Page 9 of For Emery

“What it’d be like.”

I huffed, knowing I was in a no-win situation. This was my best friend. This was Emery.

“Well, aren’t you?” she persisted.

“I know what it’d be like,” I snapped.

“And what’s that?”

I looked back into her blue eyes, the ones I wished didn’t look so damn pretty gazing back at me. “Amazing.”

She sucked in a sharp breath as her eyes widened, blindsided by my admission.

I was blindsided by it. My pulse quickened. What the hell was I thinking saying something like that?

A beat passed before she lowered her cheek to my chest and held onto me, like she was committing everything to memory. My words. The feel of me beneath her. Everything.

We lay like that for a long time, the stillness and quiet of the night encompassing us.

Should I have kissed her? Should I have kissed my best friend? I never seriously contemplated it before, and all I could come up with—as her sweet-smelling body lay on top of me—was I didn’t want it to ruin the bond we had.

“No fighting tonight?” I said, breaking the long stretch of silence.

“I think it’s the lull before the storm.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I just have a feeling,” she said. “It’s been too quiet.”

I had no idea what it was like to live the way Emery did with a stepdad who came home drunk ninety-nine percent of the time and took out his drunken anger on her mother. My parents were still as in love as the day they married—or so they told me.

Emery lifted her head and rested her chin on my chest, staring at me like she had something on her mind. “Will you kiss me, Jordan Grady?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Like, some day?”

She shook her head. “Right now.”

My brows shot up. “Now?”

“Yes.”

I swallowed the lump that suddenly shot to my throat. “Is that really what you want?”

Without hesitation, she nodded.

We told each other everything, so I knew the gravity of her asking me to do this. “Why would you want to waste your first kiss on me?”

She shrugged. “I’ve kinda been saving it...for you.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuck.

The number of guys who would’ve wanted to be in my shoes at that moment—on the receiving end of Emery’s attention—was not lost on me. I heard the guys talking about her. Saw the looks she received when we walked into school every morning. I was starting to recognize the pit in my stomach as jealousy, but I quickly squashed it because it was Emery. Emery. The girl I would’ve done anything for. The girl I’d actually consider kissing so some other guy wouldn’t be her first kiss—despite the risk of it messing up our friendship.

I was so screwed.

I was damned if I kissed my best friend, and I was damned if I rejected her.

What. The. Fuck?

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