I took another sip of water to buy time. My pulse ticked in my throat. The words were both huge and fragile all at once, like saying them aloud might make them more real.
“He kissed me,” I said quietly. “In his kitchen. During the cookie challenge.”
Silence fell, thick and immediate.
Allie reached blindly for the chunk of cheese she’d been shredding and missed it by a good three inches.
Meghan’s eyes widened. “Oh.”
Pepper’s mouth dropped open. “For real kissed? Or like… mistletoe-cheek-peck kissed?”
“For real.” Heat crept up my neck. “Mouth. Hands. The whole thing.”
“And you…?” Allie prompted, gentle.
I let my shoulders slump, the fight to hold myself upright suddenly too much. “I kissed him back.”
There it was. The truth of it lay between us like a dropped plate, shards of it catching the light.
No one said anything for a long moment. I listened to the hum of the fridge, the soft tick of the oven, the distant whoosh of a car driving past outside.
Finally, Meghan moved. She rounded the island and perched on the stool beside me, hip bumped against mine, not crowding but close enough that I could’ve leaned if I needed to.
“What did it feel like?” Her voice was low, but not teasing. Merely curious in that careful way she had when she was aware pushing would make me shut down.
I stared at the opposite wall, at the calendar with little notes scribbled in the squares. I shouldn’t have known the answer as clearly as I did. I shouldn’t have been able to conjure it up with one breath.
“Like someone had been holding my shoulders tense for ten years and suddenly… let go,” I said slowly. “Like… heat. Everywhere. And like I’d been wrong about gravity. In a good way.” I huffed out a breath. “And about thirty seconds later, in a very bad way.”
Pepper’s voice softened. “Bad how?”
“Bad like my brain finally caught up and started screaming, ‘You hate him, remember? You hate him, you idiot.’” I pressed my fingers to my temples. “Except I didn’t. Not right second. I didn’t hate him at all.”
Allie rested her forearms on the island, chin propped on her hands. “So you ran.”
“Of course I ran.” I laughed, a small, humorless huff. “I’m very consistent that way.”
Meghan bumped my shoulder with hers. “Did he do anything… wrong? During? After?”
“No,” I said immediately. That much, at least, was solid. “He was slow. Gave me time. When I freaked, he backed off. He didn’t chase me or say anything manipulative or—” My throat tightened again. “He looked… confused. Worried. Like he thought he’d messed something up.”
Pepper blew out a long breath. “Okay. So your nervous system had a meltdown, not because of him, but because the narrative in your head didn’t match the reality in your mouth.”
“That’s a horrifying way to put it,” I muttered. “But yes.”
Allie drummed her fingers lightly on the counter. “Jess… we love you. You know that.”
“That sounds like the preamble to an intervention.”
“It kind of is,” Meghan said gently.
I braced myself.
“All this time,” Pepper said, “you’ve had Powell filed under ‘irredeemable jackass’ because of what happened senior year. The locker thing. The hallway. Whatever that was. You built a whole story about him out of that one day.”
“It wasn’t just one day,” I argued automatically, even though if I tried to list other specific offenses, they mostly blurred into general teenage irritation. “He was—he is—always infuriating. Cocky. Loud. Charming when he wants to be.”
“Okay,” Pepper allowed. “And he did something that hurt you. I’m not minimizing that. But you’ve never actually talked to him about it.”
