Page 7

“You did what last night?” Austin Lyons, my ex-boyfriend and best friend, makes a wonky expression like he’s both horrified and amused at the same time. “Nova, please tell me you didn’t.”

From the laminate floor of the animal rescue shelter’s kitchen, I glance up at him. “That would be a lie.” I shake more kibble into the bowls then hand the entire steel tray up to Austin.

He takes it, rolling his eyes. “You mean another lie. Lies plural.”

“Potayto, potahto.”

After volunteering here for the last three years, the two of us are perfectly in sync as we deliver breakfast to the kennels, finishing in record time.

Austin shuts the door on one of our sweetest residents, an elderly miniature schnauzer mix. “Now I kind of regret asking you why you were late meeting us last night.”

I wink. “Oh yeah, you’re totally my accomplice now.”

“You joke, but that’s what they’ll call me,” he deadpans.

“As if you minded the extra alone time”—I waggle my eyebrows—“with Caroline.”

He blushes. “Neither confirming nor denying.”

I smirk. “And thus transparently giving away your feelings.”

“Oh, come on.” He levels me with a no-nonsense, don’t-lie-to-your-best-friend kind of look. “Like your hexing Kiara was in any way subtle. You were jealous.”

“A mistaken crush. I’m already over him,” I say, pointedly not even using Devon’s name.

“Who said I was talking about him?” Now it’s Austin’s turn to gloat. “Admit it. You’ve been pining for her ever since you kissed at my party the summer before freshman year.”

I grimace. I don’t love that reminder. “You and I had just broken up. Although, I guess it wasn’t really broken up since we were basically kids and we only went out for a week, and our first and only kiss was so weird, and your chin knocked my teeth so hard I thought I’d need dental work—”

“An exaggeration,” Austin cuts in.

“Needless to say, to recover from the horror of it all, I would have kissed anyone with a pulse.”

“Flattering,” he says dryly.

“You’re the one who said we worked better as friends,” I point out.

“And you agreed! You said kissing me was like kissing your nonexistent brother.”

“My point,” I say primly, “is that both kisses are forever filed under Things Never to be Repeated.”

At least I can joke about the one I shared with Austin. We were kids playing pretend, more excited about having our first boyfriend and girlfriend than in actually doing anything with each other. In all honesty, I think we were just giving it a shot because being best friends already felt so right.

With Kiara, on the other hand, I had an embarrassingly obvious crush. It felt like we were having a moment, so I went for it. In hindsight, I don’t know what possessed me. Surely I had no business being so confident after that clumsy kiss with Austin?

I relive it now in 4K resolution, everything clearer and more detailed.

My head tilts, my eyes close, and I am convinced I know exactly what to do.

Kiara is hot, so she’ll be amazing at kissing, too.

Our lips meet. The music doesn’t swell, her nose bumps mine hard enough that my eyes fly open, and it’s all too…

wet. I’m way too conscious of my tongue and freaking out about what she’s doing with hers.

How is it possible my second kiss is worse than my first?

Is she bad at this? Am I bad at this? It has to be me, right?

I’ve seen her kiss before, in hallways and in class behind teachers’ backs.

I’m the one with no practice and no idea what to do with my hands or my mouth or my eyes, which are still open, actually.

Just as I’m trying to work out how I feel about it and whether enough seconds have passed to detach from this awkward, humiliating exchange, she pulls back for breath.

And then goes in for another kiss. Which I promptly dodge, more out of self-preservation than anything else, convinced that I was the one to wreck what should have been a magical kiss.

When she flies back to her friends instead of trying again, I’m pretty sure she’s convinced I suck, too.

Why is having a crush the most embarrassing thing ever?

Better to dig it out like a weed instead of letting it bloom. Better to conceal how I feel. Dwelling on a mistake only makes things worse. This is how I deal with things now.

“Nova, Nova, Nova.” Austin gives me a grin that’s one part playful, one part up to something. “One, you’re deflecting. Two…” His azure eyes fix somewhere beyond my shoulder. “Good luck.”

I whirl around to see Kiara enter the shelter cradling a small black ball of fluff against an unbuttoned cardigan and a carnation-pink tee sporting her family’s clothing and outdoor recreation store, Bee Outdoors.

The shirt knots at the front, showing a strip of midriff but hiding the titanium navel piercing I know she has.

“You deal with this,” I hiss at Austin since it’s too late to duck under the counter and hide.

“Hi, Kiara,” he says loudly. “Nova, why don’t you take care of this? I’ll get the cats fed.”

Before I can protest, he’s already disappeared into the back.

Leaving me and Kiara alone. Again. My heart thumps loud enough I’m surprised we can’t hear it.

“How can I help you?” I ask, eyeing the kitten cuddled against Kiara’s chest. I wouldn’t ordinarily be speaking to someone’s chest like a horny teenage boy, but with the phantom taste of her lips still on my mind and only a counter separating us, looking into Kiara’s eyes feels impossibly intimate.

“Some hikers found this cutie outside of Bee Outdoors.” Kiara pries tiny paws from her strawberry-patterned cardigan, looking as reluctant to hand the kitten over as it seems to be handed. “I gave him some water, but I don’t have any pets, so I didn’t know what he can eat at this age.”

“Wet food. Kibble is too hard on their minuscule teeth.” I hold out my hands, palms out.

“C’mere, little guy.” With a look I can only describe as panic, the kitten flails wildly, wriggling back to Kiara.

Claws curl into the knit and, as though I’m watching in slow motion, it’s too late to stop it from happening.

With a yowl of outrage, the kitten decimates three strawberries at the same time, unraveling the pink wool.

“My favorite sweater!” Kiara cries.

Her dismay tugs at me in a way it shouldn’t. “Sorry. Shitty way to start the day.”

“If only you knew.”

Something in Kiara’s tone pulls my gaze to her face. And her horrifically reddish eye.

I suck in a sharp breath, glancing at the kitten. Without thinking twice, I lean far enough over the counter to get right in Kiara’s face, peering at her cornea. “Does it hurt when you blink?”

As I hover repulsively close, I wait for her to oblige me with a couple of startled blinks. Maybe to push away from the counter, separating us with a look of annoyance or surprise. She does neither.

Time seems to freeze as she meets my scrutiny without blinking. I start to worry the lack of moisture will aggravate her eye even more. This is the closest we’ve been since freshman year, and even though the circumstances are totally different, my heart does a traitorous backflip.

I nod toward the redness. The popped blood vessels make it hard to tell, but…“It doesn’t look like he scratched your cornea. Did you rinse it out right away with a saline solution?”

“What?” Her voice comes out a little strangled, like she’s holding her breath.

“It’s what you use for your contact lenses.”

In middle school, Kiara used to wear hot pink frames that matched the color of her lip gloss, but neither has made a resurgence in years. Probably because they get in the way of all the people she kisses.

Her lips tip up into a bemused smile. “Nice to know you care, Nova.”

I scowl, unable to deny it. Nothing about her appearance implies she’s been tossing and turning all night, restless with anticipation and dread about all the bad luck in store.

Maybe I wasn’t dire enough? Maybe after her initial alarm, she laughed it off with her friends and chalked my dire pronouncement down to a tipsy psychic who’d taken it too far.

I don’t know whether I’m relieved or disappointed at the possibility. Her smile is too distracting.

Wait, has her skin always been this baby smooth and poreless?

It’s one of life’s great injustices that Kiara Mistry looks as good as she does.

This close, I can count every single tiny sunspot smattered on her face.

Her Disney princess nose. The matchy-matchy eyelids, cheeks, and lips in a glowy shade of apricot that suits her skin tone.

The way her brown eyes widen as I enter her personal space bubble, holding her breath like it isn’t minty fresh and flossed and all those other things that the average teenager lets slide but Kiara would never fail to include in her daily regimen.

“You know, Nova,” she says, sounding like she’s barely suppressing a giggle, “anyone would think you just wanted an excuse to stare at me.”

I’m the one to recoil. “What? You really need to get your eyes checked if you think I’m staring longingly at you.”

She looks way too smug as she says, “Who said anything about longingly?”

I scoff. “Fine, maybe next time I won’t care about your potential injuries.”

Okay, I would. Because unlike some who go around stealing crushes from others, I’m a good human being.

I’d give a shit about internal damage to anyone, including shoppers who sneak fifty-plus items into the grocery’s twenty-items-or-less self-checkout and people who walk side by side hogging the entire sidewalk and the truly vile: drivers who don’t wave thank-you when you let them ahead of you.

And judging by the perceptive look she gives me after my snippy words, Kiara knows that I’d care, too. “Anyway,” she says, “this isn’t the floof’s fault. My mascara wand got me good this morning.”