The Trouble with Kissing Connor

Chapter 3 (Sadie)

"My help? Why? What for?" Was he crazy? I wasn't going to help him find me.

"You could find out who chews this gum?" he said.

"You've lost your mind. How would you like me to do that?"

"Pleeeeaaasss. You have to help me." He leaned forward, grabbed my shoulders and looked at me in that way that I found so bloody disarming. The way that made it impossible to say no to him. I looked down. Clearly it was me that had lost my mind and I couldn't believe I was about to say it, but...

"Fine. Fine. I'll help you," I said it, even though I really didn't want to. Mind you, now that I thought about it, Connor had a way of getting totally caught up in something, and then five minutes later losing interest. So hopefully he'd wake up tomorrow and be rid of this insane obsession.

"Wanna play a game of Fortnite," I asked. Desperate for a break from this crazy conversation.

"Sure," he agreed.

Normally Connor and I would hang out for hours playing Fortnite, but he was totally distracted—me too. Our fingers were moving over the controls but our brains were elsewhere, and I knew exactly where they were. At the party. Both of us thinking of the kiss, but only one of us knowing he whole story. After about ten minutes, he left.

During our short gaming session, my stomach felt tight. I wanted to scream, pull my hair out or... Ugh! For the first time ever I was actually relieved when he left—I'm never relieved when he leaves.

A strange mix of emotions was flooding me. It was as if all the human emotions that have ever existed had been thrown into a blender, whizzed around at high speed until all that was left was a thick, sloshy goo of ugly stuff. And don't get me started on my thoughts, because, at that moment, they were having their own, very loud party in my head. It was hard to listen to all of them at once, and it was absolutely impossible to grab onto one that actually made any sense. I tried to silence the cacophony by flicking through Netflix—didn't work. I tried to distract myself with a little more gaming—nothing helped. So I climbed into bed, pulled the duvet over my head and plunged myself into darkness.

But the darkness just brought back memories of the kiss. The closeness, the feeling of his hands on my body, his breath against my lips. I sighed loudly. I was such a goner. Total. There was no hope for me and my poor, damaged heart now. And he had no idea. He probably couldn't even imagine me being the one who kissed him. His best buddy of so many years. His pal. His Dude. His... Ugh! I tried to close my eyes and think about something else, but a giant word came flying into my head;

F R I E N D -Z O N E D

God, I hated that word. And it seemed to be flickering at me from a giant wall of cosmic graffiti. It was looking down at me from its lofty, neon perch and mocking me for my stupidity.

I tossed and turned for hours that night, thinking about it all, especially about the prospect of helping Connor find this mystery kisser that he was now supposedly in love with. I couldn't help but feel like I was somehow a character trapped in the electronic pages of a cheesy coming-of-age YA book, or maybe even a movie.

Tomboy next-door falls in love with best friend jock boy and kisses him in the dark, only to be roped into helping him track down the mystery girl of his dreams.

What the hell had I done? The part of me that was regretting the kiss (and all that followed) was getting louder by the second, but not loud enough to drown out the sounds of my sister and her friends coming home.

They were clearly trying to creep though the house as my sister was two hours past curfew. Mckenzie always pushed the limits, but she never seemed to get in trouble. I'm convinced her big blue eyes, blonde hair and perfect smile hold some kind of magical powers. She just flashes them at our parents and gets absolutely everything she wants. I've never figured out how she does it, but she seems blessed with almost occult-ish manipulation skills.