Free Dating Sarah Cooper by Siera Maley Page A

PDA,” Sarah insisted, but the excuse was flimsy, and Jessa countered it easily.
    “Sarah Cooper, not into PDA. Uh huh. That’s real convincing.”
    “Uh, I’m kissing someone in front of thirteen people here, too, you know,” I cut in weakly. “I don’t like PDA.”
    “Blah blah blah, all I’m hearing right now is that both of you are making up excuses not to kiss each other. What does that tell us?”
    “Sarah. Katie,” Hattie said abruptly, drawing both of our gazes to her. “Look, just shut her up. She’s just jealous.”
    “Yeah, I’m just jealous,” Jessa echoed, smirking at us. “So go ahead and prove me wrong, ladies.”
    Sarah and I exchanged looks as she stood in the center of the group and I remained seated. In three seconds, we had a mental conversation that went a little like this:
    Her: “???”
    Me: “No. No way.”
    Her: “Are you sure? C’mon! We can’t let her win this.”
    Me: “Sarah, no.”
    Her: “Yes?”
    Me: “No!”
    Her: “Oh, just suck it up.”
    And then, aloud, she sighed heavily and announced, “Okay, this is stupid,” stalked over to me even as I gave her the most subtly withering look I could muster, heaved me to my feet by my hand, then gave me a brief look that said: “you better act like you’re enjoying this” before pressing her lips to mine.
    And I blanked. My hands, completely of their own volition, found their way to her hips and rested against them, and at some point my eyes must have fluttered shut, because right around the time her lips started moving against mine I realized I couldn’t see anything.
    Her own hands were surprisingly gentle on my cheeks as they cupped my face, and she was kind of an amazing kisser. Her lips were soft and I could taste her favorite lipgloss on them, and for a brief moment, sometime before I remembered where exactly we were, I had the briefest of thoughts: “So this is kissing a girl. Huh.”
    When I first started kissing her back, which took a few seconds, I kissed her like she was Austin. Like she was someone I cared about and wanted to have romantic feelings for, but just couldn’t quite get there with. Because that was what she was. It would’ve been much easier to be a real couple in that moment, surrounded by people who would then have loved us for who we actually were and not for who they thought we were. And it was kind of nice, kissing her like I kissed Austin, because kissing Austin was always kind of nice. Kind of okay .
    But then it hit me, really hit me that she wasn’t Austin, that she was my best friend Sarah, and it was like we’d been moving in silent slow motion and now someone had hit the “play” button.
    All of my senses were suddenly on hyperdrive.
    My lips stuttered against hers and I felt her breath, hot and heavy against my chin as we lost our kiss for a moment, and then her lips caught my bottom lip and I was kissing her like she was Sarah this time, like she was my first kiss with a girl and like there was a nervous ball of tension in my stomach and throughout my chest and like it was both our first kiss and our last. My heart thudded hard, stopped, and then thudded harder, my stomach twisted in a way that was strangely pleasant and entirely terrifying, and then every muscle in my body weakened because her tongue flicked against my lip.
    She pulled away first, and her eyes opened right when mine did, dark and blue and wow, really dark. The look in them kept my heart racing even as I registered that I was a little out of breath. Noticeably out of breath.
    Right on cue, a throat cleared and we both followed the noise to Jake, who, to put it lighter than I’ve ever put anything before in my life, looked slightly amused. Beside him, Hattie was pretending to fan herself, and on the other side of the room, even Jessa looked a little bit befuddled.
    “So,” Jake finally broke the silence, trying hard not to laugh, “I think that settles that. Henry, you had something you wanted to tell us