Worth the Wait

He calls me his superstar. I like the way that sounds—his. He swears he loves me. My smile, my hair, my hands. He loves my hands. The way I touch his arms and his chest when we lay together on my narrow twin bed or his. The way I kiss his neck, his chin, his fingers—tiny Smurf kisses, he calls them. Just a quick press of my lips to his skin and that’s it. The way I kiss him when we’re alone in his room but his mother’s downstairs and his sister might burst into his room at any minute. He tells me I’m amazing. My body, my lips, my arms. He loves my arms. The way I hold him tight—I’m so much stronger than he is, he says. I made the JV football team my freshman year, which he thinks is pretty damn amazing, and got pulled up to Varsity before I was really technically old enough. I’m the strongest guy he’s ever been with, or so he says, and when we finally have s*x, he wants me to hold him the whole time. I laugh and tell him of course, silly, what else would I do? To be honest I’ve never actually done it before, but I want him to be my first and I want it to be amazing. I want it to be everything I’ve always dreamed it would be. I don’t want it to be s*x—I want it to be love. When I tell him this, he grins in a shy way he has that makes him so unbearably cute and tells me of course it’s love. He loves me. I know that.