Last Summer

"What do we do first?" Bren asked.

"I don't know." Edward said. "I've never done this before."

"Me either." she answered. "Should we just take our clothes off?"

Bren had been his next door neighbor for literally forever. She was born a week before him. Their families were next door neighbors and their mothers best friends. A little over 18 years ago, they had met while still in diapers, barely days old. So it probably wasn't quite accurate to say they'd never seen each other naked, but they certainly had not since they'd learned that boys and girls were different.

They played together in one house before they knew boys and girls were supposed to play with different things. Then when they knew, they played together, her with dolls and tea parties, he with trucks and army men.

They had other friends when they got older, but their paths kept crossing. Her friends mingled with his friends. They hung out together sometimes, just them. Other times they hung out with common friends. Another coincidence, their last names both started with the same two letters, so they sat together in class when the teacher assigned seats alphabetically. They sat together by choice otherwise.

They were almost inseparable till they were about 12. Their friends started teasing them about hanging out with each other. They succumbed to peer pressure and kept their distance. Except when they didn't. When nobody else was available, or when they just wanted to see each other. They rode their bikes together, explored the neighborhood together, explored the woods together.

As they got older, their bodies told them they wanted the company of the opposite sex, but their friendship was too close to allow either of them to notice that they were of opposite sexes. She told him about boys she was interested in. He told her about girls he had a crush on. When one of the targets of their not fully formed interest was a friend of the other, they played matchmaker for each other.

Edward had noticed that Bren's body had developed, of course. He usually put such thoughts out of his mind. They were friends, and friends didn't think of each other that way. They didn't exactly avoid each other, but quiet moments together had been awkward often enough that they started finding other people to hang out with. Their driver's licenses, their friends with cars, their widening interests, all took them further away from home, and from each other.

But they still lived next door to each other. It was the early summer after their senior year. He was mowing the front lawn. It was an easy job with the power mower, and he didn't even break a sweat. Bren came over as he was wheeling the mower back into the garage.

"I want to show you something." she said. Edward briefly noted the light cotton shirt she wore, bare at the shoulders, and the capri shorts. He noted how strong her shoulders had become after she'd taken up swimming in a semi-serious way, and the small mounds below them. He noted the sleek smooth skin covering long toned legs. He noted the femininity in her face - the perfect balance of her eyes with her her nose and lips - and how it was barely hidden behind the serious and alert expression she usually wore.

He just as quickly banished the thought, and looked at the girl he'd grown up with, the girl he'd known all his life, who was like a sister to him. "What?" he asked, peeling the work gloves off his hands and wiping his brow with a towel.

"C'mon" she said, and turned toward her front door without looking back. They knew each other well enough that they usually knew what the other was thinking, what they would do, and she had no doubt that he would follow.

She led him into the house and toward the stairs. "My parents are on vacation." she'd informed him, knowing he would be looking around to say hi to her mom. "They finally decided I could be left home alone without throwing wild parties and trashing the place. They told me I could have girlfriends visit, but no boys."

"I'm a boy." he said.

She laughed. "Yeah, but you don't count."

"Oh, I see." It could have hurt, but he knew she meant her parents didn't think of him that way. And neither did she. "What do you want to show me?"

She led him to her room. "In here." she said.

He followed her in. It was the same room she'd always had. She was never a tomboy, but neither was she a girlie-girl. She was highly intelligent, a serious student, and always had a knack for knowing what was going on when he was still oblivious.

Her room was filled with the kinds of things a girl collects over her life, some that he'd seen in his earliest memories of playing in here, some were new to him, the personal belongings of a mature young woman. Stuffed animals lined a shelf. One, a threadbare Tyrannosaurus he'd known all his life as "Rex" lay on the pillow over a deep red bedspread of a neatly made bed. Books lined another shelf. Well worn children's books. Organic chemistry textbooks. Everything in between.

"So what is it?" he asked.

She went to a desk that held an assortment of puzzle toys, a small stack of books, a stack of notepads full of scribbles, doodles, and what looked like serious notes, and a laptop. From a cheap metal in box she pulled a letter.

Edward read it, then dropped his hands, the paper held in one of them forgotten, its physical presence overwhelmed by its contents. It was her college acceptance letter. He'd gotten his last week. It hadn't struck him before, but this made it real. This was their last summer together. The last in the same town, in the same state.

"Have you ever wondered how much of who we are is because of all the time we've spent with each other?" she asked.

He hadn't, but it was the kind of observation she was always making. The kind of thing she saw, that she wondered about, that he rarely did. She made him think about them. They were part of each other, in so many ways.

"We've shared so many firsts" she said. She'd cried on his shoulder the first time she broke up with a boyfriend, after all of one chaste date. He'd gone to her the first time he broke up with someone. They went to the arcade and never said a word, but she was there. They'd hugged afterward, his first hug with a woman who was not his mother or an aunt. Before that, they'd shared their first curiosity about their growing bodies, without touching, just peeking. Before that, so many firsts of growing up. First skinned knee, first broken bone - when he'd fallen out of a tree - first time running away from home and getting as far as next door.

"I guess that's true." he said, still holding the proclamation that ended their lifelong closeness.

"After this summer," she said, her eyes watering. "We'll be a thousand miles apart."

"We can keep in touch." he said, his throat tightening.

"We can. But college means new lives. We'll make new friends - friends that don't know each other - we'll date people, we'll have interests that the other won't share, or even know about. We'll start careers, families. It won't be the same. We'll be apart. Probably for good."

"We can..." he wouldn't insult her by saying it. He knew that such vows weren't how life really works. "We still have the summer." he said, making a rash vow in his mind to spend every minute of it just hanging out with her. As soon as he thought it, he knew that even that would fall by the wayside in the rush of looking forward to new lives.

"We do. But we'll be busy." she said. She saw the whole picture, always a step or two ahead of him.

"Do you want to have sex?" she asked.

It shocked him out of his moroseness. He'd fantasized about a girl asking him that question. But she couldn't have meant that. "Hell yeah, I do." he said, falling back on their comfortable joking camaraderie. "Why, do you know somebody?"

She looked at him, a tear running down her cheek. He could not interpret her look. She looked sad and resigned, but something else too.

"What?" he asked, genuinely confused. He can't say that it never crossed his mind.... with Bren, but he never took the idea seriously enough to even fantasize about. She was his best friend.

"Our last first together." she said.

He stared at her, his eyes wide. "But.... we're...."

"Best friends. Best friends who will never have another chance. Best friends who are both virgins and about to head to college too full of innocence. You're my best friend, and I can't even imagine anyone else in the world to share it with."

"But, we're going to be apart. We won't be able to... We can't start anything now."

"We won't. We won't fall in love, we won't be together forever. We've been together all our lives, and that is about to end. I don't want it to, but it has to be. It has to be no matter what we do for the rest of the summer."

"You're breaking up with me ahead of time?" he said, trying to force a lighthearted joke through his tight throat.

"Just friends." she said, tears flowing freely down her cheeks now. "No breaking up. We won't be dating. We'll just be friends. The same as we've always been. Best friends don't break up, they just drift apart."

He wasn't sure how he felt about this. He wanted to be in love for his first time. To be head over heels and with someone that he felt - at least could believe at the time - that he would be with for the rest of his life. But he wondered if he would ever love anyone as much as her, the girl he'd been with forever. The girl he would not be with in the future. She was his girl. She was his forever girl, but only looking backward. Could he accept knowing it was just one summer, knowing that the day it would end was already a bright red square on the calendar?

"OK" he said simply. He wondered if it was his hormones making the decision, but when he looked at her eyes, full of tears and longing for what could not be, and her mouth, just barely curling into a weak smile, he knew he could not say no. He could not let them go, not yet. "When?" he asked. "Where?"

She stepped away from him and closed the door, then returned to stand in front of him.

Her tears stopped flowing, leaving slowly drying trails on her cheeks. His throat loosened a little. They could forget September. They had June, July, and August. He did the math in his head. 73 days till they left, till they would each pack up their parents SUVs with whatever they needed to start new lives with, the things they could not do without or bear to leave behind. They would head off in opposite directions. He imagined them each pressed to the back window of their respective cars as they left in opposite directions, watching the other recede into the vast distance of the future.

"What do we do first?" Bren said.

"I don't know." Edward said. "I've never done this before."

"Me either." she answered. "Should we just take our clothes off?"

"Not yet." he said, suddenly decisive. He stepped forward and grasped her cheeks with his hands. He rubbed at her drying tears with his thumbs. She turned her head in his hands and kissed each of his palms, using her own hand to press his to her lips. Then she faced him again.

He leaned his head to hers and put his lips on hers, tentatively at first, then harder. They tilted their heads and surrounded each other's mouths with their lips. She pushed her tongue out, then retracted it. Her mouth pressing to his was uncertain for a moment, then she pressed harder, and their tongues were exploring each other's mouths.

They broke with a mutual gasp for breath after a minute that Edward thought was years. They both laughed, partly at the absurdity and awkwardness of how they were going about this, partly to chase away the looming grief. They hugged, his arms around her shoulders, hers around his chest. He buried his face into the space between her neck and shoulder, she buried hers against his shoulder and chest. But they both felt that kiss, and it felt real. "Don't say you love me." she said, her voice muffled into his armpit.

"Don't you say it either." he said against her neck. He knew he would never be able to bear that day in September if he said it. If she said it. He could not bear knowing it was true.

They broke their hug after a long couple of minutes standing, holding each other tight, willing September to never come.

"Are you sure?" Edward asked.

"Yes." Bren replied. "You?"

"Yes. But maybe we should wait." He wasn't sure this was the right moment. Things were so overwhelming. Maybe they weren't thinking straight, maybe they needed to get into the right kind of mood.

She looked hurt, and said. "It would never happen. It would get too awkward." He knew she was right. If they parted now they'd both stew over it till they saw each other again. They would conjure doubts, ridiculous, trivial doubts. They would start to think that delaying would also delay the inevitable, that avoiding it altogether would avoid the pain later. They would each imagine the other having those same doubts. Their next meeting would be impossibly awkward, or worse, and they would begin drifting apart long before they had to.

He saw all that in her eyes. She wasn't crying any more. She had a determined look, a mask over roiling emotion, the stiff upper lip that said she would snatch any victory no matter how small and ultimately futile from whatever tragedy was coming. The mood did not seem conducive to intimacy, but neither was the situation conducive to abandoning each other.

"I don't want to leave you." she said, her voice still shaky. "Not without.... our last first together. Not without learning the last thing there is to learn about each other."

He wanted to make a joke. She'd left him open for it, and they'd teased before. It would have felt like old times. But it would have felt like a betrayal. Like cheapening their whole lives.

"So now what?" he asked as they stood in arm's reach not touching each other.

"We should take our clothes off." she said. Just like that. Part of his mind went to his fantasies. Fantasies of his first time, with the perfect girl, the perfect, eternal love. The sensation of wanting and being wanted, of anticipation. Of slowly revealing themselves to each other without saying it, without premeditation.

"Not all at once." he said.

"Right. Good. Tops first?"

"Sure." he said, reaching up to pull his t-shirt over his head. When he could see again, she was standing there looking at him, at his chest. She made no move to pull her top off.

She took half a step and closed the distance between them, put a hand flat on his chest. She moved her hand in small circles, avoiding his nipples. She looked to him for approval, for encouragement. He smiled both at her.

The other hand went to his shoulder, and the hand on his chest soon followed to the other. She got that look of concentration that he knew well. The neutral but focused expression she had when looking at a bug under a microscope in science class or watching the math teacher solve an intricate calculus problem. The look of needing desperately to understand something, and knowing she could.

Her hands went from his shoulders slowly up to his neck, feeling the muscles. He hit the weights once in a while, not at all serious, but he enjoyed it. It gave him faintly defined pecs and well developed shoulders. Just a few extra pounds kept him from having abs without obviously rounding his belly. She moved her hands from his neck, briefly to his cheeks, looking him in the eye and smiling.

Her hands trailed down his chest and around his ribs, down his sides. She was examining him like a blind woman reading every bump and ripple. Her hands moved back across his chest and covered his nipples. She ran her fingers across them and they responded. She looked up at him again. "I've never seen you." she said.

"Sure you have." he replied. She'd seen him shirtless before. At the pool, doing yard work on a hot day, playing shirts and skins football or soccer at school or with friends.

"No, I've seen you, but I never looked at you."

He understood. He knew that if.... no, when, he was looking at her bare chest, he would feel the same. He'd seen her in a swimsuit, seen the muted shapes of her. But he'd never seen her bare breasts. Never really looked at them, even covered.

Her fingers rubbed on his nipples. She seemed intrigued by their stiffening. She put a fingertip in her mouth and rolled it over his nipple. She blew lightly on it. Then she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.

The slow exploration with her fingers was something he'd never felt before, never been aware of wanting to feel. It was new, and with it came new feelings. With his senses heightened and the growing tension in the air, the feel of her bare arms on his skin, of the soft bulk of her breasts pressed against his chest, he felt something new. Something electric. Her hands explored his back, his shoulder blades, the line of his spine, his waist Her kiss was more passionate now, less tentative, more demanding.

She pulled back. "My turn" she said. She'd said it in the tone of a concession to fairness, of giving to him what he'd given to her. He took it as the opposite, of him giving to her what she'd given to him.

He wanted to explore her. Not entirely out of lust. She was as familiar to him as anyone could be, but he'd never really seen her. Not this way.

She pulled her shirt off, and before he could enjoy seeing her bra, it was off too, crumpled on the floor next to his shirt. He stared at it, thinking how provocative it was, how the implication was in some ways hotter even than the reality that was revealed. Then he looked at her, really looked.

He drew in a deep breath. He started to say something, but his mouth just stuck open. He hadn't seen breasts in the flesh before, but he was sure they were the most perfect breasts he'd ever seen and was ever going to. The desire to reach out to them right away, to cup them gently, to let them fit perfectly into his palms, to squeeze them, was overpowering, but he resisted it. They pillowed out gently from her chest, not drooping, not flat. She didn't have a dark tan, but her breasts were white in the shape of her swimsuits. Light brown areolae tipped them, soft nipples centered.

He mirrored her exploration with his hand flat on her chest, just feeling the swells of her modest cleavage. He made small circles, feeling her smooth skin, lightly pushing each breast slightly. They gave just a little and their shape changed subtly from the light pressure. He moved his hand up her chest to her neck, gently cupping it from one side as his other hand cupped the other side. He brought them up to her cheeks and smiled at her.

He moved briefly across her shoulders, then down her sides, feeling the outer curves of her breasts as he'd just felt the inner. He finally brought them fully into his hands. He squeezed them gently, feeling their weight, their yielding firmness. He rubbed his thumb across her nipples while staring intently at them, watching their response. He had a moment of doubt, and looked at her. She was smiling at him.

"Your breasts are beautiful." He said quietly. "Perfect."

"Tits." she said.

It tensed him. It flipped a switch from innocent exploration to needful caressing. His best friend had tits. In his mind, she never had. She wanted him to not see her breasts, but to look at her tits, with full meaning and intent. She wanted to be seen. Not as a child friend, but as a woman. He wanted to oblige, and his body had already begun responding, way ahead of him.

"Your tits are perfect." he said, hesitantly, residual innocence beginning to be fall by the wayside, but still clinging on. She smiled.

"We've got a way to go, don't we?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Do you want to go all the way?" she asked, her expression saying she knew full well the double meaning.