Mister O(19)

Whatever this kiss is, it possesses its own pulse, its own frequency, as if the air around us is charged and vibrating with sensual energy.

Or maybe it’s just me, because my body is humming. My skin tingles, and this whisper of a kiss lights me up all over, making my mind gallop far beyond the payoff.

“Your lips are so soft,” I whisper against her, and she gasps in response, then presses her mouth to me once more, murmuring, “Yours, too.”

We’ve pulled off the ruse with aplomb, but when her lips sweep across mine one more time, it feels way more than necessary for the kiss-the-girl dare to be authentic.

It feels like it’s slipped into more.

But just as the lingering build becomes almost unbearable and I’m ready to slide my tongue between her lips, the guys shout and clap, beginning a chorus of “Mister O!” that kills the mood.

We snap apart.

Harper blinks, stares down, then slides her gaze back up. The look in her eyes is guilty, like she feels bad that we locked lips. “Well,” she says brightly, as if she’s trying to smooth over an awkward moment, “good thing Mister O gave the girl the right dosage for the kissing virus.”

I clear my throat, trying to make sense of what she just said. Of what just happened. Of how we basically reenacted a scene from my show. How I’m the hero, and she’s the girl I rescued from doom.

“I mean, they totally expected you to do that,” she adds, like she needs to justify our kiss.

“Yeah, definitely,” I say, going along with her, because my brain is swimming in a sea of endorphins, and agreeing is way easier than anything else. I glance across the street and give the duo a quick thumbs up.

“She’s all good,” I tell them, as Mister O said in the show.

Harper joins in, waving, too. She turns back to me and parks her hand on my shoulder. “Those guys worship you and the ladies’ man character you created.”

I scrunch my brow, wishing we weren’t talking about fictional shit right now, because that felt really fucking real to me. But I have no idea if she liked that kiss as much as I did.

“I’m all about the show,” I say, seconding her, as the peanut gallery heads off into the night.

She laughs, then her expression shifts, and it’s earnest again, like when she first opened up at the bar. “I really appreciate your help with this whole dating thing,” she says, and the kiss has vanished into the night. The trick is over, and the magician and the show creator have left the stage. We’re just Harper and Nick now, buddies with a secret project.

“Of course. I’m happy to do it. And, like I told you, Jason is really into you,” I say, since it’s so much easier for me to make sense of the other dude right now than to sort out the tangled mess in my head.

She shrugs and quirks up the corner of her lips. “Yeah?”

“Absolutely. You should go for it with him,” I say, mustering false enthusiasm as I try to return to being her dating tutor, even though I might be a candidate for a split personality study since we just kissed, and now I’m telling her to go all-out for another guy. Maybe I caught some new strain of her babble-around-someone-I’m-into virus with that kiss.

“You think so?” she asks, with an inquisitive tilt of her head.

“Definitely. He might be the man of your dreams.” Yup. A full-blown case of it.

She shoots me a skeptical look, then shrugs. “Would you meet me after I go out with him, so I can tell you everything while it’s fresh in my mind?” she asks, placing her palms together. I’m about to say no, when she adds, “After all, I did 1919 White Sox for you.”

“Then you made me look like a rock star in front of my fans just now,” I say, still on autopilot. But even though I’m reluctant, I did sign up to help her, so this is, evidently, the drill. “Let me know where and when.”

“I’ll text you,” she says, then heads up the steps, and I watch as she unlocks the door to her building, turns around, and waves to me through the glass.

Then she’s gone, taking with her the best and strangest first kiss I’ve ever had.

I return to my home on Seventy-Third, a fourth-floor apartment with exposed brick walls and a huge window sporting a view of the park. As the door shuts behind me with a faint click, I ask myself if it even counts as a first kiss if you don’t know if it was real or just a dare?

I don’t think it lasted more than fifteen seconds, but those fifteen seconds echo inside me, and I can still feel the imprint of her lips on mine. I can still smell her sweet scent when I breathe in. I can still hear her soft gasp in my ears.

I wish I knew if she was in her apartment, lingering on those fifteen seconds, too.