Kissing Lessons

by Sophie Jordan

  They all nodded in mute agreement. It was sound logic, and Emmaline scribbled that into her notebook. Save face-holding for serious intimacy. Not for a casual make-out.

  “All right.” Hayden settled her gaze on Sanjana. “Ready?”

  Sanjana nodded, actually looking nervous.

  Lia let out a panicky giggle and Hayden sent her a reproving glare. Lia pressed her fingers to her lips, punishing them to stillness.

  Hayden readjusted her position, scooting closer in front of Sanjana. Sanjana also nudged forward . . . until their knees were touching.

  Simultaneously, they leaned in and pressed lips. It lasted maybe three seconds.

  “Okay. Very good,” Hayden said as she leaned back, sounding like an encouraging grade school teacher. “Now let’s still keep it simple, but try moving and shifting our lips a little this time.”

  Emmaline looked on with interest.

  Sanjana and Hayden came together again, not touching anywhere except for their mouths. Hayden nibbled on Sanjana’s top lip and then slanted her lips to deepen the kiss a little.

  They all watched, riveted to the lesson.

  Hayden pulled back “Everyone get that? Take it slow . . . don’t dive in like it’s a race. Ready to try now?”

  Lia and Monica squared off in front of each other as Hayden turned to Emmaline. “Want to try?”

  Her heart started to pound faster. “Er. Yes.”

  Hayden peered closely at her face. “You don’t have to do this.” She paused and gave her an encouraging smile. “No one should ever feel pressured into doing anything they don’t want.”

  Emmaline nodded. “Sure.”

  She knew that. She knew no one here was forcing her into doing anything she didn’t want. These were her friends. Even Hayden, though she hadn’t known her for a long time. This was a safe group.

  But she was hovering on the brink . . . about to hit a milestone—her first kiss. That’s what had prompted all these lessons, and yet she wanted her first kiss to matter. She didn’t want it to be an empty encounter, something to toss away for the sake of practice.

  She wanted her first kiss to be with someone who gave her butterflies.

  As much as she cared for the girls in this room . . . none of them made her stomach somersault.

  She wanted that.

  She needed that.

  Hayden stared at her in such a knowing way. “Maybe you can just observe and take notes tonight.”

  Emmaline released a relieved breath but still felt conflicted. Actual hands-on experience was obviously best.

  Monica and Lia were oblivious to her internal struggle. They’d already started practicing. In fact, they were practicing quite enthusiastically. Lia lifted a hand to brush the hair back from Monica’s shoulder, and then her fingers stayed there, lingering in Monica’s hair, caressing the brown curls between her fingertips in a way that seemed almost sensual . . . as though she was really into it.

  They kissed for several more moments without appearing inclined to stop.

  Hayden glanced at Emmaline’s bedside clock, obviously noting the time they were dedicating to this kiss.

  Sanjana cleared her throat, as though that might part the two of them, but they didn’t look ready to stop.

  Emmaline shifted where she sat, starting to feel like a voyeur witnessing something personal and intimate.

  Sanjana leaned sideways and whispered with a hand over her mouth, “Maybe they need their own room?”

  Suddenly a knock sounded. Emmaline’s gaze shot to her bedroom door and then back to the two girls kissing, lost to each other and oblivious to the potential intrusion on their practice session. Maybe the music was too loud. Or maybe they just didn’t care.

  There was one more knock and then the door opened, swinging wide to reveal Nolan and Beau in the threshold.

  “Hey, we’re going for another pizza. Can Hayden move her car so we can back—”

  The rest of Nolan’s words died and then he and Beau just stood there, gaping at Lia and Monica in a full make-out sesh.

  The girls must have finally sensed their audience. They eased apart, faces still very close, almost cheek-to-cheek, as they turned to find every­one staring at them.

  “Hey,” Monica greeted, her eyes a little bright, her voice a little breathless.

  “What’s going on?” Nolan demanded, looking thoroughly perplexed.

  “Nothing, Nolan,” Emmaline snapped. “Did I tell you that you could come in?”

  “Emma!” He looked again at Lia and Monica. “They’re kissing and you’re sitting around watching.”

  Sanjana started laughing.

  Lia and Monica joined in, their laughter much quieter, almost nervous as they exchanged shy glances with each other.

  “Oh, just tell him, Emmaline,” Sanjana managed to get out amid her laughter. She pointed at Nolan and Beau. “If you could see your faces. Priceless. If you had come in earlier, you would have seen me and Hayden kissing.”

  Nolan’s eyes widened. Great. Now he was convinced they were having some kind of orgy in here. “Sanjana,” Emmaline snapped.

  “Oh, just tell him,” Monica agreed, pushing her glasses up her nose. “It’s healthy experimentation. Nothing to worry about.”

  Nolan pressed his fingers to his temple. “What. Is. Happening.”

  Emmaline looked to Beau, hoping he might help her. He’d been silent this whole time. For him, a couple girls making out was probably just another Saturday night.

  Sanjana chose that moment to answer Nolan’s maybe rhetorical question. “Emmaline hired Hayden to give us lessons.”

  Oh no no no no no.

  She did not just tell her brother that. In front of Beau no less.

  Emmaline punched Sanjana in the arm. Even Hayden’s usually passive expression cracked. She looked suddenly wary, watching Nolan like she didn’t know how he would react to that news.

  “Lessons? On what?” He glanced around like he expected to see textbooks and laptops open or something.

  Goodness. He wanted them to spell it out.

  Sanjana was still rubbing her arms. “Lessons on seduction. Tonight, we were specifically working on kissing.”

  Nolan closed his eyes in one long, weary blink. He looked a lot older than eighteen in that moment. It really was like getting busted by a father.

  For a moment she wondered what her dad would have done in this situation. He would probably have backed out of the room with a stammering apology, too embarrassed to stick around and interrogate a bunch of girls.

  Not Nolan. He looked ready to lose it . . . and he never got mad. Never raised his voice or lost his temper.

  When he opened his eyes again, he was staring at Hayden with enough contempt to blast the wrapper off a lollipop. “You’re teaching my sister how to seduce a guy? So. In other words . . . you’re teaching her how to be like you?” The implication was clear.

  To be like Hayden was unacceptable.

  Everyone fell silent then. The only sound was the music from her laptop.

  “Nolan,” she reprimanded in a hushed voice, fearful he’d crossed a line and hurt Hayden’s feelings.

  Hayden might be tough, but words could wound, and the way Nolan was acting was not okay.

  A muscle ticked near Hayden’s eye, the only sign of emotion she gave. She didn’t react, but Emmaline knew something was simmering very close to the surface. This whole situation could get ugly if she didn’t do something to diffuse it right now.

  “It wasn’t her idea,” Emmaline blurted, deliberately not looking Beau’s way. If she was making this admission, she was not looking at him. She’d been crushing on him too long to have to endure his expression right now.

  It was mortifying enough that he now knew she had to hire someone to help her attract a guy. More mortifying than her brother finding out. Because it all boiled down to one thing.

  Beau was not her brother.

  He was a guy. A guy she’d always had feelings for. An attractive
guy who always smelled good and had no problem walking around without his shirt, showcasing his washboard abs. He didn’t need to know the level of her desperation. If he looked at her with pity, she might have to move schools, change her name, and don a permanent disguise.

  Nolan turned on Emmaline now, which had been the plan, she guessed: get him to stop being so rude to Hayden. Except now she felt a little nervous to have his full attention. “Why would you come up with a scheme like this?”

  Why? Why?

  Wasn’t it obvious?

  The nervousness turned to outrage at his question. “Because, look at me!” She threw her arms wide, forgetting everyone else in the room at that moment. “I need something to happen . . . I want to have a life in high school. A life you seriously keep stopping me from having. I’m home every Saturday night because I don’t have anything else to do. I’ve never been asked out on a date, much less been kissed by a guy.”

  His expression softened and he reached for her arm. “Emma—”

  “No!” She yanked her arm away. Had she just been thinking that Hayden’s emotions simmered near the surface? Well, now Emmaline’s emotions were overflowing. “Don’t act like you care. If I ever try to do anything fun, you’re always there shutting me down, while you get to go off and have fun whenever you want. If I just want to be a girl and go to parties and fool around and kiss a random guy, I can’t! Because you’re my brother and you scare everyone away.”

  “Good!” he snapped.

  “No! No, not good!” She shoved him in the chest, but he didn’t budge. Her hands were like flies battering at the wall of him. “I want you to butt out of my life! I can’t wait for you to go to college.”

  He stared at her in shock.

  The words just popped out. She didn’t mean them. Not really, but they were out there now.

  She looked around, her heart beating a wild drum in her ears. Everyone stared at her like she had lost her mind. And she felt like she had. A little. She’d just gone off in front of her friends. In front of Hayden, a girl she was starting to admire. In front of Beau, a guy she worked so hard not to crush on. In front of her brother, who actually meant a lot to her, despite her outburst. But it’d all become too much.

  With a choked little sound, she fled.

  Lesson #19

  Be careful flirting. It’s all fun and games until you catch feelings for someone.

  x Beau x

  Beau should have stayed home tonight. If he had he wouldn’t be standing in the middle of this mess, feeling a little shell-shocked and wondering what was happening.

  The Martin family wasn’t dysfunctional. He knew dysfunction. He lived it every day. Sure, they’d lost their dad, but that had only bonded them. It had only made them stronger. Nolan and Emmaline did not fight. They weren’t those kind of siblings. They had their shit together.

  So the fact that they were at odds now didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him, but he felt an overriding desperation to fix it, to help set everything back to rights.

  Emmaline rushed out of her room.

  Nolan started to go after her, but Beau put a hand on his chest, stopping him. “I’ll go. Let me talk to her.”

  It seemed the better idea. If one was to believe Emmaline’s own words, she wasn’t exactly a fan of Nolan right now, and Nolan wasn’t being his usual calm self either. They needed a time-out.

  Nolan must have recognized that fact. He nodded stiffly. “Okay.”

  Beau left everyone behind in the bedroom. There was no sign of Emmaline on the second floor hallway, so he took the stairs down to the first. She wasn’t in the kitchen or living room. He even checked the dining room and the rarely used home office. He called her name, mindful not to be too loud. He didn’t want to disturb Mrs. Martin. No answer.

  She wasn’t downstairs, and he doubted that she’d taken refuge in her mom’s room.

  Remembering that Savannah was gone, sleeping over at a friend’s for the night, he went back upstairs to check the youngest Martin’s room. He knocked lightly before pushing open the door. Sure enough, there she was, cuddled amid an army of pillows and stuffed animals covering every inch of Savannah’s bed.

  “Hey,” he said softly, closing the door behind him.

  Emmaline sat up swiftly, looking at him warily, but without tears. At least there was that. She wasn’t crying. He hated tears. He’d rather deal with fury. Angry words and punches he knew how to cope with. Chalk it up to experience.

  “I’m so embarrassed,” she said quickly.

  He breathed easier. Embarrassment he could handle too. “Aw, Pigeon. Don’t be.” He sank down beside her on the bed.

  She was hugging one of the ugliest stuffed animals he’d ever seen. It was purple . . . and maybe a dragon. Possibly a bear. There was no telling what the thing was. It had glittery horns and snake eyes.

  “Who’s your friend?” He tapped one of its possible-bear ears.

  She looked down at it and shrugged. “Nolan won it for Savannah at a carnival.”

  Of course he did. Nolan was that type of big brother. The sort who took his sisters to carnivals and won them stuffed animals. Family mattered. It was everything to Nolan, and for a moment Beau felt a pang of longing.

  It wasn’t the first time. The feeling struck him whenever he was with the Martin family. Whenever he witnessed their camaraderie, their loyalty and love for one another. It was evident in all their inter­actions.

  He’d never had that connection with anyone. There was just his mom, and there was definitely no closeness there, despite the times he had tried to bridge the gap between them. She was too bitter and jaded and resentful of all the things in her life that had gone wrong—and in her eyes Beau was one of those things.

  Sometimes people were so broken, there was no mending them. It was a lesson he had learned at an early age.

  As much as the Martins included him, he was only ever on the fringes, watching, looking in. He’d never be one of them.

  He was all alone.

  “I kind of made an ass out of myself,” she confessed in a small voice.

  “That’s okay. I do that all the time.” He bumped her shoulder with his own.

  “Great.” She grimaced. “I’m like you now. Should I go out and get suspended from school? Arrested?”

  “Hey! I was suspended a long time ago, as a freshman, and I’ve never been arrested,” he said in mock indignation, but really he was just glad to see her cracking a joke.

  She smiled for a moment and then it faded from her face. “I don’t want him to go away.” It was a change of subject, but Beau immediately knew what she meant.

  “He knows that.” He looped an arm around her.

  “I’m not sure he does. I mean, why would he after my little word vomit in there?” She waved in the direction of her room.

  “Just tell him you didn’t mean it. I promise, by tomorrow, neither one of you will remember any of it.”

  “Maybe.” She dropped her head to rest on his shoulder, and he inhaled a thin layer of mint toothpaste over the chemical aroma of chlorine.

  And then the image came, unbidden, of her in that bikini. The one she was still wearing.

  The strap of her bathing suit was unmistakable through her shirt. He could feel the heavy knot of strings she had tied at the back, branding his arm where it touched him. It would be tricky to undo. At least for her. He’d have no problem with it though. Or she could just remove her bikini top by pulling it over her head and squeezing out of it.

  Yes, he went there.

  He swallowed as a vision of Emmaline stripping off her bathing suit filled his mind, singed his eyeballs—and it wasn’t even real. Just a fantasy. He blinked, fighting to get rid of it.

  Help. Me.

  She exhaled and her moist breath warmed his neck. He froze, his lungs seizing, no air going in or out of him. Every muscle in his body locked tight from the horror of what was happening.

  He was lusting after his best friend’s sister. A gi
rl he had always thought he loved like a sister of his own. He didn’t want these unbrotherly ideas in his head.

  Especially not when he was alone with her in a dark room and on a bed.

  He inhaled thinly through his nose, telling himself it was okay. As long as he didn’t act. As long as no one knew what he was feeling. As long as his gutter thoughts remained buried deep. This was normal, he reminded himself; he was a guy, after all. The night had just been weird.

  He swallowed hard and fought to regain his breath.

  She started talking again. “I’m not wrong though. Nolan casts a long shadow.”

  He tried to process her words, but his thoughts were muddled from the nearness of her. It was like she was speaking another language.

  Her head shifted on his shoulder and he had the sense she was looking up at him.

  He looked down and then quickly away, realizing that brought their mouths much too close. Her words finally penetrated, finally making sense. “Someday you’ll be glad you have a brother looking out for you,” he said diplomatically.

  A brother who would kick Beau’s ass if he knew what he was thinking about Emmaline.

  She sighed. “I know. I’m glad now, truly. I just don’t need him to be so protective. It’s suffocating.” She straightened abruptly, lifting her head from his shoulder and grabbing hold of his hands. “You can talk to him.”

  “What?” He tried tugging his hands free. “No—”

  “At least get him to lay off me about Hayden. You know her. Tell him she’s a decent person and not a bad influence.” She frowned. “I don’t need him getting it into his head to tell Mom that Hayden is—”

  “He wouldn’t do that.” Beau was sure of that. It seemed gossipy and the height of judgmental. Besides, Nolan didn’t like to burden his mother. She worked hard as a surgical nurse for a hospital in town, and Nolan would take on the weight of the world rather than bother her.