Summer's Surrender

The opening band was three songs in when I first felt it—that little twinge deep in my belly that I ignored, because who interrupts a perfect summer festival evening for a twinge? The sky was streaked pink over the main stage, the grass was warm beneath our picnic blanket, and you were lying on your side watching me with that grin that always means trouble.

By the fifth song, the twinge had become a demand. By the eighth, it was a full negotiation.

"Dave," I whispered, leaning close so you could hear me over the bass, "I need to find the bathrooms."

You didn't even open your eyes. "It's a twenty-minute walk to the portaloos and back. You'll miss the whole set."

"David. I'm serious." I pressed my knees together under my skirt, a small movement, but of course you caught it. You always catch everything.

"How serious?" One eye opened now, glinting.

"On a scale of one to ten? I'm at a seven and climbing." I shifted my weight, the cotton of my panties a soft, constant reminder of how badly I needed to be somewhere with plumbing. I'd worn the skirt for exactly this reason—festival portaloos and jeans are a nightmare combination—except the skirt only helped if I actually made it to a toilet.

You sat up, unhurried, and wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me back down against you. "You held it through an entire movie last month," you murmured against my ear, your breath warm on my neck. "On the sofa. While I tickled you. You can make it through one concert."

"That was different. That was our sofa. This is a field with forty thousand people and exactly eleven toilets."

"Twelve. I counted on the map."

"You counted the toilets on the map?"

"I plan ahead." Your hand settled on my hip, your thumb tracing slow circles just above the waistband of my skirt, and I hated you a little for how good it felt, because every bit of warmth you poured into me seemed to go straight to my bladder. The crowd roared as the headliner took the stage. My body roared back, internally, with a wave of pressure that made me gasp and cross my legs hard at the ankle.

"Eight," I announced. "Eight and a half."

"You're making up numbers."

"I'm a teacher, Dave. I grade things professionally. I know a solid eight-point-five when I feel one." I bounced my knee, white sock flexing inside my sneaker, and pressed my thighs together so tightly my muscles trembled. The music thumped through the ground and straight up into my pelvis, which felt genuinely unfair. Every bass note was a small earthquake.

You laughed—that low, warm laugh I fell for years ago—and pulled me closer so my back was against your chest, your arms wrapped around me like you were guarding me from the crowd. It felt wonderful. It felt like being held by a very handsome jailer.

"If you get up now, you'll lose our spot," you said reasonably. "People will take the blanket. Someone will steal our spot and we'll be stuck at the back for the encore."

"Let them have the blanket. I'll buy you a new blanket. I'll buy you ten blankets. Dave, I'm going to—oh no." A sharp spasm hit and I grabbed your wrist, squeezing. "Nine. Nine. This is a nine."

"Shh." You turned my face toward yours and kissed me, slow and deep, the kind of kiss that usually makes me forget my own name. It did not, this time, make me forget my bladder, but it did make me melt back against you, and for a moment the desperate throb between my legs got confusingly tangled up with the warmth of your mouth. My curl had escaped my ponytail and stuck to my cheek and you tucked it back behind my ear like we were in a film.

"You're doing this on purpose," I accused when the kiss ended.

"Doing what?"

"Being distractingly handsome while I'm in crisis."

"I can't help being handsome. That's on genetics." You kissed the corner of my jaw. "Hold it for the slow song. Then I'll walk you there myself."

"That's four songs away!"

"Three. One was the slow song. You were too busy panicking to notice."

I checked the stage. The band had, in fact, already played the ballad. I groaned and did the only thing available to me: I folded myself into the tightest possible shape, knees to chest, heel pressed hard between my legs, rocking slightly. The fidgeting didn't help, exactly, but it felt like doing something, and doing something was the only thing keeping me from admitting what my body already knew.

You stretched out flat on the blanket then, arms behind your head, looking up at me with infuriating calm. "Lie down with me. Look at the sky. Distraction is scientifically proven."

"Distraction is scientifically proven to make people wet themselves on their boyfriends," I muttered, but I lowered myself onto you anyway, straddling your stomach, my skirt pooling around us, my hands braced on your chest. Your eyes went soft and dark, and your hands slid up my thighs, warm and slow, thumbs brushing the bare skin above my socks.

"Hi," you said.

"Hi," I said back, breathless, and not only from the bladder.

Then the crowd leapt to its feet for the big hit, everyone around us surging forward, and the jolt of movement went through me like a shock. I felt it happen—the first hot spurt escaping into my cotton panties, shocking and undeniable.

"Dave." My voice came out thin and panicked. "It's happening. I can't—"

His hands flew to my hips, and then, in a gesture that was somehow the most intimate and most useless thing he's ever done, he pressed his palm firmly against my gusset, as if he could hold me closed from the outside. "I've got you," he said. "Squeeze. Hold it."

"I'm trying—" But my body had finished negotiating. The dam broke in one long, helpless rush, heat flooding through the cotton, spreading under his pressing hand, soaking through my skirt where it pressed against him, streaming down warm and endless while the band played on. I buried my face against his shoulder, mortified and shaking—and then, mortifyingly, wonderfully, the warmth kept spreading and my whole body pulsed with it, a wave crashing through me while I was still dripping, and I clutched his shirt and rode it out, gasping.

"Oh," you said, very quietly, soaked from chest to hip. "Oh. That was—I felt that."

"Don't," I mumbled into your neck.

"Jane." You tipped my chin up. You were smiling, and your eyes were shining. "That was the best thing that's happened at this concert and the band is right there."

"You're lying in my—" I couldn't even finish it.

"I'm lying in an experience. You looked incredible. You sound incredible. I'm buying you a festival hoodie at the merch stand, we're going to walk out of here like nothing happened, and next year—" you pressed a kiss to my forehead— "we're buying the fast-pass toilet upgrade."

I started laughing, helplessly, against his soaked shirt, in front of forty thousand strangers. "You counted the toilets on the map."

"Twelve," you said solemnly. "And now we know why."

The encore started. We stayed right there on the grass, soaked and giggling, and honestly? Best seat in the house.