Page 59 of When Ivy Met Mr. Holiday
I let her lead, seeing where she wanted to take this.
At first she was tentative, her lips moving softly over mine. But then her hand met my chest, and her fingers curled into my shirt. She took a breath before her tongue skimmed my lips.
That was all it took. The iPad fell to the side, the movie still playing, and the ice cream melting. But it was all drowned out as I pulled her onto my lap, needing to be as close to her as possible.
Ivy gasped and pressed her body against me, deepening the kiss.
It was as if fire met fire and consumed us.
My hands slid to her waist as hers knotted in my hair. Our tongues danced wildly together. There was no hesitation on her part. Her lips were mine. Her breath was mine. If she was acting, she deserved an Oscar.
Hell, it was the best kiss of my life.
Our tongues tangled in a rhythm neither of us seemed willing to break. Her weight settled against me, warm and real. And when she made that tiny breathy sound in the back of her throat, it took everything in me not to see how far she wanted to take this.
But it all came to a crashing halt when Ivy’s lips slid off mine and she pulled away, dazed, blinking.
“Um . . . ,” she said, breathing hard. “How was that?”
How was that, she asked? I wanted an encore for the rest of the night. The rest of my life.
“I believed it.”
“Good.” She grabbed the iPad and snuggled back against me as if she hadn’t just rocked my world.
And I just let her.
Because if she was acting, I never wanted this scene to end.
Chapter Nineteen
“There are some guys somewhere saying, ‘Yeah, we’re friends.’ No, that’s not true. He’s your friend only because you have made it absolutely clear that nothing else is happening except this friendship we have.”
Steve Harvey
Ivy
“So,tellmeallthe fifth-grade gossip.” I fastened a styling cape around my niece Poppy. She was my lastclientof the day.
It was family photo day, and everyone wanted to look their best, so I’d been doing hair since earlythat morning. Cami Cullen was the photographer, and she was a famously good one.
Her parents, the Jenkinses, were my parents’ closest neighbors. My brothers had played basketball with some of her brothers in high school, and my sister and Cami had played basketball together as well.
Funny side note: Cami had become famous a few years earlier when she’d photoshopped her wedding pictures after she caught her husband cheating. They’d gone viral. Like, super viral. So she’d made a living cropping exes out of other people’s photos. She’d even started Ex-File chapters, like support groups for cheated-on exes, all over the country.
She was happily remarried now but still helped people deal with the betrayal of a spouse or significant other being unfaithful. It was admirable.
Jack already looked picture perfect, dressed in dark neutrals per Mom’s instructions, sitting not far from me in the kitchen, grinning at me like we were sharing a secret. I supposed we were.
His eyes danced with the same amusement I had coursing through me. While I felt giddy, I also felt kind of skanky. I had totally cheated on our friendship, shamefully using the excuse of wanting to sell our relationship, when all I’d really wanted was to kiss him while we’d snuggled in bed. I blamed him for being so dang sweet and bringing me a period care package.
The kissing hadn’t stopped there. I’d kissed him when we woke up, claiming I needed more practice.I’d kissed him under the mistletoe in front of my family to show off my skills. Basically, I kissed him every chance I got.
And he let me.
Worse, he played along and kissed me back. And dang, he was good at it. Jack’s kisses should come with a warning label: Highly addictive, may cause fits of giggles, take you to an out of this world plane, incite delusions of being his real girlfriend, and last but not least, they may ruin the best friendship you’ve ever had.
Was I playing with fire? Absolutely. And I was burning in heaven and hell.
