The Trouble with Kissing Connor

Chapter 1 (Sadie)

My timing was perfect, because the second I left the room, the lights came back on and the music started blaring again. I heard a collective cheer rise up from the room as I hit the street and started running. I didn't look back.

Brett, Connor and I all lived in the same gated community, and even though my house was only a few blocks away, I reached it in record time. As usual, I didn't bother with the front door, and climbed straight up the trellis and into the window of my second story bedroom. My heart thumped in my chest, adrenalin-spiked blood wooshed through my veins and my lips still tingled from the kiss—God, the Kiss.

For what seemed like the first time since the kiss, I exhaled as I threw myself onto my bed.

I ran my tongue over my lips. I could still taste him. A slight hint of toothpaste, spicy crisps and, of course, my minty-cinnamon gum...

That's when it hit me—Crap! Where the hell is my gum?

My brain took a few moments to register the rather serious implications of this. Connor had the gum. In his mouth. It must have maneuverered its way out of mine and into his. I cringed. Sharing a kiss is one thing, but sharing chewed gum?—gross.

Still, I couldn't wipe the stupid smile off my face—that kiss.

First kisses with someone are often awkward as you bump and clumsily navigate your way around the unfamiliar mouth. But this hadn't been awkward at all. In fact, it had been perfect. To say the kiss was electric, would be an understatement. To say it stopped my heart, melted my insides and liquefied my kneecaps, wouldn't be sufficient either.

I could still feel the warm pressure of his hands on my back, pulling me closer. If I thought I'd been in love with Connor before, this just took it to a whole new level. If I hadn't been so scared of being discovered, I might have blurted the words out right there and then.

"I love you." "I love you." "I luuuuurrrvveve yooooouuu."

For a while now, those words had been stuck in the back of my throat, choking me. Sometimes I feared I wouldn't be able to say anything else until I spoke them out loud and set them free. Sometimes, when I was looking at him, it took all my energy not to blurt them out...

I'd come dangerously close to saying them once, though.

It was a year ago on summer vacation. I'd gone away with Connor and his family to the coast. It was the best holiday ever. We'd learned to surf, snuck out and gone to night clubs where we'd danced like idiots; we'd explored the coastline for hours on end and had an ongoing mini-golf tournament. He'd whipped my ass, of course. But on the inside, I was dying—Yup, unrequited love.

On our last night there, we'd lain on the beach and looked up at the sky. A shooting star cut across the blackness.

"Make a wish," he'd said.

Make a wish? If only he knew how loaded that statement was. But of course I did, and of course it was the same damn wish I'd made a million times before. I'd even thrown a coin into a wishing well once (despite my non-belief in such things as wishing wells and leprechauns).

So I'd closed my eyes tightly, focused all my attention on the moment and the star and the perfect holiday we'd just had and silently screamed it in my head, Please let Connor love me back.

"What was your wish?" Connor had asked when I'd finally opened my eyes.

I remember blushing, luckily it had been dark. "If I tell you it won't come true," he's managed, cheeks on fire, throat tight.

He'd turned to face me. I remember it so clearly because he'd had this strange look on his face that I couldn't quite read.

"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," he'd said, fixing his eyes on me in such a way that it somehow managed to suck all the breath out of my lungs and stop my heart from beating.

"I can't." I'd half choke- whispered due to sudden desert- like mouth and throat.

"Okay, then I'll say it."

He'd paused, and for a second I'd let my imagination run wild. I imagined Connor telling me that he was in love me with. That he'd always been in love. My heart started beating again and soon it was racing in my chest, so hard, so fast I was terrified he would see it through my t-shirt.

And then he'd said it. "It's about you."

This was it. The moment I'd been waiting for. And I was so ready for it. I'd been waiting for this exact moment and dreaming about it for years. But then...

"I wished we'd be friends forever."

Friends.

Even though we were lying down, I felt I would topple over as his words slammed into me with the force of one of those breaking waves we'd surfed. An agonizing silence descended and it felt like my heart was being ripped from my chest and thrown into the sea. I imagined it sinking all the way to the bottom of the ocean where it was doomed to stay forever. Cold and wet and lonely with nothing but some bottom feeding aquatic life to keep it company, and maybe a few sharks. In that moment, I was in serious danger of having my heart totally and utterly destroyed.

So what had I done? The only thing I could do. I'd smiled at him. It took every bit of energy I could muster. I opened my mouth, it had taken so much focus just to get my muscles to do what they were supposed to do.

"Me too. Me too."

I hated that memory. Every time I thought about it, I had a physical reaction to it. As if I was violently allergic to it. I was trying to push it out of my mind again when my curtains moved, and before I could sit all the way up, there he was, climbing through my window as if he owned the place.

And then he said that word. The worst word imaginable. The word that killed me and cut me to the quick every single time he uttered it...