“So we’ll kiss next Saturday for two hours?”
He shook his head. “Tuesday at the earliest. Also this isn’t a requirement, but a limit. No more than two hours at a time. No sooner than one week between sessions.”
“You make it sound like polo practice.”
He shrugged. “I actually like schedules. Otherwise I don’t function very well. The coming weeks are going to be extremely busy for me. I have so many meetings, so many rehearsals, so many people to deal with. For some peculiar reason, I’m good with people. I get it from my father. He’s one of those people who can get whatever he wants from whoever he likes. He never even tried to get me to do anything. If you’d like to set a schedule, we could integrate a kiss after dinner on Tuesdays, then add in a tea party on Sunday afternoons to accustom you to close proximity to me without things getting too friendly. Do you have any other questions?”
“Why are you in charge of the music?”
He smiled. “Because you’re in charge of buckets. We could trade, but you have to admit that your talent in regard to buckets is at genius levels that I could never achieve if I spent a thousand years in a mop closet.”
I stared at him. “You are going to kiss me again?”
He studied me for a few seconds before he nodded decisively. “I am. I tend to burn through things, become obsessive and addictive about something then tire of it when I’m finished. I can’t afford to become obsessed with kissing you before the student shows. I wouldn’t get anything done.”
“Other than kissing me.”
“Other than kissing you.”
I brushed his lips with my fingers, but he turned away to stare out the windshield. “Penny, think about what you want, what kind of direction you’d like us to go. I think that if you’re certain, you’ll be less likely to faint.”
“I know what I want.”
He turned his head to stare at me. All I could see was him tied to a tree, my name engraved on his chest, bleeding. “Take your time. Be sure. Once I begin kissing you on a regular basis, I won’t want to stop.”
“Until you get tired of me.”
He gave me a sad smile. “You wouldn’t want me around forever, would you?”
I got out of his car, half angry, half hurt, half shocked, and half eager. So many halves. He was right. I needed to figure out what I wanted. If I was going to pursue other mages, kissing Drake would be idiotic. Even thinking about going through that again, dating a mage, deciding he’d work, having him not work, it was too much. I would be smart. Or I would be stupid. I had a week to make my decision. In a week Drake would kiss me?
I skipped and sang the rest of my way to bed.
Chapter 26
Witch
When I got back to Lilac stories that evening, Viney was standing there, arms folded over her chest like an angry mother hen.
“Where were you? It’s much later than usual.”
I turned to look at the clock and it was almost ten. I’d been fainted for a long time. Apparently. “Look at that. Time flies when you’re unconscious.”
She put her hand on my arm when I tried to hurry past her. “Did someone hurt you?”
I stared at her. I didn’t want to hurt her. Would it hurt her to know that Drake had almost kissed me? It would hurt worse to lie about it. I spoke quickly, like ripping off a bandage. “I think that Drake is going to kiss me.”
I winced and waited for how badly she took the news but she only cocked her head and stared at me.
“Is going to kiss you? He hasn’t yet?”
I shook my head, no then admitted, “I think he would have if I hadn’t fainted.”
She snorted. “You fainted? Again? What’s your problem? You’re one of those ditzy females who can’t be around a hot guy without passing out? Wow. So you haven’t kissed because every time you get close, you faint? Too bad he doesn’t like kissing unconscious girls.”
“Yeah, too bad.”
She studied me, hands on her hips, scowl firmly in place, but it wasn’t that terrible.
“Viney, do you mind?”
“What? That you’re that stupid? Not really.”
I rolled my eyes. “No, the idea that I might kiss Drake. I don’t want to hurt you. If you don’t want me to, then I won’t. Again.”
She stared at me for a long time before she cleared her throat. “I don’t mind. He’s not mine. He’s probably a bad idea for you, but it’s fine. Thanks for asking. What was that you said, again?”
I inhaled shakily. “Yeah, the mop bucket thing, I kissed him, really short kiss and I don’t think he liked it but it was short, so it didn’t kill him or anything.” I covered my face with my hands because ugh, I was an idiot. I shouldn’t be like this, but I was. What can you do? I’d thought I knew about seduction and stuff, putting my hand on Zach’s knee, sucking on lollipops, flipping my skirt, but actually kissing Drake hadn’t been anything like a Telenovela. They all seemed to know what they were doing. It’s like it was scripted or something.
She pulled my hands down and patted my shoulder. “You’ve never kissed anyone before. And Drake is drawing it out, making it slow and tortuous. That sounds like him. Usually slow means serious.”
“Not serious, just slow.”
“Slow and not serious?” She sighed. “So, we’ll probably never have that make-out party, then.”
I wrinkled my nose. I still didn’t entirely understand the whole concept of ‘make-out.’ “I don’t think that would work. Zach and Drake would rather wrestle. So, what is it like to, um, make-out? Is that like kissing for two hours? Is that even possible?”
She cocked her head at me and leaned forward, staring at me while this strange mostly evil smile grew on her face. “You’re asking me for kissing tips? Awesome! Zach, get in here!”
I flinched from her loud voice, and then Zach came in after a few minutes, giving Viney a flat expression. “You called?”
“No kidding. Viney, you broke my ears.” And I didn’t really want to talk about this around Zach.
She rolled her eyes at me and gestured Zach over to the couch. “Penny needs a kissing panel. I can tell her as an extremely experienced female what to do and what not to do, but from your male perspective, you can be useful.”
“Jeez, Viney, are you kidding me? You interrupted Warcraft fifth boot-up for this?”
I put a hand on Viney’s shoulder. “I don’t think that Zach is the right person to ask. I think he’s only kissed posters.”
Zach’s eyebrows went up at the same time he sat down and leaned forward. “It just so happens that I kissed Sarah Marketry in fourth grade. It’s Viney you shouldn’t ask. You don’t know if she’s even a good kisser.”
She smacked his arm. “You can run along, Zach. You have no interest in this conversation, discussing how to kiss a real girl? So irrelevant for you.”
I giggled and bit my lip. Reading about stuff online or researching through Telenovelas only takes you so far. “Okay, fine. I have some questions about tongue. It’s supposed to be a sexy thing, the French kissing, but it just seems so gross. I’ve eaten tongue, and the texture is nasty, slimy and squishy. I think if someone put their tongue in my mouth, I’d bite it instinctively. Then there would be blood and while tongues are the fastest healing part of your body, that could be really messy. Also, what about food? Is there a time limit between when you eat and when you kiss so you aren’t swapping partially chewed bits of food? And what are you supposed to do with your hands? Is it just all octopus wrapping around and wriggling?” I blushed and tried not to fiddle. I should know all of this stuff. I’d watched Marionetta make out a million times, so why was it such a mystery? Maybe because I fainted before I could figure anything out. Maybe because Marionetta was a fictional character.
Zach leaned back and grinned at Viney. “Go ahead. I can’t wait to hear the answer to all these fascinating questions.”
Viney snorted. “Psychotic. Maybe kissing is a little too complicated for you, Penny. Let’s s
tick with spying on naked men. It’s less convoluted.”
Zach raised his eyebrows. “I heard about that. Was it you or Penny who was stuck in the bucket?”
I shrugged. “Viney landed on me or I wouldn’t have gotten jammed in so good.”
Zach gave Viney a strict look. “No more evasions. This is the kissing panel. You have to answer her questions.”
She rolled her eyes. “We should do a demonstration.”
My stomach twisted at the idea of Zach and Viney kissing. “You and Zach? I thought you didn’t have any chemistry.”
She shrugged. “We don’t, but it won’t hurt. You don’t have a cold, do you?”
He scowled at her while I started bouncing. If Pitch were playing with Zach, she would not be okay with him kissing another girl, even for scientific purposes. Pitch could break Viney so easily.
“Oh, no, Viney. If you’re going to do a demo it would be with someone you have good chemistry with. Zach, do you have Oscar’s number?”
Zach nodded and pulled out his phone. Viney squealed and attacked him, but he held it over his head. I snagged it and scrolled through the names while she yelled and Zach laughed, holding her back.
“Hurry Penny, she’s getting away!”
I scrolled through his contacts and found Oscar’s name and quickly texted him. I sent it the second before Viney hit me, knocking me to the floor.
“Too late, Viney, I already invited him.”
She rolled off of me and tucked her knees under her chin, scowling at me dangerously. I put a hand tentatively on her shoulder and she didn’t shrug it off.
“I didn’t tell him what we wanted, just asked if he’d like to come watch a horror movie.”
She glanced at me, her gaze hopeful for a second before she scowled again. “He won’t come. He thinks I’m crazy. I am because of the whole Drake thing. I mean after the last closet thing, there’s no way…”
“Who says you were in the closet scoping out Drake? Maybe you were there to check out someone else?” I nudged her.
She wrinkled her nose. “Right, because that’s so much better. Stalking him will not make him like me.”
Zach’s phone buzzed and I stared at her while she stared back.
“Well?” She leaned forward, eyes enormous and vulnerable.
If Oscar didn’t say yes, I would track him down and kill him in any way necessary until yes was his answer after all. I swallowed and checked the message, holding my breath until I read, ‘I’ll be there.’
I started screaming and bouncing, and then Viney was screaming and bouncing, and then Zach’s phone went flying we were so bouncy and screaming. Zach snagged it easily, checked the message, nodded like he wasn’t surprised and headed back to his room.
Hanging out with Oscar was so fun. Oscar sat on one end of the couch, Viney sat on the other end and Zach sat between them while I sat on the floor. Viney and Oscar didn’t look at each other.
“Eat as much popcorn as you like. I can make more.” Viney said while staring at the blank screen.
Oscar nodded, still scowling at his hands where they gripped his knees. “Okay.”
I rolled my eyes and gave Zach a look. He raised his eyebrows and gave me a ‘wow, this was your idea and it sucks’ kind of look. I yanked on his leg, pulling him off the couch to the floor. “Where can I hold you?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“It’s a horror movie. I’m going to be grabbing onto something so I thought I’d ask what you preferred. I could do your foot. Maybe it doesn’t smell so good, but that would probably help distance me from the terror.”
Oscar made this choking sound. “You really are a strange girl.”
I smiled brightly then glanced at Viney. Her face was kind of stiff. She’d dated Ian. She was totally experienced, so why was she freezing up with Oscar? She was not going to bring up the making out thing. It was up to me to bring the two of them together.
“So, Oscar,” I said, cocking my head at him. I ignored Viney’s slight shake of the head. She’d changed her mind about the kissing demo. “You’re supposed to be the ultimate well-rounded mage like all Chemiss and Sophiss and super hot too.” Was I blushing? I felt super hot and not in a good way. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea, but Viney really liked Oscar. I could wade through humiliation for her.
Viney winced like I’d stuck her with a pin. Oscar’s scowl got a little bit confused and his face went pale. “I’m not interested in you.”
Zach shot me a look of pure amusement. He was holding back laughter. I didn’t break something over his head.
I closed my eyes and took a deep, steadying breath before I beamed at our guest. “Thanks, Oscar. I appreciate your honesty.” What the crap was I doing? No idea, but the runaway train was still going, headed towards the cliff at full speed. For Viney. “The thing is, I noticed that people know how to do more than fighting stuff at this school. Like ballet and horse riding and making out. But they don’t have classes for making out. So, how do people learn this stuff? Wouldn’t it be great if people who were more experienced could do a demonstration for people like me and Zach,” I smacked him for his shaking shoulders. “Who are pretty ignorant about the whole process?”
Viney stared at me, kind of blank and Oscar leaned over his knees to frown at me. “You want to have a kissing demo?”
“Right. So much. Because I just have these things that I don’t know. So many things, right, Zach?” I smacked him again and he coughed and nodded.
“Right. You and Viney should makeout while stopping to take breaks and explain exactly what you’re doing so Penny and I can be illuminated. Yeah, it’s not weird at all, Oscar.”
He frowned at Zach before glancing at Viney where she sat very still looking kind of mortified. Not kind of. “Oh. With Viney?” He said that to her and she shifted uncomfortably before she met his eyes and scowled darkly.
“It’s purely for educational purposes. Don’t get the idea that I want to make out with you.”
He nodded slowly. “I’m a big believer in education and research and pooling resources. I can see how this would be a rational approach to a unfortunate lapse in our school’s courses.”
I blinked at him and then looked at Zach. He grinned at me then said, loudly. “Great. We can do that before the movie. Not weird at all.”
So weird. Bonbons and ho-ho’s I was never going to watch someone make out again. I’d thought the first part was strange, but the whole Viney and Oscar going at it then breaking to explain technique or something was just mortifying. I spent the demonstration with my eyes closed except when Zack nudged me so I could open them and pretend I was paying attention when Oscar went into lecture mode.
Finally, when Viney’s lips were pink and Oscar’s pupils were kind of dilated, Zach stood up.
“That was so illuminating. Let’s watch horror. A lot of horror.”
I nodded rapidly. “Yes. So much horror. Now.”
He started the film and sat back down on the floor by me.
Viney was sitting next to Oscar and he was staring at the screen with unfocused eyes..
“You guys can sit on the couch,” Viney said with a hard smile that said, ‘sit on the couch with me and Oscar and die’.
I grabbed Zach when he started to get up. “Nope. We’re so comfortable right here, right Zach? Yeah, we are so comfortable, so you guys can just stay there.”
After that, I turned around and did not look back no matter what I heard or how many times Viney kicked the back of my head. Soon enough, I got sucked into the horror movie and held Zach’s arm to my chest. It wasn’t quite right, wasn’t quite Drake, but when I put my hands around his wrist, it felt better, safe.
Zach was stiff at first, but after twenty minutes of me clinging to him and flinching away from knives and blood spatters, he relaxed, decompressing and letting me hold onto him for the rest of the show.
By the time it ended, Zach was asleep, his head resting on my shoulder. Viney got up and
turned on the light while Oscar stood and nodded at her.
“I’ll see you.”
She nodded back and then caught his hand for a second. “Do you want to do something some time?”
He swallowed. “Okay.”
She scowled at him, and he scowled back. They were so cute, I almost cried.
Chapter 27
Witch
The next day in Linguistics, Zach kind of cornered me and accused me of running over his pet parrot with my golf cart, in Chinese, and I could understand him and we had a wonderful argument which ended up with him impounding my golf cart and me calling his parrot a noisy plague and other creative insults. I was giggling by the end of class. Math was fine, lunch was a bit less combative than usual because Viney fell in line beside me and her glare seemed to give her at least a two-foot radius.
“After classes, we’re going to study hall, okay? I’ll chat with Oscar while you get some studying done.”
I shook my head and gave her a furtive glance that she noticed. She blushed slightly.
“I knew you liked him. I can’t though. I’m helping some Chemistry girl with something.”
“Chemistry?”
I shook my head. “That would make too much sense. No, bubble bath.”
She stared at me. “Are you sure you don’t need to go to the study hall?”
She needed me to go see Oscar with her. “You know what, I think I should do the bubble bath thing after study hall. It makes more sense.”
She smiled slightly and I could have sworn a trace of blush was on her cheeks. “Shut up. Are you going to eat that?”
After a pleasant lunch, Zach was in my horse riding class, and he seemed kind of relaxed, happier than usual. It made me happy to see him happy. I should not want him to be happy, but what could I do? He was my friend. I trusted him. Even if he was an evil jerk.
After that was Business and I was kind of really, really excited to go in. I held up my phone and took a picture of Drake as soon as I saw him and then a few more while he turned around and looked at me. When he saw what I was doing, he pulled out his phone and took a few pictures back. We sat there doing that until the teacher came in and then Drake grinned at me, put away his phone, pulled out his computer and did his usual stuff.
Dread Delight: Rosewood Academy for Witches and Mages (Darkly Sweet Book 2) Page 25