Dating Sarah Cooper by Siera Maley

as Sarah grabbed at the bottle, and I tried to clear my fuzzy head – both from the kiss and the alcohol – as I watched her take her time. I wondered for a moment if she knew something I didn’t about rigging the bottle, and if she was trying to figure out how to get it to land on Sam. Sarah was a smart girl when it came to anything academic, with the exception of a couple of the sciences. I couldn’t remember at the moment if Physics was one of them.
    Finally, her jaw tightened again, and instead of spinning the bottle, she twisted it back as though she was about to spin it, and then abruptly twisted it all the way around, her grip tight on it. When it was pointed at me, she released it, and dared anyone to challenge her. No one said a word, beyond a few shared grins and some raised eyebrows, and I barely had time to wonder why she’d given up a shot at kissing Sam before she’d taken my face in her hands and I was suddenly being kissed again.
    I’d spent the weeks following our first kiss convincing myself that it was an anomaly; a fluke kiss that’d only been so good because it’d taken me by surprise. And thank God I was able to use that excuse for this one, too, because it was just as good as the first.
    With Jessa, I’d kept my hands at my sides, but with Sarah, they flew right to her body like they belonged there, starting on where her thighs rested between us and then slipping to her sides by the time one of her hands had moved to my neck.
    She deepened the kiss quickly, lips moving gently against mine, and I felt her pull me closer as her tongue sent sparks straight to behind my eyelids. My stomach churned and flopped and for the first time, I was sure I knew what people meant when they talked about another person giving them butterflies.
    We weren’t anywhere near done when I vaguely registered someone saying, “Oh, man, that’s hot,” and remembered where we were. In an instant, I’d pulled away, and Sarah blinked at me, looking just as dazed as I was. I felt my cheeks burn and my stomach turn unpleasantly, that comment ringing in my head, and I couldn’t bear to look at anyone else in the circle, but Sarah’s eyes held my focus anyway as they slowly lost their glazed look. She swallowed once, visibly, and then her hand moved down to grip mine.
    “C’mon,” she said, firmly, and then she was tugging me to my feet and pulling me out of the circle and through the living room.
    I followed, confused and a little tipsy as the drinks I’d had began to take their effect. Sarah, too, was obviously not sober, because she wasn’t quite walking straight as she led me. “Where are we going?” I asked her, but she pulled me down a hallway without answering, trying a couple of doors before she finally found one that opened. A second later, I’d been yanked inside a bedroom and the door was shut behind us.
    I stared at Sarah, growing even more confused as she rounded on me and moved back toward me. Her lips were on mine again before I could register that she’d moved close enough to kiss me, and my eyes fluttered shut even as my eyebrows furrowed. It was hard to think now that the alcohol was taking over my senses, but my body thought it’d be a good idea to kiss her back, and what section of my brain was still operating agreed with that decision until right around the time I realized that we were alone.
    We were alone . Why were we kissing if we were alone?
    I stopped thinking about that when I remembered how good kissing Sarah felt, and then my lips were moving against hers fervently, my eyes squeezed shut as I gave up on rational thought. Sarah was kissing me and kissing Sarah felt great; fantastic even, and that was all that mattered.
    But we were both drunk. And still alone. And we were both girls who were supposed to be straight. This was not very straight.
    I gasped when her tongue ran along my lip, squeezed my eyes shut so tightly it started to hurt, and then forced myself to gently push her