Matt frowned. “I’m not sure I should tell you.”
“Why not?”
“I think it’s better if neither of you knows,” Matt said. He backed up a couple of steps, and I sighed in relief. Now it felt like we were actually having a conversation instead of him deciding whether he wanted to fight me. “That way, nothing else can come of it.”
“You really think it’s that easy?” I asked. “You think I’ll just forget about this if you don’t tell me? Because I promise that is not going to happen. And if you don’t tell me right now, then I promise I will ask every single one of your friends if they participated in this game until I find out who it is.”
Matt knew me well enough to know that I would follow through on my threat, which I was pretty sure was the only reason why he looked away angrily and muttered, “Charlie.”
It took a good ten seconds for the thought to sink in and a lot longer than that for me to properly understand the implications of it.
“No,” I said. “No. There’s no way it could have been him.”
“What, you think I would just make this up for fun?”
“He said he was going back to the pool.” I was grasping at straws here, but I was desperate for any reason that could prove this was some bizarre mistake. Anything that could reassure us both that Matthew’s best friend in the world had not just said I was the best kiss of his life. “He was going to lifeguard for those girls. And?—”
“He came inside instead,” Matthew said flatly. “I saw him.”
“No,” I whispered. But the reality was staring me in the face, and I could do nothing to avoid it.
I kissed Charlie Owen.
I kissed my brother’s best friend.
And worst of all… I wanted to do it again.
“It can never happen again, Madison,” Matthew said as if he was reading my mind.
“I know,” I said distantly. He was right. While part of me wanted to fight back and say he couldn’t boss me around like that, we both knew it wouldn’t do any good. Even if I decided I didn’t care what Matthew thought, I knew that Charlie did. He would never cross his best friend just for me. “Are you going to tell him?”
“No,” Matt said immediately. “He doesn’t need to know.”
I knew he was right, but I also knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the secret forever. Sure, I could hold it in for now, but it would come out one day. Probably not for a while and not until it was so late that it wouldn’t even matter anymore, but one day,I promised myself, Charlie Owen would know it was me in that closet.
One day, I would kiss him again.
two
Present Day
I woke up with my face smooshed against a fuzzy purple rug. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the most uncomfortable thing I’d ever used as a pillow, but it lost points for causing pieces of lint to stick to my mouth. I groaned and stretched, my back cracking as I did so.
“Be quiet,” Violet mumbled. I twisted around to look at her. Her head and left arm were hanging off the bed, and she was still wearing her blue graduation dress,her red hair was sticking up in every direction, mascara was smudged around her eyes, and some drool was hanging from the side of her mouth.
“You look ridiculous,” I said. I rubbed my hands over my eyes and ended up pulling off my false lashes on one side. I grimaced in disgust as I looked at it. Why hadn’t I taken off my makeup last night?
“Look in the mirror, then say that again,” Violet said. I guess I deserved that. I groaned again as I got onto my hands and knees, then slowly pushed myself up to standing. I could barely keep myself up straight and felt like I might be sick, but I managed to stumble my way toward the bathroom. “Where are you going?”
“Shower.”
I would have liked to stay in bed—or on the floor, in this case—but our school stupidly scheduled the day after graduation as the time we had to come in and clean out our lockers. We could go at any time before four o’clock, but I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to wipe all the remnants of the graduation party off, so it was better to give myself some extra time. Standing definitely wasn’t the most comfortable position for me right now. I rubbed my fingers against my temples, begging my head to stop pounding. “I have the worst headache.”
“Join the club.”
I chuckled to myself as I remembered how Violet had said over and over that she wouldn’t do anything she would regret last night, drinking included. I guess all of that got thrown out the window pretty quickly. The ceremony itself was pretty boring, but the after-party was where the fun was. When Violet and I first got there, one of the cute boys in our grade gave me a drink and asked me to dance, and after that the whole night became a bit of a blur.
A very fun blur.
