“Jeez, it’s cold out here!” I ducked back down until the water was up to my chin. My arms looked like spaghetti sticks underneath.

“You can sit here and I’ll keep you warm,” said Drew. He pulled me toward him and sat me in between his legs on the little bench. I felt his hands running up and down my arms, and my chest pounding.

“Thanks,” I chirped.

“You still cold, rock star?” he murmured, his breath tickling my cheek.

“Nope!” I managed, my voice higher still. Be cool, Levy. Be cool. And whatever you do, don’t look at your brother.

“Nobody’s guessing!” complained Liz, but she was still smiling.

“Is it a person?” asked Dina.

“Yes, sort of.”

“How can it sort of be a person?” asked Heidi.

“Keep guessing!”

The bottle came around again. I grabbed it greedily, felt the warm rush of it travel down my throat.

“Is it George Bush?” said Drew. I could feel his voice rumbling in my back.

“No.”

“Is it Harry Potter?” I said. My words were sliding into each other.

“No.”

“Is it God?”

I remembered my little prayer from the night before. Boy, a lot had changed in a few short hours. Now I had an Olympic skier with the most amazing blue eyes holding me, and the sky was so huge it went on forever, and the stars were circling, and everything was gently revolving around me. I didn’t care about Kathy now, or Leo, or … what was his name? Oh, yeah. Aaron. The moon felt closer to me than all of them now.

“Okay, I’ll give you a hint,” said Liz. “He’s Indian.”

“Ooh! I know!” cried Heidi. “Is it Mahatma Gundy?”

And then we were all laughing.

“Gundy?” yelped Liz, between cackles.

“You know what I meant!” said Heidi, but she was laughing, too.

“I know what you said!”

It wasn’t even that funny. But I couldn’t stop laughing, and it was so great to hear our voices dancing up into the night, bouncing off the trees, fading into the darkness. I felt Drew’s arms holding me tighter now. His breath in my hair.

My hair. Me. Sam Levy. Super-dweeb.

“But who was it really?” asked Jeremy after he caught his breath.

“What? Oh, Buddha!”

“Yoga freak!” cried Dina.

“Pat the belly! Pat the belly!” said Liz, and we all laughed again.

“Who’s gonna finish this off?” said Drew, holding the bottle up over my head. The light from the bottom of the hot tub came through the brown liquid and it sparkled.

“Ooh, me!” said Dina and I at the same time. I reached my arms up, even though my whole body got goose bumps, but Drew pulled the bottle just out of reach.

“No fighting, ladies. There’s enough for both of you,” he said, handing it to Dina first, then wrapping his arms around me again.

“We’re actually going to head in,” announced Heidi. She stood up, pulling Trey with her. Her lips were closed but it looked like a huge smile was just behind her eyes, about to burst. Trey gave a little wave as they climbed out of the tub.

“Yeah,” said Liz. “We should probably go in, too. I feel like a raisin.”

Then she turned to Jeremy. “Do you mind letting me back into your room?” she said, blinking slowly.

“Yeah, whatever,” said Jeremy. That boy was clueless. Then the two of them got out of the tub and disappeared. Dina mumbled something and left, too.

“I don’t know about you, but I could stay here all night,” said Drew, turning me around to face him.

“Hmmm?” I said, not because I hadn’t heard him but because his nose was so close to mine, and the moon was dipping and rising above his head and the stars were sliding around. I knew I was kind of drunk, but I was pretty sure that it was just the two of us out here in the hot tub, which would mean we were all alone, which would mean …

“That is, if you’re not too cold?” I followed Drew’s lips as he spoke. They spread out into a wide smile and there were those perfect, square teeth again.

“Cold? Me? No,” I slurred. My breath made wild circles of steam in front of my face.

“That’s what I’m talking about.” He squeezed my arms, and then he ran a hand through my hair. Keep on breathing, Levy. Wait, who’s Levy? Oh, that’s me. Right.

“So, what should we do now?” purred Drew.

I felt my stomach leap into my chest.

“We could play twenty questions again?”

Drew laughed softly. “That’s not what I had in mind,” he said. He touched my cheek with his hand gently, leading me in, pulling my face forward. This was it. This was really it. The moment I had waited for for fifteen and a half years, spinning right in front of me. I almost said, “I thought you said I was purty.” But this wasn’t a play. These weren’t lines and we weren’t Okies. It was really me and this boy — man, actually.

Our lips came together. His lips were warm and soft and tasted like Jack Daniel’s and cherry ChapStick. He held my chin and we stayed there for I don’t know how long. It was probably thirty seconds or a minute at least. I tried to count but I lost track. And I closed my eyes because I remembered Phoebe and I had talked about that, the importance of eye-closing. But then everything started spinning even faster so I opened them again and Drew was still there, pressed into me. And I didn’t want to move, but my nose felt like it was kind of in the way, and I couldn’t breathe too well. I hoped he couldn’t tell this was my first time really. He pulled back a bit.

“Mmmm,” he whispered.

My lips felt tingly out in the open air.

“Pretty nice to have this hot tub all to ourselves, huh?” Drew said. His hand traveled down to the dip between my neck and my collarbone.

“Yeah. Good thing you were prepared.” I thought of his bag full of T-shirts and boxers. The bottle of Jack Daniel’s. This guy came equipped. “Wait — how did you know we would come out here?”

“I had hopes,” he said.

“But —”

And then there was no time for more questions, because his lips were on mine again and he was leaning toward me, his whole body drawing me in. And this time I felt his tongue climbing into my mouth. It was slimy and kind of salty and wiggling around. I knew that I should try to slip my tongue inside his mouth, too. So I pushed and at first it was hard to navigate past his teeth, but then I found space and I tried closing my eyes again and really concentrating. And I was doing it. I, Samantha Iris Levy, was really kissing!

“Mmm, you taste so good,” he whispered when we came up for air. “Such kissable lips.”

Was I supposed to say thank you? I wasn’t sure. Nobody had ever called my lips kissable before. Nobody had ever called them anything before.

“You, too,” I mumbled. And then I stopped. Or at least I tried to. The sky was still spinning behind him though.

“Wait!” I managed. And I put a hand on his shoulder. My skin was about five shades paler than his.

“Wait what?” Drew said.

“Nothing. It’s just — I can’t believe …”

I looked at him. It was pretty unbelievable. Yesterday I was whining about Leo Strumm, and now here I was with a Speedo model in a hot tub! How had this happened? I had to call Phoebe and write in my journal and scream from the rooftops. And I didn’t want to jump into anything too quickly, but maybe there was such a thing as fate or kismet, and was it okay with him that I had already picked out the colors for our cottage in the backwoods of Burlington and did he want a dog because I would walk it and feed it and maybe we could get one from the pound, and should we name our firstborn Max or Sebastian, but whatever he wanted really and he would teach skiing during the day and I would make quilts and play the piano and then at night we would lean into each other like this by the fire and tell ghost stories until there were just embers …?

“Whatcha thinking, babe?” His lips were glistening, and now he was kissing the tips of my fingers.

“Me? Nothing.”