Page 25 of Everybody's Favorite Guy
“This is so unfair,” Walker said. “I can’t win.”
“If you kiss me,” I said, “we both win.”
“Lily . . .”
But I brought my hand to the back of his neck. “If you kiss me,” I said, “I’ll forgive you.”
“I told you,” he said, “I don’t want you to forgive me.”
“Fine,” I said. “If you kiss me, Iwon’tforgive you.”
He looked tempted, he really did.
So I stayed right there. Hoping he’d give in to temptation.
And then . . . he did.
He brought those arms around me, and pulled me in, and pressed his mouth to mine. Tentative at first, like I might have second thoughts. But I kissed him back like a dare. Like each press and pull was demanding he do the same right back. And before either of us knew it, there were no second thoughts—no thoughts at all—left. We just got lost in the kissing. The kind of whole-self, whole-body, wholehearted kissing you only ever do when it’s no longer high school, and life has humbled you both, and you’re still impossibly infatuated, and now you know more than enough about heartbreak—and so you know better than to take any moment of grace for granted.
He kissed me like an apology.
Like we’d wasted too much time.
Like he was saying all the things he couldn’t say.
And I didn’t forgive him. Not yet. But only because he didn’t want me to.
