Page 7 of You Belong With Me

“Huh?”

“People bingo.” He held up a small piece of paper with a bingo board printed on it, but instead of numbers, there were phrases on it. I caught a couple of them—red sunglasses, dyed hair—and the title KISSING BINGO before he stuffed the paper in his pocket again. “You’re wearing denim, so I need to kiss you. And Josh will take a photo.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at a boy I recognized from the soccer team but had never met before.

“He’s wearing denim,” I said, pointing at Josh’s jeans. “Why don’t you kiss him instead?”

Josh quickly took a step back while Sebastian smirked at me. “Josh and I don’t really know each other like that.”

“But we do?” I wanted to sound cool and flirty but instead my voice came out all squeaky and fully cracked on the last word.

“Well we…” He trailed off and glanced at Josh, like there was something he wanted to say but didn’t want Josh to hear it. “Have known each other for a long time.”

I could read between the lines of what he wasn’t saying: Josh didn’t know I was Dean’s sister and Sebastian didn’t want him to find out. I wasn’t sure what rules Dean and Sebastian had about dating each other’s sisters, but with how much Dean tried to keep me away from his friends and absolutely forbade me from dating them, I thought Sebastian might feel the same the other way.

“Only my face needs to be in the photo,” Sebastian continued, “so nobody will know it’s you.”

“Unless they recognize my hair and outfit?” I asked, gesturing over myself.

“Well, yeah,” Sebastian admitted. “But there are so many people at this party, who would notice anyway?”

“I still don’t understand this,” I said. Sebastian stepped toward me, fully entering my personal space, and I leaned back against the island counter I was pressed against, torn between wanting to step away and being desperate to be this close to him. It was just like it had been on the front lawn, when he’d pulled me into him, except there was no puke for me to be avoiding this time.

“Please, Nellie,” he murmured. Had his voice gone down a few octaves? I didn’t remember it being so deep before, but it sent shivers up my spine now. “I really want to win. Could you just do me this favour?”

A conversation like this had been in my daydreams for years. Sebastian Novak standing so close to me and whispering words for only me to hear. Sebastian Novak asking tokissme. But this wasn’t where I imagined it happening. And I didn’t imagine it happening with a camera trained on us, either. But was I really going to let this opportunity pass me by?

“I…” I felt incapable of forming any other words as I stared into his eyes. The colour of them seemed to change in different lighting, varying from blue to green. Today, his shirt made the blue in his eyes pop, and I had to hold myself up with the counter behind me to stop myself from fainting straight onto his feet.

Sebastian Novak wanted me to kiss him.

And the only word I could get out was, “Okay.”

four

I’d dreamedof my first kiss for my whole life. I dreamed of it a million different ways, with a million different boys. Well, maybe not a million, but a few.

There was Jeremy, the boy that I’d had a crush on in second grade. He and I had gotten pretend married under the slide, but we hadn’t kissed. It didn’t even occur to either of us that we should. It was more of just a high five, and ta-da, we’re married.

And then there was Thomas, the boy I told everyone I liked to cover up my feelings for Sebastian. Thomas was a safe crush. He was on the soccer team, he was my age, and he wasn’t friends with my brother. I figured he was the kind of boy who would ask me if he could kiss me before he did it, and then he would be gentle and so sweet. I knew that was what I should have wanted.

But the one that kept me awake at night imagining it was Sebastian. With Thomas and Jeremy, I’d only had one or two fantasies—it was always them walking me home from a date and kissing me goodnight before I went inside.But with Sebastian, I’d imagined so many different scenarios. I imagined him sleeping over in Dean’s room and sneaking into mine when everyone else was asleep to tell me that he’d wanted me for years but didn’t know how to tell me. Or if he won a soccer match and saw me on the bench—even though I’d never attended a soccer game in my life—and he would come running up to kiss me, telling me that I had been his good luck charm this whole time.

But my personal favorite had always been the fantasy that involved us dating. Really dating, not just going on a date like I’d imagined with Thomas and Jeremy. That fantasy wasn’t a first kiss or even one kiss at all, it was the millions of them that we could have over our lifetimes. It was him driving me home after school every day, one hand on the wheel and the other holding mine while he played my favorite music, then leaning over to kiss me as soon as he pulled into his driveway. I imagined him wrapping his arms around me, kissing me like his life depended on it.

I’d imagined it so many different ways, but I never imagined it like this.

It was obvious from the way he leaned in that he’d done this before. He wasn’t a nervous wreck like me, wondering if my hands were supposed to stay by my side, if my breath tasted okay, and which way I was supposed to lean to avoid bumping noses. I wondered briefly if he knew that I was new to it by how he seemed to take charge of the moment right away, barely giving me time to gasp in a breath before his lips were on mine.

This wasn’t a game anymore. It should have been. It was supposed to be. But the second his lips moved against mine, slow and deliberate, something in my heart slicedopen, letting in all the feelings I’d worked so hard to bottle up for the past five years.

With my eyes closed, I could almost picture we were somewhere else, just like in all my daydreams. I imagined us on the soccer field, me running into his arms after he won a game. And when he shifted closer to me, his leg almost pressing between mine and his arm coming to a stop on my bare lower back, I stopped thinking at all.

It was like my body knew what to do when my mind didn’t and suddenly I was leaning into him too, threading my fingers through his hair and deepening the kiss that was probably meant to be over now. Every one of my senses was overwhelmed byhim, and I felt nothing but the deepest desire to keep going and never pull away. I grabbed at his shirt with my hand, both tugging him closer and stopping him from pulling back before I was ready. But he wasn’t giving any sign of pulling away. If anything, he was only coming in closer, pushing me so hard against the counter that I was pretty sure I would have a bruise on my back for days.

But how could I even begin to care about that when Sebastian Novak was kissing me?

And when we finally broke apart, my lips tingling, my breath uneven, I knew—this was definitely more than just a bingo card for either of us. I giggled softly as I pulled my hands away from him, feeling almost giddy from whatever just happened.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I messed up your hair.”

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