The Forever of Ella and Micha

then we can at least be covered.”
    “You keep a blanket in you trunk?” I say. “Man, you are prepared. How many times have you had sex in your car?”
    He pulls me back onto his lap and wraps the blanket around us. “This is a first for me, pretty girl.”
    “You’ve never done anyone in the car before?” I question with cynicism.
    His face is humorless as he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I know you saw me with a lot of girls, but I think you totally mistake how much effort I put into it. Doing it in a car is going to be fucking complicated. Besides, I’ve been saving this place for you.”
    Rolling my eyes, I fasten my arms around the back of his neck. “And what would have happened if we’d never gotten together? Then you would have never lived out your fantasy. And what if I wasn’t into it?”
    He squeezes my ass. “Oh, I knew you’d be into it. As much as you get embarrassed about stuff, cars have always turned you on. I remember the first time I took you for a ride in The Beast. It was a piece of shit back then, but it could still kick it. You were sitting in the passenger seat with your hand out the window and you had this look on your face—you were getting so turned on. It turned me on so badly, I had to take care of myself when I got home.”
    “I wasn’t getting turned on,” I lie. “I was enjoying the moment.”
    An artful smirk curves at his lips. “If I would have pulled over and asked you to do me, you totally would have.”
    I shake my head in protest. “No, I wouldn’t have. You would have freaked me out if you’d asked me.”
    The intensity in his face switches to solemnity. “I actually know that. You know, when it came to doing crazy things like jumping off roofs and fighting, you were good to go. But challenge you to face your feelings and you’d run away like you were on fire.”
    “That’s because I didn’t understand them,” I utter quietly, staring off into the darkness outside. “Anna… my therapist, thinks it’s because no one ever hugged me or whatever. I don’t know… She says weird stuff like that all the time to me, like she thinks it’s my childhood that made me this way.”
    Silence incases us and finally I dare a glance at him, fearing I’ve probably freaked him out with my confession. “I’m sorry. I should probably keep that stuff to myself.”
    “I want you to talk to me about stuff, Ella,” he says. “I’m just surprised you did. You’ve never said much about what goes on in therapy.”
    “That’s because it’s personal.” My chest rises and falls as I breathe soundly.
    He cups my cheek and runs his thumb underneath my eye. “You do realize we’ve crossed the line of things being personal.”
    He’s right, so summoning confidence, I continue. “She says I didn’t get hugged enough and I told her you hugged me all the time, but she didn’t seem that impressed.”
    He laughs softly. “I remember the first time I tried to hug you… I think we were, like, eight or something. You’d scraped the shit out of your knee trying to climb up a tree and I wanted to make you feel better, so I went to hug you.”
    I wince at the memory. “And then I punched you in the arm. I remember… you scared me. I’d never had anyone approach me like that.”
    “I know.” He bushes his lips against mine as his finger traces my cheekbone. “The next time I made sure I was a little more careful, although I did sneak in a few arm wraps and pats on the back.”
    “It was weird for me when you did it,” I confess. “But there were too many people around and I didn’t want to look nuts by running away from your celebration… God, I can’t believe I was that old the first time I can remember being hugged.”
    “What were we, like, thirteen?” Micha recollects, dazing off as he coils a strand of my hair around his finger. “I was so fucking excited that I’d won that stupid bet.”
    “It was a stupid bet.” My eyelids flutter as his hand runs through my hair and tugs at the roots. “We all knew Danny was afraid of heights. I have no idea why he even tried to jump off the cliff into the lake.”
    “I held my breath the entire fall.” I clutch onto his shoulders. “I think I was scared you’d hurt yourself or something.”
    “That’s because you loved me. You just didn’t know it yet.”
    “You didn’t know it either. You were just as blind as me.”
    “I know, but I can remember swimming out of the lake totally stoked