The seat of the tractor was enclosed in a glass booth, but the windows were open. He slipped off his headphones and opened the door.
He was wearing worn, ripped jeans faded almost to white, and no shirt.
Yee-haw!
A nd he was filthy. Small pieces of straw stuck to his tanned chest and hung in his black hair.
“I was just thinking about you,” he said.
I grinned like an idiot. “What were you thinking?”
He pursed his lips. I loved that look he got when he was trying to keep from laughing. “That I wanted to spend the afternoon with you, but I’m stuck on a tractor.”
“Very responsible of you,” I said.
“A nd I feel stupid. I ran out of time last night. I forgot that you probably had a curfew.”
I walked toward him, wincing as the acorns ¡stuck to me feet. “I’ve never been this close to a tractor.”
“Really? I feel like I’ve lived on it for the past month. I might forget and drive it to school one day. Want to go for a ride?”
He held out his hand to me. With one arm, he pulled me over the enormous tire and into the cab. He let me sit in the seat, and he stood beside me.
Then he opened a compartment below the controls and brought out a second set of headphones. He placed them gently over my ears, put his own pair back over his ears, and reached down to start the ignition.
“Wait,” I said.
“What?” he asked, pulling his headphones off.
I pulled mine off. “You don’t really expect me to drive this tractor while you hang on, do you? Well be killed, and Clayton Porridge will be drum major for sure.”
He looked around the tractor cab. “I don’t want you to have to hang on. My dad would wring my neck.”
“You drive, and let me sit in your lap.”
He gave me a long look.
“Okay,” he said in a friendly way, as if this were the most normal request in the world. I stood. He slid under me to sit down, and he patted his thigh. A nd I sat down in Drew Morrow’s lap.
He slipped one arm around my waist. He reached with the other hand to start the tractor. A s he leaned forward, his bare chest pressed against my back, and his chin rested on my shoulder. We were way past phantom limbs here.
We drove fast across the rolling hills, until we couldn’t see the house and barn anymore, and there was nothing but the warm wind scented with hay, the green hills, and the deep blue sky.
“It’s really loud,” I said.
“What?” he shouted.
I shook my head. There was no way he could understand what I was saying over the noise of the motor, with headphones on.
A fter a while I murmured, “It’s so beautiful out here.”
“What?”
We went over a bump, and he tightened his arm around my waist to steady me.
I said, “I like your arm around my waist.”
“What?”
He slowed the tractor to a stop down in a valley, in front of a pond that reflected the bright sun and the white clouds. We pulled our headphones off.
I repeated, “It’s really loud, it’s beautiful out here, I like your arm around my waist.”
“Yes, yes, what?” He put his hand on my bare thigh.
I stopped breathing.
He slid his hand slowly down to my knee, and rubbed my knee gently with his fingertip. So weird how he could make me feel just by putting his hand on my skin.
He wasn’t breathing either.
I said, “On the count of three, breathe. Onetwothree.”
We both gasped.
I turned to look at him over my shoulder. My, but he was a beautiful boy. The sun made tiny rainbows at the edges of his dark hair and glinted white in his dark eyes.
He put his chin on my shoulder again and rubbed his cheek against mine. With his lips almost touching my lips, he whispered, “We should add this to the dip.”
We both burst into a long fit of laughter. He held me tight with one arm so I wouldn’t fall off his lap.
“Okay, okay,” he said finally, still laughing. “Turn around.” He put both hands on my waist and gently guided me until I was facing him, sitting on his leg.
“This is comfortable,” I said.
He grinned.
“We could be an act at the tractor pull. The Morrow Family and Their Risqué Tractor Show.”
He rubbed his thumb lightly across my lips. A nd then he kissed me.
Mmmmmmm, what a warm and lazy kiss. A perfect kiss for a Sunday afternoon in late September. On a farm.
Well, the kiss moved at a lazy pace. It was slow and thorough. But I did not feel the least bit lazy. Electricity zinged through me. I should have stopped him to make sure he hadn’t parked the tractor on a downed power line. But I didn’t.
A fter a long time he paused to spit out a fragment of hay. “I beg your pardon,” he said.
“Certainly,” I said, careful not to pant.
He kissed me. “Remember that night I had scarlet fever?”
“Mmmmmmm,” I said. “Vaguely.”
He kissed me. “Since then, all I’ve thought about is your hand in my hair.”
“Mmmmmmm.”
He kissed me. “Well, I was able to block it out during the SA T. But after that …” Kiss. “A t first I thought it was the fever. The fever went away, but the feeling didn’t.”
I put my hand in his hair.
Honk! I pressed farther against him in alarm, then looked around at the steering wheel that one of us had just kneed or elbowed. “Why do you have a horn on a tractor?”
“Cows.”
“A h.” I kissed him.
We made out on the tractor for a long time, until the sun moved and changed color. I couldn’t get enough of his mouth on my mouth, his kisses on my neck, his warm bare shoulders under my hands. What made it worse, or maybe better, was the feeling that it was too good to be true.
A high, muffled beeping played the first few bars of the opening song from our halftime show. Pulling his cell phone from his pocket, he winked at me. “Band geek.”
He clicked the phone on. “Hello … Give me fifteen minutes.” He eyed me. “Twenty.” He pressed the button to hang up. “My mom.”
“Where is she? Is she okay?”
“She’s here. She’s fine, but I have to go back to the house.”
I looked at the sun, then at my watch. “I should get going.”
He grabbed my hand. “Don’t leave! It’ll only take me a minute. She can’t reach the Cheetos. Your dad says we’re supposed to humor her.”