Page 92 of Friends Don't

“Collin, come on.”

“He doesn’t have to,” Poppy says, her voice calm, as if she’s doing me a favor, as if she thinks I don’t want to.

“What? No. I was going to say I don’t have to because”—I wave my hand at her—“I’m not going to force you to kiss me if you don’t want to.”

Poppy opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, Rose jumps in.

“I can make this easy. It’s my turn next. Poppy, kiss Mack.”

I whip my gaze to Rose who looks quite pleased with herself.

“See, no issue.” She dusts her hands as if her work here is done.

“Unless you’d rather tell us a truth. I’ve got a question for that too.” Collin stares me down. He would ask me about Tricia, and I don’t want to go there. Not tonight.

“Oh!” Rose says, clapping her hands. “And I have a great question for Poppy, if she’d rather tell the truth.”

Poppy presses her lips together and then meets my gaze. She gives me a smile and a shrug that says she’s game if I am.

“You want to do this here, in front of them?” I motion to our crowd of anxious onlookers.

“Is there another option?”

“Back in the day, we used to play that if you were dared to kiss someone, you could have some privacy.” Collin points off to the side. “So you can go around the rock over there, if you’d prefer.”

“Uh, well, yeah, I guess I’d rather not kiss in front of all you guys.”

“How will we know if they kiss?” Lou argues, staring between Poppy and me. He’s apparently quite invested in this.

“Trust me. We’ll know.” Collin smirks.

I fight against the urge to flip him the bird. Because he’s doing me a favor, and I think he knows it.

I stand and hold out my hand for Poppy.

She takes it, and I hoist her up. I don’t let go as I lead her over to the rock wall.

Behind us, our friends are catcalling, and laughing, and being generally ridiculous.

“Take your time!” Rose calls, and Poppy mumbles something about how life would have been ten times easier if God would have given her brothers.

We stop when we’re out of sight.

“How will Collin know if we don’t kiss?” she asks.

“The man has known me forever, and then he went and got cop trained. He’s pretty good at lie detecting.”

Poppy chuckles. “I can’t ever get anything past Rose, either, so I guess we’re stuck going through with it.”

“Guess so.”

Poppy looks up at me through her eyelashes. “Why am I so nervous?” She bites her lip, and my knees buckle.

“You don’t ever need to be nervous around me, Boo. It’s us.”

She closes her eyes and exhales. It’s several moments before she meets my gaze again. I see a mixture of nerves and desire flickering in her pale-blue eyes. And that’s it. I’m putty in her hands, and she has no idea.

“I want this. Is it bad to want this?” She breathes the last words so quietly I think for a second I misheard her, but she flicks her gaze to my lips and back up again, and there’s no questioning it any longer.

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