"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 literally forever. She was born a week before him. Their families were next-door neighbors and their mothers were best friends. A little over eighteen 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 twelve. 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, and explored the woods together.

Bren had a sweet sixteen party that, of course, Edward was not invited to. His birthday followed days later. It was sometime shortly after that that Edward started noticing that Bren's body had developed. 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 became awkward enough often enough that they started finding other people to hang out with. Their driver's licenses, their friends with cars, their widening interests, it 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 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 didn't mean it that way. "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 inbox, 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 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, 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 and 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 he knew that wasn't what she meant. "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 it. 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, his forever girl, but only by looking backward. Could he accept it for 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. Seventy-three days till they left, till they would each pack up their parents' minivans 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 did. If she did.

They broke their hug after a long couple of minutes just 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." 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 anymore. She had that determined look that was a mask over roiling emotion, the stiff upper lip that said she would snatch any victory 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 within 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, putting 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 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."

"Today, they're 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 before. She wanted him to not just see her breasts, but to look at her tits, with full meaning and intent. She wanted to be seen. Not as a childhood 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 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.

He nodded. And gulped. "Turn around," he said, his voice commanding. Her eyes widened, and she turned. He stepped behind her, as close as he could without letting his partial erection contact her. He put his hands on her shoulders, grasping them, feeling their delicate strength. The rigors of swimming showed, defining her shoulders and a gentle taper from them to her waist, where her hips began to swell before disappearing beneath the waistband of her shorts.

"Are you hard?" she asked over her shoulder. He hesitated long enough that her question was silently answered. "It's OK. You can stand closer."

He moved his feet a quarter step closer and made contact with her. She leaned back into him. pressing herself against his hardness, her bare back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and brought his mouth to her neck. He inhaled her smell. The lightly perfumed scent of her hair, the musk of her skin. He felt her soft butt yielding to the pressure of his stiffening penis.

He moved his mouth around her neck, his arms under her breasts. He kissed the back of her neck, the other side, then up behind her ear. She purred. He moved over her shoulder and saw her breasts from above, her nipples standing firmly out, the skin around them crinkled with tension. She wiggled herself lightly against him below. She raised her arms to lightly hold his head.

He moved his hands up and cupped her breasts. They felt warm and firmer. He tweaked the nipples with his fingers, and she responded, pressing her back more firmly against him. He felt the pressure of her against his now full hardness, and it sent a shudder through him.

Things were accelerating, his need growing, their innocence falling away. His best friend was becoming a woman, by his look, under his hands, by the touch of his lips. There would be more, so much more, before that transition was complete. He moved his hands down her side, to the waistband of her shorts. She stopped him.

"Not yet," she said and turned around. "Take your pants off."

He looked at her. They weren't playing now. He held her gaze while he lifted one foot, then the other, pulling off his shoes and socks. They looked into each other's eyes as he unfastened his pants and pulled them down, along with his boxers. He'd never been naked in front of another person outside a locker room. He'd never been seen naked by anyone who cared. No eyes but his own had ever witnessed his erection.

She took a step forward. She put her hands on his hips, thumbs making lazy circles at the top of the crease of his groin while her eyes remained on him. His penis extended between them, rigid, waving gently.

She dropped to her knees without taking her eyes from his. He wondered if she was about to take him into her mouth, but instead, she just looked, finally, with that intent and examining stare. She slowly moved her hands over his hips, down his thighs. She looked at where her hands traced the shape of his muscles, then back to his penis. She moved her hands to the insides of his thighs, and he widened his stance.

She cocked her head, examining him from different angles. She shifted her weight, to look from above and below. She moved her hands up until her fingers lightly brushed his scrotum, then pulled back slightly. She looked up at him with a question in her eyes. He nodded. "Just don't squeeze those," he said.

She smiled a small smile like ownership, having discovered a vulnerability. She cupped his balls with her fingers. He never knew he was so sensitive there. Her lightest touch sent shivers through him. He felt them tighten in her hand and the first deep tension of a gathering storm. She looked up at him. "Show me how you do it," she said.

He looked confused.

"How you masturbate," she said.

He hesitated, momentarily embarrassed. But her confidence, her matter-of-fact attitude of studying a mystery, and the fact that she knew better than to ask 'if?' pushed it away. He wrapped his hand around himself.

"Stroke your cock," she said, as if tasting the words in her mouth, feeling them on her tongue and lips for the first time with meaning. He wasn't her lifelong friend anymore, they weren't the children who had spent so much innocent time together. He was a man, with a cock. With a hard cock, he was grasping it in the ancient way, pointing it obscenely at her face. His head and last inch or so of his shaft protruded from his fist. He slowly pushed his hand forward to cover them, stretching the skin to lubricate the friction. She looked surprised.

He moved his hand forward, then back. Again, a little faster. He looked at her eyes, inches away. At her lips, even closer, and her soft cheeks, her cute nose. His mind raced with thoughts of painting them with a chaos of white stripes. He felt his mind turn a corner. He stopped himself.

"Not this time," she said, noticing the change in him, the direction his mind had turned. Then, "So that's how that works. Do you use something else sometimes?"

He didn't want to talk. But he didn't want these moments to end, to complete their becoming just yet. He wanted to know his best friend was still there, in front of him, in the shape of this woman. "Sometimes, but it's not always convenient," he said, marveling at how casually he admitted to this.

"Do you think of me?" she asked.

He was shocked this time. "Um... no... not for more than a split second, anyway." And he hadn't, ever. One time, an image of her had flashed through his mind at the moment of climax, but he'd never deliberately sought that image out to reach it. "You?" he asked.

"About you? No. Never. I started to once, but I didn't want to have any preconceptions about this."

Had she just admitted that she'd been thinking about this for a while? "How long?" he asked.

"Graduation," she said. It had been two and a half weeks ago. "It felt so final, like such an end. It felt like we were already separated for good." She looked down at the floor. "I started to... to fantasize about you." She looked directly into his eyes. "I started to masturbate to thoughts of you. To memories of you. But I realized it didn't have to be that way. It wasn't final yet. There could be more than memories and fantasies."

He didn't want to think about endings now. That letter felt like a death sentence. She looked up again, her eyes distant.

"It looks really big," she said after a thoughtful pause. He detected a hint of fear in her expression. Not of him - he would never want that - but of the tool he would soon use to invade her body. He had his vulnerability, yes, but it could be nothing like what she was facing. To lie on her back, legs spread, completely open to him, completely helpless, desperately wanting and desperately fearing his intrusion into her most private, most sacred space.

She brushed his head with her fingers, encircled it with her fingertips, pressing them down along the shaft until her palm pressed his tip. She was fully in control, for now. She could finish him right then. His whole body tensed, a reaction to what it knew as the final destination, even as he knew it was not. He was surrounded. Loosely, awkwardly, but he was inside something, enclosed. His body wanted to finish its task. He loudly sucked in a breath, and she pulled her hand away.

His cock twitched and surprised her. "It can move?" she asked. He tightened his base muscles and made it waggle back and forth about an inch through the air. She laughed. She reached up and encircled it with her hand. She squeezed lightly and mimicked the stroking motion he's shown her.

His body exploded again. Not in orgasm, but in raw sensation. He felt it everywhere. In the last several minutes he'd experienced one new sensation after another. One absolutely astounding sensation after another. He never knew how that could feel. He'd fantasized these things, and more, but they were but the palest shadow of the reality. Before she could stroke him a second time, he said "You'd better stop that." His voice was low, almost hoarse, and came out more menacing than he'd intended.

She froze. "Squeeze," he said.

"Won't that make you cum?" she asked, matter-of-factly.

"No" he knew that enough pressure could make his rising need back off, for a little while. A precious few minutes. But it took a lot. "The opposite. Don't move your hand, just squeeze. Evenly, not too much in one spot."

She squeezed, tentatively, afraid, not knowing where pleasure ended and pain started.

"It's hard," he said. "It's solid. Harder."

She squeezed harder now, but hesitated, sure it was too much. "Harder," he said.

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

"No. It's..... I don't know how to describe it. It aches, like a sore muscle. The pressure relieves it, without really relieving it. For a while. Harder."

She put her strength into it. Her swimmer's muscles bore down and held for a moment. It was enough. He nodded his satisfaction.

She looked up at him with eyes wide.

"Your turn," he said.

She shuddered. She stood, eyes not leaving his cock as she rose. Her temporary truce with his urgency did nothing to diminish its visible presence.

He watched her. He saw her breasts heaving and jiggling tightly with the adjustments of her balance. She stepped back and hooked her thumbs into her waistband. "Be gentle," she said. He nodded.

He was nervous again. This was about to be his first time. Everything. And with his best friend, the love of his life, so far. She was about to fully reveal herself to him, and they were about to join. He was about to penetrate her, for her first time and his. All the usual worries hit him at once. How he would do, would she really let him or would he somehow blow it, how long would he last, would he embarrass himself?

Then it was there. Right there before his eyes. Light brown hair, fuzzy and lightly curled, covered her from below the crease of her belly and down, curving under her. She'd trimmed, unlike him. His eyes followed the path of fuzz down and between her legs, to a tender pouch cleaved by a thin crease. He knew he could push her back on the bed and be inside that gap in a second. He knew she would let him.

But he didn't want this to end so soon. He stepped forward and put his hands on her hips. The tip of his cock waved in front of him, and he eased his hips forward to make light contact with her belly. She looked at him with lidded eyes, bottom lip pouting away from her mouth. He pulled her hips closer, shifting his own so his cock would push to the side and press along its length between them. He kissed her, wrapping his arms around her.

Her bare skin touched his from top to bottom. Another sensation, unlike anything he'd imagined coursed through him. In all his fantasies about sex, touching bare thighs, bellies, and chests together never entered into them. They'd focused on the obvious, and having no experience to fuel more, had been limited to the visual. To the sights, of the woman, of himself, of hands-on sensitive parts, of friction.

He'd had no basis for including this in those fantasies. Including the warmth, the gently tacky grip of skin on skin, and the smell of skin itself. The electricity was not focused on a single point of contact, but spread fully across them both like a field, flexing and pulsing in the aether.

They held there, kissing, hugging, moving in minute increments against each other. It was their last hug, the last that could be said to be in innocence. Their last as best friends, not saying goodbye, not yet, but becoming something more, never again to be what they were. Despite their nudity and their arousal, it felt almost chaste.

That was not to last. He felt himself squeezed between their bellies, and felt her heat below. He felt her hips move, her hands on his back exploring more aggressively, moving down past his hips, behind him. His did the same, blazing trails of their own will, to her waist, to her ass, and the crease where her buttocks pressed together.

As if by agreement, they broke the kiss, their breath heavy. They separated their upper bodies without losing contact below. He moved one hand to her breast and squeezed greedily. He kissed the nape of her neck, down her chest, between her breasts.

Then he went quickly to his knees.

His eyes examined it, took in every detail. Hair followed the surprisingly almost straight plane beneath her mons, barely concealing the reddening of her lips, the hood rising, and the as yet timid peek of labia from within her slit. The girl he'd grown up with, fully and clearly a woman now, her musk wafting into his nostrils from her bared sex. He'd never known that scent before, but he recognized it immediately. He was born knowing it.

His hands on her hips moved inward, fingertips lightly brushing the creases of her groin and sending a spasm through her. He reached behind her and pulled her toward him. He turned his head and pressed it into her belly, pressed her body against his head. He drank in the scent, his fingers beginning to search for her center from behind. His other hand turned palm upward, reached in, and felt the first wisps of pubic hair, pressed lightly against the skin under it, dragged through it.

He had not touched her yet, but the proximity and anticipation sent a shudder through her. He looked up at her, and her eyes were dark and brooding. She stared down at him. submission and defiance in the same look, her control slipping as he took more. She nodded subtly, loosely, as if her neck was no longer strong enough to hold her head up.

He extended one finger and pushed further, downward, inward. He felt moisture, faint and promising. He felt the skin under his fingertips change, swell, and become more pliant. He felt a cleft, within it a small rising ridge.

Her dampness was already on his finger, easing its travel. He slid it further along that rising ridge, eliciting a moan as his motion took his finger over its edge and toward the abyss. His other fingers followed, surrounding that ridge, pressing it lightly between them as his middle finger curled forward, following her contours further in, upward now as she stood before him.

She rocked on her feet and her belly convulsed. Damp became wet as his finger probed, found an opening, and pressed against it. He pushed, his palm now pressing against her mons, and below. She moved her hand over his and held it firmly. He looked up at her. "Not yet," she said. "Not that."

He nodded to her, knowing the barrier that still remained to that probing. He wanted to break it down, but not this way.

She turned around, presenting herself to him from behind. He kissed one cheek, then the other, then cupped her lips in his hand as he took in the sight before him. He was not interested in exploring the new revelation, but the shape of it too was a necessary part of her, a completion of the picture before him. Somehow, seeing it seemed even more intimate, more fully exposing. Now she hid absolutely nothing from him.

He stood and put a hand on each of her hips, pulling her to him, pressing against her. The length of him nestled into the cleft of her ass, his scrotum making gentle contact. She looked over her shoulder at him, smiled, and slowly shook her head.

"Not that way," her look said. "Not this time." It was a significant feature of his fantasy life, but this was not the time for the fantastic. He wanted to look into her eyes when he entered her, to see her face, to see her seeing him, to see her fear and her acceptance and her need.

She grabbed the end of the bedspread, flung it off the bed and across the room in one motion. She did the same with the top sheet and blanket. She turned back to him and kissed him deeply.

"You're my best friend," she said, then sat on the bed. Her eyes were almost level with his hips. With his cock. She looked slightly down at it, then up into his eyes. She bowed her head and kissed the tip, looking back up at him. Then again, this time surrounding the head with her lips, her tongue quickly darted over the end. Then she backed away, scooted her hips back, and turned to lay her head on a pillow. She stretched her legs out straight, together, her breasts barely flattening against her chest, the wedge of hair bisecting the V between her legs.

He put one knee on the bed, then the other. He shifted his weight and swung a leg across her body, turning to be over her, his weight on his hands next to her shoulders. He saw apprehension in her eyes. He saw her give away control. He felt the weight of his balls hanging below him in this unfamiliar posture. He moved his face close to hers and kissed her hungrily, pressing his hips downward to rest his cock on her belly. Her pubic hair tickled his balls, another new mind-blowing sensation.

"I don't want this to end so soon," he said.

"We have all summer."

"Not for this. This will never happen again," he said.

Her face screwed up. "Only one first," she said.

He kissed her. He pressed against her, not letting his weight fall fully on her. She squirmed under him and he shifted his balance to free one of his hands. He brought it to her breast. Her tit. He pawed at it, squeezing it, rubbing the nipple. He bowed his head and brought his mouth to it, then up to her neck as she threw her head back. She presented her open throat to him in full surrender. She moaned as he nibbled it, symbolically taking her life, her blood, into his mouth.

He shifted his weight again and freed both hands. He surrounded each breast with a hand, and his mouth to one tit, then the other, then between them and back again.

He suckled for what felt like hours. She moaned and sighed. She began to writhe under him and he felt her thighs press against his as her need to open them met his thighs surrounding her.

He shifted backward on his knees and moved his head down. He looked at her, her eyes wide and desperate. He kissed her belly. He had no patience to make it slow anymore, and she was getting lost in her own urgency. He dragged his tongue through her bush and to the top of her slit. He pushed it as far down as he could reach between her closely joined thighs. She moaned and bucked her hips, pressing her legs outward as far as his own thighs would allow.

He lifted a knee, and her leg shot past it, opening her further to his sight, and to his tongue. He put the knee back down and lifted the other. Her legs were wide in an instant, he knelt between them. He saw everything. He marveled at the sight, at the overpowering scent, at the visible wetness. The pictures he'd seen could not do this view justice. Her lips were open, he could see all of it. Her labia, her clitoris a proud sentinel above her entrance, awaiting only the proper benefaction to grant access.

He brought a finger to her and pressed it inward as far as he dared. He dragged that finger up, hooking it to move across the hard nub, He moved his tongue down to meet it. He moved it against her, lapping and probing, feeling every fold, every wrinkle, every softness and every firmness. She writhed. He looked up at her, her head was thrown back. She was oblivious.

He kept going. The ache in his balls reached all the way up his shaft. He knew he would not last once joined to her, and wanted her to be there too. He didn't know for sure what that looked like, but she was breathing heavily, her breasts were pointed at the sky with the arch of her back, nipples reaching out. He reached for them, squeezing them with outstretched arms. Her hands flailed against her belly, to her breasts and back, finding him instead of what they wanted to touch.

Then they found his head. She pushed his forehead. She pushed it back, off of her. He looked into her eyes. She was alert, aware again, her look boring into him. She answered the question in his eyes. "Almost," she said.

"I want to remember it," she said. "I want to know it. To see it. I never want to forget."

He too needed to fix the moment in his mind. To remember it as it actually was, not as a reconstruction from scattered flashes of sensation and vision. "I'll remember you for the rest of my life," he said, and regretted it. It cut too close to the finality of this summer. He looked at her, his look momentarily frightened and sad. She nodded. He forgot the pain. He was ready to experience her, all of her.

He shuffled his knees forward to what he thought was the right spot. He grasped himself with fingers and thumb, his rigid shaft making long arcs in the air at the slightest motion. He tapped her with it. She curled forward, craning her neck to see. He saw the gentle roll in her belly, scrunching to bring their point of contact into her view. He saw the way her breasts compressed and pressed outward. Her legs were almost against her ribs now, her hips curled forward.

He shifted his hips and pressed forward, putting himself against her opening. He needed to move his knees again, to gain a better position. Once he found it, his penis poised at her opening with his hips pushed back, she put a hand on his belly and nodded up to him. She looked down at herself, and at him, at them, almost one but still separate beings for one last moment.

He pushed forward and felt resistance. She looked tense, and he kept pushing slowly. He felt her resistance give, and she winced. The hand on his belly held him back. He tore his eyes away from the view of his manhood now becoming realized, her parting around him to accept him within her. He looked into her eyes. She looked pained and held him still with her hand. He didn't dare move.

Then she nodded timidly, hesitantly, and the hand eased its pressure on his belly but remained tense. He pushed further and felt her slide around him. There was a little too much friction, and her hand held him back again. He pulled back, then slowly in again. He got further before he felt a gripping friction and stopped. He backed up slightly and slid forward again. He finally felt his body press against hers. She sighed, and her hand fell away.

She lay back again after witnessing him fully inside her. They explored each other's eyes, their friendship forever changed, their lives forever changed. They each looked at the other anew, as if meeting for the first time. It was true, they were different people now. He searched, not sure what he was looking for. But then he saw it. His best friend. She was still there, still within this body he only now knew. She smiled that old smile at him, and he returned it, assuring her that he too was still there.

"Slow," she said.

He pulled out slowly, and slid back in, inch by inch, pressing her apart. He moved at a steady pace and was all the way in again. "One more," she said. He repeated the slow, full stroke, watching, watching himself penetrate her, watching her eyes accept it.

She was breathing heavily. She held her arms out and he shifted his weight again, falling over her onto his hands. With his own hips curled forward, he had the leverage he needed. They kissed. He moved only gently in her, another long slow stroke. She wrapped her arms around his neck and her ankles around his hips. They broke the kiss and he stared into her eyes. He could see her knees in his peripheral vision. "Faster" she whispered in his ear.

He began to move, one stroke following another without pause. He would not last, but he wanted her with him. He moved at a moderate pace, letting her build back up, keeping himself on edge as much as he could. But he had no experience in it, he did not yet know how to control it. He wanted to let his mind wander to delay the overwhelm he knew was imminent.

"Stay here," she said, seeing it. "Remember this. Don't worry about me."

"I want you with me," he said.

"I'm right here," she told him.

He moved faster. Her belly rose to him, and her back arched. Her hips pulled back, then she thrust them up to him, her belly curving the other way. His hands were on the bed again, supporting his weight. Hers began to move wildly as he moved in and out of her as fast as his muscles could carry him.

It was too late for him. He was at the brink and the current would carry him over no matter how he resisted. The world came into focus, he saw everything in stark detail as if the whole room was alight. Time paused, and he felt like he could survey the scene at leisure. He saw her face scrunched up, her back arched under him. He saw himself invade her. He saw her surrounding him, consuming him.

And then the moment became something else. He moved frantically, then changed to hard forceful thrusts timed to the convulsions coursing through his entire body. He saw nothing, a random kaleidoscope of flares through tightly closed eyes. He felt his whole life run through him and into her. He caught his breath and looked down, just as another spasm wracked him. He saw her moan, but he never heard it. He saw her panting, he never heard it. His ears rang, his body vibrated.

He ejaculated stream after stream into her, and she consumed him. It went on for a lifetime. His mind flashed to memories, random, out of time, to them on their bicycles in the woods, to her skinned knee, to her crying about her failed date, to her running away to his house where his parents gave her dinner and walked her back home. He filled her with all he had, his memories, his universe, everything converging on a single point from which his love for her streamed.

She bucked under him as he started his slow return to the world. She yelled, "Keep going," and he did, resuming his frantic pace. Muscles he'd never used this way before strained and ached, but he kept them working as if their lives depended on it. He fucked her with abandon, his own semen lubricating the heat of his motion.

It only took a moment. He had not flagged, and a final spasm gripped him yet again. She screamed. The ache in his muscles started to overcome him, but he stayed with her. She writhed, she grabbed his hips, pulling him deeper into her with her hands and her legs.

She finally tensed and arched her back like an acrobat, the top of her head pressed into her pillow. She was wracked with convulsions. He stayed with her till she finally collapsed and pushed his belly with her hand.

They lay on the bed after. Edward felt their combined moisture soaking the sheets beneath him as he lay on his back. Bren was half on her side, half on her back against him. He had one arm around her, the other out to his side. He felt her heartbeat and the gentle swells of her breath. "Summer will go by so fast like this," she said. He felt wetness seep against both his temples and her body gently rocking. They both knew how fast a summer could go by.

===

Edward loaded his parent's SUV with all he would need for college dorm life, everything he could not bear to leave behind, with one exception. He looked over at the empty house next door on every trip to the driveway. Bren's parents were home, but it looked abandoned, hollow, devoid of life.

Their summer had gone by in a whirlwind of everything he'd ever dreamed of, and it seemed to fulfill her dreams as well. It passed in the blink of an eye. They'd spent every day together and every night, not hiding any of it. There was no time to sneak, and both sets of parents accepted it. Almost as if they'd known it was coming for two decades.

As the sun fell lower in the sky day by day, a shadow crept over their idyll and over their shared bed. She wouldn't say what day she was leaving, but he knew his departure was only a bit over a week away, and hers could be any time.

One night as they lay in bed, after making love slowly and tenderly, she said. "I don't love you."

It hurt to hear it, but he knew it would hurt even more to hear the affirmation. Her eyes were filled with tears. She buried her face in his shoulder and gripped him like she didn't want to ever let go, and he knew it had been their last time. "I don't love you too," he said, his voice choking, and felt her body wrack with sobs. His own vision clouded, and tears dripped into his hair and his ears.

The next day she was gone without saying goodbye. Over the years, he would alternately curse her or thank her for that, but he knew it was for the best. Best friends don't ever break up, she'd said.

They never saw each other again. They never spoke, never crossed paths on social media. He remembered her for the rest of his life, and not for an instant of it would he have traded this day's pain for the emptiness of never having experienced her, of never learning the final lessons they had to teach each other, of never learning to know each other as so much more than best friends.

He kept no pictures of her, save one. It was taken more than eighteen years before that summer. They lay on a bed together wrapped in swaddling clothes, tiny faces scrunched, fists balled. He could never be sure which of them was her, but he suspected that he was the one that was crying.

As his dad pulled the SUV away, he turned to look out the back window, watching both empty houses recede into the past.