Best friends are not supposed to know how you taste.
I have told myself that for six years. Through high school hallways. Through late-night study sessions. Through every time Noah Cole dropped onto my bed like he belonged there and stole fries off my plate like it was a birthright. Through every girlfriend he introduced me to with that easy, stupidly handsome smile, as if my chest didn’t tighten every time he said her name.
I told myself it was fine. That wanting him was a private, harmless sickness. That as long as I never said it out loud, I could keep being Ley—the best friend, the safe one, the girl he called at two in the morning when he couldn’t sleep.
Then someone dared us to kiss.
It started as a house party we should have skipped. End of junior year. Cheap beer. Too-loud musi
