Fifteenth Summer - By Michelle Dalton Page 0,39

hem of my skirt. I was pinned down!

I took a deep, long-suffering breath and started yanking my skirt out from under me. Never had my vintage habit so betrayed me! I was totally going to switch to miniskirts after this.

“ ‘On Wednesday,’ ” the mom read, “ ‘he ate through three plums, but he was still hungry.’ ”

“Yah!” I grunted, finally freeing myself. I smoothed the poofy skirt down, then planted my hands on the floor to push myself to my feet.

But before I got very far, Josh planted his hands on me! On my shoulders anyway. I fell back to the floor.

“Oof!” I grunted, giving him a WHAT are you doing? glare.

From the stunned look on his face, it seemed Josh was asking himself the same question.

But then his fingers tightened on my shoulders and he answered the question for both of us by leaning in—and kissing me!

It was just one kiss. By the clock it probably only lasted a few seconds. But in my head (not to mention the rest of me) that kiss—Josh kissing me—seemed to go on and on. I felt a tingly jolt in my lips. Josh’s palms felt incredibly warm on my shoulders, and my arms and legs went rubbery.

No, that wasn’t the right word for it. I felt melty.

I couldn’t believe it.

Whenever I read a romantic book (and I’d read a lot of them), I’d get to the part where she “melted beneath his touch” or “melted into his arms” and roll my eyes.

That’s just a goofy thing writers write, I’d told myself. Nobody really melts when a boy kisses her.

Now I knew. The melting really did happen—if you kissed the right boy. For the first time in my life, I seemed to be doing just that.

And I was doing it with a chirpy mom reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar literally six feet away. Not to mention all those little kids. This was . . . weird!

Also wonderful.

And very, very surprising.

That’s surely what Josh saw in my face when we finally pulled away from each other. That and a whole lot of hot-and-bothered hair frizz.

“Um . . . ,” I said.

“Um . . . ,” he said.

“So I gotta . . . ,” I said, pointing in the general direction of the door. Kissing Josh seemed to have rendered me half-mute.

Josh only nodded. I guess he was fully mute.

As I drifted to my feet, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a good or bad thing. Maybe another girl (my sister, Abbie, for instance) would have come out and asked him if it was a good or bad thing. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

For one thing, there was the half-muteness.

For another, I couldn’t look Josh in the eyes. Not after his lips had just been on my lips and he’d just seen my face more close-up than I’d seen it myself. It was so embarrassing!

Also amazing.

I turned and headed out of the picture book aisle, trying not to wobble as I walked. I forgot about book shopping entirely and reported to work twenty minutes early. This earned me completely unintentional brownie points, as well as the privilege of chopping up some celery for Melanie while I waited for my shift to begin.

Once it did, it took a while for my tables to fill up, which was a good thing. I was ridiculously distracted from a job I hadn’t even begun to master yet.

Okay, the first question, I thought as I laid napkins and flatware on my tables, is why! Why did Josh kiss me? Does he really like me? Or maybe kissing me was an accident, somehow. I mean, it doesn’t get less sexy than The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

And besides, I know he regretted telling me to go for the job next door. I could see it in his eyes. So why—Oop! Party of six in my section.

I hurried over to scoop up menus as three middle-aged couples settled themselves into my section’s biggest table. I handed the menus out, then managed to get their drink orders correct—even if I did hand the wrong drinks to each customer, down to the very last person.

“I’m sorry!” I said as they laughed and passed their drinks around the table until each one found the person who’d ordered it. “It’s only my second day.”

“In that case,” said one of the customers, a jolly-looking guy with thinning hair and a big grin, just the kind of guy my dad would love to regale with one-liners, “I’ll