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in the booth and run a brush through my hair. I slide a fresh coat of lip gloss over my lips and straighten my shirt. I breathe against my hand to check my breath and pop in a mint. Am I going to do this? Am I really going to do this?
    By the time he comes back, I still don’t know.
    “Ready to hear this sucker?” he asks.
    “Like, so ready,” I say nervously.
    He presses buttons, then plays the mix, coming into the booth to listen to it with me, where the sound can fully envelop us both. The strain of my voice against his guitar is lightning on skin, the branched brand it makes when it strikes flesh. We’ve made something together, something only the two of us could make.
    He loops a finger through my jeans, tugs me close. He smells like cinnamon and soap, and all I want to do is inhale him. I run a hand up his chest as he kisses me. Jackson’s kiss is a challenge, a dare. So I kiss him back, hard, until I can breathe his air into my own lungs. I could disappear into that kiss.
    He brushes my hair away from my ear. “I’m going to kiss you here,” he says. And he does.
    Then he runs his thumb across my clavicle. “And here,” he says, as he leans down to kiss me in the soft dip at the base of my neck.
    “And here.” He traces lower, between my breasts, and kisses me there too.
    Then his hands are on me, everywhere. He isn’t fumbling and clumsy like Mike. He isn’t tentative and searching like Nicolas, not weak. This boy doesn’t care about respect. He’s in total control. He’s picking me up and setting me on a stool, and my legs are around him and my hands are on him too, searching, hungrier this time.  
    He can feel it, the difference in me. He catches my hands in his, looks me in the eye. “You’re not saying no,” he says.
    “I’m not saying no.”
    “You sure? Like, for real?”  
    I close my eyes, try to flush my mind of everything I’ve heard tonight, everything I’ve heard my whole life. “I’m sure.”
    “You don’t have to. Not for me. Not if you don’t want to.”
    “I know. I—“ But suddenly I’m tired of words. Instead of an explanation, I kiss him, hard enough to convince him, to convince myself, that I know what I want.
    “Okay,” he says, his breath coming rough. “Okay.”
    We fumble our clothes off, my T-shirt catching on my nose as I pull it over my head, probably making me look like I have a pig’s snout. Jackson doesn’t seem to notice. He reaches for the button on my jeans, unbuttons them fast, then pulls down until I’m standing in front of him in just my panties.
    I turn away, embarrassed, but he grabs me close and lifts me against him. And then we’re on the ground, and my panties are off, and I’m closing my eyes, self-conscious and not used to not knowing what to do.  
    “Open your eyes, Em,” he says.
    So I do. I open my eyes and look into his. It’s like staring off the edge of a cliff. If I jump, will I be able to fly? Or go crashing into the rocks?
    I have to do it. I have to know which it will be.
    And then he’s there. And it hurts a little at first. But his eyes are locked on my eyes, and the pain passes, and before I know it the heat of him burns up all my promises: the purity pledge I signed in the sixth grade, the promise ring Mike gave me on my birthday, the vow I made with the other kids in front of my father tonight, until there’s nothing left but white space and the sweet sigh of relief that escapes my lips.
    I can fly.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    W E ’ RE TANGLED ON THE floor together, an awkward mess of angles that somehow fits together just right. My face is nestled into his chest, covering the tattoo of a flock of swallows flying across his heart, wild and swirling and free. He’s never told me much about that tattoo, just that he got it after getting released from juvenile detention a couple years ago. It’s amazing how far he’s come since then, working hard enough to get accepted at NYU right along with me.
    “Don’t go back