Page 35 of Here We Go Again

“Those are the rules of Spin the Bottle. And no one forced Logan,” Jennifer taunted. “She wanted to do it. Shelikedit.”

Logan just rolled her eyes again, like she truly didn’t care what anyone else thought.

“Rosemary didn’t like it,” Jake cut in. He turned to face her with earnest eyes. “Did you?”

She felt like the bottle, spinning on the carpet in the bonus room, unsure of where to land.

“No,” she finally croaked. “No, I didn’t like it.”

But the second kiss.

The sun was starting to set on the pool party, and everyone had gone around the front of the house to play Sardines in the cul-de-sac, but Rosemary stayed behind to pick up the paper plates on the lawn for Mrs. Platt.

“Hey,” Logan said, coming up behind her with another Popsicle in hand. She saidheylike the kiss had never happened, like their lips had never touched. Like Rosemary had dreamed the entire thing.

But if it were a dream, why could she still feel the phantom imprint of Logan’s lips on hers? Why did she still feel hot prickles of shame down her spine?

“Why did you kiss me?” Rosemary asked, shoving an abandoned hotdog into a Hefty bag.

Logan shrugged like she always did. “To shut everyone up. It’s just a game. It’s not like it’s a big deal.”

Rosemary glanced down at her hands. She wasn’t sure why, but there was a tingling in her fingertips. “It was my first kiss.”

“Duh, Rosie. I know,” Logan said casually. “Mine too.”

“That… that wasn’t how I expected my first kiss would be.”

She wasn’t sure how she thought her first kiss would be, exactly, but she didn’t expect Logan’s face close to hers, a sticky chin, soft skin beneath her T-shirt.

“Come on.” Logan reached for Rosemary’s hand. Her fingers were as sticky as her chin, and she dragged Rosemary along the side of the house, to a little garden in the shadows where the summer air smelled sweet. Logan sat down in the dirt and pulled Rosemary down with her.

“Rosemary,” she said, and it took Rosemary a second to realize Logan was reaching out to touch a plant with little green leaves beside them.Rosemary. Or, at the very least, something that resembled it.

“How did you think your first kiss would be?” Logan asked when they were completely alone.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled, hoping it was dark enough to hide her blush this time. “I guess I thought it would be romantic. Private. With a… a boy I liked.”

“Well, I can’t do anything about the boy part, but we like each other, right?”

And they did, back then. Rosemary liked Logan so much, sometimes she thought her body couldn’t contain their friendship, like it wasn’t big enough for all the feelings she had for this other girl.

“And this is private.” Logan gestured to the little bit of garden. “You can pretend I’m a boy if you want. Do you want a redo first kiss?” Logan asked so innocently, it took Rosemary a minute to understand what Logan was offering. To kiss her, in the dark, where no one was watching.

Logan plucked part of the plant-rosemary off the branch and reached over to tuck it into girl-Rosemary’s braid. Logan’s face was so close, having moved in to touch Rosemary’s hair, and with her fingers already brushing the back of Rosemary’s throat, it wasn’t hard to follow the gesture to its natural conclusion.

To tilt her head forward and to find Logan’s Popsicle mouth.

That time, she closed her eyes. That time, it was a graze, not a peck. It was the skim of soft skin against soft skin. Logan’s soft fingers and her soft mouth.

And all the panic that usually ran rampant through her brain quieted to make room for a new feeling inside her chest. Logan opened her mouth. Logan’s tongue sweeping against her tongue. Rosemary hesitantly kissing her back.

It was the entire universe, that feeling in her chest. It was galaxies and infinity.

The kiss gathered inside her, made her feel brave, the way Logan always made her feel brave.

The kiss felt like math, like variables and equations spilling out in front of her, and if she kept kissing Logan, eventually she would understand what they all added up to.

So, she kept kissing Logan. Kept touching her. Her skin was so soft, and her mouth tasted like sugar, and Rosemary didn’t understandwhy. She just knew she had to keep kissing Logan.