Read If We Kiss for Free Online Page B

forever.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Well.”
    “What did you stay for?”
    I walked with her toward the bike rack. “Newspaper.”
    “Was Kevin there?”
    “Um,” I said. “I think so. Do you know some girl named Penelope? She’s a senior?”
    Just then Kevin walked by. “Hey,” he mumbled as he passed us.
    Neither of us answered; we just watched him board the late bus.
    We kind of smiled at each other, me and Tess. She shrugged and said, “Knowing me, I give this thing with Kevin two weeks, maximum.”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “Thanks.”
    “No! I meant . . .”
    “I know, I know.” She bent down to unlock her bike. “Do you really think he’s a jerk?”
    “Um . . .”
    “You’re probably right.” Tess flung her long leg over the seat. “See you tomorrow. Sure you don’t want me to ride you home?”
    I shook my head. She rode off and I turned around. My walk home is the best part of my day. I tried not to think about Kevin, or Kevin and Tess, or kissing, but eventually gave up. I walked a long time, thinking about all of that.
    I got home around five and did some random boring chatting online and also my homework, at the same time. Mom came in just as I was finishing. We stood in front of the refrigerator for a while together, and eventually came up with yogurt, bananas, string beans, and Froot Loops for dinner. Afterward we made a pot of decaf coffee and sat out on the deck with our mugs to look at the lake.
    “Heck of a night,” she said.
    I nodded. The lake looked like a postcard image of itself, as if someone had painted a backdrop, and not a very realistic one either. The leaves were all gold and red and purple, and their reflections, upside down in the lake, were even nicer because of the blur. My mother had first seen the house at this time of year, and I can see why she made an offer on the spot, even if my father thought it was a money pit and the last straw.
    Mom drained her cup. “Wanna go for ice cream?”
    “Yeah,” I said. Not much can get me off my butt on a nice night of lake looking, but ice cream is my weakness.
    As we stomped into our shoes, Mom asked if anything interesting happened at school today. Well, let’s see: I belly-flopped on the linoleum, flirted for the first time, fixed up my best friend with the boy I love, and began my career in journalism. “Nope,” I said. “You?”
    “Nope,” she said, and grabbed her car keys off the hook.
    We were not the only ones with the ice cream idea, apparently, so we ended up parking way down in the grocery store lot and walking up the hill. It was the last week of September but it felt like one of those end-of-summer evenings on the Cape, where my father and his cute new family live—one of those nights when there’s a slight breeze and everybody wants to walk around in a hush and a cardigan, pleased with how it’s all going.
    Well, that was all dandy until I saw Kevin, already in line at Mad Alice’s.
    I felt myself slow down but then I gave myself a quick lecture: There is absolutely no reason for me to be freaked out about seeing a kid from my class at the ice cream place; it is a free country (with a free press!) and this is the best ice cream place around, with mush-ins and everything. And if the kid from my class just happens to be going out with my best friend, so what? And if that kid recently touched my tongue with his tongue—
    Stop it right there, Charlie. Do not think about his tongue or any other part of his body.
    “Hi,” he said softly, almost to himself.
    I managed not to do anything horribly humiliating like faint or, for instance, grab his head and start kissing him passionately right there on the sidewalk. Instead I went with saying, “Hi.”
    To get my eyes away from him I looked up at Mom, who hadn’t said hello or introduced herself or anything. She was smiling at Kevin’s father. He was smiling at her. I looked back and forth between them a couple of times before Mom broke eye contact with