Read Online If We Kiss by Rachel Vail - Free Book Online Page A

loving each other.
    “Yes, it’s totally true,” Tess said. “She’s in the Middle East, I heard—Jennifer’s father is friends with Kevin’s father, and Jennifer told me, like, last week. Kevin’s mom is in, um, whatever—one of those countries that starts with an I, totally flying jets. Isn’t that cool, in a way? I mean, sucks for the kids, but still. If it’s her passion, what she dreamed of doing all her life, you know? Like when other little girls were pretending to be Cinderella, she was totally, like, bombing enemy aircraft in her backyard. Right? I have the whole story worked out in my head.”
    “So I see,” I said. Tess always makes up a whole story for everything. It’s one of the best things about a sleepover with her. She has life stories worked out for all the cafeteria ladies, old men in the mall, everybody. “So then what happened?” I asked. “Why did she get married and have kids?”
    “Oh, isn’t that so obvious and sad?” Tess sat up, psyched. “She felt all this pressure to conform, maybe from her mother or friends or an older sister—yes, I think it was an older sister, who was more traditional and already happily married—and then of course she met Kevin’s father. I mean, he is hot, right?”
    My stomach actually made a noise.
    “Your guts know it,” Tess said, pointing. “He’s old and he’s still a hottie, so you can imagine how hot he was when he was young. So she met him and they fell in love and you know she was all off balance, falling in love with someone like that. So she tried to be ordinary, make her parents proud and happy like her sister had, tried to forget flying and her own career and all and maybe he insisted on it, Kevin’s father—he wanted her to stay home and make three-things-on-a-plate dinners and go to PTA meetings. So she tried to be that person but all her dreams, when she fell into her insomniac sleep at night, were fighter pilot dreams and eventually she just couldn’t fake it anymore; she just couldn’t be someone she wasn’t, even for the man she loved. Did you know Kevin has a little sister? Amanda, I think.”
    “Samantha,” I said accidentally. I was so caught up in the story of this woman’s life, I wanted to hear how it turned out.
    “Right. Samantha. The mom supposedly left when the little girl was, like, two. Talk about messing a kid up. But maybe being abandoned by his mother is kind of what makes Kevin so passionate, you know?”
    “Tess!”
    “What?”
    “She didn’t abandon . . . That didn’t even . . . You’re making it all up.”
    “So?”
    “So you can’t know what really happened between them. Besides, that is such a mean way to put it. Abandoned?”
    “Okay, I wasn’t auditioning to be his therapist. He’s not even here. I was complimenting him anyway, Miss Protector of the Kevin.”
    I hit her with my pillow.
    Tess flipped over onto her stomach and stuffed my pillow under her arms. “Here’s the thing. I wish you’d kissed him, too.”
    I froze. What? “You do?”
    “So you’d know what I mean. Because he does this thing, when he kisses, or at least when he kissed me at your party.”
    “What?”
    “Promise you won’t mock me,” she said.
    “I won’t,” I promised. “I swear. What did he do?”
    “He kind of, like, almost groaned a little when he kissed me.”
    His secret hum-sigh. No. That was only for me. I tried to swallow, unable to speak.
    “You know what I mean?” Tess asked. “It’s hard to explain.” She imitated it, the sound Kevin made when he kissed me. He made it with her, too, I guess. So either he makes that private sound of longing with every girl he kisses or every boy does that. It was hard not to be overwhelmed with disappointment.
    “Do you think that’s weird? Or good?”
    “I don’t know,” I admitted.
    “Oh, Charlie, you really have to start kissing so we can discuss this better.”
    I closed my eyes.
    “At Kevin’s party.” Tess sat up and leaned