Page 8 of Last First Kiss

He arrived earlier with a sleeping bag, one of his trademark crooked grins, and a plastic-wrapped batch of special brownies tucked neatly into his backpack.

Jordan and Jamie are shoulder to shoulder on the floor, their backs braced against the foot of Denz’s bed. Jamie is all smiley, his pink-rimmed eyes scrunched. Jordan’s almost too fixated on thegame to notice. His Bowser laps Toad for the second time. Denz snuffles and snores into his pillow, dead to the world.

“Wait! Start over,” Jamie cries. “You’re cheating!”

“I don’t cheat,” Jordan argues.

Not all the time, he doesn’t add.

For better or for worse, Jordan is a very competitive person. He’s not sure where he got it from. The only person his mom ever tries to one-up is her fraternal twin sister, Eva. Maybe Jordan got it from the biological dad he’s never met? Who no one in his family, including his mom, ever talks about?

(Jordan’s not interested in going down that road right now.)

Point is, he hates losing.Badly. So, he works hard not to. Sometimes, that requires devious tactics. He’s not ashamed of his past delinquencies, but Jordan also doesn’t need a shortcut to beat Jamie.

It’s all about skill. World-class concentration. Being so determined that—

“I heard Yasmine Romero asked you on a date,” Jamie says.

Jordan’s Bowser swerves into a wall.

He pauses the game. Heat scorches the back of his neck. He doesn’t look at Jamie when he says, “You—what?”

“Yasmine Romero,” Jamie repeats, as casual as the first time.

“I, uh,” Jordan stammers. “Who told you that?”

“Denzmight’vementioned—”

Jordan almost throws his game controller. He expects this kind of behavior from his mom. She loves gossip almost as much as she loves raspberry truffle cheesecake. But Denz? That’s unprecedented betrayal.

Wonderful, now Jordan has to murder his cousin. He hasn’t decided how yet. Waterboarding? Poisoning one of his energy drinks? Death by an overpriced memory foam pillow?

He’ll figure that—and his alibi—out later. Right after he deciphers why the hell Jamie is staring at him weirdly.

“What?”

Jamie gives him a wide grin. God, he’s such a border collie. Happy and friendly and hard to look away from.

“She’s into you, right?”

Jordan shrugs. “I guess.”

The thing is… he’s not really sure?

He’s shared classes with Yazzie for the last two years. They’ve been lab partners and study buddies. In the spring, they were each other’s date for the junior prom. She had asked him. Not that that matters. It’s just—the idea of askinghernever even crossed his mind. Proms were an excuse to dress up, take silly photos, and dance until your feet hurt.

Which they did. For hours.

When the DJ announced the last slow song, Jordan dutifully led Yazzie to the dance floor. She locked her arms around his neck. His hands rested awkwardly high on her waist. They shuffled around the other couples to John Legend’s “All of Me.”

It was a good night between two good friends.

Was there supposed to have been more?

Jamie squints at him. “You guess?”

“Um… yeah?”