined me in that room that smelled too much like him, his shirt was back on him, begging me to take it off again. So I did.

Feverishly, we kissed and touched and undressed and explored some more, until I was beneath him, losing my mind as my fingernails dug into his skin, because I was just realizing that this felt better than I remembered.

A few minutes later, as I waited for my breathing to even out while staring up at the ceiling, the only thoughts in my head were how I would've been in church if I were at home, how I'd get the pill later without being questioned by my sister, and what the actual hell I'd just done.

Next to me, Takoda was quiet, his breathing steadier than mine for some reason, but I couldn't bring myself to look at him. I didn't want to remember the eye contact we'd maintained throughout, how he'd kissed me at intervals, as though he was desperate not to forget that I was there, or how he hadn't forgotten my body, even after all these months, even after it had grown up so much. I especially didn't want to remember how much I'd loved his weight on me in that moment.

My stomach was rolling quietly, my mind otherwise blank, as the pleasurable ache between my legs dulled until I was sure I could walk without making it obvious that I felt like all the bones in my body had turned to jelly.

Indescribable guilt built in my chest until I couldn't hold it in anymore and was pushing the covers off my sweaty body. I kept my eyes down as I grabbed my underwear and dress from where they'd been abandoned for the past ten minutes or thereabout, not wanting to know if he was looking at me.

I was feeling self-conscious all of a sudden, even though he'd seen more of me than I'd seen myself, and at the back of my mind, a stern voice scolded me for not going back upstairs after I was done with my meeting.

I'd sworn off this—off having sex with anyone until I got married—after everything that had happened. I'd thought it was a sign that waiting truly came with benefits. I was raised in a religious home. I'd been taught what was acceptable and what wasn't. At first, I wasn't even thinking about the fact that I was doing something I shouldn't. I'd instead thought that that was what we were given our bodies and emotions for. It was unfair to know you could feel something so wonderful, but shouldn't until you exchanged vows with someone about ten or twenty years later.

The guilt only started to slip through my cracks when our fling ended and I got the chance to think rationally about what we'd done. I'd had sex. A lot of it, regardless of my religious background. And I'd loved it more every time. No remorse until it all blew up in my face. I'd thought I was being taught a lesson.

Now, putting on my clothes after half a year of staying away from it and the boy that drove me crazy with it, I couldn't help but feel like I'd relapsed, like I'd offended myself.

As I adjusted the strap of my dress over my shoulder, my movements slow because I couldn't manage to move any faster, tears stung behind my eyes.

I chanced a look at Takoda, just in time to watch his eyes—the same ones that had refused to leave mine just minutes ago—slide from the ceiling to me. One of his hands gripped the top of the sheet covering his lower half, and the other was placed behind his head. A light sheen of sweat glistened on his chest and forehead, his face flushed, an evidence of pleasure, hair smoothed away from his eyes. I was forced to wonder if he felt guilty, too. Did he only feel relief? Did he only feel light, like how I'd been expecting to feel after?

I could see his body responding as he breathed quietly, still as soft as ever, and mine ached.

What was I supposed to say to him now? Thanks for the orgasm but I don't think we'll be seeing each other anymore? Goodbye? Or was I just supposed to walk out without saying anything?

"Thanks," I ended up saying, my voice coming out softer than I intended, and he immediately looked surprised by my choice of words.

But instead of saying anything, he just nodded, and I slipped out of the room and into the hallway. That was it. Message clear. One last