Chapter 5: One Kiss Too Many

The car ride home should’ve been easy. Clair was in a good mood, half turned toward me in the passenger seat with one leg tucked under herself, talking about who had worn what, who had embarrassed themselves and who was definitely hooking up with who by the look of it. She was bright and animated in that effortless way she had when a night had gone well for her. The windows were cracked just enough to let cold air in, and the streetlights kept sliding across her face in gold and shadow as I drove.

I answered when I had to. Laughed in the right places. Kept both hands on the wheel because if I let go, I had the stupid, impossible feeling I might reach for something that wasn’t there.

“You’re quiet,” she said eventually.

“I’m tired.”

“It’s not even midnight.”

“I had to listen to Tara explain why dancing on tables should count as self expression. That takes years off a person’s life.”

Clair laughed. “Fair.”

I glanced at her for a second, then back at the road.

She looked beautiful. That wasn’t new. It was one of the easiest truths in my life. Clair was beautiful and sharp and impossible to ignore. Being with her had always felt like some private kind of luck. Even when she was demanding, even when she was unfair, even when she made me feel like I was forever half a step behind whatever pace she’d set for us, I still liked the way she chose me.

So why, sitting there beside her with her hand drifting over to rest on my arm, did I still feel like I’d left the party carrying some invisible thing I didn’t know how to put down?

“You did good, by the way,” she said.

I blinked. “At what?”

She smiled. “The game. You looked like you wanted to die for a second.”

“I basically did.”

“Oh, please. It was one kiss.”

There it was. She said it lightly, amused, like it couldn’t possibly matter, like the whole thing had already flattened itself into a harmless story.

My grip tightened on the steering wheel. “Right.”

Her nails traced idly against my sleeve. “You’re not actually weird about it, are you?”

The question should’ve been easy to answer. No, of course not. Why would I be weird about it? It was a game. It was a stupid moment in a crowded room. A joke everybody would forget by Monday.

Except I knew. I knew with the kind of awful certainty I couldn’t explain, that I wasn’t going to forget it by Monday. I wasn’t going to forget it at all.

“Why would I be weird about it?” I said, aiming for casual and not quite trusting I’d hit it.

Clair studied me for half a second, then leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Good.”

That should’ve settled it. Instead, the second her lips touched my skin, my mind betrayed me.

Not because I didn’t like it. I did. I always liked her touching me. I liked her attention. I liked the certainty of her, the polished confidence she carried around like a crown. But the feeling that rose in me wasn’t the same one that had hit me in Emily's living room.

That one had been instant. Sharp. Like striking a match in the dark and being surprised by how bright the flare was. This was warm, familiar, and safe. And the difference between those things sat in my chest like a splinter all the way to her house.

When I pulled up outside, she unbuckled slowly, clearly not in a hurry to get out. She angled toward me, smiling that private little smile she used when it was just us.

“Come here.”

I leaned in automatically. She kissed me soft at first, then deeper, one hand sliding up to the side of my neck. I knew this. I knew the tilt of her mouth, the pressure she liked, the exact sound she made when she was pleased with me. My hand came up to her waist. I kissed her back because she was my girlfriend, and I wanted to want this in the simple, straightforward way I always had.

But somewhere in the middle of it, a horrible thought cut through me clean and cold. It doesn’t feel the same. I pulled back a second too soon.

Clair frowned slightly. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You keep saying that tonight.”

“I’m just tired.”

She searched my face for a second longer, then sighed, not angry exactly, but faintly annoyed at being inconvenienced by my mood.

“Fine,” she said. “Get home safe.”

“I always do.”

“You know what I mean.”

I smiled because that was what she wanted, watched until she got out and walked up to her front door, then waited until she was inside before driving away.

The second I was alone, the silence in the car got loud. I drove home with the radio off, and my thoughts were getting steadily worse. Every traffic light felt too long. Every empty stretch of road gave my brain too much room.

It was one kiss. That was the line I kept trying to feed myself, as though repetition might make it settle into something useful.

One kiss. At a party. In a game. In front of everyone. That should’ve made it meaningless, if anything. Public. Performative. The opposite of intimate. Other guys and girls kissed each other. I bet they didn't think about it. So why did it feel more intimate than half the private moments I’d had with Clair?

I parked outside my house and sat there with the engine off, forehead resting against the steering wheel for a second like I could somehow knock sense back into myself.

This was stupid. This was beyond stupid. I was tired, that was all. Overthinking. Making too much of a moment because it surprised me. Because it had embarrassed me. Because Tyler was the kind of person who made everything feel bigger and louder and more dramatic than it needed to be.

That had to be it. It had to be. Inside, the house was dark except for the lamp my mum always left on in the front room. I moved quietly out of habit, dropped my keys into the bowl by the door, shrugged off my jacket, and headed upstairs.

In my room, I changed, washed my face, and stood in front of the mirror for longer than necessary, staring at myself like I expected some visible evidence of whatever had shifted.

Nothing had changed. Same messy hair. Same tired eyes. Same face. Only now, I looked like someone I wasn’t entirely sure about.

I turned away sharply and got into bed. Sleep should have come easily after the noise of the party and the long week behind me. Instead, I lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling while the night stretched around me.

I thought about the bottle spinning. About the crowd shouting. About Clair telling me it was just a game. About Tyler saying I could opt out. That was the part that kept catching. Not even the kiss itself, not at first.

He’d just looked at me with those impossible blue eyes and said I didn’t have to. And then, when I hadn’t moved away. I shut my eyes hard. Bad idea.

The memory came back sharper in the dark. The warmth of his mouth. The quick certainty of it. The strange, bright jolt that had gone through me before I’d even had time to decide what I felt about it.

My eyes opened again instantly.

“No,” I muttered to the ceiling, as if that settled anything.

I rolled onto my side. Then my back. Then my other side.

At some point, I got so irritated with myself that I threw the blanket off, sat up, and reached for my phone just to give my brain something else to do. There were messages in the group chat from Tara, all some variation of absolute chaos.

Tara: Leonard almost combusted during spin the bottle, and nobody appreciated the historical significance.

Tara: Clifford, you looked like your soul left your body.

Tara: Are you both dead?

Leonard had replied with a single message.

Leonard: I regret all of you.

Despite everything, I laughed. Then another message came in, private this time.

From Clair. Had fun tonight. You owe me for surviving Tara’s music taste. x

I stared at the screen, then typed back: You looked beautiful. Thanks for coming.

Her typing bubble appeared, vanished, appeared again: Obviously, I did. Goodnight, baby x

That made me smile in spite of myself. Familiar. Easy. The shape of us still there, solid and recognisable.

I put the phone down and tried again to sleep. This time, just as I was drifting, another thought slid in under my guard.

When I’d kissed Clair in the car, I had wanted the spark from the party to come back. I had been looking for it. That realisation sat so heavily in me I almost felt physically sick.

The next morning, I woke late and disoriented, sunlight already cutting through the gap in my curtains. For one blessed second, I was just tired.

Then memory came back. I groaned and rolled onto my face.

Downstairs, my dad was already in one of his weekend moods, clattering around the kitchen while talking too loudly at the news. I made coffee, ignored two questions about study plans, and escaped back upstairs with toast before he could turn breakfast into a lecture on productivity.

I spent most of the morning trying to force myself into homework. It should have worked. Numbers usually helped. Spreadsheets, practice questions, balance sheets. Those things obeyed rules. They made sense if you paid enough attention.

But every few pages, my concentration slipped. A sentence would blur. A question would sit unanswered while my brain wandered straight back to a living room floor and a kiss I did not want to care about.

By noon, I was irritated enough with myself to text Leonard.

Me: Do you ever wish you could uninstall part of your brain for a day?

He replied almost immediately.

Leonard: Frequently. Usually, after interacting with Tara.

I snorted.

Me: Helpful.

Leonard: If this is about last night, Tara has already written at least three fictional versions, and all of them are legally slanderous.

I stared at that, pulse jumping unpleasantly.

Me: It’s not about last night.

The typing bubble came and went.

Leonard: That sounds convincing.

I didn’t answer. Instead, I put my phone facedown and forced myself through another hour of work before giving up and going for a run, because if I stayed in my room much longer I was going to end up thinking myself into an early grave.

The cold air helped. The steady burn in my legs helped. The rhythm of my feet against pavement helped.

For a while, with my lungs working and my heart occupied with something honest and physical, it was almost possible to believe I could outrun my own thoughts. Almost.

But the second I slowed near the park and bent to catch my breath, his face flashed into my mind again. Close, amused, and attentive.

I swore under my breath and straightened. This was ridiculous. I wasn’t gay. The thought came fierce and immediate, like I could pin everything down with it if I said it hard enough.

I wasn’t. One weird reaction at a party didn’t rewrite my entire life. It didn’t erase every feeling I’d had for Clair. It didn’t turn me into someone else overnight.

People got surprised. Bodies reacted to strange situations. Brains fixated on embarrassing moments. That was normal. That was explainable. That was probably all this was.

By Sunday evening, I had almost convinced myself. Almost.

Then Monday happened. School was school again by the look of it. Lockers slamming, teachers barking late warnings, students flooding hallways with all the grace of a collapsing dam, but underneath the normal noise, there was still that unbearable awareness humming in me. Like I’d tuned into some frequency, I couldn’t switch off.

I found Clair near my locker before first period, exactly where I expected her to be. She smiled the second she saw me and stepped close enough that the hall noise seemed to blur at the edges.

“There you are,” she said. “I’ve barely seen you all weekend.”

“You saw me Friday.”

“That was days ago.”

I laughed softly. “Tragic.”

“For you, maybe.”

She took hold of my tie, straightening it though it didn’t need straightening, and then she kissed me.

I kissed her back. And there it was. Not bad. Not wrong. Just... not that.

No bright jolt. No sudden rush under my skin. No awful, impossible spark. For one horrible second, all I could think was that I was searching for someone else in my girlfriend’s kiss.

I pulled back and made myself smile before she could read anything in my face.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes. “Again with that.”

Before I could answer, movement over her shoulder caught my attention.

Tyler was walking down the corridor with Reece and Kyle, one hand hooked in his pocket, expression half asleep and half amused like the day hadn’t earned his full effort yet.

He looked up. Saw me. Saw Clair still standing too close. His gaze held mine for a moment, unreadable.

Then, he gave the smallest acknowledgment. A tilt of his head, nothing more, and kept walking. My stomach dropped anyway.

Clair turned to see what I was looking at, then faced me again.

“You’re seriously distracted lately,” she said.

I swallowed. “Just school.”

It was a lie. And I was starting to think it was one I wasn’t going to be able to tell for much longer.