When she walked into Jace’s living room, I was a goner. My heart stopped for a moment, then started again, the same as it did for her all those years ago. Yeah, we made a pact. We were young and dumb. I didn’t understand back then that if we made the pact that someone else would end up getting the girl.
It wasn’t until she came to me and told me she wanted me—Hunter West—to be her first kiss that I realized the huge mistake we’d made. But it was too late. She was leaving.
I’m outside in my yard, throwing a stick for my dog, Chewy, to catch. Mom and Dad are inside arguing about something again, and I don’t want to be here. But the boys are home today. No one wanted to do anything because she’s leaving.
Mila, the girl who has been my best friend since I was six, is leaving, and I don’t know if I will see her again. It isn’t fair. I’d cried this morning, and I didn’t even care if the others found out. She had been such a big part of my life up until now. I couldn’t imagine life without her.
Chewy brings the stick back, and I reach for it with my bandaged hand. I feel the pull of the skin where it was cut, but I welcome the pain. It means she’s still real to me. She exists.
She told me we’ll be together again one day. But I want that day to be today and every day after. I don’t want her to leave me. I need her more than she knows.
Glass shatters against a wall inside the house, then the slamming of doors. I sink my knees into the grass. Why do they always have to fight? Why can’t they see me, see I’m upset? Why is it always about them, and I’m always an afterthought?
Chewy gives up when I don’t throw the stick and runs off.
I hear the sound of my dad’s car pulling out of the drive. He always leaves and goes to his office after a fight. Mom stays home, but she’ll leave me for a bottle of whiskey in her room. I wouldn’t see her until tomorrow.
Everyone leaves me.
“Hunter?”
I glance up, my eyes blurry from the tears. I wipe my face with the back of my hands and see an angel running toward me.
“Hunter? What are you doing?”
I scramble up, confused. Am I dreaming? She’s supposed to be leaving today. Mila isn’t really here. I’m dreaming and wishing she was, and now that’s all I can see.
“Are you okay? You look like you saw a ghost.” Mila chuckles, and I look around my yard. This is my yard…this is the girl I’m in love with, standing in front of me. She’s really here.
“What are you doing here? Don’t you have to leave today?”
She shrugs and giggles. Whenever she giggles, it gives me butterflies. The sound of her happiness always does that to me. She hasn’t laughed for a few days, so the sound is like music to my ears. My own smile appears for the first time in days too.
“Yeah, I have to leave at two. But I couldn’t leave without asking you something.”
Her blonde hair is up in a high ponytail, and she reaches for it, pulling it in front of her. It’s one of her signs, I know she’s nervous right now. Mila doesn’t do that very often; she’s always so strong. I’d only seen her do it a handful of times, and one of those times was a few weeks ago.
We had gone to the lake; it was just a regular day. Not that any day could be considered regular when Mila was wearing a bikini. I’d had many, um, dreams about that bikini. It was embarrassing. Okay, it was all I could think about. My body responded to hers in a way I hadn’t known it would, and last week, I’d almost drowned while trying to hide what was happening in my swim trunks.
She was sitting in the grass watching Jace and Roman swim. I walked up to her and sat beside her. “Why aren’t you out there, swinging off the rope?”
I was chicken on that rope, something she teased me about. But I didn’t hate the taunts, she wasn’t being mean. It always made her giggle that I wouldn’t do it.
“I don’t feel good.” Her brows were pinched, and she put her hand on her tummy.
“Oh no, are you going to be sick?”
She shook her head, then her eyes widened. She looked at her bike, then back to me. She went to stand but then sat back down just as fast.
“Do you think I could borrow your basketball shorts to ride home?” she asked, looking down at my black baggy shorts.
I wasn’t going to swim today. I’d realized my basketball shorts were loose enough that if something were to happen, and I got another boner, she wouldn’t notice it.
“What? No.”
I had on my black boxers underneath, and those wouldn’t hide anything from her. They were tight. Why would she want my shorts? She wore her bikini on her bike all the time. She didn’t even bring a towel, as she always said, “If we ride fast, it’s like a dryer.”
“Um…” She pulled her hair forward and started running her fingers through it. She didn’t look at me, instead watching as Roman dunked Jace under the water. I sat there quietly for a few moments not knowing what to do. “I think…no, I know. I just got my period.”
Her big blue eyes were watering like she was about to burst into tears.
“That thing we learned about in sex ed?”
I was panicking now. I didn’t want to freak her out, but was she going to be okay? I didn’t listen well to the girl part; I was still freaked out about the boy part. Like how everyone else in class had known that’s how babies were made, and I hadn’t. My parents never told me that stuff. Even Mila and the boys knew, and I sat there and tried to pretend I did. It finally made sense to me why I was washing my sheets almost every morning.
But the period…that was the blood part. She was bleeding? I looked to the water, to the tree, back to Mila. I didn’t know what to do. Should I call her dad?
“Yes, and I don’t want anyone to see when I ride home.” She sniffled.
“Hey, what are you doing, Mila? Come in, we can race,” Jace called out, waving his arm, and I saw her stiffen. This was bad.
“Should I get my mom?” I could ride really fast home and get her. I was sure she hadn’t been drinking today, so she could come and get Mila. Take her to the hospital? Home?
But Mila shook her head. “No, if you give me your shorts, I can go home. I promise I will wash them, Hunter. I just…I didn’t.” She buried her head in her arms, and I felt a pang in my chest. She was embarrassed, and I didn’t want her to be. I knew all the sex stuff was kinda icky and weird, but I didn’t want her to be sad.
“You can have my shorts.” I moved to pull them off and kicked at them when they got stuck to my shoes. I handed them to her, and she whispered, “Thanks.”
Jace called out again, only he was closer now, and I heard her suck in a gasp. “Hey, we will be there in a minute.” I moved forward to block Mila from the boys. When she got my shorts on, she stood. I turned just as she pulled the drawstring tight.
“Thanks, Hunter.”
Mila left and didn’t come back to swim for three whole days. The boys complained about how she was slacking off this summer. But when I told my mom what had happened, she told me that I did the right thing. Mila just needed a few days because periods could make you feel sick and crabby.
But now, when she’s supposed to be getting on a plane, she’s in my yard…nervous. Is it because she got her period again and needs my shorts?
I decide not to wait for her to tell me. I tug my shorts down and hold them out to her. She looks from me to the shorts and then back to me before bursting into giggles.
“No, I don’t need your shorts today, Hunter.”
Now I feel silly and quickly pull them back on. I want to hug her and tell her she can stay with me. I will hide her in my house so her mom can’t find her, and I will feed her pizza and strawberries. Her favorites.
“Why are you here?”
She looks down at her feet then glances at me under her lashes. A small smile is there as she licks her pink lips. “I want you to be my first kiss, Hunter.”
I take a step back, stunned. Did she really ask me that? She wants me to be her first kiss? Not Jace. Not Roman. Me. Unable to form words, I point to my chest, and she nods.
I open my mouth to say yes, but all I can do is stutter. I nod and she smiles.
She moves in close, her hands going to my shoulders, and I place mine on her hips. For a brief moment, I think about the pact I have with the boys. But that leaves my mind just as fast as it entered. She wasn’t coming back. They wouldn’t know, and I wanted to be her first kiss. I wanted her to be mine.
The butterflies in my belly start dancing, and I draw closer, my lips puckered. I close my eyes as her warm lips brush against mine.
It’s like fireworks and cherry snow cones and jumping into the lake on a hot summer day. Kissing Mila is all of my favorite things wrapped up into one perfect moment. I love her and want to marry her and, even though it’s kinda icky, have babies with her. She’s the girl for me.
“The fuck?” Roman yells, jolting me out of my memories and back to the party. His fist is balled in Emerson’s tee, who holds his hands out in surrender.
“Fuck, I was just asking. Because of the pact you were talking about, it sounds like Mila’s fair game, and I can ask her out.”
“No,” all three of us yell at the same time.
Emerson’s eyes widen right before Roman throws him back against the couch. A girl screams as he lands beside her. I look over and notice it’s the girl who was all over me earlier. She peers up at me with those fake lashes, and I shake my head. I don’t want her anymore. Not after seeing Mila.
Mila was going to be the end of me. I still want her, after all this time. But now I’m also pissed. I need to know who was first. It makes sense that she would have kissed Jace last when she rode her bike home. But my house is the same distance away from her place as Roman’s but in opposite directions. She would’ve had to ride past her area of town before going to the other. She came to me around lunch time. Would that have even been enough time to get to Roman’s, then get home and kiss Jace, then leave?
“I was first,” Jace growls at us as Britney comes up beside him, placing her hand on his arm. He spins on her, and her eyes widen.
“What does it matter, baby? I will be your last.”
And that was the wrong thing to say, obviously. Jace loses it. He shrugs her off and screams at everyone to leave. The party is over. When she tries to grab him again, he yells, “Leave, now.”
Nothing shuts a party down faster than finding out the girl you’ve loved your whole life lied to you about your first kiss.
The music stops, and the sounds of cars and people leaving echo around us. The three of us don’t speak until things are quiet outside.
Jace turns to me, then faces Roman. His jaw ticks as he takes a deep breath. “This is why we have the pact. Did you see what’s happened already? She played us all. She left for four years without a word, and in just a few minutes with her back in our lives, she had us all at each other’s throats.”
Roman grumbles in agreement, and as much as I want to tell them both to fuck the pact, I know it’s the truth. It was just as Jace had said when we were ten. She would pick one, breaking us apart. Look at tonight, all that over a kiss. One little kiss, and we were fighting. Imagine how it would be if she did pick one of us.
These guys have been my best friends for so long. They’re my brothers, and I would do anything for them. Even tamp down and hide the feelings I still have for Mila. I won’t let her come between us. I need them as much as they need me.
All three of us place our right hands over each other’s and call out loudly like we had many times as kids.
“The pact still stands.”
