by Emma Hart
I shrugged, shooting her a half-grin. “Careful. It’s hot.”
“Thanks.” She put down her phone and took the pretzel from me. “Ouch. Crap, you’re right.” She immediately laid it on her lap and licked her fingers. “Aren’t they doing paper plates anymore?”
I shook my head.
“I’ll have to talk to my father.”
“You sound like Draco Malfoy when you say that?”
She’d just ripped a bite of pretzel off when she looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Wrong. If I sounded like Malfoy, I’d have told you that my father would hear about it. I just said I’d talk to him.”
“Perks of being the mayor’s daughter, right?”
“Hardly. He’s never listened to my suggestions.” She shrugs. “Neither does anyone else, to be honest, even when they really should.”
“Like what?”
“Like when I tell my mom that three marriages are more than enough for anyone and she doesn’t need a fourth.” She paused for a moment. “I think she just likes the weddings.”
“She gets to be a princess and be the center of attention. Don’t most women love that?”
The shudder that wracked her body told me that Halley was not most women.
“No, thank you. I can’t think of anything worse than being the center of attention for an entire day just because I fell in love with someone.”
“You’re the center of attention during the fair every year.”
“Wrong. I’m a mild sideline attraction, and it’s all for charity. That’s different. I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing it to help other people. This booth has raised a thousand dollars for the last four years because people pay more than a dollar. Then my dad quietly matches the donation. Two thousand dollars is a lot of money to the charities we help.”
Wow. I had no idea that her dad matched the donation and doubled it.
I glanced over at her. There was a little twinkle in her eye, and it hit me: she really did care. This really was about the charity for her, about making a difference to other people’s lives.
Shit.
She really was perfect, wasn’t she?
“Is there anything wrong with you at all?” The words escaped me before I could stop them.
Halley choked. She hit her fist against her chest, and her eyes watered. “What?” Her voice was scratchy and rough, and she looked at me with confusion clouding her eyes. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head and got up for my water on the other side of the tent.
“No, tell me. What do you mean, is there anything wrong with me at all?”
I sighed. There was no getting out of this with her. “Fine.” I held my hands out either side of my body. “You’re beautiful, you’re thoughtful, you’re perhaps the most caring person I’ve ever met, and you feed raccoons, for the love of God. What is wrong with you?”
She blinked at me for a few seconds—quick, confused blinks, almost as if she couldn’t quite believe I’d just said that.
She was in good company.
I couldn’t fucking believe it either.
Then, she laughed. A huge laugh that almost made her drop her pretzel. “What are you saying?” she asked when she’d gotten herself back under control. “Are you saying I’m perfect or something?”
“If the shoe fits…”
She shook her head emphatically, her blonde curls swinging side to side. “I’m not perfect.”
“From my point of view, there isn’t much wrong with you.”
“There’s a lot wrong with me. I’m just really good at hiding it.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t feed the raccoons out of the goodness of my heart. I feed them so they don’t thumb through my trash like the little grub monsters they are.”
My lips twitched. “You still feed them.”
“Okay, fine. I can’t cook.”
“You can’t cook?” I stared at her. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.
She shook her head again. “At all. My mom can’t really cook, and my dad never had time to teach me. My stepmom tries, but I’m just really bad at it. Last week, I burned spaghetti.”
“How do you burn spaghetti?”
“Because you don’t put enough water in and forget to stir it, okay?” she grumbled. “It happens. Sometimes you fall asleep. Sometimes you get caught in the middle of a How I Met Your Mother Netflix binge.”
“The last one sounds the most likely.”
“I don’t have to respond to that.”
“Ah, but you did, and your response tells me everything I need to know.” I grinned. “So, what’s your kiss tally so far?”
Halley leaned back, adjusted her glasses, and looked at the chalkboard we both had to mark off our kisses. “Fifty-two.”
I pursed my lips. “Damn it.”
“I have more than you?”
“I hate to say it, but yes.”
She gave me a grin of her own and ripped off a piece of pretzel. “Pucker up, flower boy.”
CHAPTER NINE – HALLEY
Kissin’ Ain’t Easy
I closed my eyes as ninety-year-old Gerard Hooper leaned over and pressed his wrinkled lips against mine.
It was gross. Let me tell you that. It was like being kissed by your grandpa, except your grandpa had spent the entire day at the bar and was steaming drunk.
He tasted like beer and stale cigars.
I knew that smell would linger with me for hours.
With any luck, it would, and it would get me out of my bet with Preston.
What was I thinking, agreeing to that? To kissing him? I’d gone and lost my damn mind. It was the only explanation for it. It didn’t matter if I won or not, because the result was the same.
We would kiss.
The only way this would be bearable would be if I kissed his cheek. Unfortunately for me, I only had control over one of these scenarios.
I would either win and kiss his cheek, or he’d win, and he’d… well, who knew what he’d do?
I had no idea why he’d suggested it in the first place. It was a terrible idea. Nothing good could come of it.
God only knew what kissing Preston Wright would do to me.
It’d keep me up at night for weeks. It would consume my waking thoughts. One little kiss would become an unhealthy obsession.
This was not good.
And there were only ten minutes until we closed. Until we’d find out who won.
Until there was the potential of me kissing the one person who was off-limits to me.
It was a disaster.
It was a stupid, stupid bet. One that I would damn sure never repeat again—not that it got me out of it right now.
I kissed my final person of the night, an adorable six-year-old boy who’d just won his first stuffed animal on the hook-a-duck game. It was a wonky-looking donkey, with one eye almost twice as big as the other, and a tail that looked as if it was going to fall off any second. The exasperation was written all over his mom’s face, but it quickly disappeared when he lisped to me that he wanted to help someone with his last two dollars of the money he’d earned doing some chores for his sick grandma.
Because he was just the sweetest thing, I kissed his cheek, let him kiss me back on the cheek, and listened to a story about how he went to the moon with his favorite Superman action figure. Then, when it was all said and done, he high-fived me and skipped off.
His mom mouthed a thank you as she hurried after him, and I couldn’t help but grin like a lunatic as she chased him down in the doorway of the tent.
“Cute.”
I looked back at Preston. There was a playful glint in his eyes. “What?”
“That. Humoring the kid.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I? The line is shut, and I probably made his day.”
“You’re right. I guess you’re just an inherently better person than I am.”
It took everything I had to bite
back a groan. “Not this again.”
He held up his hands and took a step back. “All right, all right. Are you ready? I’m here to collect on my winning bet.”
Rolling my eyes, I added one final mark to my tally chart. It took me around a minute to add up the groups of five plus a couple of stragglers.
Peering up at Preston, just over the rims of my glasses, I said, “What did you get?”
“Ninety-three.”
My heart sank.
Shit.
He’d beat me. At some point in the last couple of hours, he had out kissed me.
By one person.
One. Freaking. Person.
Double shit.
“What did you get?”
I swallowed hard. “Ninety-two.”
He froze. Surprise flashed across his handsome features, swiftly followed by absolute delight. He burst out laughing, grabbing his stomach as it hit him.
“One? I beat you by one?”
“Whatever.” I took my money, put it in a safety deposit box, and looked at him expectantly. “Well? Your money?”
Preston disappeared for a second before he handed me a wad of small bills from his side. I took them and put them with mine in the box before locking it and storing it safely in my purse.
“Let’s get this over with, then.” I hopped off the stage and dipped under the ropes to his side. “What are you staring at me for? I don’t have all evening. I have some rowdy raccoons to feed. If I’m late and they rummage in my trash, I’m calling you to come to clean up.”
His smile was lopsided, playful almost, and he slid across the stage, past the curtain and sat on his stool. “I wouldn’t want to starve your raccoons.”
“They aren’t my raccoons.”
“Whoever they belong to. We made a deal, and now you have to pay up.”
My heart thundered in my chest. Was I really going to do this? Was I really going to kiss Preston? Right here, right now? On the lips?
That was the deal, wasn’t it?
I approached the stage.
No, it wasn’t the deal. Where the kiss could be placed was never specified. Just that we had to add a kiss to the winner’s tally.
I could do this.
I stepped up onto his side of the stage and dug a dollar out of my ass pocket. I brandished it in his direction with a small smile, then stepped over toward him.
His eyes followed me everywhere. He watched me like a hawk. It was unnerving and downright weird because he was looking at me like—
Like he wanted me to kiss him.
That didn’t make any sense. There was no way the hottest bachelor in town and my best friend’s brother wanted me to kiss him.
Was there?
This was too much for me. If it weren’t for the fact that I was a woman of my word where bets were concerned, I’d be running away right now.
Goddamn me, being a woman of my world. Morals were so overrated.
I walked right up to Preston. Bending over, I looked him in the eye, holding his gaze until it became so intense that a shiver danced its way down my spine.
Then I kissed his cheek. I planted a big, firm, red-lipped kiss on his stubbly cheek.
When I pulled away, there was a lipstick mark on his skin and the look of total shock in his eyes.
“The bet didn’t say where we had to kiss,” I whispered.
My lips pulled into a smirk, and I jumped off the stage. I broke into a run and darted out of the tent before he could argue otherwise.
I vaguely heard him shouting my name, but I disappeared into the insanity of the fair, falling in amongst the throngs of excited people who were having the time of their lives.
I’d gotten away with it.
That was one more day where I didn’t have to kiss Preston Wright.
I just had to make it through four more.
***
“You did what?”
The second I’d gotten home, I’d made a round or two of peanut butter sandwiches and refilled the water bowl on my porch. Before I’d had a chance to think, Reagan and Ava had come swinging in through my front door with stuff to make margaritas. They hadn’t taken no for an answer, despite my desire to just climb into bed and forget how Preston’s stubble had felt against my lips.
“I kissed his cheek.” I sipped my margarita. “We made a deal, and nowhere in that deal did it state that I had to kiss him on the lips. Kissing Booth rules dictate that cheek kisses count, so that’s what I did.”
Reagan exploded with laughter, sucking her drink up her nose until she choked. Her eyes watered and she went red until Ava handed her a bottle of water to wash it down with.
“I think that’s genius.” Ava sat back down. “Kissing people complicates things. You’re stuck there for a few more days, and the last thing you need is to sit opposite him and know exactly what it’s like to kiss him.”
“Yeah,” Reagan said scratchily. “It’s totally better for her to be imagining it instead.”
I groaned. “Look, we all know it’s never going to happen.”
“Why isn’t it?”
“Because your brother is tall and hot and funny and rich and I feed peanut butter sandwiches to raccoons.”
“I actually happen to think it’s one of your better qualities.”
Ava nodded solemnly. “She’s right. It shows your kind side. You know, the one that sometimes gets overshadowed by your sass.”
“I do not sass.”
“You sass all the time.”
It was Reagan’s turn to nod.
“Yeah, well, you two are hardly the poster girls for a sarcasm-free life.”
“Eh.” Reagan shrugged one shoulder. “Life would be boring without sarcasm.”
She was not wrong.
“It’s just not in the cards, okay? We’re only getting along because we don’t have a choice. Otherwise, we don’t. We aren’t suddenly going to become friends.”
“Why don’t you get along?” Ava sat forward and paused to slurp the rest of her margarita up through her straw. “I don’t know if I’ve ever actually asked that. Jesus, fifteen years of friendship, and I never cared.”
“There is no reason.” Reagan’s tone was dry, but her lips were quirking up in a way that was so like her brother’s. “They’re civil, but they aren’t friends.”
“But why?”
“Because they have a raging fucking crush on each other and have never bothered to say anything.”
I spat my drink over my lap.
“It makes it super awkward because they ignore it, so it has the effect of them appearing to hate each other when it isn’t true. They want to jump each other’s bones, but since neither of them wants to admit it, they jump down each other’s throats instead.”
“They should try putting tongues down each other’s throats instead.”
“Ooooookay!” I waved my arms in front of me in a ‘quit it’ motion, a bit like a referee finishing a boxing match. “That’s enough of that. There will be no putting tongue’s anywhere, at least until you two are done licking each other’s asses about this.”
Reagan made a face like a thirteen-year-old who’d just been grounded for a week for breaking curfew. Nose scrunched up, lips pursed into an asshole-like pucker, and narrowed eyes.
I grinned, cupping my glass. “See? It’s not nice.”
“Whatever. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Like your lack of a love life?”
“Yours isn’t thrilling if you’re kissing the guy you like on the cheek.”
“We all have shit love lives,” Ava said before we could descend further into bickering. “Reagan, you have no discernible love life whatsoever, Halley is too shy to ever admit to Preston how she really feels, and me and Butler are over for good—”
Reagan’s lips tugged to the side. “And that’s before you even think about the fact you have feelings for Ethan.”
Ava’s expression soured at the mention of her older brother’s best friend. “W
e are not discussing Ethan.”
“Let’s not discuss this at all,” I said, leaning forward to refill my drink. “All we’re going to do is hash over stuff that’ll make us feel like crap, so we’ll drink until we’re giggling at cat videos on the internet, pass out squished in my bed, and be monstrously hungover tomorrow.” I adjusted my glasses. “And none of us need that. God only knows that I don’t need to be hungover while kissing other people.”
“I have a wedding bouquet spread to finalize tomorrow,” Reagan said. “Plus a meeting with the bride in the afternoon. I definitely cannot be hungover.”
Ava looked between us. “I’ll get drunk. It’s my day off.”
I laughed. “By yourself?”
“What do you think I’d be doing if I was at home?”
“Your laundry?” Reagan asked.
“Nope. I’d be getting hammered, eating my weight in pizza, and probably watching a rom-com on Netflix so I can yell at the people getting happily ever afters. It’s like therapy, but it only costs ten bucks a month instead of a hundred an hour.”
Actually, that sounded like fun.
Reagan looked at me. “I’ll order the pizza.”
CHAPTER TEN – HALLEY
The Queen of Bad Decisions
I regretted the final pitcher of margaritas the second I woke up.
My head spun like the teacup ride on crack. I was pretty sure my tongue had swollen to three times its usual size overnight, and my mouth felt like a tornado had swept over the beach and dumped all the sand in my mouth.
Rolling over, I squinted at my nightstand. Two little white pills sat next to a bottle of water, and I silently thanked yesterday’s Halley for putting that there before we made the final pitcher.
The only problem was the fact there was a body in the way.
Thankfully, the body was Reagan.
“Don’t mind me,” I muttered, leaning right over her to grab my glass and the aspirin.
She groaned as I sat up and tossed the pills into my mouth and quickly washed them down. I finished up the glass of water in a few gulps and leaned over again to set it back down.
Well, at least my mouth didn’t feel like the bottom of a flip-flop anymore.