It took him a long moment to pull back from the kiss, and even then, Philip didn't go far.
He stayed close, his forehead nearly touching mine, and said with disarming seriousness, "Rita... I like you."
"Do you even know how much older I am than you?"
"I've never thought age mattered!"
He looked at me with an almost desperate intensity, as if he could prove, right there and then, that he was grown now, that he could be someone I leaned on.
I lounged back against the sofa and swept a strand of hair behind my ear.
"You might not care about age at eighteen. But what about when you're twenty-eight? Or thirty-eight? Philip... By then, I'll be the one who can't pretend it doesn't matter."
That caught him off guard. He'd never thought that far ahead.
Philip pressed his lips together, his b
