Page 15 of A Good Book

“Sarah used to say that you had a crush on me.”

I coughed a laugh. “What? Oh my gosh! Leave it to Sarah to assume that everyone wants what she has. She probably thought I wanted to be a singer in Nashville too.”

Matt studied me with an unreadable expression as his head cocked ever so slightly to the side. I tried to hide my visible squirming by rubbing my arms as if I wasn’t wearing a jacket. He stepped closer, forcing me into an audible gulp.

“Would you?” he asked.

My eyes couldn’t hold his gaze, so I stared at his chest. “Would I w-what?”

“Kiss and tell?”

Sweat formed between my breasts and soaked my armpits as his words turned me into an inferno. He was going to kiss me.

My. First. Kiss.

Oh gosh.

No.Oh GOD!

Matthew Cory, on the verge of kissing me, wasn’t a gosh moment. It was a full-on Lord’s-name-in-vain-moment. The single greatest moment of my life. Only … I didn’t know how to kiss. I mean, everyone knew how to kiss. I had kissed my mom and animals that I’d loved, not a romantic kiss on the lips. But Matt had kissed his girlfriend, my sister, and probably a bunch of girls in between.

I trapped my lips between my teeth, making them unavailable to him. They weren’t ready to be kissed. I’d saved my first kiss for him, but who wanted someone’s first kiss? I would proverbially fumble the condom like he had done with Sarah.

“It’s been fun. We’ll have to do it again,” he said, taking a step backward. “Maybe Julianne can join us. You’d like her.”

Keeping my lips hostage, I nodded several times.

“Maybe you can bring Ben.”

I kept nodding, but I wasn’t bringing Ben with me on a real or imaginary date with Matt. Well, Matt and his girlfriend.

“Goodnight,” he said, leaving me with a smile as he pivoted and sauntered back toward his car.

I sprinted inside the building, all the way to the fourth floor, and down the hallway, weaving past groups of guys laughing and chatting. After a half dozen hard knocks, Ben opened his door.

I craned my neck to see past him, looking for his roommate. When I didn’t see anyone, I shoved his chest so I could step inside and shut the door behind me.

“Please, come in,” he said with a slight laugh.

“I don’t know how to kiss!” I stabbed my fingers into my hair.

CHAPTERFIVE

MICHAEL JACKSON, “THEWAYYOUMAKEMEFEEL”

Ben

Loving Gabriella Jacobson was easy.

Being her best friend? Pure torture.

When we were in elementary school, she brought injured animals like cats, rabbits, and birds to my house because her dad said it was God’s plan for the animals to die in nature, and that’s where she needed to leave them. But Gabby thought that finding them was a sign from God for her to save them. And because she was the pastor’s daughter, my parents said I needed to be nice to her and help her nurse the animals back to health in the barn.

By middle school, Gabby taught me to braid her hair because it relaxed her. And in return, she listened to me play my saxophone, clarinet, piano, cello, and trombone. She danced, swayed, and snapped her fingers with a huge smile and enthusiasm in her eyes, whereas my parents used to say, “That’s nice, Ben,” without even looking at me.

Gabby wrote her first poem for me, and I wrote my first cello piece for her.

In eighth grade, her friend, Michelle, told me that Gabby liked me more than a friend, but just days earlier, Susie had asked me to “go with” her, so I called Gabby to tell her that we could only be friends because I had a girlfriend. She gave me a “duh” like it was ridiculous for me to think that she liked me more than a friend, and she swore Michelle had lied.

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