I SINK INTO THE kiss for an incinerating moment. The rush is overwhelming, high-altitude dizziness in the middle of this empty locker hall. Ethan’s lips are hurried, frantic almost, his hands frenzied in my hair. My hands aren’t conducting themselves any more respectably. They clutch him desperately, without reason.
Ethan walks me back until I’m pressed to the locker behind me. Our legs tangle, his chest heaving against mine. Distantly, I’m surprised how strong Ethan feels. His arms hold us together, and I don’t object.
It’s like our hatred has ignited, changed state. Water into steam. We hit the point of transition, our atoms vibrating, energy and heat building between us, until suddenly we’re something new. My mouth meets his every movement, and my brain can’t keep up. I abandon arguments and comebacks in exchange for lips and hands, gripping his back while he deepens the kiss. The fight hasn’t stopped, only moved to new fronts.
When his tongue brushes my lips, it’s like it triggers whatever instinct the intensity of the moment overwhelmed. We break apart, eyes wide, and fly to opposite sides of the hallway. My mind unlocks. Realization slams into me, knocking the wind I have left from my lungs. I just kissed Ethan.
Daring to lift my eyes, I find him looking like he’s having an identical reaction. “You . . . kissed me.” He gets the words out past heaved breaths. With an agitated hand, he thumbs his lips, and I notice how uncharacteristically disheveled his hair and shirt collar are.
“No,” I reply hotly. “You kissed me. Why would you do that?”
“I wouldn’t. I despise you.” There’s an unconvinced waver in his voice, a forced quality. He averts his eyes when the words pass his lips, like he’s aware of how wrongly they landed.
“Likewise,” I manage to say, my lips stinging. They’re probably swollen. I lift my hand to check, and Ethan’s eyes follow the movement, mesmerized. His expression is one I don’t entirely know how to read. I’m not sure I want to, either. Like he’s been slapped, he suddenly blinks, then spins sharply on his heel and storms out of the hallway.
I watch the door swing shut behind him, my nerves jumping under my skin. What was that? I’d almost believe it never happened were it not for the lingering burn on my lips and the scattered newspapers at my feet. I bend down to pick them up, straightening edges and refolding pages with shaking hands.
The kiss was an anomaly, I tell myself as I make my final deliveries. An outlier. Data sets allow for outliers, and they don’t have to destroy years of careful research and analyses. I reassure myself of this repeatedly. My lips on his—nothing more than a quirk of nature.
Except I enjoyed this anomaly. The feeling of his hands in my hair, his mouth harried and heated. It fed a flame in me, one I’m finding it impossible to ignore. Just admitting to myself that I didn’t hate it infuriates me. I don’t even like Ethan, not as a person, and certainly not as someone I’d choose to kiss. The fact that we did kiss, that for a breathless moment I wanted nothing but to keep kissing him, is something I can’t reconcile with everything I know about myself.
So I won’t, I decide. The kiss and the feelings they sparked don’t matter. I simply need to return to my life as it was thirty minutes ago. To a world governed by gravity and the laws of nature.
I pull myself down the way I do whenever Ethan threatens to push me out of control. I hold on to what’s real—goals, plans. Logistics. This day’s requirements, and the next day’s. Ethan will be seeking revenge for my newspaper coup, and I have to be prepared. We’ve both upped the ante. Now I have no choice but to play for keeps.