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“Am I fired for kissing you on Valentine’s Day?” he asked softly by my ear. “Should I have waited until tomorrow?”

I let out a breathy laugh. “No, I have let go of my obsession with changing the day. I have accepted it for what it is.”

“Consumerism?”

I laughed again. “Well, that too. But no, it’s a day to celebrate love.”

“Love?” he asked, then straightened up.

“Isn’t it?” I wanted to see his face, his expressions, but I couldn’t, and I waited, breathlessly for his words in the dark.

“Are you still talking about Valentine’s Day?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“You love me?”

“Of course I love you,” I said.

“As more than a friend?”

“I just kissed you, Jack.”

“I kissed you.”

“And it wasn’t weird,” I said.

He laughed. “It wasn’t.”

“I really liked your poem. I didn’t know you could write poetry.”

“Only for you.”

I slid my arms around his neck. “I’m glad we get more than seven minutes in the closet this year.”

Chapter 17

“At my parties,” Troy said to the crowd in the living room. “I allow the single people in the room to play spin the bottle. Because hopefully the magic of Valentine’s Day will help you find your true love, or at least someone to make out with for the night!” He popped his eyebrows in my direction. Jack and I were sitting next to each other at the table but hadn’t touched since rejoining the group.

After several more kisses with Jack in the closet earlier, I had said, “These coats are starting to make me claustrophobic.”

“And they smell musty,” he said.

“Totally,” I said.

“Yes, let’s go see what everyone is doing.”

We didn’t move. Instead, I’d stretched up to kiss him again. He obliged, kissing me several times, then saying, “I can’t believe I can do this now.”

We hadn’t talked about what we were going to do or say once we were outside the closet, we just kept a foot of space between us as we walked. Maybe wanting to keep this to ourselves for a few more minutes, knowing how our friends would react.

But with the way Troy was acting now, holding a bottle in the air, I knew he had something planned.

“Who here is single?” he asked. “No, wait,” he said as people raised their hands. “We’ll start small and expand the circle.”

Laney was suddenly at my side, pulling me from where I sat at the table in the kitchen nook next to the living room.

“No, I don’t—”

“Just trust me,” she said.

I sighed but followed. After directing me to the floor by the coffee table, she got Jack, who seemed equally resigned. She guided him to the floor directly across from me. I waited for her to grab more people, but she didn’t. She just handed Jack the bottle.

Everyone in the room laughed and clapped.

He gave the slightest raise of his eyebrows in my direction, asking permission. I gave the smallest nod back. He placed the bottle on the table and spun. The cap definitely didn’t point at me when it stopped, but still, the room chanted, “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

He crawled around the table and stopped next to me. I shifted my whole body to face him, took his cheeks in my hands and pulled him to my mouth.

A cheer erupted around us so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else until he moved his mouth to my ear and whispered, “I love you. Happy Valentine’s Day.”