Page 62 of Kiss Me Now
“That was a very bad idea.” I said it out loud, and hearing the words helped me believe them. “So bad. Dumb, dumb, dumb.”
Another strip curled down and hung in front of my face like it was dangling an answer, nodding gently.
I laid out white paper on the kitchen counter and arranged the mushrooms on them to capture their spore patterns. When I had them all set out, I tackled the wallpaper again, but no matter how loud I turned the music or how hard I scraped at the old glue, my brain kept replaying that kiss on a loop. It had been...
Incredible.
The kind of thing that curled my toes in ways I’d thought romance writers only made up. But now I got it. Your toes curled because they were trying to hold onto the ground while the rest of you felt like it wanted to float away.
I’d made out with Ian Greene in the woods and had felt like I was leaving the earth.
This was so bad.
I chipped away at the wallpaper and glue for a couple more hours, but when lunch rolled around and Ian was still in every other thought, I decided I needed to take even more drastic action.
I pulled out my phone and texted him.Meet me on my porch in 10 for a ham sandwich and a Coke?
He sent me a thumbs up, and I threw together two ham sandwiches complete with thick slices of tomato from the garden.
Ten minutes later exactly, he knocked and I opened the door to hand him a plate with a sandwich and a cold Coke from the fridge.
“Go ahead and have a seat on the porch. Sorry I don’t have furniture yet. I’ll get to it eventually. Maybe even a swing. Pull up a stair, and I’ll be out in a second.”
I fetched my own lunch from the kitchen and sat beside him at the top of the steps, smiling when he bit into his sandwich and gave a happy sigh.
“Good sandwich,” he said.
“Thank your grandmother for growing those tomatoes.”
“I’ll thank you too for helping her and for making the sandwich.”
“Sure. It’s the least I can do after your help today. You know, in the woods.” I tried not to wince at hownotsmooth my lead-in was.
“The woods were great,” he said, his tone carrying a faint question in it, like he knew I was getting at something.
“Right, so about that...” How was I supposed to say this?
“About the woods?” Now he sounded confused.
“Yeah. The woods. Or no. More like what happenedinthe woods.” My cheeks flushed.
“Ah.” The syllable was loaded with meaning. How did he put all those layers into a single sound?
“Right. So no more kissing.” Wow. Could not have said that in a dumber-sounding way.
“No more kissing,” he mused. “Why not? As a scientist, you should know I have a hypothesis that we might be really good at kissing each other.”
“I’m not a scientist. I’m a science teacher.”
“Right. And that was an excellent lesson in biology you gave me.”
My cheeks straight up flamed. “It was not.”
“You’re right. More like chemistry.”
I groaned. “How many versions are you going to do of that super lame joke?”
“Not a joke,” he said even though a smile lurked at the corner of his lips. “More like an observation.”
