She gave me a sarcastic smile. “We’re obviously not there.” We shared a small chuckle at that. “But, I mean, kind of. If she wanted me to see that shit, am I entitled for wanting to see…?”
“See what?” I asked her.
“Not see. But, y’know,” she replied, shrugging.
“I’m not sure I do.”
“Well, that’s not my problem. I gave you your challenge.”
I stared at her for a bit, chuckling in discomfort, before looking down again. “Gahh, I’m not good at this,” I mumbled to myself.
“That’s okay,” she soothed. “I’m not looking for how good you are. I’m just asking…” She gestured vaguely.
I looked at her for a bit. She wasn’t saying anything more. Was she asking me to…? No, I couldn’t just assume that.
…Huh. Okay, I was overthinking. That’s what she was talking about. Realizing that made me kind of terrified in a weird way, because I knew what I had to do, and what she was asking, but every second that I let pass was making the moment weirder. I steeled myself, trying to push those feelings of anxiety and hesitancy back down into my stomach, and walked calmly towards Morgan. I walked closer and closer, invading her personal bubble, not allowing myself to think enough to back out of this. I practically held my breath as my face got closer and closer to hers. I felt so weirdly nervous, afraid I was going to screw it up or be a novice compared to her and not know how to do it or whatever, but luckily, my brain was too focused on those thoughts to stop me from closing the gap between us. My face came up to hers, and before I knew it, we kissed.
It felt so… new. Not bad, too nervous to be good. Just a simple closed-mouth kiss, one small peck on the lips. Feelings were surging through me. I backed away from her and cleared my throat, feeling my voice quivering like a loser.
“S-something like th-that?” I managed to ask.
Morgan could help but giggle at me. “You look like you’re going to pass out.”
I nodded. “Y-yeah, I feel like it too,” I admitted.
“So how was it? Did I do okay? I wasn’t too hard on you, was I?” Morgan asked, obviously joking.
“Hey, you have experience, I don’t,” I defended myself. “It’s easier to just do it once you’ve done it before.”
Morgan folded her arms and gave me a ‘wait for it’ look. A second or so later, my own point dawned on me.
“Oh. Huh.”
“Mhm,” she giggled again.
“Can we uh… do it again? I want to try again,” I replied quickly.
“I dunno, Quinn. I guess I’ll just stand here and see how you decide to answer that,” she replied in a playful voice.
My first kiss turned into my second, then my third, then my fourth over the next couple of minutes. Once the third or so was out of the way, I could confirm — kissing was fucking awesome. It was definitely a good thing. They were still closed-mouth kisses, but I got more comfortable and bold with each one. After about ten or so, both of us came up for air.
“Uh… got any tips?” I asked jokingly, no doubt blushing.
“Yeah. Believe in yourself a little bit more,” she replied. “And kiss me whenever you want to.”
“I kinda really want to right now,” I admitted.
“Then come here,” Morgan laughed, and we resumed kissing, daring to not leave it at little pecks. We didn’t exactly make out or anything — or did we? Was ‘making out’ just kissing that wasn’t closed-mouth? I’d have to ask Kevin later. At any rate, we kissed for what seemed like forever, and for what probably was longer than we meant to. Before long, there was the occasional student passing by us, not crowding around us or anything, but definitely noticing us and what we were doing.
“Oops,” Morgan commented, looking around. “PDA.”
“Is it a bad thing?” I asked, going in for another kiss.
She readily accepted it, but backed off from me afterwards. “I think a lot of students see it as kind of tasteless. Even if it isn’t, like, making out or anything.”
Huh. So okay, that wasn’t making out.
“But I think a few students saw us. This’ll be really awkward for the rumor mill.”
“Wait, what do you mean?” I asked, worried that there was something else about high school gossip everyone else knew about but I missed.
“Oh, I’m just saying, imagine the scandal, if two students, one of them a kind of popular girl, kissing in the hallway, and neither of them have even asked the other to be their boyfriend or girlfriend yet…” Hints were rolling off of her voice in waves.
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Is that your-”
“You don’t get to ask,” Morgan butted in.
I huffed annoyedly. “Hey, Morgan, would you want to be my… or… would you like me to be your boyfriend?”
Morgan chuckled with her best ‘Oh, Quinn’ face. “Yes to both,” she laughed, wrapping her arms around me. We exchanged one more kiss before deciding that the walls of Hazelwood had seen enough.
***
And boy, could Hazelwood get the word out. By lunchtime, it was clear that Morgan and Quinn were the story of the day. Of course, the response to that was usually, “Quinn who?” but apparently a lot of the seniors knew me as ‘the school’s study buddy’ because of that thing I did that one time (thanks Kevin) so people could figure out who Quinn Shen was. It was weird; I was known before now, but at this point my name was known. Even by the time Morgan and I were holding hands between the first two classes, people were figuring out, ‘hey, that’s Quinn Shen’ before even needing to ask Morgan.
And it was all because I was being seen with Morgan. I knew the group was popular, but I really underestimated just how popular she was. Either that, or the entire populace of Hazelwood really needed to get a social life. Or a combination of the two.
The most nervewracking part of it all was when Morgan asked me to sit with her group at lunch. At first I was hesitant — the events of Taylor’s basement weren’t even twenty-four hours old — but a gentle squeeze of my hand and a gentle reassurance later, I was begrudgingly walking to her lunch table, my hand in hers.
I felt childish for doing it, but I avoided Taylor’s gaze most of the time I was there. I was just too nervous to look at her. It was just as well that I didn’t concentrate on her, or even anyone except for Morgan. Milo and Crystal barely spoke to me, Lexi kept asking Morgan intrusive questions about us, and Taylor was oddly silent the whole time.
I tried my hardest not to feel insulted at the team’s group effort to ignore me, especially since I was kind of their first conversation topic — or more specifically, what happened yesterday. Taylor did most of the talking, and, I have to admit, did a weirdly good job of never lying and yet leaving so much critical information out that it somehow seemed like they had a fight about something else entirely. It seemed like misunderstandings and even fights might have been commonplace of the group, since they did a dissection of yesterday’s situation that lasted all of five minutes, then moved on as if it were nothing. Part of me wondered if Milo was going to hold a grudge for never texting him, but either he forgot or was really good at not showing it.
Near the end of lunch, Taylor said something out of the blue and instinctively I looked up from my food to meet her gaze. What was weird was that there wasn’t a hint of malice on her face, not for last night and not even for clearly ignoring her for most of the lunch period. Once she saw that I was looking at her, she simply gave me a warm smile and chuckled, “Hey Quinn.”