Kiss Me Again by Rachel Vail Page A

turn all melty inside. We have to talk is a terrible phrase.
    When he left, I quickly dashed to the bathroom, to pee and brush my teeth and figure out what the heck was happening. He can’t break up with me , I thought; we’re not officially … anything. Though that hadn’t stopped me from breaking up with George, so I really had no good counterargument.
    Not that you can argue logically when somebody’s dumping you. It just doesn’t matter. Even if you’re right, you’re still dumped.
    But what if he didn’t want to dump me? He didn’t actually say, We have to talk ; he said, I need to talk to you. Maybe he needed to confide in me. Unburden his troubled soul or some such horrible, wonderful thing.
    For a girl who likes things clear and definite, I sure was making a murky mess of everything. I didn’t know if Tess was my best friend now, or mad at me again. And Felicity? Were we suddenly buddies? And was George absent the past few days, or just really good at avoiding me?
    Of course, that was all just a way to avoid thinking about the boy who was waiting to TALK to me a few steps away in his boxers and T-shirt, in his room, in my house....
    And also avoiding the fact that he had awakened me from a dream in which I was kissing Toby in that back alley, on those brick steps during a break, before Laertes showed up to sword-fight him.
    I shook my head at myself in the mirror. Get a grip, girl!
    I spat out the toothpaste and washed my face with the already damp (ew) bar of Dove soap. Another new thing: In my own bathroom, before, the soap was always dry when I touched it. Only my shampoo was in the shower. And the face towels were never soggy.
    I tiptoed to Kevin’s room.
    “Hello,” I said.
    “Hi.” He stood up and closed the door behind me. The lock clicked. His arm, still extended, hovered inches from my side.
    “Hi,” I said redundantly, and then, with goofiness jolting my nerves like electricity, I added, in a fake-husky voice, “We have to stop meeting like this.”
    “Why?” he asked in the intimate, unsmiling whisper of his.
    “I don’t know,” I whispered back, breathing in the brisk, clean scent of Dove soap on both our faces, so close to each other, getting closer by the millisecond. “But, don’t we?”
    As an answer, he kissed me. Hard and full on the mouth, not tentative this time at all. I surprised myself by meeting him there, just as forcefully. I was out of breath in about three seconds, pressed up against the closed, locked door of Kevin’s room.
    It felt like thirst. Like when you’re roasting hot in the summer, and all you can think is water . You’re gulping from the water bottle, it’s so good; the best anything ever. Even after the first few seconds, when you’re no longer dying of thirst, you still keep wanting more, more, downing it, drowning in it, so fast it almost hurts. That’s what it was like, this time, kissing Kevin.
    Want want want. The word stopped making sense. Was that even a word? Or just a sound? Want. Wonton soup. Wanton girl.
    What do normal people think about while they’re kissing?
    And then, without warning, there was this tenderness falling on us, between us, light like afternoon snow flurries. The kissing got slower, more gentle. His hands on my back pressed softer against my T-shirt, and then tangled up into my hair.
    When I opened my eyes, his eyes were open, too, and he was staring at me with tender and want all swirled up together in his eyes.
    “Chuck,” he said.
    “Mmmm,” I said.
    “Was the shirt I wore today purple?”
    “What?”
    He reached over to his desk and picked up his crumpled, blue-gray T-shirt.
    “Blue,” I said. “Grayish blue.”
    “Damn,” he said. “I thought that one was the purple. Spirit Day.”
    “And here I thought you just had no spirit.”
    “This is why my favorite color is plaid,” he whispered. “I hate being color-blind.”
    He looked so disappointed, I plucked the shirt out of his hand and flung it over