Okay, here's chapter eight. Sorry it's been delayed, but after I finished finals, I didn't want to deal with anything that required me to think much and then I heard Kevin got married so my fangirl went nuts and then I got swamped with Christmas stuff.

My best friend bought me the Rolling Stone bag with their first cover on it and a JB t-shirt. I feel really cool.

Dedicated to Sweetgalsab because she is awesome, likes Doctor Who and her PMs kept me entertained while I went nuts in my school library.

By the way, I got an A in music, B's in science and politics and a C in history. The C isn't great, but it's better than I thought it would be.

My Christmas has kind of sucked, so please leave nice reviews in spite of this chapter being kinda rushed and not really touching on the eighth reason. It concentrates mainly on Stella's and Macy's friendship which I thought was called for because this seemed to be solely Kevin/Macy interactions so far.

I hope everyone else had a great Christmas.

At school later that day, Kevin had been kind of avoiding me. Stella brushed it off as him being shy after the whole kissing-me-on-the-lips-without-warning thing, which made sense, but it still hurt. I had one more class, then lunch, and I was a little concerned about what was going to happen. I mean, just because he kissed me didn't mean we were going out. I didn't know what to think about it at all, and I was pretty sure Kevin felt the same way.

I sat down at the lunch table and opened my lunchbox. Juice box, Oreos, an apple, a bag of chips, and a fantastic sandwich, courtesy of my dad. I unfolded my napkin and smoothed it down on the tabletop. I took the items out, one-by-one and set them on the napkin. I unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite. Pastrami on rye. Good choice dad. Then Kevin sat down next to me and my hand-eye coordination went out the door. The sandwich innards fell out of the bread and landed on my lap. Ew. Stella got mad, of course.

"I didn't design you a one-of-a-kind Stella Malone original just for you to dump some greasy deli meat on it!" she said as she hastily handed me a napkin before pulling me out of my chair. She dragged me to the restroom where she left me for a few seconds before returning to the restroom, plaid skirt in hand.

"Here," she said as I murmured a sheepish apology. I ducked into a stall, removed the pastrami-scented skirt and put on the clean one. I came out and Stella gave me one of her "talks".

"Mace, I know you like Kevin and all, but try to have a little more control around him, okay? I mean, I know you were going all fangirl on all three of them at the beginning of the year, but then you got better about it. And then you started liking Kevin and got all weird again. And now that the two of you are together-"

"Stells, Kevin and I aren't together. Not really. We're like you and Joe. We like each other and all, but we don't really know what's going on."

"No, Joe and I know what's going on between us. We're just in denial about it. And we'll keep being in denial about it until one of us grabs the other and plants a fat on them."

"Then why don't you do that now?" I asked.

"Because that's not my thing. It's more like Joe's thing. He needs to do it."

"Chicken," I muttered, searching my blazer pocket for my tube of lip balm. Stella handed me her lip gloss. Some fancy tube of expensive, sticky gloss. Sangria flavored. Not my favorite (that would be Dr. Pepper LipSmackers), but it would have to do. Besides, the wine-colored gloss looked good smeared on my lips. I shoved the wand back in the tube and handed it to her.

"Excuse me?" Stella said archly, snatching the gloss back, "I'm not the one who ran off after kissing the guy of her dreams."

"Kevin ran away from me, thank you," I replied crisply.

"I meant Jonathan Webb in eighth grade," Stella replied.

"You know that was a dare. Instigated by you of all people."

"You want me to talk to him?"

"Jonathan Webb? He moved to Dallas not long after I kissed him."

"I meant Kevin."

"You would?"

"Sweetie, you're the best friend a girl could have. You are loyal, funny, smart and an awesome dresser. You put up with me complaining about Joe, even if I interrupt you and Kevin's…romantic interludes in the process."

I let out a snort at 'romantic interludes'. That was about the furthest thing to describe it. Stella seemed to know this and corrected herself.

"Yeah, you and Kevin really aren't the 'romantic interlude' type. You're more like the…saccharine sweet type. It hurts my teeth to look at the two of you sometimes. You're all shy glances and soft smiles and you look away from each other and blush or you bump each other at the table and freak out or whatever. It's cute, but it's disgustingly sweet."

***

A little later that day, I was at my locker. Brittany Wright was soaking up the attention of Tyler Conner, the captain of the boys' basketball team. He's a good friend and I look up to him. That's all. I don't like him the way I like Kevin…but I hate Brittany getting Tyler's attention. Brittany's on a few teams with me and I hate how she steals the spotlight from me. I like being the star and I can't help but feel like I fade into the background when placed next to her. She's really pretty. Like a model. And she has this dark auburn hair that falls in perfect curls and she never does anything stupid like freak out when a guy sits next to her or kisses her in the middle of the hallway.

I stod there, stewing, watching them flirt.

"Hey, Mace."

I jumped as Kevin came up behind me.

"Oh, hey, Kevin," I said distractedly.

"You okay?"

"Oh, I'm…I'm fine," I said as I dug around in my bag for a book.

"You don't sound fine."

"So how do I sound?"

"You sound…jealous."

I averted my gaze from Brittany and Tyler.

"I'm not jealous."

"That sounds jealous. I'm just not sure what kind of jealous it is…"

I dared to sneak another glance at Brittany and Tyler. Big mistake.

"Are you jealous of…that?" Kevin asked, pointing towards them. There was a bit of a crease between his brows and the corners of his mouth had turned down suddenly.

"Are you jealous of me being jealous of that?"

He grumbled and crossed his arms. I suppressed a laugh. He was really cute when he was like this.

"It's not boy-girl jealousy Kev," I hastened to assure him, "It's…like…you know how sometimes there's a person you admire or something and someone you don't like hogs their attention? That's the jealousy I'm experiencing."

"Not boy-girl jealousy?" Kevin said, a hint of a smile on his face.

"No," I said, giving him a smile.

He picked me up and spun me around in the hallway. I let out a shriek and threw my arms around his shoulders, scared that I was going to fall.

He put me down on the ground and smiled at me again.

"You know, Kevin, it's a bit annoying that you know me so well," I said.

"It's a burden I have to share with Stella," he said with a sigh.

I laughed and hit his shoulder.

"You want to come to movie night at my house tonight? We always watch a few movies, that way everyone is happy."

"Okay…what time?"

"Um…six-ish? We usually manage to watch about three movies give or take."

"Okay. Works for me," I said with a smile.