Free Kiss Me Again by Rachel Vail

huh?”
    “Actually,” I said, “I think it’s kind of cool.”
    “You do?”
    “Well, to see things differently from everybody else? Yeah.”
    He shook his head. “It’s not—I never thought of it that way.”
    “You want to be an artist?”
    “Yeah. Stupid, right? Everybody wants to be an artist, every little kid.”
    “I don’t,” I whispered. “I never did. Maybe only artists think that, when they’re little.”
    “What do you want to be?”
    I shrugged, trying to think of a goal other than kissing or not kissing him. Save the world from evil? Cure cancer? Win Tess back? Invent a calorie-burning cookie?
    “When you were little,” he persisted. “What did you want to be?”
    I smiled. “A teenager.”
    “Most likely to succeed.”
    “Talk about a stupid wish, huh?”
    “Not as much fun as you’d imagined?” He kept his lake-blue eyes latched on to mine, though his head was ducked down.
    “It has its moments,” I whispered.
    “Mmmm,” he answered. His smile, that slow, sexy one, spread his mouth and revealed his white teeth. With no choice in the matter, I stood watching. He watched me back.
    A shiver shook my body. I wrapped my arms around myself.
    He stepped toward me, closer, closer, stopping my thoughts dead. Inches from me, centimeters, he whispered, “Chuck.”
    We stared at each other, and for once I didn’t fill the silence with inane babbles. Just breath.
    “I don’t think … ,” I finally whispered.
    “Good,” he said. “Don’t think.”
    “No,” I whispered. “I mean …”
    “Shhh.”
    “This is probably a very bad idea, us being out here like this, together in the middle …”
    “Very bad,” he echoed.
    “Yes, for so many reasons, so we should …”
    “Shhh. Can I kiss you?” he asked, his face so close to mine I could feel the heat from it on my cheeks. “I really want to kiss you.”
    I don’t think so.
    Not a good idea.
    What if our parents walk out here right now?
    What if your sister sleepwalks?
    I’m not even sure if I actually like you.
    Kissing you outside that other time practically wrecked my life.
    Who are you to me?
    We shouldn’t.
    “Yes,” I said.
    He smiled a millimeter and then tipped his head toward mine, his eyes closing.
    We met in the middle, our lips touching lightly, so lightly you could barely qualify it as a kiss, so lightly there might have remained a molecule of air between my mouth and his, until, after a moment, there wasn’t even that, and then, just as soon, there was, again, the movement as imperceptible as it was unwilled.
    We looked at each other, with questions in our eyes. And then I lifted my hands and threaded my fingers into his hair and pulled his mouth to mine.
    We breathed each other, kisses upon kisses—faster and harder, more intense—then slower, soft, tender. Soon we were pressing tight against each other and then soft again, a rhythm like unheard music—on and on it played … until the trees began to clarify themselves out of the darkness and then, blinking, we let the air fill in the space between us again.
    Our lips, a bit bruised and swollen, smiled a little. There was nothing to say, no pretending this was just a slightly flirty good night between two not-quite-friends who happen to live together. We both knew we had to get inside, in the silence of the brightening dawn, before anybody found us.
    He held the deck door open for me. I tiptoed past him to the kitchen. While I was tossing the unopened bag of cookies onto the counter, he grabbed a pear from the fruit bowl and bit in. Slurping, he held it out to me.
    “No,” I whispered. “Remember? Those pears sucked.”
    “On Monday. Monday pears are hard and unripe. But it’s Thursday now. Bite.”
    I took a bite. He was right. It was perfect, juicy and full of pear flavor. I stretched to take another just as he pulled the pear away and took one himself. We cracked up silently, and then he held it out again to me—but yanked it away before I could