The First 100 Kisses: Practice Makes Perfect Read online

  THE FIRST 100 KISSES

  Book 1 in

  The Practice Makes Perfect Series

  By Danielle Bannister

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright (c) March 2019 by Danielle Bannister

  All rights reserved

  Published by Danielle Bannister

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

  For information about permission, write to:

  [email protected]

  THE FIRST 100 KISSES

  Cover Design by: Q Design

  Edited by Ellen Blake

  ASIN: B07NQK8GRR

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Sneak Peek

  How to Hug an Author

  Author Bio

  Also, By the Author

  For all the sufferers of unrequited love, this one’s for you.

  Mad thanks to my beta readers who have the courage to read through drafts that aren’t finished and point out to me parts that didn’t resonate, or that felt cliched, or flat out wrong. Sharon Estes, Sarah Joy, Julie Cassar, Kelly Hewins, Amy Miles, and Tim Pugliese. And mad props to Ellen Blake for editing this manuscript. Pointing out some timing issues and all the grammatical issues. You rock, my dear! Also, to Eric Sanders and Victoria Stolte for their eagle eyes!

  This story was a departure from my normal style of fade to black writing. Something about these characters told me to keep the lights on. It wasn’t gratuitous or done merely for arousal purposes, but for this story, it was necessary for the plot and for character development. That made it easier to hit the publish button on a book I was nervous to write.

  “Chloe, I have a huge favor to ask,” my bestie, Liam, said just as the theme song for Outlander started. The side-eye glare he got in response should have been all the answer required, but Liam didn’t pick up the meaning.

  “The answer is ‘yes’ to whatever you need but shut it now. The show’s about to start.” If my glare were actual daggers, Liam would be as bloody as the men were about to become in the Battle of Culloden. Seriously, what the hell was he doing speaking right now? He knew this was a no-talk-hour. Gasp or squeal, sure, but no conversations, boy! This was sacred time. If our years of friendships taught him anything, it should have been to never cross me when my shows were on. I took this stuff seriously. Just like take out Tuesdays and longest fry Fridays, (I always won and thereby got to use the ketchup first.) We had our rituals that we’d developed over the years –well, I had developed and drug him along, and tonight it was movies and munchies. You don’t just abandon dedicated viewing time to ask favors. You do that nonsense after the post-show discussion with wine and whiskey. It’s like he was new here.

  He opened his mouth to speak but I hucked a piece of popcorn at him.

  “Not another word, mister. Or the M & Ms are next.” I lifted a red one for good measure. Liam hated the red ones. He thought they had deadly dyes in them or some shit.

  “Fine,” he huffed as he settled into the couch.

  Satisfied I had won that argument, I swung my legs over, flopping my feet unceremoniously in his lap. Liam looked at my feet, then at me, and shook his head. Still, he took my feet in his hands to massage them. It was heaven. I smiled at him, then diverted my eyes back onto the screen.

  As he worked my feet, I couldn’t help realizing that nights like this never happened when I dated a guy. I was never as chill as I am with Liam. On the rare times I went on a repeat date with someone, I could never fully relax into myself. I was too busy pretending to be a version of the woman that the guy wanted me to be. I was a chameleon. I’m sure a therapist would say I had issues with abandonment or was just trying to be loved or some shit, but we all had our neurosis and mine was knowing I’d never really be good enough for someone. I didn’t need to pay a shrink to tell me that. I already knew it.

  When I was with Liam, though, I didn’t have to pretend to be anyone other than me because we’re just friends. Perfectly platonic. Seriously. We’d been friends forever. Well, not forever, forever, but a long freaking time. He was the only guy friend that I had that I hadn’t screwed. Not that Liam wasn’t screwable. The man was delish, and he knew it. Normally, that was a turn off for me, but Liam seemed truly annoyed that he had good looks. I often felt like he wished he were more common, like us peasants.

  Not that Liam could ever pass as peasant. He just stood out. It wasn’t just his looks though. Liam was…odd. The sort that was uncomfortable in his own skin. Especially in public. Liam was the sort who liked routines, and schedules, hence why he liked my weekly themed events. He liked knowing when and how things were going to happen and when they didn’t go as planned, he got anxious.

  Unfortunately, this was one of the many reasons he was probably still single. Socially awkward didn’t begin to cover it. He was a handful, that one. But he was my crazy friend, and I had no problem keeping him in check when he messed up.

  Sometimes he’d blurt something inappropriate, not out of spite but out of not stopping to think first. It was like his brain was wired a bit differently. He saw things in a straight line in a world that was full of twists and turns.

  I wish I could say we’d ever crossed a line physically, but

  He had drawn that line in the sand years ago. A really deep line. He wasn’t interested in me like that. And I got the message. Loud and clear. After a few years, that is. What? He’s pretty! Can you really blame a girl for lusting even if it was a dead end?

  Liam warmed my cold feet with his long fingers, and I moaned in content. He knew I loved having my feet rubbed, a thing none of my past boyfriends ever did. The jerks. Couple that foot massage with the drool-worthy kilt action on the screen, and I couldn’t be happier. This was why I busted my ass each week as a lowly waitress in a city of a thousand restaurants: This end of week bliss. Scottish men, foot rubs, and wine with my bestie. Nothing could be finer.

  As the show progressed, I couldn’t help but see Liam out of the corner of my eye when I grabbed popcorn, which, I noticed, he hadn’t eaten any of it yet. It was clear that he was frustrated. Probably a costume was wrong or one of the weapons wasn’t quite period. Liam was a bit anal retentive about that sort of thing. He was a bit anal about everything, truth be told. Most people couldn’t stand Liam once they got to know him. I got it, he was a gigantic know-it-all, and no one likes a braggart. It wasn’t his fault. It’s just how his brain was programmed. He felt compelled to give you the right answer even if you didn’t ask for it.

  Liam made a low grumble and I shushed him.

  “It’s almost over. C
ool your jets.”

  When the end credits rolled, I really wanted to discuss what happened in the show, because Holy Hell what an episode, but it was clear we were going to be talking about other things first. Liam shoved my feet off his lap and began to pace around my small living room floor.

  That couldn’t be good. Liam paced when he was having a hard time figuring something out. He hated when there was a problem he couldn’t solve, or if there was something he didn’t know at least the basic information on. He became obsessed. Frantic. When he got like this, it made him hard to be around, which meant I needed to help him solve whatever was on his mind or I’d be the one ultimately suffering.

  “Okay. You may speak now. What’s crawling up your ass?” I asked, putting my feet on the coffee table instead. It wasn’t nearly as nice as his warm lap.

  He stopped pacing, “Do you remember how we met?” he asked.

  I cocked my head and thought. “Well, you moved into the building about seven years ago. I offered to help you move your boxes. You lectured me on the right way to lift a box, I thought you were flirting. I tried, unsuccessfully, to hit on you. We didn’t speak for months after because I was mortified of how epically bad I’d read you. Then, you got locked out of your apartment one day. The super was out of town. I crawled out on the fire escape because you are a chicken who can’t deal with heights, and I shimmed my ass into your apartment and saved the day, and we sort have been friends ever since.” He looked at me, seemingly surprised I’d remembered so many details. “Yeah, I remember,” I said. “Why?”

  He nodded along, validating my word-vomited list of events leading to our friendship. “In the seven years since we’ve been friends, how many women have you seen me bring home?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. A few.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me because he knew I was lying. I totally checked his dates out through my peep hole. He knew because I told him. I’m a moron.

  “Okay, fine, I know you brought home like, five or six maybe? I can tell you this: they were all blonde and big boobed. You, sir, are a cliché,” I said, looking down at my very opposite body type. Rail thin, smallish boobs, no real hips. Tack on basic brown hair and eyes and you had an amalgamation of all the qualities guys didn’t want.

  “They haven’t all been blonde,” he said, affronted. “One had dark hair.”

  I stood up and dusted the bits of popcorn off my oversized Sassenach sweatshirt. “Please, she was dirty blonde and easily had double D’s.”

  He didn’t argue with me because he knew I was right.

  I’ll admit, I was jealous the first time he brought one of the bimbos back to his place. Mostly because I realized that he had a ‘type’, and I would never be it. A bootylicious Barbie I wasn’t.

  Jealousy was not a good look on me, so I started thinking of Liam as being gay. When that didn’t work, I pretended he had the male anatomy of a Ken doll. That was the key. If he didn’t have a penis, we could be friends.

  Liam let out a breath and began pacing again. I headed over to turn off the TV by hand, because I’d long since lost the remote.

  “Liam, help a girl out. What is bugging you? Let’s figure it out so we can have ice cream and talk about the show.” I picked up some bananas and whipped cream for sundaes even. Whatever miniscule problem he was fixated on could likely be solved in a single sentence if he’d just calm down and dish.

  He turned and ran his hands through his own dirty blonde hair. I frowned when it didn’t even mess his hair up. He had that perfect beach hair that no one from New England should be blessed with. And his eyes. Good gravy. Gorgeous eyes. That’s what I’d first noticed about him, and quite honestly, why I offered to help a perfect stranger move boxes. They were the lightest shade of blue I’d ever seen on anyone before or since. They hit you in your core somehow. Eyes like that made him stand out, which I think he knew because he tended to keep his gaze down in public, though it could also be that people, in general, made him uncomfortable. And eye contact, when you thought about it, was really something intimate. Maybe that’s why you had to know Liam for a long time before he would maintain eye contact with you for longer than two seconds. Eyes are the link to the soul or some shit. We’d advanced to the normal level of eye contact, but it took years to get him there.

  Even though we are not involved in a sexual way, nor could we ever be, my heart still did a little flip when he looked into my eyes as he was now. There was just something so captivating about them. I called them his voodoo eyes. Women were powerless against them. Men, too, for that matter. It was his curse. Poor baby. Must be hard to be beautiful.

  “Okay,” Liam asked, “In the time that we’ve been friends, how many gentlemen callers have you had over?”

  “Um…I don’t know.” I said, trying to dodge this bullet by pretending I had no idea. I might be a Plain Jane but that didn’t mean I didn’t like me some booty. My sex number wasn’t skank high, but it wasn’t prudish either.

  Liam’s lips pressed together. He was agitated by my uninformative answer. “Can you ballpark it? It’s important. I’m trying to collect the data before I ask the favor.”

  Good old socially awkward Liam. The things that came out of his mouth, sometimes. He came off as a normal guy, until he opened his mouth and said crap like that. “Collecting data,” I mumbled. “You mean in the last seven years?”

  “Yes, please,” he said.

  “I don’t know, Liam…A few dozen or so. It’s not like I keep a journal of the guys I have over,” I huffed. At least, not since I got out of high school. After that, it was just a mental list.

  He nodded again. “And of those scores of men, how many of them stayed over?”

  Did he just call me a whore?

  “Scores of men?” I hissed.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he sighed, “I’m sorry. I realize this is none of my business. I am merely trying to assess if you are the appropriate person to ask this favor of.”

  I looked at him, my mouth agape. “By asking me how many guys I’ve slept with?”

  Sure, we were best friends, but we didn’t talk about this kind of thing. We’ve discussed, in detail, what we had for dinner, or what the homeless guy in front of our building peed on today, or, my personal favorite, who ticked us off at work, but never about the people we were dating. If he was bringing up a clearly uncomfortable topic, it must be something huge he was struggling with.

  “Yes. The number of men is essential for the data I am trying to compute.”

  Jesus, sometimes he sounded more like a robot than he did a man. “Not that it’s any of your business, but like 99% of them. Now, can you tell me what the hell is going on in that head of yours?”

  Liam sat down on the couch and started to bounce his leg up and down. A nervous twitch he got in socially uncomfortable situations. I knew from being one of his only friends that this meant he was feeling overwhelmed by something.

  I sat down beside him and put firm pressure on his knee with my hand to quiet his nerves, knowing that heavy touch was soothing to him in times of anxiety.

  Liam looked down at my hand and quickly stood up. “See. That, right there,” he said. “What do I do if…” He broke off his thought and went to the window, looking out at the night sky.

  “What? Liam? What is going on? You’re kind of freaking me out.”

  “Angel is moving back to town.”

  “Oh?”

  Angel was his ex. They were serious high school sweethearts. I didn’t like her. Why, I had no idea, as I’d never met or even seen a photo of her. I just knew that she’d done a number on my friend. Well, that and he’s been hung up on her ever since. That made me irrationally jealous. Liam was very private about his relationships. Hell, he’d only ever mentioned Angel’s name maybe five times since we met, but every time he said her name, there was a lingering hurt in his eyes. Anyone who hurts Liam is no friend of mine. Not that I’d know her if she walked up to me on the street, but I’m taking a
shot in the dark that she’s blonde with big boobs.

  “How is she doing?” I asked, trying to keep my bias out of my voice.

  “She’s well. I think. She’s staying with her mother until she finds a place.” He turned around. A pained expression was on his face. “She wants to get together in a few weeks.”

  “Ah.” That explained it. He was nervous. It was one thing to catch up with an old flame on the phone. A whole different scenario when they wanted a face to face. Especially with whatever history they had. He must be freaking out.

  “Okay…” I said gently, as though approaching a wounded animal. “Dinner is good.”

  “Chloe, I haven’t seen her since she broke off our relationship. We were kids then. So much time has passed. I don’t know what to say to her. How to act. I don’t know anything, especially what she wants from me.”

  I gave him a small smile. He was overthinking things. But that’s what Liam did best. “Don’t stress about it. She probably just wants to see how you’re doing. You know, catch up.”

  He looked at me with those damn icy eyes. “She said, and I quote verbatim, ‘She missed me.’”

  I flinched. “Well, in that case, she wants to bang ya, buddy.” I said, patting him lightly on the arm, hoping that would clear up his confusion and we could start our ice cream. Liam wasn’t great at reading people’s body language and worse at understanding subtext. Now that he understood her intentions, I thought we’d be able to move on to dessert, but my translation seemed to upset him even more.

  “I was afraid you were going to say that.” His eyes were drawn tight with worry.

  “Dude, it’s okay. I got you. No stressing out allowed. I’ll help make sure the evening is perfect. I can hook you up with a good restaurant. Maybe get you in to a fancy-pants place.” Being a waitress had very few perks but knowing other waiters and hostesses from other restaurants helped bump you up the reservation lists. It also came in handy knowing which places were worth the money and which ones were dodging the health inspector. “Whatever you need,” I continued. “I can help with your outfit, picking out the right flowers, where to go after. Whatever you need, just ask.”