One More Kiss: A Lesson in Love, #1

By Tara September

My formerly annoying neighbor turned charming addiction. Who would have guessed? First, I need to put it to the test.

Step one: Kiss Cal again. Just one more kiss.
Step two: Kiss someone else to compare.
Step three: Kiss goodbye and permanently close the door on Cal Chase.

Once again I bang on the connecting door to my dorm room, trying to be heard over the blaring music coming from the other side. My bestie should be living in that room, but no, she transferred to be with her boyfriend and now I'm stuck sharing a wall with stupidly hot track star, Cal Chase. My friends say I'm lucky, but his mere presence annoys me, along with his late-night music and the constant gaggle of giggly girls who visit. I'm the only one who can see right through that patented "Cal Charm." He's just another player and I'm not game.

So, why the hell did I let him give me an out-of-this-world kiss under the stars the other night? It had to be the magic of the meteor shower. I can't actually like him, right? I simply need to prove Cal's stellar kiss was a fluke, and I know how to do it and in just three steps.

Should be easy, right?

 

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Award-Winning:

- 2021 Heart Awards Winner: YA Romance
- 2022 HOLT Medallion Contest Finalist: Romance Novella

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tara September
• Release date: Sep 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9798223932024

Book preview

1

APRIL HARRIS

Boom, boom!

Come on, April, wake up!

Go away! I manage a muffled shout, but most of my reply is muted by my oh-so soft pillow, beckoning me back to blissful slumberland.

Bang, bang! April, get your ass out of bed. You have plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead, Amerie Clinton yells back.

Now, didn’t that make death sound almost desirable?

Annoyed, I fling my pillow at the back of my dorm room door and hear my friends’ laughter on the other side. Fine, I’m up! I shout. This better be worth it.

Hurry, we’re going to miss it, my other friend Jacquie calls back.

Groggily, I hop down from my elevated twin bed, stacked higher thanks to two cement slabs under each foot. Still grumbling, I slip on a pair of tie-dye joggers, which I’d had the foresight to place on my desk chair before going to bed last night so I’d be ready for this.

Getting up at four a.m. had sounded like a good idea yesterday, in the dining hall, when my friends had brought up going to view the Leonid meteor shower. Now, I want to slap my eight-hours-ago self for agreeing. All right, so it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, but I’m majoring in English with a minor in Psychology. It’s not like I’m going to be an astrologist or a meteorologist or whatever.

I pause, debating whether to put on a bra and a different shirt, but I opt for leaving on the ribbed tank top that I slept in and reach for my hoodie, only to remember that I still haven’t gotten the missing zipper pull fixed. I sling it on, but since I can’t zip it up, I tug the comforter off my bed in a swift motion that would have made a magician proud. Somehow my teddy bear remains in the same spot, even after I’ve wrapped the buffalo check plaid duvet around my shoulders and hug it to my chest. I need to try that blanket-pulling trick again when I’m not half delirious. For now, I shove my bare feet into my well-worn UGG boot dupes and open the door to my single.

The jarring fluorescent lighting above my two friends and their boyfriends leaves me squinting and wanting to turn around all over again.

No, you don’t, Jacquie warns, tugging on my comforter and pulling me out fully into the hallway with them. She reaches past me and grabs the keys hanging above the light switch in my room, then lassos the lanyard around my neck. There we go, ready? she asks, firmly shutting the entrance back to dreamland.

I stare her down like she’s the grinch of Snoozeville, which she is. Several curses and unkind replies flutter through my mind, but I release them with my pent-up breath. There was no going back to bed now, so no use sulking. I might as well get this over with.

I can’t wait, I say with an over-the-top brightness that would make an anchorwoman proud. Given the eye rolls I receive, my friends aren’t fooled or amused. Brady Hale, Amerie’s boyfriend, at least snickers at my attempt to be positive. I wouldn’t have expected their match in a million years, but it seems to be working out, given the annoying honeymoon stage they are still in.

What’s going on? asks an unexpected male voice to our right. Several of us jump, but I recognize that voice, and it’s not welcomed so early in the morning … or at any time. Turning, I take in a bare-chested Cal Chase peering out from his opened door. I tell myself that I don’t like what I see.

Liar, liar, even my joggers feel on fire.

While I resent my infuriating neighbor, I’d be downright blind not to notice how sexy he is. He looks too mature to be just twenty-one. Too buff to only be on the track team. Too everything. Even his facial hair is perfect, not substantial enough to be called a beard exactly, just a manly scruff. And dammit, how does he make bedhead look so good? Barbers should list a photo of how he looks right now as an option because it is a gorgeous, rumply mess of chocolate-brown hair with a couple of natural golden streaks garnered from running out in the sun so often.

My own hair is probably a cotton-candy-like mess of midnight black frizz. I should have at least put my fingers through it first, never mind a brush, before opening the door. I’m still getting used to it being so short, but I don’t regret chopping it off this summer to just below my chin to donate it to Locks of Love. Besides, my friends have assured me that my sleek bob emphasizes my green eyes and is both sophisticated and flirty. Their descriptors, not mine.

We’re headed out to Thatcher Field to catch the meteor shower, Amerie explains, checking the time on her phone. I’m glad at least someone can talk because, for some reason, I’m tongue-tied looking at Cal.

A bunch of us are going, Jacquie adds and Diego nods.

Word. Give me a sec and I’ll join you, Cal says, and my mouth drops open.

You weren’t invited, I call after him, and Jacquie jabs me in the ribs with her elbow. Yes, I’m being rude, but still, I’m just speaking the truth.

I didn’t realize I needed a private invitation to look at the sky, Cal calls back from inside his room, undeterred. Be right there.

Ugh! He shouldn’t be here at all. Stef, my college bestie, should be living in his room. At the end of our sophomore year, I’d won a high lottery number, allowing me first dibs on selecting the best housing on campus for our junior year. So, after much investigation, Stef and I had chosen these attached rooms in Atwood Quad’s historic Tasker Hall, which had been built in 1890. But when Stef up and transferred to a local college in New Jersey, leaving one of the best private colleges in New England just to be closer to a guy, she also left me high and dry. And now I’m stuck with a jock next door living up his senior year. For a girl who prefers to go to bed by midnight and loves sleep more than books and Boba Tea, Cal is an unwelcome thorn in my side this semester and likely until summer move-out.

To top it off, not only do I share a wall with him, but a connecting door, too, which is thankfully locked. While I can’t hear anything from the room on my left, I hear too much on Calvin’s side due to that stupid door. I know things—like his favorite songs, that he calls his parents every Monday and Friday, that he sleeps with the light on, and that he almost always has a giggly female in the room with him. Seriously, no one is that funny.

Occasionally, I overhear snippets of his conversation, but it is hard to make it out unless he’s shouting or talking right near the adjoining door. So, I mainly hear mumbling and, of course, that constant giggling from his girl fan club.

There have been two major exceptions. One time, after I pounded on the wall for him to be quiet, I overheard a female voice say, Is she always like that? My resulting gasp had been so loud, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they