Page 94 of Eye of the Beholder

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Page 94 of Eye of the Beholder

I return to her question. “What makes you thinkIdid something to him?”

Lydia glares at me. Sweet, angelic Lydia—she glares at me.

“We kissed. Sort of,” I say quickly. “I mean, we definitely kissed. But I don’t think it was real.” Right? It wasn’t real, right? “I just told him I don’t know how to kiss, so he…you know. Showed me.” Is that what he apologized for? Was he talking to Jack?

She narrows her eyes at me, looking contemplative now. “You kissed?”

I swallow and nod, trying not to wince under the expression she’s wearing.

“What kind of kiss?” she says, her voice businesslike.

I blink in surprise. “Um. I don’t know,” I say.

Lydia sighs and leans back against the counter. “Well, was it a peck on the lips? Was it gentle? Was it crazy? Did it last a long time? Were you full-on making out? Was there tongue? Was—”

“All right,” I say, holding up my hand. “I get it. And I feel weird answering that, since he’s your brother. But I will,” I add as she glares at me again. “It didn’t last a long time. And there was no tongue. But…”

“But what?” Lydia prompts.

“But it wasn’t a peck on the lips,” I say. And I can’t help it; I bury my face in my hands. This is so embarrassing. “And I wouldn’t call it gentle, either.”

“Huh,” Lydia says, sounding interested now. I keep my face in my hands so I don’t have to look at her. “Did you like it?”

Well, I’ve told her everything else; I may as well tell her this too. She’ll probably wheedle it out of me if I refuse, anyway.

So I nod. Emphatically.

She’s silent, and when I finally get up the nerve to take down my hands and look at her, she’s watching me with a gentler expression than I’ve seen from her so far this evening.

“Thanks for answering my questions,” she says. “I just wanted to know what had happened.”

“You didn’t really give me a choice,” I say, and she just laughs.

When she leaves and I’m left to really consider what she said, my heart sinks. Cohen came home looking panicked and miserable.

I’ve always wanted someone to kiss me and then feel miserable. My dream.

But that’s what happened when Jack kissed me. That’s how I felt; miserable. So I understand, I guess.

All right. Clearly Cohen and the kiss are not going to let me ignore them. Introspective Mina is on duty, I guess.

If for whatever reason he really didn’t like kissing me, then the safest thing to do is to revert back to the way things were. We can’t undo the kiss, obviously. And, to be honest, I don’t want to. Because he was right; I could tell it was a good kiss. But it was more than the kiss; it was him. It was Cohen. An identical kiss from someone else would have meant nothing. Might have been gross, in fact. My heart sinks further at this thought.

So I like him. I have romantic feelings for him. I’m finally adult enough to admit that to myself.

But it’s fine. We can just keep being friends. We’ll go to college in six months anyway and rarely see each other again. If I haven’t moved on by the end of the summer, I certainly will once we live who knows how far away and never talk.

My head snaps up as the bell at the door jingles. For some reason I’m expecting it to be Cohen, and I’m disappointed when it isn’t. Although that’s stupid, of course. He doesn’t need to be buying flowers.

A man comes to the counter and greets me with an infectious smile. “Hi,” he says. “I want to get some flowers for my wife.”

“Great,” I say, not feeling great at all. “What would you like?”

“These, I think,” he says, pointing at a bouquet of dyed daisies.

I nod and help him gather the flowers, and then I begin to ring up the purchase.

I look up when the man begins to speak.