Relying On Ben and Jerry (Waltham #1)

Chapter Twenty-Six: Short-Circuiting

“Did you see the look on that guy’s face?” Quinton asked me through hysterical laughter. “He was looking at you like, No. Just, no.”

I giggled and buried my head in my hands. “I can’t believe you dared me to say that.”

“I never thought that you would,” he told me, and burst out laughing again. “That was priceless!”

“That poor guy,” I said, laughing despite myself. I screwed up my face into something pretty close to serious and reenacted the scene from the subway station, turning to Quinton. “Hey, you kinda look like my Biology teacher,” I mimicked. “Wanna make out?”

Quinton doubled over laughing, which was pretty dangerous considering that he was driving. He shook his head, and he had been laughing so hard that I could see his eyes slightly shining with the tears of hysterical laughter. I could have high-fived myself for being the one to make him laugh, but I was trying to make an effort not to embarrass myself. He grinned, watching the road, but it was meant for me.

“I wish I could have gotten that on camera,” he lamented wistfully, sighing. “We probably would have won that show with the funniest videos.”

“America’s Funniest Videos?” I supplied.

“Yeah,” he said. “That one.”

I shook my head, smiling to myself like an idiot as I have been all day, my cheeks hurting from the amount of stretching they have been doing to make my smile big enough. This had hardly ever happened before, but for some reason being with Quinton made it feel like a natural reaction.

He pulled onto our street, not surprising me when he parked on the street directly in between our houses, favoring neither of them. I jumped out of the car and joined him on the other side, on the sidewalk, and for the first time the entire day we didn’t really know what to say. We stood about a foot and a half apart, leaning in the direction of our respective houses, but it wasn’t awkward as much as it was just . . . not completely comfortable.

It wasn’t as natural as the other moments had been. I guess that was what I was trying to say.

I fidgeted. He took a deep breath.

“So that was fun,” he commented and I smiled and nodded in agreement. “We-we should do this again sometime.”

“Guh?” I replied.

He blinked. “Sorry?”

“I said that sounds good,” I told him, biting my lip nervously. I took a hesitant step back, not wanting to go but knowing that I couldn’t stay. “I guess I’ll see you at school, huh?”

“Not unless you look out your window,” he said to me with a charming smile, and for some reason I kind of melted. I smiled back, trying so hard to bite back the series of random facts my mind was just dying to blurt out and ruin the moment with, hoping to make the moment a little bit more awkward.

Too late.

“Kangaroos can’t hop backwards,” I blurted out, immediately turning tomato red, trying not to look too horrified, but I doubted that it worked. He chuckled a bit, looking amused, and I just seriously couldn’t stop talking. “And koalas sleep for approximately sixteen to eighteen hours a day. About three of their five active hours are spent eating. Did you know that a koala might have given One Direction chlamydia? Or that—”

He silenced me in one of the best possible ways—he closed the space between us and kissed me.

Would it be weird to say that his lips were warm? Or is that kind of like saying that I felt some major sparks? It was like fireworks. I felt my face heat up even though it wasn’t much, just his lips against mine for too short a time, just enough that when he pulled away I had to control myself from either pulling him back in or just passing out cold right here on the sidewalk. I blinked, my lips tingling like crazy as he pulled his face a little bit away from mine, looking at me to gauge my reaction.