Page 64 of We Drank the Dawn

He sharply shushed me. “Gosh, you are so loud. Be quiet.”

“Are we going to graffiti?”

He shot me a stern glance. “If you don’t get us in trouble before we even try.”

I put a hand over my mouth, muffling my apology. A loud clack-clack-clack filled the air as Peter shook an orange can and nodded for me to follow him toward a parked train down the tracks. Adrenaline rushed through my body as I followed Peter to a blue train car. The light was dim there, making it the perfect place to put our initials.

He winked at me. “Line twenty-eight. Graffiti my initials. You ready?”

I smiled. “Born ready.”

Wasting no time, I slid a mask over my face and sprayed my initials into the side of the freight car, happy to have a yellow so bright that it popped off the mural of color beneath it.

SED

Pleased with my work, I stepped back to watch Peter add his.

But he didn’t stop after PCT. He kept going, wrapping his sentence around the back of the train car.

PCT loves Sunshine Girl.

My heart flipped and dropped, my torso pooling with warmth as I watched him add the finishing touches to his declaration. Though he’d said the same words many times before, they’d never lost their ability to flood out my midsection with love so strong I thought I would drown in it.

Now eighteen, he’d changed so much. A bit of facial hair lined his cheeks, and his shoulders were thick, corded with strength. Watching him heal from the flickering wisp of life on a hospital bed to this was a miracle I relived every single day.

When he turned back to gauge my response, I beckoned him with a finger.

Dropping his can of paint on the ground, he surged forward and wrapped his arms around me.

It was the last day of our senior year. Every class was utter chaos as excitement for graduation soared. A huge smile rested on my face as Peter’s fingers entwined with mine and tugged me down the hall. But then I frowned in confusion as I realized we were traveling against the lunch-bound stream of students, away from the cafeteria.

I looked up to ask where we were going, but he didn’t answer.

One twitch of his eyebrow told me to wait and see.

Slowing down at a door, he glanced forward and back to make sure no one was watching. Then he opened the door and shoved me in. Giggling uncontrollably, I blushed as I noted the utility sink in the corner, the bottles of cleaner on a shelf, the mop, the buckets, and the push broom.

When I turned around, Peter braced a hand on the shelf over my head, pressing close to me.

“Line twelve. Say it.”

I spread two open hands over my face, laughing in mortification. “I can’t.”

He laughed then too, and I relished in how happy he sounded. “You aren’t getting anything unless you admit what you want.”

“Peter!” I scolded him for how suggestive that sounded.

“Time’s wasting,” he whispered. “Say it.”

Sometimes I genuinely wondered what I was thinking, writing that crazy list and then showing it to my boyfriend of twenty-four hours. I must’ve been crazy. Admitting that fifteen year-old Sarah had a janitor closet fantasy made my face roar with heat.

He leaned down, holding his mouth out of reach. “Tick tock, Sunshine Girl. The janitor needs his closet back.”

Always a beggar, my eyes dropped to his lips, forcing me to concede by spitting out the foolish hopes I had penned during literature class. “Make out in a janitor closet.”

He smiled, satisfied.

As we moved toward each other, Peter grabbed my wrists, holding them still by my side as he lowered his mouth to mine. Practiced in our kisses, our mouths instantly opened, moving together, proving we’d done it a hundred times. When he let go of my hands, they sprang up, knocking his hat to the floor and plowing through his hair as a strangled hum wrenched from deep in my chest. Peter pressed me into the side of a shelf, the bottles rattling with the force of our bodies colliding.