26 Kisses (23 page)

“Goddamn right it had better be nothing. It’s your sister’s birthday. So get back in here and have some cake and be happy about it.” He glares at both of us and turns away, his footsteps thudding down the hallway.

“We’re not done,” I say, grabbing Jeffrey’s arm as he walks past me. He shrugs me off like I’m Kaylee’s size.

Everyone’s talking about you and your new boyfriends.
I wrap my arms around my stomach and stare at the pictures of Dad, Lila, and Kaylee perched on the marble fireplace mantel. Is that what people are saying? I think back over the summer, mentally cataloging the guys I
actually
kissed (not counting the nonromantic ones, obviously). How many is that? Five? That’s not enough to be labeled the town slut, is it?

“Vee!” Dad roars from the dining room. “We’re waiting.”

“Coming,” I say, trying to slow my racing heart. It can’t be true. Jeffrey has to be wrong.

After we sing “Happy Birthday” to Kaylee and eat Funfetti cake with pink frosting, it’s time for presents. She rips through a dozen packages from Dad and Lila before reaching for the rocking chair, but as soon as she opens it, her eyes light up. “
My
chair!” she says in wonder, standing up and carefully lowering herself onto it, her feet flying up off the floor when the chair rocks back.

“Say thank you to Vee and Jeffrey,” Lila reminds her.

“Tank you!” Kaylee shouts, running her tiny hands over the armrests. I grin, noticing not even Jeffrey can completely hold back a smile, and silently thank Killian for helping me find the perfect present.

The eastern edge of the sky is just beginning to darken when Lila hustles Kaylee off to her room for bath and bedtime. Kaylee doesn’t want her birthday to end, and she clings to me, her fingers sticky with frosting and her little heart beating madly.

“Happy birthday,” I whisper into her hair, and she starts to cry.

“I think someone’s a little tired,” Lila says, untangling Kaylee’s fists from my hair and lifting her away.

“No!” Kaylee sobs, and my heart wrenches as she reaches her arms out to me. “No!”

“Night, Kay.” I smile brightly and wave. “Time to go to bed.”

As soon as Lila and Kaylee are upstairs, Jeffrey bolts for the basement. I chase after him, thundering down the carpeted stairs. I haven’t been in the basement in months, and I had forgotten how huge it is—a never-ending expanse of plush carpet dotted with the biggest sectional sofa I’ve ever seen, a pool table, an air-hockey table, and anything else a preteen boy could wish for.

Jeffrey sprints into the bathroom and locks the door behind him. “Come on, Jeffrey,” I say, keeping my voice low enough that Dad won’t come down here and ream us out again. “Come out for a second.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” he says. “Just leave me alone.” He flips on the bathroom fan and water runs in the shower. I sink down to sit on the floor and lean against the door. He’ll have to come out eventually.

jeffrey said people are talking about me and the guys i’ve kissed,
I text Mel.
is it true?

I hope she’s not still mad about what happened at Seth’s yesterday. I need her to be on my side right now. Luckily, her response is almost immediate.
whaaaaat?!? no. i have not heard anything like that.

i don’t know if i want to come tonight.

I can imagine Mel standing at her bathroom sink, holding the flatiron to her hair with one hand and typing madly with the other as samba music blares from her iPod. A department store’s worth of makeup is scattered across the counter, and she’s wearing one of her dad’s old button-down shirts so she can get ready without spilling eye shadow on her outfit. Maybe she’s even pregaming with some rum mixed into her Diet Coke or vodka-soaked gummy bears.

you have to. tonight is everything. you could cross off a bunch of letters all at once!!! and you know who is coming, right?!

Yep. Definitely pregaming. I close my eyes, suddenly nervous about seeing Killian tonight. There’s only one letter standing between me and
K
—and I realize with a jolt that the one remaining letter is
J
.

i need to talk to jeffrey and find out what he knows.

Mel doesn’t respond. Inside the bathroom, the shower shuts off, and I quietly move away from the door, hoping Jeffrey will think I’ve given up and gone away. He spends twenty minutes humming to himself and banging around in there. I hear the distinctive hiss of an aerosol body spray can and wrinkle my nose. Finally the door opens and Jeffrey steps out, a towel wrapped around his waist.

I’m on my feet and next to him in a flash, my shoulder pressing against his damp arm. He smells like the love child of Hollister and an overripe banana. “If you don’t tell me what the hell is going on, I’m going to rip this towel off, take a picture, and send it to everyone in school,” I say, the tone of my voice calm and conversational. I hook one finger under the towel and give it a gentle tug. “So I suggest you just do what I say.”

Jeffrey stiffens but doesn’t pull away. “You wouldn’t do it,” he says, but the hesitation in his voice tells me I’ve got him right where I want him.

“Try me.”

He lets his breath out in a huff. “Fine, but get away from me. You’re freaking me out.”

“Come over here.” I tug him across the room and force him to sit down in a corner of the sectional. I stand over him, hands on my hips. “Spill.”

Jeffrey squirms, goose bumps rising on his chest as water drips from the ends of his hair. “I’ve just heard some stuff,” he mutters, avoiding my gaze.

“What stuff?” I brandish my phone at him, camera app at the ready.

He cringes. “Kyle and Oliver told me Mark had some people over last weekend for a bonfire at his house.” I stop breathing for a moment, the smell of woodsmoke and the feeling of one of Mark’s giant hoodies pulled around my shoulders flashing through my mind. “And Gabriel Latimore was talking about how you were all over him at Lila’s party.”

A flash of anger rips through me. Paired with Ryan’s eyewitness account of how I kamikaze-kissed Dexter early this summer, I could see where some people might start to see a pattern. But Mark knows me. He knows I would never actually sleep around.
But is what you’ve been doing any better?
an annoying voice inside me asks. I choose not to answer.

“All I did was
kiss
Gabriel.” I close my eyes briefly, unable to believe I’m having this conversation with my little brother, who apparently is not so little anymore.

Jeffrey takes the opportunity to try to bolt, but I grab the edge of his towel and he quickly sits back down as it begins to slide. “Stop. I don’t want to hear about it.”

I fall onto the couch, letting the squishy cushions surround me. “Who else knows?”

Jeffrey shrugs. “Beats me.” He stands up, clutching the towel to his waist with both hands. “There, I told you everything. Happy? I’m leaving now.” He stomps into his bedroom and slams the door.

Shit.
I clutch my phone, my hands trembling. Everyone from school must know by now. It’s too good of a story—
goody-two-shoes Vee gone wild
. I’m a slut—me, Vee Bentley, debate team nerd, half-marathon trainer, the girl who wanted nothing more than to keep dating her high school boyfriend.

My phone buzzes in my hand, and I jump.

i’m ready, biotch. coming to pick u up.

I’m wearing my Dad-appropriate clothes, hair up in a boring ponytail. Cute and traditional. The same old Vee.

I take a deep breath and stand up, my fingers moving automatically over my phone’s screen.

k. but we need to go back to your house first.

They think I’m a slut? Fine. If they want to give me the label, I’m going to look the part. They haven’t seen anything yet.

The girl staring back at me from the mirror is wearing more eyeliner than I’ve ever seen on anyone in my life. Her eyes are huge, her cheekbones sharp, her lips red. She looks like she’s going to kick the world’s ass.

“You. Look. Incredible.” Mel stands next to me, staring at my reflection. “I’m superjealous.”

“Mark knows,” I say to her, touching the ends of my hair, full and wavy from Mel’s curling iron. “Everybody knows.”

“They don’t know anything,” she says, raising her Diet Coke bottle and toasting my reflection. “And they can just go to hell.”

It’s nearly dark by the time we leave Mel’s house, stumbling in our stilettos and folding ourselves carefully into the Buick so we don’t flash the whole neighborhood with our impossibly short skirts. I have to drive since Mel ended up pregaming a little bit more than she planned to while I was getting ready, and my hands are slippery on the steering wheel. My senses are heightened under the awareness I’m likely the number one topic of conversation among the teenage population of Butterfield right now—the deep purple shadows of dusk seem sharper, the lake-scented air more crisp.

“I’m done with the kissing thing,” I say to Mel. My pulse is racing, imagining what it’s going to be like to walk into the middle of a crowd, knowing everyone there thinks I sleep around. “I can’t walk into that party and just start kissing more random people. And I was so pissed at Jeffrey when I left that I forgot to kiss him, so I’m not even on
K
yet.”

“Vee! How could you forget?”

I shrug and turn on the air-conditioning, trying to keep the windshield from fogging up. Maybe I didn’t exactly forget—but if I still have to cross
J
off my list, then there’s no risk of having to make the decision about Killian tonight.

Mel shrugs and then rolls the window up a bit so the wind doesn’t mess up her perfectly straightened hair. “Well, screw it. Just skip
J
.”

I swallow hard. “Is that allowed?”

Mel’s smile is dangerous as we pass under a streetlight. “Vee, have you looked at yourself lately? Tonight everything is allowed.”

It seems to take about half the usual time to get to the dunes, and when we pull up the parking lot is nearly half full with cars. “Excellent,” Mel says, using her phone’s flashlight to check her makeup in the rearview mirror. “This is going to be an insane party.”

As soon as we climb out of the car, I start shaking and feel like I have to pee. “Mel,” I say, leaning against the Buick, the metal warm against my thighs. “I’m scared.”

She walks over and puts her hands under my elbows, steadying me. “You don’t have anything to be scared of,” she tells me, anchoring her dark eyes on mine. “They suck. You are awesome. What else matters?”

She grabs my hand and leads me to the beach path. Laughter and shouts float through the trees, and it sounds like half the school must be here. We pull off our shoes when we reach the sand and step out onto the beach, and I hold my breath as I wait for someone to spot me and shout,
Hey! The slut is here!

Of course, that doesn’t happen. Everyone is already two or three beers into the night, preoccupied with their own drama, hitting on whomever they want to make out with later. There aren’t nearly as many people here as I thought, and one quick glance over the crowd tells me Killian hasn’t arrived yet—if he’s even coming.

I grab Mel’s arm. “Let’s just go.”

“No way. Killian will be here, right?”

“He said he would.”

She tosses her hair. “Well, you have to at least wait until he shows up.”

We grab drinks from one of the many coolers scattered across the sand and join Brianna and Landon at the edge of the bonfire. Mel flits around, talking to everyone, using animated hand gestures and exaggerated laughter, and I trail after her, trying to drink my foul-tasting beer as quickly as possible to dull the sense that everyone is staring at me.

I stay close to Mel, avoiding the eyes of people I don’t know, and keep drinking. I find some wine coolers, which speeds up the process a bit since they don’t taste like the bottom of a garbage can, unlike the cheap beer.

“Text him!” Mel says, holding her drink aloft while she dances.

I look down at my phone but can’t quite figure out how to type a coherent message. My fingers keep hitting the wrong keys and writing strings of nonsense. Sighing with exasperation, I look up. And there he is. Killian is standing in front of me, his hands on my shoulders as I lean precariously to the side. Suddenly he’s the only person in the world who I want to see.