Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend. Louise Rozett

to do with you all summer. Forget him. You shouldn’t even be here.

      Why are you so hopeless all the time? It’s lame.

      As if two warring voices in my head weren’t enough, Caron chimes in, telling me to ignore the noise and just be present.

      I hate to admit it, but it’s good advice.

      My feet carry me forward until I’m standing right in front of Jamie. He stares at me with those perfect gold-flecked hazel eyes that don’t blink. Somewhere inside me I find the confidence to be quiet, to not fill the silence. He called me, he asked me to come out—he can talk first.

      I stare right back, my arms folded across my chest. The silence goes on and on. He starts to look a little uncomfortable. It’s kind of gratifying.

      “Thanks—for helping Conrad tonight,” he finally starts. I still don’t say anything. I think it’s the first time I’ve had any kind of upper hand with Jamie. Ever. “Rose, look, I’m sorry,” he says with so much remorse that I have to bite my tongue to keep from telling him everything’s fine and he shouldn’t worry about it.

      Instead, I say, “Why didn’t you call?”

      “You got my note?”

      “The one that said you’re not right for me? That you’re different? That one?” I sound hostile. Jamie looks at the ground for a second and then up at the dark sky.

      “Yeah,” he says, shutting down. I don’t want him to do that—when Jamie shuts down, he disappears, even if he’s standing right in front of you, and there’s no getting him back, no matter what. I’ve waited too long for this opportunity. I force myself to drop the hostility.

      “You know Angelo gave it to me,” I say as calmly and normally as I can manage.

      “That’s why I didn’t call.”

      I shake my head and step closer to make my point as clear as possible. “If you don’t like me, Jamie, just say it. You don’t have to get all cryptic and write notes about how it’s not me, it’s you.” The hostility is back. The voice that’s coming out of my mouth is angrier and more hurt than I want it to be. But I can’t shut it up.

      “Who said I didn’t like you?”

      “You did. You sent me a note that didn’t explain anything, and then you ignored me all summer. And tonight, you didn’t even say hi. You pulled me out of the pool, but you looked mad. And on top of that, you still didn’t talk to me. That means you don’t like me. Actually, what it really means is that you don’t respect me. And if you don’t respect me, then I don’t have any time for you.”

      The warring voices in my head are shocked into silence. I am finally telling Jamie what I’ve been thinking these past few months, and it feels so good to see that he wasn’t expecting any of this from sweet little Rose, who is always so nice to him. Yeah, well, check it, Jamie Forta. Sweet little Rose has been replaced by new Rose, and she isn’t going to let you jerk her around.

      Turns out Jamie’s not the only 2.0 in town.

      My plan is to make a dramatic exit, to just leave without saying another word, but as I turn to go, Jamie catches my arm and pulls me back around to face him. He steps toward me, leaving about an inch of space between us. In a strange and exciting turn of events, even this doesn’t intimidate me.

      I like this 2.0 stuff.

      “I was mad about Hallis—what he was doing to Conrad—and you getting pushed into the pool,” he says. I can see that he’s telling the truth, but only partly. There’s something else going on behind his eyes, but I suddenly find that I have too much pride to ask him what it is. I’m not going to beg him to tell me his secrets. If he wants to be all taciturn and mysterious, that’s on him.

      “Oh, you were mad on my behalf? So, what are you? My bodyguard? My boyfriend who I’m not allowed to tell anybody about?” I demand. “Just make up your mind, Jamie, and stop messing with me.”

      Pain flashes across his face as if I’ve slapped him, and then suddenly his lips are on mine, hard and fast, knocking the air right out of my lungs. His kiss ricochets throughout my entire body in a nanosecond. He grabs my arms and turns me, practically lifting me off the ground as he backs me up against his car, pinning me to the driver’s-side door with his body as his tongue flashes across my lips and into my mouth. It’s like he’s been waiting for this to happen again as long as I have.

      But that can’t be true.

      I’m just a sometimes delusional girl who has a crush on a guy who…is currently kissing me as if his life depends on it.

      His arms wrap around me, and they feel different now than they did the last time we kissed—it’s not just that he’s stronger, it’s that he’s solid and immovable, like a brick wall. And it feels to me like he is 100% committed to kissing me—he’s not holding back. One hand is in my hair, the other sliding down my lower back. I literally feel my limbs going weak like some stupid fairy-tale princess. Once upon a time, I would have loved having weak, swoony limbs, but right here and now, in this moment, it pisses 2.0 off.

      Jamie doesn’t get to do this to me again. He doesn’t get to just show up and take over my body for the time it takes to kiss me and then disappear. I think about what Conrad said—how Jamie shows up whenever he feels like it and kisses a girl so he can keep stringing her along.

      Is that what he’s doing right now?

      I’m just about to make him stop when the hand on my back finds the bottom of my shirt and then slides under it and up, touching bare skin that he’s never touched before. My head falls back against his car as my whole body starts to tingle. We both freeze for half a second when we realize at exactly the same moment that I’m not wearing a bra. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing for a guy to discover—what does it say about a girl if she’s not wearing a bra when she’s making out with a boy against his car in the middle of the night? Anything? Nothing?

      Slowly—with my body practically vibrating, begging him to touch every place he’s not supposed to touch—he slides his hand back down and around to my waist and leans forward, burying his face in my neck. He still has that beautiful clean smell but there’s something new under it—something that is just him, I guess. When he takes a step back and the weight of him leaves me, I lift my head and open my eyes. I can’t catch my breath, but I see that he’s a little out of breath, too—and when my eyes land on the front of his jeans, I can see why.

      My face heats with embarrassment. I can’t believe it. After all this time of thinking that there was nothing between us, that I imagined the whole thing, it turns out I was wrong.

      Jamie is as turned on by kissing me as I am by kissing him.

      I feel a rush of…something. Power? But the feeling drowns in confusion and fear. What do I do now? Am I supposed to do something about his…condition? If I don’t, am I a tease? Or am I only obligated to do something about it if I’m his actual girlfriend? And if so, what, exactly, would that something be?

      Wait—there is no obligation when it comes to this stuff, right? You’re just supposed to do what you’re comfortable with and nothing else?

      That’s what Ms. Maso drilled into our heads last year. It all made so much sense in health class. Now it doesn’t seem so clear.

      I realize that I’ve been staring at the front of Jamie’s jeans for way too long to pretend that my gaze just fell there by accident.

      I force my eyes up to his face, and I’m expecting him to be embarrassed or apologetic but he just gazes back at me with that same steady look, as if what’s happening is totally normal. Which, I guess, it is. Although I can’t imagine any of this stuff will ever feel normal to me. If anything, it feels like one big freak show.

      He runs a hand through his hair and shakes his head as if, once again, he did something