Page 3 of Gracefully Yours

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SOPHOMORE YEAR

At nineteen years old, I was perfectly comfortable with the fact that I’d never had a boyfriend. In high school, I’d been too busy with dance practices every day to even think about dating, and now that I was in my second year of college, well…

I was sitting on Daniel’s bed in his house, eating marshmallows and staring at my best friend as I procrastinated doing my history paper.

But I wasn’t focusing on the screen in front of me, or the taste of the marshmallows on my tongue. I couldn’t stop staring at his lips. My best friend’s lips. A place where they absolutely should not have been, but I couldn’t help it.

Noelle had a boyfriend. Gabbi had another girl had hung around the dorm for a few months before she shared with all of us that she was bi. And Angelina, with her tight ponytails and red lipstick, had more confidence than I could ever muster, and I… still hadn’t had my first kiss.

Not that I felt like I was lacking because of it. I just wondered what it would be like, and part of me wanted to get it over with. To not have this feeling dangling over my head. Like people could take one look at me, with my glittery shoes and my pink canvas backpack, and seevirginplastered all over my forehead. I didn’t want to be some innocent or naive girl, in the same way that I hated it when I got labeled as a dumb blonde.

“Hey.” I threw a pillow at Daniel’s head, missing him as it fell on the floor.

He perked up from his engineering textbook, looking at me. “What?”

“What’s it like to kiss someone?” My cheeks flushed pink, but I didn’t care.

He raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean? Isn’t this a better question to ask the girls?” Probably. But I didn’t want them to make fun of me. And no matter what Daniel would say, he would never laugh at me.

“Well, I… I’ve never kissed anyone.” I swallowed roughly, not able to hold his eye contact.

“What do you mean, you’veneverkissed anyone?”

I could feel his eyes on me, but I shrugged and shook my head, plopping another marshmallow into my mouth.

He had a girlfriend last year—or maybe more than one, I wasn’t really sure—but the closer we got, the less I saw of anyone else. Selfishly, I liked it that way. Knowing he preferred to spending his time with me.

“Really?” He asked again.

Slumping back against his pillows so I could stare at his ceiling, I brushed my hair away from me, letting it fan out over his dark gray pillowcases.

“You know I haven’t had a boyfriend. Why isthisso surprising? Of course I haven’t kissed anyone. Besides, I spend all my time with you, dummy.” I threw a marshmallow at him, because that seemed like the most illogical thing I could do right now.

Deflecting.

What I didn’t want to do was explain to my best friend why I’d even asked. Why was I still staring at his lips?

I shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place.

Apparently, I wasn’t done putting my foot in my mouth, though. “I always wanted it to be with someone special,” I whispered. “I didn’t want to waste it on someone who wasn’t.”

Once, in middle school, my friend had told me she wanted to only kiss the person she was going to marry. She thought it was romantic. Even then, back when I still thought kissing boys was gross, I thought it was silly. I didn’t have any ridiculous notions or even expectations. I just… wanted to kiss someone I cared about. Not a guy whose name I would forget in ten years, or ten minutes.

“How many girls haveyoukissed?” I asked, unable to stop myself.

“Um.” He blinked. “A few.”

I didn’t know why that gave me an unsettling feeling in my gut. This was just Daniel. My best friend. I’d never looked at him like that, and I knew he’d never looked at me that way either. It was why we were so close, why our friendship worked so well.

Sure, I thought he was attractive, but it was an attraction I would never act on. So what did it matter?

“What’s it like?”

“What?” He blinked a few times, like he’d been thinking about something else. A girl he’d kissed before, maybe? The thought soured in my mouth.

“Kissing. What’s it like?”

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