Page 5 of Kiss Me Again

"Okay, stop." I raise my palms to make her quit talking. Di hates it when I do that, but at least it always makes her pay attention. She looks at me like she wants to kill me. "But why the hell did you tell Mia about it?"

No matter how much I love Di, sometimes I want to strangle her.

"To let her know that she shouldn't go into that room," Di says uncertainly. Obviously, she can't keep anything from Mia; that's obvious. "What are you embarrassed of? You're nineteen, and she knows you're having sex. It's Mia! She's like family!"

Except that she's not.

Yes, she used to be, and I even treated her like it, saying to my classmates that Di and Mia were both my sisters. But that was a long time ago, when I was thirteen or fourteen. I don't even remember.

But then something changed. Mia turned from a child into a beautiful young woman, and I began to look at her differently. One day I made a huge mistake: I kissed her. I have no idea what I was thinking; I gave vent to my emotions. That is not typical for me, but I did it anyway.

And then everything changed. I knew we could never be together; it would complicate everything for my sister.

So I could no longer be around Mia without thinking about how beautiful she was, how amazing she smelled, and how soft her lips were when I brushed my mouth over them.

I can't live under the same roof with Mia. It just can't happen.

"Relax." Diana winks at me, which only pisses me off more. "She's not going to bother you; she is finally getting her own life."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing." Di lowers her gaze.

"Great." I shake my head disapprovingly. "Now I also have to deal with Mia's personal life."

I know that will make Di tell me everything. She always has to prove her point, even if it means she'll say too much.

"She has no life! That's the point!" Diana exclaims and then bites her tongue.

I say nothing. When Di starts saying something, I need to keep quiet, and she will eventually spit out everything.

"She wants to lose her virginity before college, all right?" Di retorts.

She was never able to keep secrets from me. Even if I wasn't supposed to know, like when she broke her car or snuck out the window to meet friends, she always told me about it afterwards.

Is Mia a virgin? I swallow, feeling my throat get dry just thinking about it.

"She dated that guy ..." I pretend not to remember his name.

"Fred," Di ends my sentence, nodding. “Yeah, she dated him for almost six months, but nothing happened."

Of course, I remember his name. I saw him only once, at a dinner party, and I had to leave early so I didn’t have to see Mia with him. Everybody was talking about how well they fit together: He was smart, intelligent, educated, exactly like Mia.

No guy ever irritated me more.

"Well, at first she wanted to wait, and then she said he wasn't the one," Di continues, even though I didn't ask her to. "But last month she announced that she doesn't want to be the only virgin in college, that she might never meet the one, that..."

"Okay, I get it, I get it." I try to stop my sister's monologue because picturing Mia losing her virginity with some other guy gives me physical pain. "Why are you telling me this?"

"So you won’t worry that she might bother you," she says as if it's obvious. "Yes, she used to have a crush on you, but that was a long time ago..."

"Wait...what?" I interrupt her again. "Mia had a crush on me?"

"Well, not like a crush, but you know...she confessed she liked you when she was fourteen, but I told her that it was ridiculous. You would consider her as more than a sister."

I can't believe it. Mia has a crush on me.Had a crush.And my sister knew about it all along. And she didn't tell me. I always thought she would be unable to keep a secret from me. I guess I was wrong.

And now Mia wants to lose her virginity because she's bored. Am I correct? And I have to pretend that I'm okay with that.

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