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. “We 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.”