He gave me his signature goofy grin, and my stomach did a flip-flop.

God, what was wrong with me? This was Jeremy. Simply Jeremy.

Who was I kidding? He’d never been just Jeremy to me, but still… I wasn’t a fan of how my view of him was changing.

He grinned and leaned in close to press a sweet kiss to my temple. I thought he lingered a little longer than usual, but when he pulled back, I figured that was wishful thinking. It was just brotherly, something he’d started doing in the sixth grade when Ryan Harper had tried asking me to be his girlfriend. Jeremy had marked his territory with that kiss, and while, at the time, I’d been grateful, no boy had asked me out since because they all thought I belonged to Jeremy.

Hell, I had even started to believe it.

“Sullivan, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because…” He raised an eyebrow at me expectantly.

I smiled and leaned up on my tiptoes to place a feathery kiss on his cheek. “Where you go, I go.”

His smile widened, and his eyes searched mine. Then his lips parted slightly as he rubbed a thumb over my bottom one. My nerves fluttered because… Oh my God. Jeremy was about to kiss me.

“Always, Tod,” he whispered as his head descended.

Was this it?

No. It couldn’t be.

And then his head dipped lower. Lower. Lowering still…

Oh. My. God.

This was it.

The moment I’d been waiting six years for. The moment I hadn’t known I wanted but suddenly couldn’t happen soon enough.

“Always, Copper,” I breathed as my eyes fluttered closed and I waited to experience his lips for the very first time.

“Eww. Eww. PDA! Make it stop!”

My eyes snapped open in time to see Jeremy jump back from me at the sound of Chris’s teasing voice. His dimples were showcased when he tossed me a sheepish grin. It only lasted for a split second before rolling his eyes at our now former best friend. (He never actually knew it, but I was mad at Chris for months after that.) The moment was officially broken—my heart right along with it.

Jeremy slapped a playful arm around my shoulders and squeezed. It was like a bro hug, and my heart sank at the immediate change in his demeanor. One thing was blatantly obvious: I was back in the friend zone. Hell, I’d never actually left. It had been wishful thinking, but even then, I burrowed myself into his chest, savoring that hug for as long as I could, even if it was strictly platonic.

Over the course of the next year, I’d really come to hate those bro hugs.

“Shut it, Chris. You know Sullivan and I are just best friends,” he quipped, seemingly unaffected by our near kiss.

Cue the inner sigh. I was back to Sullivan. Jeremy always pulled that out when talking about our friendship. As if calling me Sierra made me more feminine or something.

Right. Best friends.

I so needed to remember that.

Holy crap.

Holy crap.

Holy crap.

The thought ran through my mind in super-quick succession as if my brain had suddenly turned into a broken record.

Holy freaking crap.

That was a close one.

I could have killed Chris.

I could have also thanked him.

I’d been on the verge of kissing Sierra, and I wasn’t ready for that.

Was I?

Don’t get me wrong. As Sierra’s breath had hitched, my eyes had locked with hers and all I could think about was placing my lips on hers. I didn’t want forehead or cheek kisses anymore. I wanted her supple lips against mine. I wanted to know if her favorite cherry ChapStick really made her lips as soft as the slender tube claimed. I wanted my tongue to experience the taste of hers after years of her sticking it out at me whenever I’d irritated her. I wanted to wrap my arms around Sierra’s waist, pull her in close, and kiss the hell out of her, blowing any movie kiss out of the water until we got detention for our public displays of affection.

And, suddenly, I wanted that detention more than I wanted anything else in the world.

So yeah, I could kill Chris.

But, now that I was coming back to my senses, it was clear Chris had done me a favor by interrupting a moment that would’ve fundamentally changed everything between Sierra and me. I wasn’t ready. I hated that, but it was the truth. High school was going to bring about so many changes, and the last thing I wanted was to do something to ruin my friendship with Sierra. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t act on my impulses until I knew what the hell I really wanted. I wasn’t quite ready to take that leap.

But fucking hell. I wished I were.

AFTER OUR NEAR KISS—I was still calling it that—things were seemingly normal with Jeremy and me. I spent too many hours analyzing every second of that interaction, and every time, I came up with a different conclusion. He’d been going to kiss me. He hadn’t been going to kiss me. I’d been reading it wrong. I’d been reading it right. I exhausted myself trying to figure out what it all meant.

Even if it had truly been a near kiss, Chris’s interruption had put a stop to it. The way Jeremy had jumped away from me as if I’d had the plague still haunted me. In that one move, he’d made it clear it hadn’t meant anything, and that was my final determination. I was convinced that the whole thing was in my head, some sort of wishful thinking.

And let me tell you, that sucked. Big time.

At the end of the day, however, I’d rather not have played tonsil hockey with my best friend if he wasn’t attracted to me. That would’ve been a nightmare. Instead, I brushed my confused feelings aside and settled into my daily routine as a new freshman at Navarre High School. I walked the halls with my shoulders squared and my head held high, and from time to time, I checked out the upperclassmen.

I never admitted it to Jenna, but even the cutest guy in school didn’t hold a candle to Jeremy. The only thing that would help get my mind off his messy brown hair, his infectious smile, and his cute dimples was distance. Unfortunately, I wasn’t getting that, nor did I want it. So I spent day in and day out trying to squelch my attraction to him only to have it grow every single time he flashed his gorgeous smile. It wasn’t easy, but I was clearly a glutton for punishment, because as much as we could be, we were attached at the hip, and when we weren’t together, I wished we were.

Cue the inner sighs.

If I’d been afraid that things would change when we went to high school, I shouldn’t have been. We had every class together and spent what time we could doing homework. It wasn’t much, actually, with his football practices taking up most of his afternoons.

Actually, things had changed, just not in the way I’d thought. Our time together had exponentially decreased since we’d started school. He was either on the football field or lifting weights in the field house after school, and I was left sighing at the dining room table, doing my schoolwork on my own. It was too quiet, too lonely, and I was miserable staring out the window at his house, just waiting for him to get home.

It was probably pathetic, but he’d been my partner in crime for six years. I’d come to rely on Jeremy far too much, and I didn’t know what to do with myself when he wasn’t around.

Pretty freaking lame, right?

After a week of moping around, I was starting to annoy myself—as well as my family. Mom suggested I add an extracurricular activity to my schedule, so I decided to try out for the cheerleading squad. It made perfect sense to me, and I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought about it myself. Why wouldn’t I want to be on the sidelines, cheering Jeremy on? Not to mention I’d have front-row seats to him in those super-tight football pants. It seemed like a win-win to me.