"My help? Why? What for?" Was he crazy? I wasn't going to help him find me.

"You could find out who chews this gum?" he said.

"You've lost your mind. How would you like me to do that?"

"Pleeeeaaasss. You have to help me." He leaned forward, grabbed my shoulders and looked at me in that way that I found so bloody disarming. The way that made it impossible to say no to him. I looked down. Clearly it was me that had lost my mind and I couldn't believe I was about to say it, but...

"Fine. Fine. I'll help you," I said it, even though I really didn't want to. Mind you, now that I thought about it, Connor had a way of getting totally caught up in something, and then five minutes later losing interest. So hopefully he'd wake up tomorrow and be rid of this insane obsession.

"Wanna play a game of Fortnite," I asked. Desperate for a break from this crazy conversation.

"Sure," he agreed.

Normally Connor and I would hang out for hours playing Fortnite, but he was totally distracted—me too. Our fingers were moving over the controls but our brains were elsewhere, and I knew exactly where they were. At the party. Both of us thinking of the kiss, but only one of us knowing he whole story. After about ten minutes, he left.

During our short gaming session, my stomach felt tight. I wanted to scream, pull my hair out or... Ugh! For the first time ever I was actually relieved when he left—I'm never relieved when he leaves.

A strange mix of emotions was flooding me. It was as if all the human emotions that have ever existed had been thrown into a blender, whizzed around at high speed until all that was left was a thick, sloshy goo of ugly stuff. And don't get me started on my thoughts, because, at that moment, they were having their own, very loud party in my head. It was hard to listen to all of them at once, and it was absolutely impossible to grab onto one that actually made any sense. I tried to silence the cacophony by flicking through Netflix—didn't work. I tried to distract myself with a little more gaming—nothing helped. So I climbed into bed, pulled the duvet over my head and plunged myself into darkness.

But the darkness just brought back memories of the kiss. The closeness, the feeling of his hands on my body, his breath against my lips. I sighed loudly. I was such a goner. Total. There was no hope for me and my poor, damaged heart now. And he had no idea. He probably couldn't even imagine me being the one who kissed him. His best buddy of so many years. His pal. His Dude. His... Ugh! I tried to close my eyes and think about something else, but a giant word came flying into my head;

F R I E N D -Z O N E D

God, I hated that word. And it seemed to be flickering at me from a giant wall of cosmic graffiti. It was looking down at me from its lofty, neon perch and mocking me for my stupidity.

I tossed and turned for hours that night, thinking about it all, especially about the prospect of helping Connor find this mystery kisser that he was now supposedly in love with. I couldn't help but feel like I was somehow a character trapped in the electronic pages of a cheesy coming-of-age YA book, or maybe even a movie.

Tomboy next-door falls in love with best friend jock boy and kisses him in the dark, only to be roped into helping him track down the mystery girl of his dreams.

What the hell had I done? The part of me that was regretting the kiss (and all that followed) was getting louder by the second, but not loud enough to drown out the sounds of my sister and her friends coming home.

They were clearly trying to creep though the house as my sister was two hours past curfew. Mckenzie always pushed the limits, but she never seemed to get in trouble. I'm convinced her big blue eyes, blonde hair and perfect smile hold some kind of magical powers. She just flashes them at our parents and gets absolutely everything she wants. I've never figured out how she does it, but she seems blessed with almost occult-ish manipulation skills.

Mckenzie once got the school genius to do her math homework for a whole semester. In return, she'd said 'hello' to him at school and walked with him in the hall from time to time. Poor guy. I think he's still nursing a broken heart.

Our house is big, but that night the walls seemed much thinner than normal and I was plagued by the sounds of their loud giggling and general girl chatter. Their cackling made it so much harder to sleep and I imagined them all braiding each others' hair and painting nails while they did a thorough post-mortem of the party, dissecting all the details with their bitch scalpels.

Who looked at whom? Who danced with whom? What did so-and-so wear and who were they hooking up with? But my blood ran ice cold the second I heard Connor's name being whispered, followed by even more giggling.

Knife, stab and twist.

It was no secret that almost every girl at school had a major crush on him. And it was no secret that he'd dated a rather substantial amount of them—not that I'm counting. Or maybe I am...a little. Okay, so I'm fucking counting!

I must have fallen asleep at some point, or some strange version of sleep filled with tossing and turning and thoughts of Connor, because I felt exhausted when the sun came streaming into my room and slapped me across the face.

"What the?!"

I turned to the window and tried to open my eyes, even though they felt like they had been superglued shut. Through half-closed slits, I could just make out Connor climbing through my window.

"What're you doing?" I managed to ask, suddenly conscious of morning breath. "What time is it?"

"Time to get up," he said, and I felt the duvet rudely flung off me.

"Seriously, what time is it?" I tried to pull the duvet back but Connor had a firm grip on it

"It's already eight." Suddenly two hands reached for my arms and then I was standing on my feet face-to-face with him.

Good thing I always made sure I slept in a baggy shirt and gym shorts for just such an event. I was always ready in case Connor ambushed me in the morning. Mind you, I don't think it would have made a difference if I was standing in front of him wearing a lacey Victoria's Secret thingy with fuzzy nipple tassels and sexy heels. I'd still just be the friend. I don't even think he considers me to be an actual female. The only time he seemed to acknowledge the difference was when I started wearing a bra...

I'd been so stressed out when I realized that I would need to get one. I mean, I'd seen how my sister and her friends had been teased by the boys at school when they'd gotten theirs. The guys had run around like crazed idiots snapping their bra straps like it was some kind of new Olympic sport. Like magpies to a pretty shinny thing. I fought getting one for as long as I could, but finally admitted defeat one day and got myself the simplest, plainest one I would find and hoped nobody would notice. Thankfully they didn't. But then a few days later when Connor noticed the strap he looked perplexed.

He struggled with the sentence, but finally said it. "Dude, you got a bra. That's so weird."

As if he hadn't ever realised I had breasts! Both a blessing and a curse. And here we were once again with him being Clueless Connor. Except this time he didn't realize that I'd kissed him in the dark.

"Remind me... why are we up so early on a Saturday?" I rubbed my face and discreetly wiped a tiny bit of drool away with the back of my hand.

"We're off to investigate." He sounded so perky.

"Investigate what?"

"The mystery kisser, and the only lead we have for now," he said.

Now I was very wide awake. He was serious about this. He hadn't been joking the night before. And to top it all off, he was using the collective 'we' again, which under the circumstances was so utterly, horrifically inappropriate. But the only sensible thing to do was to go along with it until I figured out what to do.

"What lead is that?" I shrugged, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

"The gum. If we can figure out what brand it is, maybe we'll find someone at school chewing it."

"So what... we're going to go to the shop and buy every flavor of gum and try it?"

"Great idea!" He clapped his hands together looking far too excited for my liking.

"You're not serious!"

"Dead serious," he said before rummaging through my wardrobe and throwing me some clothes. "Here. Get dressed."

Shit... what the hell had I started?