Free Kiss Me Again by Rachel Vail Page B

but now I realize it could be uncomfortable, for Kevin, to suddenly have five girls …”
    “Five?” Joe asked.
    “Doesn’t sound uncomfortable to me,” Kevin piped up. “Sounds like my birthday and Christmas all wrapped up in—”
    “Kevin!” Joe said, but I could see he was sucking his smile in, trying not to laugh. Every once in a while, I get a glimpse of Joe’s fun side and it really throws me off.
    “Hey, that’s a good idea,” Mom said.
    We all turned to her, like, what is a good idea?
    “Why don’t you postpone, have the sleepover during spring break? Kevin and Sam will be out west, so you and your friends can have some space, and …”
    “I’m going to Dad’s,” I objected.
    Mom hesitated.
    “I’m not going to Dad’s?”
    “He’s taking his wife and ABC to Paris that week.”
    “I thought he hated France,” I said, despite completely not wanting to discuss this in front of the Lazarus family.
    Mom’s lower jaw tightened twice. She raised her eyebrows while shaking her head and said, “I thought he did, too.” A small, mirthless chuckle escaped her.
    “He’s not taking me with them?” I asked in an unfamiliarly small voice. Not that I would want to go on vacation with them, where I’d basically be an unpaid nanny, but still.
    “Maybe call your father later to discuss it?” Mom suggested. “And also the job thing? But meanwhile, wouldn’t that be a better idea, postponing your sleepover until then?”
    I shook my head, not trusting my voice, not trusting anything.
    “Sure! You girls can rent some movies, and I’ll get one of those tubs of popcorn for you, and Joe and I will mostly stay upstairs, and it won’t be so awkward for Kevin, and it will all be good.”
    “The end,” Samantha said without lifting her head from the book she was reading. She said it like the narrator at the end of a sweet little tale for children. I had to laugh a tiny bit at that.
    “We gotta run,” Kevin said, and thrust my bag at me. “Bye!”
    We were out the door before I could even continue arguing or figure out what had happened.
    “I can’t believe her,” I grumbled on our dash to the bus, which was pulling toward the corner already. “Or my father. Damn. Screw everybody.”
    “Better this way,” Kevin said. “We’ll tell them they can go out for dinner Saturday, then get Sam to sleep early …”
    I opened my mouth in disbelief and gave him a little shove.
    “I was just thinking we’d watch a movie,” he said. “You’re the one with the dirty mind.”
    “So are you,” I said, climbing up the bus steps.
    “Yeah,” he said. And for the first time, he didn’t pass me to go sit in the back row with Brad. He plopped down next to me instead.
    I didn’t ask him anything about his mom or tell him anything about my father. We didn’t talk at all, in fact. For once I didn’t get all awkward and compulsive about filling in the silences. I closed my eyes and slumped beside him, this hot guy I still didn’t know all that well who had just witnessed private, inside family stuff, stuff nobody had gotten to witness before. Maybe somebody with siblings would feel different, but for me, it’s always been me on my own, with only my mom or my dad for discussions . It was kind of embarrassing— whose father disses her like that ? But I’d witnessed some of his secrets, too, I realized. We might tilt our heads down toward our feet during moments of odd family tension, but still there was no way to avoid getting some inside views, simply by living in the same house as each other.
    I felt his knee fall against mine as the bus went around a curve. I didn’t open my eyes or move my leg away, and when the torque straightened out, his leg continued pressing warmly against mine. I opened my eyes, an adrenaline surge waking me up fully, better than anything Anya could whip up at Cuppa, for sure. I spent the rest of the ride looking out the window, silent, with my thigh and Kevin’s pressed