Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Practice Makes Perfect
“W e need to get our story straight.”
I’m at Oliver’s place Thursday afternoon, the day before we’re supposed to go on our double date with Tina and Ryan.
“We’re sleeping with each other,” he says. Even though I know it’s not true, hearing these words makes me flush. “How much more of a story do they need?”
I hug his throw pillow to my chest. “I may have accidentally implied that it was more than just that.”
He frowns at me. He’s sitting on the other end of the couch, his arms crossed. There’s a whole cushion of space between us. “You were the one who didn’t like the idea of lying to Tina, and now you’re adding to it?”
“I was caught in a trap that you put me in,” I remind him.
“Okay. What’s our story then?” He uncrosses his arms to reach for a glass of water on the coffee table.
I shrug. “I told Tina that it started when we went to the rest stop together.”
He almost spits out his water. “Seriously? You told her we had a quickie in the bathroom?”
“Oh my God.” I throw the pillow at him. He’s not expecting it, so it hits him in the face. “I only said that we hit it off and you kissed me.”
He takes the pillow and puts it on the floor away from me so that I can’t use it as a weapon anymore. “Doesn’t sound as fun, but I guess it’s a little more realistic,” he says with a shrug.
I roll my eyes. My face is hot. This whole conversation is going to give me a fever.
“Okay, so we made out at the rest stop, then started sleeping together, and now we’re going on a double date with Tina and Ryan tomorrow night,” he recaps.
I clear my throat. “That about sums it up.”
“We should probably practice so that we’re at least believable,” he says.
I frown. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Getting our story straight is one thing,” he says. “We can’t have an awkward, fumbling first kiss in front of them. They’ll know something’s up.”
I’m not sure I hear him correctly. “Wait… you mean you want to practice kissing? ”
He shrugs again like this is no big deal to him. “Yeah, why not?”
“I don’t… we don’t…” I can’t even get the words out. I take a deep breath to compose myself. “That’s ridiculous. Why do we need to kiss at all? Maybe we’re one of those couples who don’t do PDA.”
“Now that’s ridiculous,” he says with a smirk. “Of course we do PDA.”
I can’t believe he’s being so nonchalant about this while I feel like I’m having a stroke. The thought that he wants to kiss me, even if it’s just to prepare for tomorrow, makes my head spin. I’m in way over my head. “We don’t have to.”
“Tina is going to know something’s up if we don’t kiss each other. What’s the big deal?”
I stammer, trying to find the right words. “I don’t make out with every guy I date in front of her. Why does this have to be any different?”
He frowns. “Why are you so against kissing me?”
“I just… I don’t want our first kiss to be practice, okay?” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize what I’m implying. My face heats. I look away from him, trying to think of how to backtrack.
“Oh.” He’s quiet for a moment. “You want it to be special.” He says it slowly, his voice a little lower. My body might as well be on fire.
“I just mean any kiss in general. Not with you. I just… I don’t kiss people for practice. It’s not because I want it to be special with you specifically.”
“Okay, I get it,” he says, cutting me off and saving me from rambling. “We don’t have to kiss in front of them.”
“Fine. Good.” I face forward, staring at the black screen of the TV. Oliver does the same. Even though neither of us says a word, the room still feels loud with my racing thoughts. “But do you think that they’ll be suspicious if we don’t?”
Oliver throws his head against the back of the couch. “Seriously, Priscilla? Make up your mind. You either want to kiss me or you don’t.”
“I don’t want to kiss you, but I don’t know. Maybe it would be more realistic.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You want to practice, then?” He scoots a little closer to me so there’s only half a cushion of space between us.
My heart rate picks up. I panic. “No!”
I exclaim it louder than I intend. He stops moving and rubs his hand over his face. “So you don’t want to practice, but you think we should kiss in front of them?”
“I don’t know what I want,” I admit. “I guess I just haven’t thought it all the way through yet.”
He sighs. “I’ll leave it up to you then.”
“Fine,” I say, though I’m not sure this is any better. I kind of wish he would make the decision for me. “Is Ryan even going to let you plan his proposal? I hope we’re not going through all this trouble for nothing.”
“He is. He likes the idea of using my marching band. He also has a few other ideas.”
“Like what?”
“He wants an airplane to spell out ‘Marry me, Tina’ in the sky.”
I clap my hands over my mouth. “I love it. And he wants you to book that, too?”
“He said that he would book it, but I convinced him to let me do it. I told him that way I can make sure it happens perfectly in time with the band. He didn’t put up much of a fight.”
“Okay. Perfect. What else?”
“He wants fireworks.”
I shrug. “Easy enough. Tina already asked for fireworks.”
“Great,” he says. “So all I need to do is find a pilot who has good airplane penmanship.”
I smile. Oliver crosses his arms and shoots a funny look at me. “What?” I ask.
He shakes his head, smirking. “I never imagined I’d be putting so much effort into planning someone else’s proposal.”
“Would you put this much effort into your own proposal?”
He considers my question for a moment. “I don’t know. I guess it would depend on what she wanted.”
I raise an eyebrow. He’s never struck me as the kind of guy who would settle down or think about marriage. All the girls I’ve seen him date have only lasted a few weeks, maybe a month or two at the longest. “Is there a she?” I wonder.
“Not yet,” he says with a shrug. “What about you? Are you planning on popping the question to someone someday, Tina-style?”
I shake my head, laughing. “No way. I’m all for Tina’s plan, but I couldn’t do it. I guess I’m a little more old-fashioned when it comes to that.”
“I see. So you would want to be the one surprised with all the fancy things? Flash mob, airplane, marching band, and fireworks?”
“God, no. If I ever get married, I hope the proposal is the furthest thing from a spectacle as possible. I would want it to be just me and him, no one else around. Nothing fancy. I don’t even care if he gets down on one knee. Just quietly slip the ring onto my finger and ask me.”
“What about the wedding?” he asks. “I bet Tina wants to go all out there, too.”
“Of course she does. Even if I could afford to have a huge wedding, I don’t think I would do it. If I’m going to spend a lot of money on getting married, I would rather?—”
“Go somewhere great for the honeymoon,” he says, interrupting me. It also happens to be exactly what I was going to say.
“Yeah. That,” I say with a laugh. “Somewhere like Fiji or Bora Bora.”
“It seems ironic that an event planner wouldn’t want a big event like that for herself,” he says.
I shrug. “Is that weird? I don’t know. I love planning big things for other people, but I guess I like it a little simpler for myself.”
“It’s not that weird,” he says. “Kind of like a gourmet chef getting home from work after cooking fancy meals all day and ordering a pizza for himself.”
“You can never go wrong with pizza,” I agree.
“Hmm. Maybe I’ll get some for dinner tonight.”
“We still need to get our story straight,” I say, getting back on subject.
“I thought we already figured it out. How much more of a story do we need?”
“What do we talk about? What do we do together—other than the obvious? And are we serious or just keeping it casual?”
He twists his lips, thinking about his answers. Then he says, “We talk about what kind of pizza toppings we like. When we’re not having sex, we eat pizza together. And we’re pretty serious about casual pizza nights.”
I let out a sigh that comes out as more of a groan. “I’m being serious, Oliver Edison.”
“Whoa. No one ever says my full name. I feel like I’m in trouble.”
“Oliver Edison,” I repeat in a vaguely threatening tone.
“Okay, fine,” he says. “But I don’t know why we need to plan all of this out. Why can’t we just wing it? If this relationship is new—which it is—then wouldn’t it be more realistic if we don’t have it all figured out yet?”
I think about that for a moment. “You might have a point.”
“I guess there’s only one thing left to do, then,” he says.
“I swear, if you say pizza one more time?—”
Before I can finish my sentence or even process what’s happening, he leans closer and touches his lips to mine.
I’m caught off guard, but my mouth instinctively moves with his.
It takes me a second to realize that he’s kissing me, and I’m kissing him back.
When I don’t immediately push him away, he takes it as permission to move in a little closer.
His body touches mine and his hands close around my waist.
He separates his lips from mine only long enough to whisper, “Is this okay?”
I nod, too dumbstruck to get any words out. His lips return to mine, his hands still around my waist. I clutch his shirt to pull him closer. He parts my lips with his, and his tongue slips inside, tasting me. A warm rush comes over my body. I feel it all the way down to my toes.
I lean back against the armrest so that I’m lying down.
He stays with me, his body over mine. He’s propped up on his knees on the couch so that our midsections don’t touch.
One of his hands trails from my waist to my hip and back up again.
If I had known a practice kiss could be this good, I would have been all for it when he first suggested it.
I wrap one of my legs around his back, pulling him down so that his body is flush with mine and I can feel his weight on me.
One of his hands is in my hair now, the other feeling the path between my ribcage and my hip.
My hand is on the back of his neck, keeping him close to me.
His tongue tastes mine again. I tighten my hold on his neck while his fingers dig into my side and he clutches my hair, like we’re two hungry souls desperate for the taste of each other.
Before we get any more caught up in this moment than we already are, I let go of his neck and pull my mouth away from his, breaking the kiss. Oliver pulls his head back to look at me. His chest is still against mine, both of us breathing heavily against each other.
“That’s probably enough practice,” I say, though my mind is conflicted. It feels like every fiber of my being is protesting my words. It doesn’t make any sense. This is Oliver .
“Practice. Right.” He lifts himself off of me and stands up. He turns around, pacing the room once before facing me again.
I sit up straight. After having just made out with him on his couch, I find it hard to look him in the eye.
I can’t stand this awkward silence though, so I force my gaze up to meet his.
He stares at me, his brow wrinkled in a slight frown.
This silence is deafening. The look on his face has me feeling like I did something wrong.
Maybe this was some kind of test, and I shouldn’t have kissed him back.
It certainly didn’t feel like it, but then again, he and I have never been nice to each other.
It would be just like him to trick me into doing something he could use against me, though he’s never crossed a line like this before.
“I should go.” I slide off the couch and head for my shoes by the front door.
“You don’t want to stay for pizza?” he asks.
I look up at him as I slip my shoe on. “I didn’t think you were serious about that.”
“I was,” he says.
I put on my other shoe and place my hand on the doorknob. I look back at him one more time. He’s still standing where I left him next to the couch.
“So that’s a no, then?” he asks.
I wish I could stay without it being weird, but I just made out with this guy to practice for a fake date tomorrow night.
Now I feel weird just being in the same room as him for this long.
I don’t know what we would talk about, so all I can picture is us sitting here in agonizing silence while we wait for the pizza to get here.
The thought of that is suffocating. I need to get out of here so I can breathe again.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say.