Hot.
I’d actually referred to Jeremy Banks as hot. The guy with whom I’d made many a spit pacts and spent hours pretending we were characters from The Mighty Ducks. I wasn’t sure how to process the way he’d begun giving me butterflies. The way I studied his features and wondered how his lips would feel pressed against mine. Would I be able to tell that his lower lip was much fuller than the top one, or would it even matter? Would his eyes light up as we kissed, or would he close them, savoring the taste of me? Would his large hands fist my hair with passion, or would he hold my hips firmly in place?
He snapped his finger in front of my face, breaking my trance. My cheeks heated as I hoped he hadn’t caught me ogling him. That’s just what I needed—him reading my thoughts and running screaming in the opposite direction. When my eyes reached his, he was watching me with concern.
“You ready for this, Tod?” he asked, not acting the least bit weirded out. It was more like he was worried I wasn’t ready.
That was Jeremy. So freaking sweet.
I let out a sigh of relief even though I was still reeling from the visions I’d had of Jeremy kissing me. Like that’d ever happen.
“Tod? Hello?” he repeated, eliciting a sheepish grin from me.
Get it together, Sierra.
A comfortable wave of contentment poured out of Jeremy and flowed over me. For a moment, I was transported back six years to the first day of third grade. It had been my first time ever in a new school, and I’d been so nervous. Jeremy had held my hand (not literally—GROSS. Or, at least, it would’ve been at the time) every step of the way, putting me at ease. And, now, he was doing the same thing, even if he didn’t realize it. I peeked back up at him and found his copper eyes dancing playfully yet still watching me with traces of concern.
“I think so,” I told him as I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, feeling a little self-conscious because of the older girls coming from the student parking lot. I waited for Jeremy’s eyes to roam as he checked them out, but they never left mine. “I’m just really glad our schedules match.”
He gave me his signature goofy grin, and my stomach did a flip-flop.
God, what was wrong with me? This was Jeremy. Simply Jeremy.
Who was I kidding? He’d never been just Jeremy to me, but still… I wasn’t a fan of how my view of him was changing.
He grinned and leaned in close to press a sweet kiss to my temple. I thought he lingered a little longer than usual, but when he pulled back, I figured that was wishful thinking. It was just brotherly, something he’d started doing in the sixth grade when Ryan Harper had tried asking me to be his girlfriend. Jeremy had marked his territory with that kiss, and while, at the time, I’d been grateful, no boy had asked me out since because they all thought I belonged to Jeremy.
Hell, I had even started to believe it.
“Sullivan, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because…” He raised an eyebrow at me expectantly.
I smiled and leaned up on my tiptoes to place a feathery kiss on his cheek. “Where you go, I go.”
His smile widened, and his eyes searched mine. Then his lips parted slightly as he rubbed a thumb over my bottom one. My nerves fluttered because… Oh my God. Jeremy was about to kiss me.
“Always, Tod,” he whispered as his head descended.
Was this it?
No. It couldn’t be.
And then his head dipped lower. Lower. Lowering still…
Oh. My. God.
This was it.
The moment I’d been waiting six years for. The moment I hadn’t known I wanted but suddenly couldn’t happen soon enough.
“Always, Copper,” I breathed as my eyes fluttered closed and I waited to experience his lips for the very first time.
“Eww. Eww. PDA! Make it stop!”
My eyes snapped open in time to see Jeremy jump back from me at the sound of Chris’s teasing voice. His dimples were showcased when he tossed me a sheepish grin. It only lasted for a split second before rolling his eyes at our now former best friend. (He never actually knew it, but I was mad at Chris for months after that.) The moment was officially broken—my heart right along with it.
Jeremy slapped a playful arm around my shoulders and squeezed. It was like a bro hug, and my heart sank at the immediate change in his demeanor. One thing was blatantly obvious: I was back in the friend zone. Hell, I’d never actually left. It had been wishful thinking, but even then, I burrowed myself into his chest, savoring that hug for as long as I could, even if it was strictly platonic.
Over the course of the next year, I’d really come to hate those bro hugs.
“Shut it, Chris. You know Sullivan and I are just best friends,” he quipped, seemingly unaffected by our near kiss.
Cue the inner sigh. I was back to Sullivan. Jeremy always pulled that out when talking about our friendship. As if calling me Sierra made me more feminine or something.
Right. Best friends.
I so needed to remember that.
Holy crap.
Holy crap.
Holy crap.
The thought ran through my mind in super-quick succession as if my brain had suddenly turned into a broken record.
Holy freaking crap.
That was a close one.
I could have killed Chris.
I could have also thanked him.
I’d been on the verge of kissing Sierra, and I wasn’t ready for that.
Was I?
Don’t get me wrong. As Sierra’s breath had hitched, my eyes had locked with hers and all I could think about was placing my lips on hers. I didn’t want forehead or cheek kisses anymore. I wanted her supple lips against mine. I wanted to know if her favorite cherry ChapStick really made her lips as soft as the slender tube claimed. I wanted my tongue to experience the taste of hers after years of her sticking it out at me whenever I’d irritated her. I wanted to wrap my arms around Sierra’s waist, pull her in close, and kiss the hell out of her, blowing any movie kiss out of the water until we got detention for our public displays of affection.
And, suddenly, I wanted that detention more than I wanted anything else in the world.
So yeah, I could kill Chris.
But, now that I was coming back to my senses, it was clear Chris had done me a favor by interrupting a moment that would’ve fundamentally changed everything between Sierra and me. I wasn’t ready. I hated that, but it was the truth. High school was going to bring about so many changes, and the last thing I wanted was to do something to ruin my friendship with Sierra. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t act on my impulses until I knew what the hell I really wanted. I wasn’t quite ready to take that leap.
But fucking hell. I wished I were.
AFTER OUR NEAR KISS—I was still calling it that—things were seemingly normal with Jeremy and me. I spent too many hours analyzing every second of that interaction, and every time, I came up with a different conclusion. He’d been going to kiss me. He hadn’t been going to kiss me. I’d been reading it wrong. I’d been reading it right. I exhausted myself trying to figure out what it all meant.