Page 18 of The Bully's Dare

Her lips crush against mine and I trip and fall into her kiss. There is a whole summer’s worth of pent up energy in me, and it zeros around every swipe of her tongue. The dark heat of her mouth. The way she tastes me, so curiously, so hungrily, as though she wants to trace every strand of my DNA with the tip of her tongue.

I am a line on a ship, wrapped around a winch, pulling tighter and tighter and tauter and tauter, until it trembles with the pressure, one more twist all it needs to make the whole thing snap apart—

“Fuck!” This is not a toe-curling moan of pleasure. This is the humiliated groan of a boy wound so tight, he comes apart.

In his pants. In his fucking pants.

I freeze on top of her.

Kenzi’s breath patters against my lips, her silence unsure. Still clinging to me. Then, timidly, she asks, “Did you just…uh…?”

“Yeah…ugh.” I climb off of her and sit up, retreating to my side of the couch. There’s a decorative throw pillow in the opposite chair and I snatch it up, hugging it in my lap. Hiding the shame stain.

“I swear, this has never happened to me before,” I mutter into the seam of the pillow. “Is this like a…straight person thing? Because it sucks.”

Kenzi sits up and runs her nails over the back of my neck. “Firsts for both of us, then.”

“This was not your first time,” I protest.

“You said it yourself—your first time doesn’t have to be penetrative to count.”

“Oh my God…do not. Do not repeat my idiot words back to me.” I bury my face in the pillow. I feel sticky and sullied and ridiculous. “I wish I was Pinocchio.”

“Because he’s…made of wood?”

“No. Because he got swallowed up in the belly of a whale.”

A light chuckle escapes Kenzi. “C’mon. It’s not that bad. It’s kind of flattering, actually.”

“Great,” I groan. “I’m going to go lie underneath a car now.”

“Stop. You’re so dramatic.” She rests her chin on my shoulder. Her breath tickles my neck lightly and, eventually, it draws me out of my turtle shell. I roll out of my hunch and lift my head.

“Can we just…go back to being friends and pretend this part of the night never happened?”

She blinks at me, those green doe eyes all innocent. “Pretend what never happened?”

The silence between us is like steel wool against the skin. I want to say something, but all my words have jumped down my throat and refuse to resurface.

“I like this song,” Kenzi says after a moment. “Turn it up?”

I do. We both stare at the video without really watching it. Halfway through, she gets close, and rests her head on my shoulder.

“You’re my best friend,” she says after a minute, “You know that, right?”

“You’re mine.”

We’re okay. We’re going to be okay.

We stay up late, watching videos, just existing in each other’s shared space.

9

Kenzi

I’d love to rub my prank in Jason King’s smug face.

But I can’t.

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