We’d shared our explosive kiss during a downpour, but he hadn’t made a move since. Sitting on my bed in a towel, I’d expected him to whip it off before kissing me again, instead he’d averted his eyes and let me leave. When I got back, I thought okay, now I’m not coated in roadside grime, maybe this will be when it happened, instead he’d asked for a solo concert.

“Are you going to go to prom?”

I scoffed. “It’s too much money for pigs in a blanket and sparkling apple juice and wearing uncomfortable shoes.”

“I’m sure if Dare asked you, you’d go,” she sing-songed.

“Not even if he asked. He’d have to kidnap me and throw me in the trunk of his car for that to happen.”

“Now you’re just talking dirty.”

I flung a pillow at her head.

“Jeez, you hit hard.” She blew her hair out of her face. “I’m not going either. Unless a certain stage crew guy asks me.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

She gasped and pressed her palm to her chest, fanning her face with the other hand. “And what kind of lady would do such a thing?”

“One who wants to go to prom.”

“It’s a rite of passage.”

“I’m sure I’ll get over it.”

“You’re no fun at all.”

I pictured Dare showing up to my house in a tux with a corsage and matching boutonniere. I shook my head. Maybe it was a convincing-as-hell hallucination and he’d never kissed me at all. My first kiss. Well, my first non-playground-behind-the-jungle-gym kiss. A kiss while soaking wet on the side of the road, one so explosive I’d have been happy to never leave that spot. But how many other lips had he tasted? How many other tongues had danced against his, knowing all the right steps and not fumbling around in the dark trying to figure out what room they were in. It had been face palm territory for sure.

He didn’t need to know it was my first real kiss. I’d remember it forever, though.

From the way he jerked his hand back when our fingers brushed, I expected to get the letting you down easy talk any day now. At least he wasn’t avoiding me. Not my calls or my texts or even in the hallways. Not that making eye contact shouted we were in a non-relationship relationship, but at least I wasn’t back to being invisible.

So, a shirtless Dare might not be something I saw again.

Peering around the edge of my curtain, I stared at him in all his rippling-muscled glory. Shiny with sweat and laughing, throwing a ball to Knox. He looked so carefree. Not like he did at pep rallies or pretty much any other time I’d seen him with other people. There was always an intensity in his gaze, like he was going to flay anyone who got in the way. It was at odds with our popcorn fight during the end credits of Goonies, and I was having trouble reconciling both sides of him.