Free Kiss Me Again by Rachel Vail Page A

bite and took it for himself. So I had to grab his wrist and hold the pear steady to get another one in. “Yum,” I whispered. He took a last bite before holding it out toward my mouth. Despite the sticky mess, sharing that pear felt even more intimate than the kisses out on the deck.
    By the time he tossed the core into the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink, the light coming through the window was dayish enough to see each other clearly. His hair was rumpled and his lips were puffy red, with a bit of pear juice just off the center. I’m sure I looked similarly worse (or better) for wear.
    He wiped his sticky hands on his pajama pants and grabbed my hand. “Come on,” he whispered.
    Our hands stuck together as we dashed around the corner to the stairs. He stopped short on the landing. Our parents were behind a door just above us. I made a face like Go! Go!
    He grinned back at me, leaned toward me.
    I shook my head and pushed him up the steps.
    At his room, he stopped again and turned around, grabbing me by the sleeve of my fleece and pulling me toward him. “This is fun,” he whispered in my ear.
    There was a noise from behind our parents’ door. His eyes opened wide and mine did, too. I scurried down the hall. At my bedroom door, I turned around. His head was peeking out from behind his.
    “See you at breakfast,” he mouthed.
    I rolled my eyes and dove into my bed. My mother’s alarm clock buzzed before I was fully under my covers. I froze, listening, as some whispering and then some giggling wafted down the hall from her room toward my unwilling ears, until I had the sense to cover my head with my pillow.
    In the silence and darkness, I didn’t plot out how in holy hell I was going to get through breakfast and the day of school—Spirit Day, I remembered in my fog; have to wear a purple shirt. But I didn’t jump up to make sure my purple shirt was clean, or contemplate what I had gotten myself into and how many ways it could end in complete catastrophe (and how few, well, how zero ways it could end well). Or whether I’d tell Tess what had just happened. Nope. I fell asleep thinking forward twenty hours or so, to when maybe we could meet out on the deck again.

fourteen
    I BLAME THE lack of sleep. But when my mother announced at breakfast that she had changed her mind about my sleepover Saturday, I think I was slightly justified in losing it, even if I had been in a normal state of mind.
    Though how could I possibly be in a normal state of mind in front of Kevin and his family at breakfast, while having a should-be-private conversation with my mother despite my kiss-swollen lips?
    She changed her mind. Saturday wasn’t going to work after all.
    “But I already invited people,” I protested. “Tess will be so—I can’t just cancel!”
    “People?” Joe asked. “How many people were you planning on?”
    “Excuse me?” I said. “I wasn’t talking to—”
    “Charlie,” Mom interrupted. “We just think—”
    “We?” I may have been yelling by this point. Just what I did not need was to cancel on Tess.
    “Charlie,” Mom said in a Calm down NOW voice. “Joe and I discussed it—and …”
    “And he said no?”
    She opened her eyes wide at me like Let’s discuss this later, not in public , but we were not in public; we were in our own kitchen. And she was letting this guy take over what I was allowed to do or not even after she gave permission.
    “That’s not fair, Mom,” I said.
    “Charlie, come on now.”
    “Why can I suddenly not have friends sleep over?”
    “Well, for one thing, what about Kevin? It doesn’t sound fair to …”
    “He could invite some of his friends over, too,” I suggested, trying to sound both spontaneous and reasonable. “I don’t mind. That’s fine.”
    “Never gonna happen,” Joe said. “Coed sleepover? Ah, no.”
    “That’s not what I meant,” Mom said, her hand on Joe’s arm. “My point was, I wasn’t really thinking of this when I said yes,