12. Bailey
I hadn’t meantto blurt that out, but the damage was done. Jamie stared at me as if I’d lost my mind.Maybe I had, but I couldn’t get past the idea that if I could persuade Jamie to kiss me, he’d realize we were meant to be.
I loved Jamie, and it hurt every time he crawled off into a corner to make out with some other girl. It wasn’t his fault. He had no idea I had feelings for him. But I couldn’t take it anymore. It was time to fish or cut bait. And I was ready to fish.
I really did look up kissing on the internet the other day. You can’t believe the number of different kisses people have come up with. Most of them were just variations of the five I told Jamie we would try on each other—if I could convince him to go along with my plan. And that was a big ‘if.’
Jamie sat beside me on my bed, his entire body so still it was like I’d tagged him in freeze tag. I was prepared for that. I knew my plan would shock him. I knew I risked repulsing my best friend and pushing him out of my life forever, but I was willing to walk that line. No more playing it safe. If you want something, you have to put yourself out there and stop being a chicken.
“M-Make out? Us?” Jamie croaked.
I nodded. I had to be confident. One slip out of character, one glimpse of insecurity, and he wouldn’t take me seriously.
Reaching into my nightstand drawer, I withdrew a notebook. I wasn’t kidding about narrowing down the kisses. I’d made a list. Then I pulled up the calendar app on my phone.
“Okay, so—” I scanned my calendar and tried to come up with a reasonable schedule. I figured we would have to do this at his house for reasons, the most obvious being the fifty-million members of my family that lived in mine. And we’d have to work around our sports schedules. We were done with practice every day by six and home by six-thirty. Mom insisted on family dinners, and most nights, I had homework until eight-thirty or nine. Nine would work—during the week.
But it was Friday night. And we both had the next day completely free. Sunday, too. We could knock off kisses one and two this weekend.
Perfect.
I glanced up. The only word I could think of to describe Jamie at that moment was dumbstruck. He looked ridiculous. His mouth gaped open, and his eyes were wide and full of panic.
I sighed. I would have to walk him through this step by step.
“Bailey, this is crazy—”
And not give him any time to think about it.
“Are you scared to kiss me, James?” I asked, hoping I sounded playful, maybe even a little flirty. But it came out more like a challenge, and Jamie’s whole demeanor changed. He went from deer in the headlights to cocky jock like that!
His lips curved into the smirk I knew so well, and he leaned into me so close I felt the air from his breath on my cheek.
“You think I’m scared to kiss you, Bales?” he asked, his voice husky and low, its timber different than I’d ever heard before.
It was my turn to freeze, but I couldn’t give him the upper hand. He couldn’t know how he affected me, how my heart rate increased when his body moved closer to mine. Or how my breath grew ragged, and shivers raced down my neck when he spoke close to my ear. This whole thing hinged on him believing I didn’t have a major crush on him, that I was going into it just as uncommitted as him.
“I know you are. But that’s okay. Because the NCMO King can kiss anybody and walk away feeling nothing. Right?”
JAMIE
I leftBailey’s room the night before without agreeing to anything. But dang, if the girl hadn’t thrown down. I’d gotten up this morning with inexplicable rumbles in my gut. I felt nervous and anxious, and it had nothing to do with watching game film at the high school or the light practice that came after. But had everything to do with the text I’d gotten at seven-thirty in the morning confirming my first ‘make-out session’ with Bailey at nine o’clock that night after she helped her mom get the kids to bed.
It was calculated. That seven-thirty text, when it could have been noon or even five in the evening. That had been carefully planned and executed to mess with me all day long. I hadn’t given Bailey enough credit. The girl knew me. And she was playing me. Like my mother’s baby grand piano, Bailey was playing me.
And now it was eight-thirty, thirty minutes before Bailey was supposed to come over. I’d just helped Mom by taking out the trash in her office and refilling her empty coffee cup. She was deep inside her head and had hardly acknowledged my presence except to say thanks, baby.
Once I was sure Mom was all set for the night, I’d raced down the stairs to my room, taking them two at a time and skidding to a halt in front of my closet. It was Saturday. I’d spent most of the day on my couch playing video gamesand eating potato chips. A glance in the mirror and a sniff of my breath attested to the raw truth of that. Gross.
Part of me wanted to believe Bailey’s plan to teach me a lesson would end in a Punk’d style just kidding, you idiot! Then there was this other part of me, the one that had been beside Bailey on her bed last night, who knew she was dead serious and that tonight if I wanted, I would engage in a make-out session with my best friend.
But would I do it? I had a choice. Bailey couldn’t make me kiss her. All I had to do was say no. There were dozens of reasons I could give her, and some of them might even be true.
I could tell her I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. True.
I could tell her I didn’t want to hurt her. True.
I could tell her it wasn’t a good idea because I didn’t believe she wanted to kiss me.
I could tell her I couldn’t kiss her because I didn’t want to.
It was those last two that had me tied up in knots. Did Bailey want to kiss me? Did I want to kiss her?
Maybe she did want to break me from a life of serial making out with girls I didn’t care about.
Or maybe she liked me herself but didn’t know how to tell me? That couldn’t be it—right? Scary. I pushed that thought down, unable to deal with it at the moment.
No wonder I had a headache! Who could deal with this kind of drama? Hooking up with some random girl at a party for a couple of hours was so much easier than this! Which was why I did it.
I glanced at the time—twenty-five minutes. I had twenty-five minutes to decide. What should I do?
I could stubbornly refuse to shower and brush my teeth because there was no way I was letting my best friend taunt me into doing something I didn’t want to do.
Or I could shower, brush my teeth, and put on the cologne I knew Bailey loved like this was a date.
Crap.
I knew what I had to do. And now, I only had twenty-three minutes to do it.