“What? No!” I jump back as if I’ve been scalded. “God, no,” I add, giving a theatrical shudder, just for good measure. “It’s a hypothetical question. I just wondered if that’s something guys do, is all?”
Alex stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind.
“No, Summer,” he says in a ‘stating the obvious’ tone. “No, I’ve never kissed a female friend on the lips. And I obviously can’t speak for all ‘guys’, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that no, that’snotwhat we do.”
“Okay, cool. Thanks.”
“Is that what he did, then? Whatshisface kissed you?”
“Yes. No. Maybe. Look, I’m not sure, okay? It was just the faintest brush on the lips. I’m not sure whether it even counts.”
Alex clears his throat awkwardly.
“It counts, Summer,” he says. “Trust me: it counts.”
I go back to the key card, my on-stage humiliation all but forgotten as I wrestle with the competing emotions that rise up inside me at the knowledge that Jamie’s mouthdidn’tjust get lost on the way to my cheek, and that his disappointingly ordinary kiss might now lead tomoredisappointingly ordinary kisses.
Or maybe he was just nervous? Guys must get nervous too when they kiss someone for the first time, right?
I glance round at Alex, so I can run this one by him too, but his room door is closed, and he’s presumably already behind it; probably getting into his coffin, or whatever it is he does in the evenings.
Oh well.
At least he didn’t say anything about my attempt at singing. I suppose that’s something to be grateful for.
Inside the hotel room, I go straight to my bedside table, where the diary is waiting for me, and pick it up, along with the pen that’s lying next to it.
1. Kiss Jamie Reynolds from next door.
2. Overcome fear of flying so I can get out of Margate and travel the world.
3. Sing somewhere other than in the shower. Become famous for this.
4. See Taylor Swift in concert.
5. Become cool. (This should maybe be number 1, seeing as everything else kind of depends on it?)
6. Maybe ride a motorcycle? That seems like something a cool girl might do?
7. Meet the love of my life.
8.Jump out of an airplane.Climb a mountain.
9. Some other stuff TBC. (That means ‘to be confirmed’, by the way.)
10. Just totally change my life, basically.
My pen hovers over number 5 for a moment.
Become cool.
How will Iknowwhen I’m cool, though?
I tap the pen against my teeth, thoughtfully. I’ve always thought the ‘coolest’ people I know are the ones who aren’t actuallytryingto be cool. They justarecool. It’s something innate to them that can’t really be imitated, and which they probably don’t even know they have.
Does that meanIcould be cool too, then, and not know it? Like the heroine in a romance novel, say, who’s just, like, SO beautiful, but doesn’t realize until the hero tells her?
I think again about the strange, croaky sound that came out of my mouth when I tried to sing.
