“We should probably keep our distance,” I said, after kissing him one last time. “We can’t do this again, or let it go anywhere. It’ll only make it worse when you leave.”
He pressed his lips together, grimacing slightly. I hoped he’d argue with me, but he only sighed. “If that’s what you want,” he said.
When we walked across the parking lot, he put his arm around me, and I leaned into him, stealing as much of his touch as I could before going inside, where we’d spend the rest of the evening pretending nothing had happened at all.
Seventeen
As soon as we returned from karaoke, Mia, Kitty, and I collapsed onto the sofa bed, planning to melt our brains with as many episodes ofMy Super Sweet 16as we could stand. I settled between them like I had the first night they’d arrived, and tried to focus on the TV. We still had four seasons to get through before the girls returned home to North Carolina, but I couldn’t pay attention to bratty teens’ birthday parties because Alex was the only thing on my mind.
“Are you having a stroke or something?” Mia asked.
I turned away from the train wreck of a birthday party on the screen. Mia eyed me with suspicion, the blue light of the television flickering over her face. “What are you talking about?”
Kitty sat up and leaned over me. “Do you feel any numbness? Tingling?” She pinched my cheek. “Did you feel that?”
“Ouch! Yes, Kitty, I felt that.”
“I don’t mean a literal stroke,” Mia said.
Kitty dropped back onto the bed. “Oh.”
“If I’m having a literal or figurative stroke, it’s because the people in this episode are even more outrageous than usual.” I nodded to thescreen, where a father and his teenage son interviewed models to jump out of the son’s birthday cake, assigning each one a chili pepper on a ten-pepper hotness scale.
Mia pursed her lips. “I don’t think so. You keep doing this.” She grinned, then furrowed her brow, then dropped her mouth into a frown before springing into a smile again.
Probably an accurate representation of both my face and my inner turmoil. Since my kisses with Alex in the parking lot, I’d thought of little else. Except for the part where he and Greyson were leaving. “Haven’t you ever heard of facial yoga?” I said. “I do this every night. It’s a natural anti-aging treatment.”
“Yeah, sure,” Mia said. She set her chin on her hands, and the three of us returned to watching TV.
“There!” she said a few minutes later, jolting upright on the bed. “You’re doing it again!”
“That’s just my face, Mia. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
She gnawed on her lip as she studied me, and I tried not to think about Alex, in case she could read my mind. Though she probably wouldn’t need to read my mind with how bad of a liar I was.
“Where did you and Alex go after your song?” she asked. “You were gone for a looooooong time.”
Damn it.“I went outside for some air. It was hot in there.”
“And Alex?”
“May or may not have been there.” There was no use lying about that. They’d seen us come in together.
“And what were you twodoingoutside?” Mia pressed.
“Talking.” Not a lie. We’d talked.
“Uh-huh, just talking. Really.”
“Yes, really.” The corner of my mouth twitched, and I fought off a smile.
Mia clutched a hand to her chest. “Oh my God! Kitty, something definitely happened.”
Kitty pretended to swoon onto the bed.
“Nothing happened!” I cried.
Mia raised an eyebrow. “Sure, because both of you got your hair messed up on your own.”
