My heart slows all the way down. Strangely, I feel relieved. I know I’m going to kiss him. Honestly, nothing could stop me from kissing him. I’ve wanted to kiss him for a while now. Probably since our LaLaLand tour. Probably since before that.
The only reason I haven’t yet is that I’m afraid. Because of my dad and the divorce. Because of the visions. What if I see our future? What if it’s not a good one?
But I don’t want to be afraid anymore.
I lean in and tilt my face up.
Our teeth collide.
He smiles against my lips and pulls away for a second to adjust our position. But then he puts his hands on either side of my face and kisses me again. I wrap my arms around his neck, wanting to get closer—needingto get closer. His hands slide down my back and then…lower. Never again will I make fun of his enormous hands. They are the perfect size.
“Wow, that was better than I thought it was gonna be, and I thought it was gonna be good,” he says when we finally pull apart.
I laugh. “How much thinking about this have you been doing?”
“A fair amount,” he says, and kisses me again, and it’s more than good.
It’s excellent.
Stupendous.
Phenomenal.
Prodigious.
Every synonym forexcellentever conceived.
I’ll almost certainly worry about this kiss and what it means tomorrow, but for right now I lean in and kiss him again, happy to be in the here and now.
CHAPTER 25
The Ones You Don’t See Coming, Part 1
“WHY DO YOUkeep touching your lips like that?” Sophie asks. She imitates me by pressing two fingers against her lips.
Cassidy stops chewing her PB & J. “Youareacting stranger than normal.”
“Did something happen with you and X last night?” asks Sophie.
Across the table, Martin just watches me.
One of the hazards of having friends, especially longtime ones, is just how well they know you.
“Wemighthave kissed,” I say.
“See, I knew it!” Cassidy says, nudging Sophie’s shoulder. “Didn’t I say she had poufy just-kissed lips last night?”
“You did say that,” Sophie says, laughing.
Martin joins in on the teasing. “Was it a good kiss?”
“Infinity on a scale of one to ten,” I say, with a huge smile I can’t seem to make smaller.
They tease me some more, with Cassidy claiming that she has kiss radar—“kissdar,” she calls it. Sophie asks when we can have another bonfire with my “boyfriend.”
Hearing her sayboyfriendsends me into a small panic. First, X and I are not officially together. Second, don’t I know from the visions that things fall apart? Third, I don’t know why I didn’t see a vision of us last night. Maybe one of the rules of the visions is I can’t see my own future? Or maybe I have to actuallyseethe kiss for it to happen? That’s fine with me. I like kissing with my eyes closed.
I stand up and grab my tray. “I’m going to get more chocolate milk. When I get back we can totally talk about something other than my lips.”
