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We had kissed at Tommy Mitchell’s seventeenth birthday party. His parents hadn’t been home, and like the rich kids you see in stereotypical Hollywood movies, he’d thrown a raging party. Unlike American movies, with keg stands and weed, the vices of choice had been X and the good scotch stolen from the liquor cabinet.

I hadn’t done any drugs. But I had gone to hang out with Alex. After the graffiti incident, we’d had lunch every day together and did our homework together. Alex tutored me in programming, and I helped him with maths.

But at the party, I’d been a horny, impatient seventeen-year-old with a whopping crush. And when Alex and I found each other alone in a hallway, I’d strapped on a pair and kissed him.

“Well,” he said slowly, still watching me in the mirror, “I was a teenage boy no longer in control of his hormones, and the girl with the best tits in school had pressed them up against me. I had to run, otherwise I’d have jizzed my pants.”

My arms lowered, the floss unspooling from my fingertips on the way down until it dangled from my teeth.

When I didn’t say anything, Alex tacked on, “Which part has got you tripped up? Jizzing in my pants or the spectacular tits bit?”

“Did you jizz your pants?”

“Nah. I made it to my car and came in the driver’s seat. Dad still thinks the stain on the leather was mayonnaise.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Ew.”

He shrugged. “Teenage boy, great tits—and even better, they were attached to you.”

My brain locked up for a moment, reprocessing the evening. The feel of Alex’s lips on mine, being pushed away, my face burning. I came back to myself and finished flossing in a hurry. Alex still watched me, his arms folded across his chest.

I spit in the sink. “Then why did you tell everyone I was a terrible kisser?”

He rubbed his chin. “Now, about that part. Either we have different recollections, or something got bungled. Because I seem to recall you saidIwas a terrible kisser.”

“Who told you that?”

“Bernice. Who told you I said you were a terrible kisser?”

“Bernice.” I narrowed my eyes. Bernice, one of my former friends who Alex dated for all of Year Twelve.

“Well, didn’t that work out nicely for her then?” I tossed the floss in the bin under the sink and banged around for a bit, putting Alex’s toothpaste on my brush and aggressively attacking the plaque on my teeth.

Over my furious brushing, Alex continued. “Here’s the thing. We probablywererubbish.”

“Speak for yourself,” I grumbled around the toothbrush.

“We were seventeen, Nikki.”

I kept my eyes straight ahead. Talking about kissing Alex with Alex was irritating me.

“I think I’ve gotten a lot better at it,” he went on. “I wouldn’t have known what to do with you back then. You were confident, and I was fumbling around. I would have wanted it to be good. I would have wanted to please you.”

My brushing slowed, and my eyes found his in the mirror.

“I would have wanted to take my time. I would have wanted a better first kiss than one in the hallway around our high friends. I would have wanted to go slow and learn every possible noise that I could pull out of you. Seventeen-year-old me wouldn’t have been able to do that.”

Alex’s eyes burned through me. My stomach flipped. He waited a beat and then heaved himself off the wall. “Let me know when you’re done in there,” he called over his shoulder.

I watched him leave in the mirror and then caught my own reflection. The toothbrush dangled from my mouth, a bit of foam dripping out from my lip.

I looked rabid.

I felt rabid.

I layin bed listening to the sounds of Alex getting ready to sleep.Seventeen-year-old me wouldn’t have been able to do that.

Holy shit.