And tonight, I was indulging in a self-care night, one I desperately needed after fielding the media circus that had been keeping me busy all week. Things would slow down a bit now that Chart Day was behind us — at least, until the season opener this weekend — and I was celebrating the fact that I survived rounding up more than two-dozen football players for interviews, social media stunts, and fan appearances.

Not to mention the fact that I’d survived kissing Clay Johnson.

Just like it had a hundred times since that day, the memory of it had my pulse racing, and I let my book flop against my chest as I reached for the glass of water on my bedside table and gulped half of it down. After, I just sat there, staring at my bookcase at the foot of my bed as I replayed it.

I’d been kissed before. I had.

There was Ricky in the fifth grade, who threw a dodgeball over the playground fence and then asked the teacher if we could go retrieve it together. He pressed his lips against mine and held them there for three seconds — ones he counted on his fingers — before running off laughing.

There was also Matthew, the closest thing I’d had to a boyfriend, who made out with me in a very slobbery way every chance he could get my entire sophomore year of high school. He was also the first one to stick his hand up my shirt, which deterred me from ever wanting that to happen again if all boys groped as hard as he did.

But other than that?

I was not well-versed in the subject.

Well, unless you counted my romance novels, which was about all I could think about the moment I leapt into Clay’s arms at the cafeteria with every single person watching.

We’d practiced. We’d rehearsed. I knew exactly what to do, what to say, to make a scene and make it convincing. I felt like the main character in a cheesy rom com, caught up in a crazy scheme with a guy way out of my league. It was thrilling. It was fun.

Until the moment he caught me, and my legs wrapped around him, and I realized there was nothing between us but my cotton thong that said Monday on the crotch.

It had stolen my breath, that recognition, the way I’d felt his stone-hard abs brush against my center. But it was nothing compared to when he tilted my chin like a cinnamon roll hero would and kissed me.

I didn’t mean to lean into it, to inhale that kiss and nonverbally ask for more when I arched into him.

But I also hadn’t expected it to feel so good.