Kayla's P.O.V

“You kissed freaking Jake Mitchells.  What do you mean it’s no big deal!?  And I swear if you try and claim you have no feelings for him I will slap you, we both know you do” Paige was pacing around my driveway ranting like a psycho.

“It was one little kiss, he just wanted to win dare night.  It didn’t mean anything to him so why should I let it mean something to me” I crossed my arms being stubborn.  I wasn’t going to admit, even to my best friend, that the kiss meant a lot to me.

“How do you know it didn’t mean anything to him?  Did you guys talk about it afterwards?” Paige caught me there.

“No there wasn’t time.  Greg announced we won and mass chaos ensued.  The whole football team surrounded Jake and the school song started playing and then you and I left and ended up here.  I don’t need to talk to him about it, Jake Mitchells doesn’t like me and I guarantee you he’s already forgotten about the kiss” I insisted.  Paige’s eye roll was so exaggerated I thought her eyeballs would permanently get stuck up in her head.

“You’re avoiding the question.  Do you or do you not have feelings for Jake Mitchells?” Paige waved her finger at me like a teacher lecturing her student.

“It’s not that simple.  I don’t know how I feel.  It’s complicated, I mean he’s my doubles partner what if things get awkward.  Ugghh none of this was part of the-“

“I swear woman if you mention the plan I will personally take you out.  Stop giving me excuses about things being complicated or it messing with your plan.  It is a yes or no question, do you have feelings for Jake?” Paige locked eyes with me and refused to look away.

I shoved my face into a pillow, but she could still hear my reply,

“Yes”

Jake’s P.O.V

“I can’t get her out of my head man” I shot the ball and missed my 8th shot that morning.  I didn’t play basketball, but normally when Tyler and I played around for fun I was pretty decent, but that morning I was missing everything.

“Still thinking about the kiss?  At least you’re finally admitting you have feelings for her.  That whole ‘just friends’ crap of yours was getting old” Tyler caught me off guard, got around me, and dunked the ball.  I couldn’t focus on anything.

“If the fact that I can’t stop thinking about her and I would retake Geometry if it meant I got to kiss her again means I have feelings for her, then yeah I’ve got it bad.  What am I going to do?” I shot and missed, again.

“Wow if you would go through Geometry again for her then you really do have it bad.  How did she react last night?”

“I didn’t have a chance to see her reaction.  The kiss meant we won and everyone went crazy and I lost her in the crowd.  If she feels the same way I do then I have to know, but if she doesn’t then it’s going to be awkward and we can’t be weird around each other if we’re going to win this tournament.  I need the stupid money to get away from the dictator” I was trying to think it all through when I heard a shout from the back door.

“Jake get in here and answer these emails from BC.  If you keep putting it off we’re going to have a problem.  I’m sick of you trying so hard to screw up your future”

“Speak of the devil” I mumbled.  I got a sympathetic look from Tyler before he drove off and I headed into the house.

***

               Jake’s P.O.V

Monday morning I was freaking out on my way to pick up Kayla for practice.  I had spent the previous day trying to figure out what to say when I saw her.  I could think of a bunch of flirty things to say, but I couldn’t use any of them because I had no idea how she felt about the kiss. 

I had never been this confused about a girl and it was not a comfortable feeling.  All of my past relationships had been pretty easy and simple, I never had fifty thousand questions running through my mind.  I couldn’t focus on anything, she kept popping back into my head no matter how hard I tried to distract myself.

I had come to the decision that I would just be straightforward and lay it all down on the table.  I would just say “Kayla, about the kiss, I had to do it, truth is I’m crazy about you and I didn’t want to miss my chance because I knew I’d regret it later”.  There that wasn’t so bad right?  I could get through that.  I just hoped she felt the same way.

“Morning Jake!  I’m playing soccer at day camp today!  I just love soccer!” Charlotte rambled as Kayla climbed in the car, gave me an awkward smile, changed my radio station, and looked out the window.  Shoot, I forgot about Charlotte.  We couldn’t exactly have this conversation with her there.

“Hey Kayla can we talk?” I asked when we finally got to the beach.

“Definitely!  We really need to talk about switching our defense up.  The championship game is in a couple weeks and we’re undefeated, but I think we can step it up a bit” Kayla was rambling and pacing around the court doing menial tasks and avoiding looking at me.

“Right, sure the defense.  Well we have all week to practice so I guess if we’re going to switch it up, now is the time.  Anything else you want to talk about?” I watched her tighten the net for the second time that morning, even though it was perfectly fine when we got there.  Kayla was clearly nervous, but as usual she wouldn’t admit it.

“Nope, let’s focus on our game for now” She finally looked at me, gave me a nod, and then started practice.

We had only been running drills for half an hour, but we were both going crazy.  We were messing up simple plays we had been running since day one of the summer.  We used to click so easily, but now all of our timing was off.  I would set her up and she would be nowhere near the ball, then we would get in an ‘argument’ about what the play was supposed to be.

This had never happened to us before, it’s like we had never played together.

“Ugghhh what is wrong with us?” Kayla groaned and flopped down on the sand.  Our two hour practice was almost over and we were still a mess.

“We’re being awkward and I think we both know why.  We need to talk about what happened Saturday night” I sat down next to her cautiously.

“You’re right, let’s just talk about it so we can get back to our usual selves” Kayla suddenly became really fascinated with her water bottle.

“Okay so about the kiss, I had-“ I started.

“You had to do it so we could win Dare Night.  I get it, you’re a football player, and Dare Night is an even bigger deal to your team than it is to the rest of us.  I get it, it didn’t mean anything to me either.  Let’s just forget it ever happened and go back to being out normal, goofy, volleyball compatible selves.  Deal?” Kayla sounded like she was solving a math problem, not talking about what the heck was going on between us.  It was impossible to judge her reaction so the only thing I could go off of were her words.

“Yeah sure, deal.  If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do” this conversation definitely didn’t go how I hoped it would.

“I can’t believe this!?!?  No way!” Kayla shouted.  I looked up confused, only to see her run across the beach toward Paige.  Wait not towards Paige, toward the tall attractive guy standing right next to Paige.  I watched as the girl I couldn’t get out of my head jumped into another guy’s arms.

Looks like things aren't going so smoothly for these two.  What do you guys think?  How should they have handled it?

Who is this mystery guy?  Any guesses?  Comment!  And don't forget to vote!