Winging It Read Online Free Page A

with me. She was. And when she squeezed my hand and leaned toward me, I leaned in, too.
    We met somewhere over the gearshift. It wasn’t a great kiss…we were both too tense, and the whole thing felt unnatural. Well, not exactly. In a way, it felt too natural, but that kind of freaked me out and made me self-conscious. After a few awkward seconds, I leaned away. But she didn’t let me go far.
    “We need to do better than that,” she whispered.
    I think it was the “we” that made me relax. Yeah, this was a weird situation, but it was still just me and Nat. The two of us had been a team for a long time and we still could be; we just needed to remember how.
    “We need to loosen up a bit,” I suggested.
    “I don’t like your hand there, on my neck. That’s where you always touched Dawn when you kissed her.”
    Nat had noticed how I kissed Dawn? “So…do you not want me to touch you at all? Or just somewhere else?”
    “I don’t know.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “It’s weird because we’re sitting down,” she decided. “Get out of the car.”
    I really didn’t think sitting was the weirdest thing about what we were doing, but I got out of the car anyway, and when I saw her heading around the front, I met her partway. We stood there, facing each other in that familiar driveway, with the snow falling in big, gentle flakes, and everything felt totally familiar and totally new, all at the same time.
    I managed to catch myself before my hand lifted to her neck, and I found her waist instead. She didn’t seem to mind that, and even with her bulky winter coat, I could feel a bit of a curve and imagined how soft her skin would be underneath all the layers of clothing.
    She raised her chin, I lowered mine, and this time I just let myself feel what we were doing. I forgot about pretending, forgot about Scott, about Nat’s ridiculous plan, and after about two seconds I forgot about the snow and the driveway and getting to school and pretty much everything else. It was just me and Nat— Nat , of all people—our lips, our breath, and our bodies leaning together.
    Nat jerked her head away, leaving me so disoriented I almost staggered, and it was only then I noticed the car pulling into the driveway next to mine. Nat’s mom was behind the wheel, staring at us with a completely unreadable expression on her face.
    “Shit,” Nat whispered. She stepped backward, hit a slippery patch and flailed a little, trying to get her balance back. I reached out to steady her, but she jerked her arm away, and then her feet slipped more, pushing forward right into mine. I’m honestly not sure of the exact sequence of events after that, but there was more slipping, a bit of swearing, and then Nat was flat on her back on the driveway with me pulled down almost on top of her. I’d caught myself with a knee between her legs and my hands on either side of her head, and if she’d given me one tiny bit of encouragement I would have lowered myself the rest of the way and gone for the full-body contact, whether her mom was watching us or not.
    But Nat didn’t look encouraging. She frowned up at me and said, “That wasn’t too smooth. We need to get better.”
    Just like that, we were back to her goals, her plan, and her incredibly stupid crush on my asshole cousin. I managed to get to my feet without slipping and falling on her then stood back and let her figure her own balance out for herself.
    As soon as she was upright, she shot a breezy wave toward her mom, who had managed to make it out of the car but was still staring at us, apparently with nothing to say. “Gotta go!” Nat called. “Don’t want to be late for school.”
    I took my cue and headed for my seat, a cautious nod toward Nat’s mom as I went. She and I had always gotten along really well, back when she’d seen me as a guy her daughter hung out with, not a guy her daughter made out with. Probably different standards would apply now.
    But she let us go, at