The Last Best Kiss

  I’m sure she thinks she’s teasing me the way a big sister would. And she’s not wrong. Lizzie would probably be just as annoying in this situation.

  “I was finishing up some work,” I say, and pointedly turn back to my painting. I still have to fill in the sky. I want it to be very sunny right above the tree, with ominous clouds hovering way off in the distance. Streaks of dark purple in the coming storm.

  “Don’t worry,” Ginny says, coming closer. “I was joking about busting you. I won’t say a word to your father. Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “Do whatever you want.” I move over to the paint cabinet and consider my options.

  Ginny leans against the counter, watching me. “Don’t pretend to be working, Anna. You can’t possibly focus after that. Let’s talk about it! That was Finn Westbrook, right? The kid who left school and came back? He’s very cute. A lot of the girls on the volleyball team have crushes on him. Well done!”

  I try to imagine a universe in which Ginny’s approval of my love life would mean something to me, but I can’t. I bring some tubes of paint, a few brushes, and a palette back to the worktable and sit down on the stool. “I really need to focus,” I say.

  She comes closer and looks over my shoulder, studying the picture for a few minutes before saying, “I don’t get it. The landscape is beautiful—but why the weird little creatures?”

  “It’s what I do.”

  She shakes her head. “But wasn’t the point for you to stretch yourself? Why not just do a pretty landscape for once? Prove that you’ve got the basic skills covered and that you’re not a psychopath. Not that I’m saying you’re a psychopath, of course—”

  “Nice save.”

  “Just that the school might think you are with all your creepy hidden little drawings. You don’t want admissions people to worry that they’re letting in a serial killer, Anna. They’ll be looking for reasons to turn kids away, anyway—why hand them one?”

  “Mmm.” Noncommittal sounds may be the way to go with Ginny.

  She waits for more, but I keep prepping my paints in silence. I really want to be alone to think about what just happened with Finn, but she won’t leave.

  “I’m serious about not telling your dad,” she says, after a moment. “About Finn, I mean. You can trust me, Anna.”

  “Do you honestly think my dad would care?”

  She waves her hands around in the air. “Of course. I mean, he’s not a prude or anything—I mean, I assume he’s not, I don’t know—but you’re his little girl, and it can be uncomfortable sometimes for a father—”

  “The thing is,” I say, cutting her off, “Dad and I? We leave each other’s personal lives alone. He doesn’t criticize my choices, and I don’t criticize his. And that’s a good thing, don’t you think?” I fix her with a long, innocent stare.

  She takes a step back. “I guess,” she says. And tells me she’s late for practice and has to run. Leaving me blissfully alone to paint my sky and think about Finn.

  In the middle of everything that’s making me happy is one small thing that’s making me worried, so instead of driving home after I’m done painting, I head to the twins’ house.

  Lorena lets me in as usual and tells me she didn’t know I was coming. “Neither did I,” I say. “Are the twins home?”

  “Hilary has Krav Maga. But Lily is here. She has a friend over. They’re up in her room.”

  “Can I go up?”

  “Yes. I think so.” But she seems oddly hesitant. “Just, maybe . . . knock first. If the door’s closed.”

  “Of course,” I say, and head up the curved, enormous stairway that rises from the front foyer up to the second story. I prefer the smaller, straight stairway in the back of the house, but this is the fastest way to Lily’s bedroom. At least her parents aren’t around—I really don’t want to have to make small talk with them. I want to see Lily and leave as quickly as possible.

  I make my way along the carpeted hallway, which goes on for longer than you’d think an upstairs hallway could go, and find Lily’s room. Her door is closed, so I knock.

  “Who is it?” Lily’s voice calls out. A little breathlessly.

  “It’s Anna,” I tell the door. It’s white, but the panels are outlined in silver paint. Gilding the Lily, I think every time I see it. It’s one of my mother’s favorite phrases and one of the few things about her that’s stuck to me. “I should have texted, but I was already in my car and had a question for you. Can I come in?”

  “Yeah—wait—one sec.” There are sounds of shifting and moving, and then she’s standing in the suddenly open doorway. She hugs me. “Hi! I’m glad you came by. You know James, right?”

  I look past her. James is sitting on her bed. His shoes are off. He waves at me.

  “Hi again,” I say, and I almost burst out laughing, because I realize I already have the answer to my question. But I’m here now. “I need her for one second,” I tell James. “We’ll be right back.” I grab Lily and pull her across the hallway into Hilary’s room and shut the door behind us, then turn to her. “How much do you like James?”

  She raises her eyebrows. “That’s what you wanted to ask me?”

  “Sort of. I mean, I came here to ask you how you were feeling about Finn these days, but I feel like they’re related. Not the guys. The questions. You know what I mean.”

  She crosses her arms and studies me. Her hair is slightly rumpled, especially in back. She’s wearing just a tank top and yoga pants. Her mascara is slightly smeared.

  I definitely interrupted something.

  “Why are you asking?” she says. “Do you like Finn?”

  I look down at the carpet. Hilary picked it out, so it’s very practical: dark blue with an abstract gray design that couldn’t show dirt if it tried. The carpet in Lily’s room is white with neon-green polka dots.

  “Yeah,” I say. “But I needed to talk to you before anything happened.” Okay, that’s a little dishonest, since it implied nothing has happened yet. “Before anything really serious happened,” I amend it to, which is slightly more truthful.

  “Oh, for god’s sake,” Lily says. I look up at her. She’s rolling her eyes. “If you like him and he likes you, then to hell with me or anyone else who gets in your way. That’s how it should be.”

  “You’re not helping,” I say. “I don’t want it to be like that.”

  “Did he tell you I already basically broke up with him?”

  “Yeah. It’s the ‘basically’ that worries me.”

  She breathes out sharply, impatiently. “I couldn’t really break up with him because we weren’t really going out.”

  “Still—”

  “Anna,” Lily says, cutting me off impatiently. “Finn’s a nice guy, but—” She shrugs. “He can’t compare to James. Not for me. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” I say, and I start laughing, mostly because I’m so relieved, but also a little bit because it is funny to me that anyone could like that guy—that slightly ridiculous, mildly pompous elf—more than Finn. But I know that’s how this romantic stuff works: one girl’s perfect guy is another girl’s reject. And right now I’m glad of it. Lily’s welcome to James. Hallelujah for James!

  Lily goes back to her elf, and I go home to shower and change and dry my hair and fool around with my makeup. And even though “singing” isn’t on the agenda, I end up doing a lot of that too while I’m doing all that other stuff.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  twenty-five

  Early that evening I hear a car pull up in front of our house, and I look out the window. It’s Finn’s Volt. I run downstairs and fling open the door. Then I step back, shy suddenly and a little scared that he’s going to say something like, We both know what happened today was a mistake, right?

  He peers at my face. “Everything okay?”

  He looks anx
ious, and I realize that my hesitation is making him wonder if I have doubts, and that we could go on passing our anxiety back and forth for a while, each of us wondering if the other regrets what happened until we’re completely dysfunctional . . . and that seems like a waste of a potentially awesome evening.

  So I reach out, grab him by the sleeve—he’s put on a light blue hoodie since I last saw him and changed from contacts to glasses—and drag him over the threshold. “Get in here,” I say, and throw my arms around him.

  That’s clearly all he was waiting for. He clutches me so hard that we stumble over our own feet and almost fall over but laughingly manage to catch ourselves in time. We wind up safely propped against the door, locked in a kiss that lasts for a good long time. His glasses bump into my temple at some point, and I pull my head back.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I should have left my contacts in.”

  “No. I like these. They make you look like old Finn.”

  “Do you like old Finn better than new Finn?”

  “I like seeing that he’s still in there.”

  “I haven’t changed all that much,” he says. “I still like the same girl I did in ninth grade.”

  “Not still,” I correct him. “Again.”

  He shakes his head. “I never stopped. I tried to but couldn’t.” I’m curious about that, but he’s distracted, glancing around the foyer. “I probably should have asked this before, but is anyone else home?”

  “Not right now. But my dad could show up any minute. Want to go up to my room just to be safe?”

  He raises his eyebrows. “You move fast.”

  I heave an exaggerated sigh. “Finn, I’ve known you for, like, four years. There was a break in the middle, but all things considered, I’d say we’ve moved pretty slowly. Anyway, my room is just the easiest place for us to hang out in. It’s not a brothel.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” he says disappointedly.

  “Don’t worry—it’s not a temple of purity either. Follow me.” I lead him up the stairs and into my room. “Oops. I probably should have cleaned it first.” I cringe as I survey it with the eyes of a stranger: dirty clothes overflow my wicker hamper and make cloth puddles on the floor all around it; schoolbooks and my laptop lie in a circle on my unmade bed, since that’s where I was doing homework before Finn arrived; and my desk is covered with its usual mixture of art supplies, CDs, and old dishes. I eat in my room a lot, since I eat alone a lot. “I’ll clear some space for us.”

  I start stacking up the books and papers on my bed.

  “I’ll help you,” Finn says.

  “You don’t have to clean my room.”

  “I like organizing.” He starts moving swiftly around the room, making neat piles of CDs and putting books back onto my shelves. He stacks up the dirty dishes and carries them all down to the kitchen for me. By the time he’s back, I’ve picked up my laundry off the floor, made the now uncluttered bed, and even arranged the pillows at the head in the way they’re supposed to be and haven’t been since the day I first bought the matching bedding when we moved into this house ten years ago.

  Finn stands in the doorway, surveying our work.

  “Much better,” he says.

  “You’re weird.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “A girl invites you up to her room, and you clean it.”

  “Are you questioning my masculinity?” He lunges at me, literally sweeps me up in his arms, then deposits me on top of the bed on my back. He looms over me.

  I grin up at him. “Not questioning it anymore. Just enjoying it.”

  “Much better.” He looks around. “Now where did I put my feather duster?”

  “Shut up,” I say, and pull him down on top of me. We have a lot of catching up to do.

  Eventually the making out gives way to talking—because we have a lot of catching up there too, and I still want to know what he meant when he said he never stopped liking me. Which seems equally wonderful and impossible.

  He’s on his back, and I’m curled up against him, my head pillowed on his shoulder, his arm wrapped around mine. Maybe there are better places in the world to be. Maybe there are people happier than me right now. But I’d need a lot of proof before I’d believe it.

  “I thought I’d blown it with you forever,” I tell him, lacing my fingers through his and rubbing my cheek against his T-shirted chest. (When did his hoodie come off? Oh, right. I tore it off him—it was getting in my way.)

  “I thought you had too,” he says. “All that time I was away . . . you became like this monster. The Girl Who Humiliated Me. I thought that when I actually saw you again for real, you’d look all twisted and evil and ugly, that my eyes would finally be open to your true appearance. And there you were, just as pretty as ever. Prettier. With your quiet smile and that little mischievous glint in your eye—”

  “I have a mischievous glint?”

  “It’s your finest quality.”

  “So you don’t like anything else about me?”

  He gives me a punitive little shake. “You’re not getting any more compliments out of me, so stop trying. Anyway, it was very disturbing to see you again. You weren’t supposed to be cute. You were supposed to have fangs and horns and a unibrow.”

  “I’m sorry I disappointed you. Did you really hate me that much?”

  “Only when I wasn’t with you.” He brushes his lips against my hair—so softly, I can hardly feel it. “I tried hard to hate you full-time—”

  “It felt like you succeeded. You were cold, Westbrook.”

  He shakes his head. “Just an act. When I was around you, it was work to remember that I hated you. I tried to hold on to the image of you as this spoiled, self-satisfied crowd-follower, but all I ever saw was this sweet, cute girl who still made me want to slay dragons just to get her attention. Or save her from mad dogs, at least.”

  “Yes, you did do that, didn’t you?” I sling my arm across his chest. “You totally rescued me from Mad Dog Fang. Even if you were too busy falling all over Lily afterward to let me thank you.”

  “I wasn’t falling over her.”

  “You so were. You guys were inseparable that night.”

  “Well, you weren’t an option. I had decided that. And Lily was easy to like. She was cute and funny and smart, and I could tell she would never let anyone tell her who to date. Or who not to.”

  Even though I’m lying safely inside the circle of his arm, I feel a sick thud when he says that. He may have forgiven me for it, but I still did something hateful to him. And I’d give anything not to have.

  “I am so sorry for what I did that night,” I say, hiding my face against his chest so my words are muffled. “I wanted so badly to be able to take it back, to get you to forgive me, but you wouldn’t let me. And then you were just so totally gone . . .”

  He nuzzles my temple. “It’s okay, Anna. You were fifteen—so was I—and we both acted pretty stupidly. You shouldn’t have blown me off, but I should have given you a chance to apologize.”

  “What I did was worse than anything you did. And you know it wasn’t just that night.” I swallow hard. I want everything out in the open. So I can be completely forgiven. I just can’t look at him while I put it out there. “I should have told the whole world how much I liked you right from the beginning. And instead I kept it a secret. I don’t even know why. I guess I was scared that if my friends knew and didn’t approve, I’d have to choose between them and you. But afterward I realized that not being with you was a thousand times worse than having to stand up to them would have ever been.”

  “When did you figure that out?”

  “The second I didn’t get to be with you anymore.” I push my face even harder against his shoulder. “I mean it, Finn. I missed you so much, and I only had myself to blame, which didn’t exactly make it better.”

  “You know, my family would have moved away even if we’d kept going out.”

  “I know. But we would have stayed
close. We would have texted and talked and seen each other whenever we could.” I lift my head to look at him. “Like when we go to college next year. We may end up far away, but—” I stop, worried I’m being presumptuous. Maybe he doesn’t think this is something that will last until next fall.

  But all he says is, “You’re right. Being geographically separated isn’t the same as being apart.”

  “And you admit that I was way more stupid and at fault than you were?”

  “Okay,” he says with a grin that I can only see from the side but is all the cuter for being lopsided from this angle. “I’ll admit that. And I’ll admit something else too, while you’ve got me pinned down and unable to escape—”

  I raise my arm off his chest. “Hardly!”

  He pulls it back down across his body. “I like it there. Anyway, do you want to hear my confession?”

  “Of course.”

  “That night at the music festival . . . I was incredibly jealous of that guy who was kissing you. I mean, there I was with Lily, who is by all objective counts a total babe—”

  “Prettier than me.”

  He shakes his head and says vehemently, “No! I don’t agree with that at all. But anyone who saw me with her would definitely say I was the lucky one of the two. Anyway, my point is that instead of appreciating my luck and enjoying myself, I kept looking around to see what was happening with you and that Wade guy and thinking about how he was kissing you and how I used to get to do that and how much I wished I still could. I kept wondering if you still had that little gap next to your front incisor. . . .”

  “Do I?” I try to feel if it’s there with my tongue, but it just feels like the inside of my mouth.

  He hits his forehead with the palm of his free hand. “Can you believe it? I forgot to check.”

  “Too late now,” I say regretfully.

  “I think you’re wrong about that,” he says, and rears up over me, pulling my upper body up to meet his as his mouth descends on mine.

  “The gap is gone,” he murmurs in my ear a few minutes later. “I used to be able to stick the tip of my tongue in there.”