The Avery Shaw Experiment - By Kelly Oram Page 0,29

It took Grayson a minute to figure out what happened. “Crap! Aves, I’m sorry! You okay?”

“I need to get out of here!” I gasped. “I want to go home.”

Grayson took me straight to his car, no questions asked, and headed back toward my house. He was quiet until the only evidence left of my freak out were the tears that continued to trickle down my cheeks.

“Aves, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t think. I just, I had you in my arms and you felt so good I—I didn’t think. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to kiss someone so bad in all my life.”

I turned my face to my window, leaned my forehead against the cold glass, and muttered, “I’ve never wanted someone to kiss me so bad in all my life.”

The surprise of my confession caused Grayson to slam on the breaks. The car screeched to a stop.

“What? You wanted me to?”

I tried to wipe away the rest of my tears as Grayson pulled the car over to the side of the road.

“Of course I did!” I groaned. “Every single girl at that party tonight would have wanted you to kiss them had they been in my position. Grayson, I wanted you to kiss me so bad it physically hurt.”

“Then . . . what happened? What was the problem?”

“The problem was that it was you I wanted! I wanted you to kiss me. Not Aiden.”

Grayson opened his mouth to say something and then shut it again. He looked at me for a second as if I’d asked him some kind of trick question. “Um,” he finally said. “You know, I’m really kind of okay with that. Relieved even.”

“Well, I’m not! I feel awful!”

I started to cry again. I knew I sounded like I belonged strapped to a gurney in a room with padded walls, but I couldn’t help it. I was drowning in a sea of guilt.

“I feel like I cheated on him. I know it’s stupid. We weren’t even ever together, but I loved him so much. I’ve dreamed about kissing him for so long. I have a million different scenarios written in my diary of how it would all play out when it finally happened.”

Grayson chocked back a laugh. “You do not.”

I gave him a grim look. I did. Detailed fantasies.

“I gave him my whole heart. It hasn’t even been three weeks, and I barely cry about it anymore. I have all these new friends, and I do all these new things as if Aiden never even existed. As if he wasn’t my whole universe for my entire life. It’s like I completely moved on. And I didn’t just almost kiss anybody. I almost kissed his brother. What kind of person does that?”

Grayson sat there with his hands on the wheel, staring out the windshield. Eventually he lifted his shoulders into a shrug. “Maybe you were never really in love with him.” He turned to face me with a serious look. “What you felt tonight when we almost kissed, before you panicked, have you ever felt that with Aiden?”

I felt my cheeks heat up and looked at my lap. “I’ve never felt anything like that before. I didn’t even know a person could feel like that.”

“That just proves my point,” Grayson said softly. “Aiden was your best friend. You loved him, but you weren’t in love with him.”

“Yes I was! I am!”

Grayson shook his head. “You’re in love with the idea of him, but if you were really in love with him, you never would have gone on a date with me, much less let things go as far as they did.”

We were quiet for a minute, and then Grayson tried a different approach. “Aves, you haven’t done anything wrong. Aiden let you go. You should be able to move on. Even he would want that for you.”

He was trying to make me feel better, but he was having the opposite effect. I started to cry again, so he reached over the center console and took my hand in his. He rubbed his thumb gently over the backs of my knuckles. The touch calmed me down some, which then of course made me feel guilty all over again and I started to cry harder.

“Please just take me home.”

Grayson put the car back in motion. He didn’t say another word as he drove me the last few miles to my house, but he held tight to my hand the entire way. Selfish