Free Behind the Strings by Courtney Giardina Page A

right then, as the girl who hung the stars. The girl who could do no wrong and the girl he would spend his whole life waiting for.
     

 
    17
    That kiss consumed me for that entire week that followed. I felt incredibly guilty for my actions and was so angry at myself for what I had done that I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Jaycie right away. I kept it bottled up inside and let it eat away at me. It wasn’t a secret that there was a time Logan wished we could be more than friends. I know it’d been years since he said it, but I could see it in the way he looked at me that it was still there. I didn’t want him to think that kiss meant more than what it was, a lapse in total emotional judgment to rid my mind of my deadbeat father.
    I had never been confused about where Logan and I stood, not until now. But that whole night that it happened seemed out of the ordinary for me. My excitement when I saw Jesse, the intimate thoughts going through my head, and then the kiss. It was all a big jumbled mess and I had wrestled alone with it long enough. It was time for a voice of reason to help me make sense of it all.
    “What a beautiful day in the neighborhood,” Jaycie sung as she waltzed through my door. It was mid-afternoon on Saturday. The two of us were trying to stick to our promise of going out beyond the scope of work. “Are you hungry?”
    “I’m starving,” I said, standing from the couch.
    “Good,” Jacyie said, “let’s go get lunch. I’m totally in the mood for some pizza.”
    “And beer?” I asked.
    “I thought that was a given.”
    I grabbed my keys and the two of us headed downtown, where I swerved my car into a side street space right outside the heavenly smell of pepperoni and marinara. The sounds of live music filled the air for blocks. We could hear it loud and clear even as we stepped through the door of the pizza shop.
    As soon as we sat down I blurted it out: “I kissed Logan.”
    It wasn’t the most graceful way for me to talk about what happened, but it was eating me up inside and I needed to get it out. I needed someone to answer what I’d been asking myself.
    Beer sprayed from Jaycie’s nose, and as she cleaned herself up she seemed to replay the words in her head. It took her a minute to catch her breath before she asked me the expected when, where, why and how.
    “The night of Kat Moore’s party. Something happened and I was frustrated.” I glossed over what that something was and continued on. “He walked me to my car and it just happened. One minute we were hugging each other goodbye and the next I was watching him lean in. I didn’t stop him and he kissed me.”
    “Did you kiss him back?” She asked, leaning in closer to me. Her eyes were wide.
    “I think so. I mean, I don’t really know, it all happened so fast. I didn’t pull back immediately, I know that.” I leaned my forehead on my fingertips. I pressed my eyes closed and shook my head.
    “I feel like you’re regretting it,” Jaycie said before taking her first oversized bite of her slice.
    “More like trying to figure out why it happened.”
    “How did you feel afterwards? Was it a cloud nine, out-of-the-park kind of feeling?”
    I was mid-bite when she asked, so it took a minute for me to answer.
    “I don’t think I would describe it that way. It was…sweet. And in the moment it made me forget what was going on around us, but I didn’t forget to breathe because I was so enchanted by it. It didn’t leave me floating my way home,” I explained. “And there’s more.”
    “Oh boy.”
    She prepared herself this time by taking a quick sip before I went on to tell her about Jesse. I hadn’t mentioned him before tonight, so I did some quick backstory before telling her about all the impure thoughts I had had when I turned around to find him with Logan.
    “Oh, Celia, you are a hot mess.”
    “Thank you,” I said, tossing a black olive in her direction.
    “You know I love you, I really do, but it