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Except Stella, with her stupid dog, pushed past me, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed Cassie right on the mouth. Cassie didn't even seem surprised. The girl I'd brought to the party was making out with the girl I loved. There was full tongue involvement. Okay, maybe there wasn't, but in the days that followed, when I remembered it, there would be.

People on both sides of the door catcalled and whistled. And I could only stand there and watch, embarrassed to the tips of my toes. Not only had I failed to kiss Cassie—again—but someone else had done it in my place.

What. The. Fuck.

Stella winked when she was done. “I'm Stella Nash,” she said to Cassie. “Nice to meet you.” Then she wiped her lips with the back of her hand, pushed her way into the bowels of the party, and disappeared, taking with her any chance I'd had of kissing Cassie.

Cassie had chucked Eli Horowitz like an ugly sweater, and the douche was still managing to cock block me. He hadn't needed to say a word; he'd simply walked into the party and stood there being all Horowitzy while I asked Cassie the price for a kiss. And it wasn't like she'd said no to the kiss. That, I could have handled. I could have scooped the battered remains of my ego off the kitchen floor and retreated to a dark corner, maybe chatted up Natalie or resorted to making out with Aja Bourne. But Cassie hadn't even heard me. She'd blown me off without taking one serious second to consider my proposal. Like I meant nothing to her. Less than nothing. I might as well have been DJ Leo, except he, at least, had some skills, whereas I had dice.

I stood in the kitchen, replaying the way Cassie had looked when she'd seen Eli standing by the French doors in the family room. Eli Fucking Horowitz. Seriously, if I had a time machine, I wouldn't waste my effort righting the wrongs of the world's ridiculous history, I'd travel back and wipe out Eli. I'd punch through
the time-space continuum and take a chainsaw to the whole Horowitz family tree.

I might have wasted my entire night coming up with progressively more violent ways to delete Eli from my life if a girl in a bikini, chasing a guy wearing nothing but a towel, hadn't run through the kitchen and bumped into me, spilling something red and sticky onto my jeans.

“Thanks,” I called after them, as if they could actually hear me. I groaned and snatched a napkin from the counter to dab at the slowly spreading stain, but the napkin was useless. As useless as I felt.

It was all too much. Cassie and Eli and the party and the people and the music pounding at my ears. I needed a break before I broke someone's jaw. Before I had the kind of meltdown that would cost my parents a fortune in therapy bills and antidepressants.

God, I was being so melodramatic. And I melodramatically stormed through the family room and opened the first door I found. Which happened to be Mr. and Mrs. Castillo's bedroom. I turned to leave—aware that Mr. Castillo would likely flay me alive if he found out I'd been in his bedroom—when I caught sight of Eli again. He was standing against the far wall with his arms crossed over his ridiculous chest. I followed his gaze to where Cassie had stopped to have an animated conversation with some girl I didn't really know. The fact that Eli was watching her pissed me off. There were only two logical reasons that explained why he'd decided to show up. He was either trying to make Cassie jealous or trying to get her back.

If he'd been trying to make her jealous, he would have shown up with another girl on his arm. Someone like Lacy McDougal, a.k.a. Cassiebot 2000. Which would have made Cassie go ballistic.

That meant that Eli was definitely trying to get back together with Cassie.

I watched Eli watching Cassie for another minute before ducking into the bedroom—Mr. Castillo be damned. I needed a moment to calm down, clear my head, and clean the stain off my jeans, and this was the perfect place to do it.

The room was bigger than my living room, dining room, and kitchen combined, and that wasn't counting their bathroom, which was divided by a luxurious, sloping tub. A king-size bed dominated the room, and it looked so soft that all I could think about doing was jumping on it. Seriously, it called out to me. Begged me to hop up and defy some gravity. The lure was so great that I momentarily forgot how angry I was at Eli and his stupid, cock-blocking ways.

“What are you doing in here?” Cassie walked up behind me. She didn't look angry, but it was clear that she didn't approve of my choice of hiding spots.

I tried to tell her that I'd come to clean my stained jeans, but I sputtered and stalled. I was too overwhelmed by my feelings for Cassie. It was all I could do not to admit right then and there that I'd been in love with her since the very first moment I'd seen her. I wanted Cassie to feel the same way about me that I felt about her. I wanted her to know. But how could I tell her that when I couldn't even tell her about the stupid stain?

“I was contemplating taking a jump on your parents' bed.” Fortune favors the bold. Plus, I couldn't think of anything better.

Cassie made a pinched face. “What?”

I pointed at the bed. “Jump. The bed's begging us to jump on it. Come on.” I held my hand out to Cassie and prayed for her to take it. I didn't expect her to. The idea was dumb, idiotic, but a voice in my head told me that at this second, this moment, Cassie didn't need me to kiss her, she didn't need my romantic declarations of Shakespearean love, she didn't need me to eliminate Eli from the infinite arrow of time. All she needed was to jump.

Cassie glanced at the bed and shook her head. “This is stupid, Simon.”

“Stupid awesome.”

This was not a Cassie thing to do. She protested school budget cuts of the arts programs, she rallied for organic cafeteria food, she studied hard and got good grades, she was proper and cool and classy. She always did the right thing. I knew she had a rebellious streak and I knew she'd been drinking, but I didn't know if that would allow her to jump on her parents' bed with a loser like me.

“No,” Cassie said. “No.” I felt her slipping away, retreating back into the party, where she was safe, where I might not be able to reach her again. I knew I was being a flaming imbecile, but for the second time in less than an hour, Fate had thrown Cassie and me together. Had given me the rare opportunity to show her that she was oxygen and I was hydrogen and that we belonged together. Molecularly.

I might not get another chance.

“Yes,” I said, holding my hand out to her again. “One jump. If you hate it, we'll stop.”

“Simon—”

“A trade, then,” I said. “Jump on the bed with me and I'll go vegan for a month.”

Cassie paused. “You? Vegan?”

I nodded. “One jump,” I said. “And I'll eat nothing with a face for a whole month.”

“Two months,” Cassie said. “And if you welsh, I'll tell everyone in school that you wear silky pink panties.”

“That's not true!”

Cassie shrugged. “Dear, sweet Simon. It doesn't need to be true for people to buy it.” Her smile was so genuine that it was nearly impossible to believe she was so deliciously devious.

“Deal,” I said. “Two months for one jump. Unless you like it, in which case, I'll be more than happy to provide subsequent jumps at a greatly reduced rate.”

Cassie arched her sculpted eyebrow at me, looking rather like a Bond villain about to spill her evil plan for world domination. “I didn't realize this was a pay-per-jump establishment.”

“We can discuss alternate payment plans later.”

“My mom's head will explode.”

“I'll never tell,” I said. I drew an X over my heart. “You have my word. The only way your parents will ever find out that we jumped on their bed is if they have a camera in here somewhere.” I looked around conspiratorially.

Cassie feigned shock. “Why would my parents have a camera in their bedroom?”

“Duh,” I said. “For when they put on their after-hours sock puppet shows. They're all the rage on YouTube. The Castillo Tube Sock Variety Pack. Over a hundred thousand hits and counting.”

“Now you're just being silly,” Cassie said, but she was smiling. For that, I'd be as silly as I needed to be.

“Stop stalling. You owe me a jump.” I kicked my shoes off before climbing up on the bed. Cassie bent down to take off her heels, wincing as she pulled the shoe off her injured foot. It didn't look as bad as before, but I could see that it hurt.

“Sorry. Again.”

Cassie didn't say anything as she used the headboard to haul herself up.

The ceiling in the Castillo bedroom was vaulted, and there was a skylight over the bed that let in all the stars. They seemed so bright and I wondered if any of this was real. This whole thing felt more like my dreams than reality. The lights were brighter, the lines sharper, the sounds clearer, and Cassie actually wanted to spend time with me. But dream or not, I didn't care.

My socked feet sank into the thick comforter and I took an experimental hop. The bed was springier than I could have hoped for, and a smile took root on my face and grew.

“I haven't jumped on a bed in forever,” I said.

Cassie got her balance, but held on to the headboard for support. “I've never jumped on a bed.”

“Never?”

“Nope.”

“I'm shocked,” I said. “Speechless.”

“Not so speechless,” Cassie said.

“You know what I mean.” I ran my hands through my hair and tucked it behind my ears. “I find it impossible to believe that you've never jumped on a bed before. That's, like, child abuse. Your parents are totally going on my naughty list. What kid hasn't jumped on a bed?”

“There are a lot of things I never got to do,” Cassie said. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

“Oh, hell no,” I said, and took her arm, guiding her to the center of the bed. “We had a deal, and if you back out now, I'm stealing a car, driving back to Gobbler's, and ordering a Big Bacon Belly Exploder, with extra bacon. Anyway, you know you wanna try this.”

“Ugh. You're like a bad drug dealer.”

“Careful, Cass. One jump and you'll be hooked. Next time I see you, you'll be breaking into furniture stores, stealing jumps off the discount mattresses.”

“Or turning tricks for jumps on strangers' beds.”

“Yikes,” I said. “This is gonna be fun, but I'm not sure it's worth turning tricks for.” I cocked my head to the side and broke out my special occasion smile. “Who am I kidding? I'd trade hand jobs at truck stops for jumps. I'm Simon Cross, and I'm a jumpaholic.”

Cassie laughed, which made me smile even bigger. So big, my cheeks hurt. “Are you going to tease me all night or are we going to jump?”

“You can't just jump into this sort of thing,” I said.

“You can't jump into jumping?”

“It's an art; it must be respected.” I held out my hands and Cassie took them. “Okay, so here's what we're going to do. When I count to three, you're going to jump as high as you can. Got that? On three.”

Cassie rolled her eyes dramatically. “I think I can handle it.”

“Okay.” I tightened my grip on Cassie's hands, but not too hard. They were soft and so small. My own fingers fit around Cassie's like a perfectly tied knot. “One,” I said slowly, drawing it out theatrically. “Two.” I grinned at Cassie, memorizing her face. “Three!”

I jumped and Cassie jumped. We jumped. The two of us, connected by hands and happiness and our declarative FUCK YOU! to gravity. Our smiles and laughter filling the void between our bodies, joining us, entangling us. One and the same.

And then my feet hit the bed and I bent my knees and jumped again. Again. Again.

Again.

With Cassie.

Because she couldn't resist jumping with me. She couldn't fight the pull of fate, the density of her soul locked in battle with her insatiable desire to leave this earth behind. Even if only for a moment.

At least that's what I thought I saw in her eyes as we hovered in the air for those brief moments. Maybe it wasn't real.

But maybe it was.

“Oh. My. God!” Cassie yelled as we hopped like demented
bunnies. The bed groaned and creaked, and I laughed, and Cassie squealed with delight.

When we were in the air, everything disappeared. History, our history, vanished. The hours, days, and years that had existed between the time I'd turned chickenshit at Pirate Chang's and this moment right now were nothing. We'd bridged the two points in time and space and come together. Here. In the air.

I wondered if Eli was standing outside the door, listening to the sounds of us jumping, which to anyone else might have sounded like we were doing something less vertical. I hoped that he was standing there, right outside of the Castillos' bedroom, imagining all the things I might be doing to Cassie and that she might be doing to me. The same way that I'd been forced for three long years to endure watching Eli touch Cassie's neck in a way that made the tips of her ears turn pink. Watching him say something that made her laugh. Something that only the two of them understood.

But Eli had had his chance. This was my time to soar.

“I can't believe I've never done this,” Cassie said. Stray bits of hair stuck to her slightly damp forehead.

“Awesome, right?”

“Higher,” she said as an answer, and I squeezed her hand and pulled her higher into the night sky, ignoring the ceiling and the limitations of mass and molecules and that buzzkill Newton. Leaving the house and the party and the whole damn world behind.

Because Cassie was the girl for me. The girl for forever.

So I kissed her.

Or I tried.

What really happened was that we were jumping on the bed, had been jumping on the bed for a full minute. And I was looking at her and thinking about her, and this little voice in my head, a voice that I should have known better than to heed, told me to go for it. And I listened. Midjump, I craned my neck for the kiss, sure that Cassie would kiss me back and we'd spend the rest of the night in the fluffy comforter, rolled up like sushi.