On an Edge of Glass

tonight. 
                  “Are you getting sick of that?”  He asks.  His eyes reflect the pearly moonlight. 
                  I bark out a laugh.  “Are you kidding?”
                  Even in the dark, I can make out the corners of his smile.
                  “That night…” he starts.
                     I wrinkle my forehead.  “Which one?”
                  Ben’s rubs his palm over my stomach.  “In Asheville.”
                  “Ahhh,” I say, kissing that freckle that I love.  The one on his chest.
                  “I should have told you then.  That’s why I came to your room.  I’d decided to tell you that I loved you.”  He pauses.   “Obviously, I bailed on that plan.”                  
    “ And, if I had been more honest with you from day one, we could have skipped out on a lot of trouble.”
    He twists my hair between his fingers.  His voice is low.  “I should have told you the truth about Lily.  Even though things with her were over and done with before I met you—you had a right to know the entire story.”
    “ Well, I wish that I had given you more of a chance to explain.”
    “I should have pushed harder to make you listen to me.”
    “Shoulda-woulda- coulda…”  Placing my hand on his chest, I push him back flat against the mattress and straddle his hips.  I kiss over his collarbone and the warm skin of his neck.  I run my hands down his arms.  “We both made mistakes, but we can’t go back.”  I feel him nod against me as I taste his mouth.  “We can only move forward.”
    “Together,” he whispers, his arms encircling my waist and rolling me over.
    I close my eyes and wait for the stars to explode.  “Together.”
     
     
     
     
                   
                   

EPILOGUE
     
     
     
    “What is this thing?”
                  I turn away from the cardboard box that I’m unpacking.  Ben is walking in through the door.  In one arm he’s got a white floor lamp, and in the other he’s carrying what looks like a ginormous fleece bootie with a cord attached to it. 
                  I squint and pucker my mouth.  “I have no idea what that is.  I guess you should just set it in the living room over by the couch for now.”
                  He shakes his head and walks toward the living room.  There are about a dozen more boxes for us to go through in there.
                  Moving sucks.  Big time. 
                  I glance around my new bedroom.  It’s actually pretty spacious by New York standards.  There’s a large window that takes up almost the entire eastern wall.  The good news is that it lets in a lot of natural light.  The bad news is that it overlooks a trash-filled back alley.
                  I sigh.  I shouldn’t complain about anything.  I’m here .  In New York.  And my dream internship begins next week. 
    Ben will start practicing with his new symphony sometimes in late June.  Meanwhile, the guys from Accidental Sweet Tea are already setting up some new gigs.  Taylor texted twenty minutes ago that he had a lead on a club in Brooklyn that’s interested in booking them next month.
    Then, when the fall rolls around , I start my first year at Fordham—a law school right here in New York.  Even my parents seem happy with my choice. 
    I set a stack of New York City map s on the ledge of my window.  Ainsley shoved them in my bag yesterday as we said a teary goodbye.  I check the time on my phone.  She should be landing in Atlanta in the next half hour and I’ll give her a call to make sure that the trip went well.  She accepted a position as a social worker down there so that she could be closer to her family.  Brandon and his pleated pants are looking for a job nearby.   
    Payton moved out of the house right after graduation two weeks ago.  She’s sp ending the summer backpacking in Europe with her friends Hedda and Dominic.  After that, it’s all up in the air.  She claims that she wants to see where the world takes her.
    Sometime before she comes back to the states, she’s going to make a stop in London to see Hannah, who never did come back from England.  We ended up shipping the bulk of her personal stuff to her parents in Canterbury and giving the rest of the stuff away.  As it