WARREN
For ten whole seconds, I’m powerless.
A peck from her would have sufficed, and that’s what I’d anticipated. But Savvy has something else in mind and even though this is all for show, I know this girl doesn’t half-ass anything.
Like an idiot, my eyes remain wide open at first, studying the girl currently attached to not only my lips, but my torso and hips as well.
My eyebrows shoot up to the top of my forehead when she smashes her mouth against mine with more pressure as each second passes.
I inhale, realizing I haven’t breathed in yet, and the perfectly light aroma of her fresh citrus perfume invades my senses.
It’s a tug of war to anchor my focus. Her soft lips, her scent, and her hands on my arms all demand my attention. It’s overwhelming and exhilarating all at once. Before I can process how perfect it is, it ends too soon with Emma’s grating voice in the background as she refuses to let us go on another moment without making sure we know that she’s now standing right next to us.
“Excuuuse me? Hello?”
The moment Savannah steps away and puts a few feet of distance between us, her hand flies up to her mouth. Her cheeks are fully flushed—whether it’s from arousal or embarrassment, I’m not sure.
Immediately, I regret how flustered I was, stunned and frozen in place during that kiss. It was supposed to be performative, but it didn’t feel that way and I wasn’t ready. I want to try again. Fast. Ideas of where I’d touch her to coax more sounds or reactions out of her flood my mind and I rub the side of my jaw in frustration.
“Were y’all playing spin the bottle or something? That’s so cute,” Emma scoffs.
Unfortunately, she’s not walking away, so my plan to get rid of her by kissing someone else was an epic failure in that sense. But the kiss itself? It had my heart racing. It was meant as a distraction, but it was sweet like nothing I’ve ever tasted. I look down to my boots, expecting to see them hovering above the ground but they’re not. Strange, because the rest of me feels like it’s floating.
I turn my gaze to see Savannah’s mouth open in shock as she stares at Emma. With the crowd that gathered around us and the jealous glare on Emma’s face that she’s doing a terrible job of hiding, she glances around frantically.
I’ve seen that look on her face before. She’s scouting a fast way out.
“I missed you—” Emma says as she turns in my direction, but I cut her off when Savannah spins and darts down the hallway.
“I don’t have time right now, Emma.” I’m not trying to be mean to her, but I’ve never wanted her to shut up and leave me alone as much as I do right now. In the split second that I made eye contact with her, I could tell she was a little bit high too.
I push through a group of people who are all giving me confused looks. It doesn’t take long to catch up to Savannah, but I’m not fast enough to keep her from pushing through the nearest door she could find. Which just so happens to be Tripp’s room. She’s not even halfway through the doorway when she squeals and slaps a hand over her eyes.
Over her head, I can see Tripp making out with a shirtless girl on the edge of his bed. His head pops up and he smirks over her shoulder while the girl straddling his lap latches onto his neck. Blowing out a heavy breath and shaking my head, I reach around Savannah to grab the knob and pull the door back closed.
“Ugh,” Savannah groans.
“In here,” I say as I usher her to my room a little further down the hall.
She hesitates, no doubt hating the fact that I followed her when she was clearly looking to escape alone. I couldn’t help but follow her though. Partly because I could see the wheels spinning in her head and partly because I wanted to ask her when we could kiss again. With a glare, she follows me into the room and I close the door.
“Is there a back door I can use?” She crosses her arms over her middle, holding her elbows in each hand.
“There’s a mudroom at the end of the hallway with a door that leads to the back, yeah.” I scratch a nonexistent itch at the nape of my neck, deep in thought. “You want to leave?”
“I don’t know,” she sighs and then starts walking across the room, pacing as if the movement might help her put together pieces of a complicated puzzle in her mind.
My lips roll inward as I watch her. Her delicate heels tap against the wooden floorboards that have seen better days, her feminine dress a stark contrast to my slightly messy and simple room. She’s beautiful, elegant even, as she glides back and forth to gather her thoughts.
“You know,” she says when she stops pacing and spins to face me, “when I decided to go along with your kiss to get your ex to go away out there, I didn’t realize it was Emma.Again. I feel like a pawn in some sort of scheme at this point, and this is thesecondtime you’ve used me to make her jealous.”
She holds two fingers in the air and emphasizes the wordsecondto drive home her point. My chest expands with a deep breath and in my head, I start trying to come up with an honest explanation that doesn’t sound like a measly excuse.
The first time she’s referring to is when we went out on our first date. I took her out to the only decently nice restaurant in town three weeks ago, and things went great at first. We clinked our glasses, ordered food, and smiled stupidly at each other the way you can’t help but do when you’re as happy as you are excited about who you’re with.
I don’t know exactly how Savannah was feeling, but I was into her more than anyone else that I had ever been on a first date with. I’m not saying I knew for sure that we were endgame yet, but I knew that I’d been waiting for that butterflies-in-your-chest feeling that she was giving me for a long time.
In true Emma fashion, it only took a few minutes for her to show up and ruin things. Shit hit the fan after she stomped over to our table. She got right in my face and started berating me with questions likehow could you do this to me?and then spitting out allegations likeyou knew I’d be here tonight and you brought a new shiny toy just to make me jealous.
