Page 16 of A Good Book

By the following year, I had grown over three inches taller, a few zits appeared on my forehead and chin, and the chemicals in my brain made me see Gabby in a new light. I was in love with my best friend and always had been. When we were younger, I didn’t know my desire to spend all my free time with her was actually my first crush. Though, by the ninth grade, I knew I’d never love another human being the way I loved her. If only I hadn’t been scared out of my mind to tell her.

“What do you mean you don’t know how to kiss?” I asked as she covered her face with her hands and shook her head.

“Ugh!” She dropped her hands to her sides. “Matt was going to kiss me. I just know it. But I freaked out because it suddenly hit me that my efforts to save myself for him have only made me really inexperienced. Who saves their lips? He’s a real man who’s had real sex. What was I thinking?”

I tried not to laugh, but my best friend had been in love with the idea of falling in love for as long as I could remember. And for whatever reason, she fell for her oldest sister’s boyfriend. While she shelved her infatuation long enough to pine for a few other guys who were not real options either, she always came back to Matt.

“Don’t think that I’m not going to demand you explain ‘real man’ and ‘real sex’ to me later, but for now, let’s just think about this logically. Are yousurehe was going to kiss you? Because I swear he turns you into a space cadet.”

She flipped out her hip and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not stupid. I know when a guy is about to kiss me.”

“How?”

“Don’t be a jerk.”

I laughed. “I’m not being a jerk. But whatever. We can pretend that you’re right. The last time Matt saw you, you were fourteen. Sarah had demolished his heart. And after a walk around campus and a pizza, he suddenly wants to kiss you. Makes total sense.”

She stuck her tongue out at me.

“If you do that, then I’ll be forced to tickle you. And I’d hate for you to get a reputation on your floorandmine.” I twisted my lips for a few seconds. “Never mind. I’m fine with the other guys on the floor thinking I’m expertly giving a girl an orgasm.”

Gabby blushed, and she never looked as beautiful as she did with pink cheeks. Even the top of her ears were red as she curled her light-brown, shoulder-length hair behind them.

She turned her back to me, fiddling with the zipper to my backpack on my desk chair. “You have to show me.”

“Show you what?”

“How to kiss.”

“Real funny. Don’t girls use the back of their hands or something like that to practice?”

She kept her back to me and shrugged. “Maybe. But the back of my hand can’t tell me if I’m doing it right.”

“Gabbs, no one goes to kissing school. You just do it and figure it out in the moment. There is no right or wrong.”

She turned, nose crinkled. It was another one of her adorable expressions. “But there’s good and bad. I want Matt to think I’m good at it.”

I was still ninety-nine percent certain that Matt had no plans of kissing his ex-girlfriend’s youngest sister. But friends didn’t dash other friend’s dreams.

“I thought you said he has a girlfriend.”

“Who’s probably leaving for California.”

“Still. Did they break up yet?”

She shrugged.

“Do you think he’d cheat on her?”

Gabby averted her gaze while fidgeting with her jacket’s buttons. “I mean, is it cheating if they know they’re not staying together?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Matt if he thought Sarah cheated on him when they knew they would not stay together at the end of that summer.”

“Benjamin,” she frowned, “why must you always do that?”

I leaned against the door and crossed my arms. “Do what? Make sense?”

That earned me a dramatic eye roll.

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