If We Kiss, page 17
“Actually, I already kissed him.”
Well, that stopped everything. Too late now. Her eyes were open wide, and I was on a roll.
“Yeah, there it is. I kissed him. You wanted to know who he kissed over vacation? Me. He kissed me, not on New Year’s Eve, that’s my technicality—but he kissed me. Deep and wet. I kissed him and it was great. You wanted to know who he fell in love with over vacation? It was me. So you can stop flicking your pretty hair around and encouraging me and Kevin to get along, because we do get along, sometimes too well.”
Tess blinked twice, then looked at Kevin, who was looking at his feet. She let go of his hand and walked out of the kitchen then up the stairs. We all watched her go.
Darlene put on the pot holders and picked up the brownies. “These really do need more time,” she said, and slipped them back into the oven. That seemed to unglue everybody, because they all dashed out of the kitchen, whispering to one another as they headed for places to sit down and rehash the scene I’d just caused. Kevin went into the bathroom and locked the door. I decided I needed a little personal space so I whipped past George, who was still leaning against the fridge watching me.
I grabbed my coat from the closet, went out the front door, and sat on the step to breathe some cold air. The book from George was in my pocket. I ran my fingers over the smooth cover and tried not to think.
A few minutes later, the door opened. Tess came out. She had her duffel and sleeping bag. Her eyes were red.
“Where are you going?” I asked, my voice croaky.
“My mom’s coming,” she said. “I called her.”
I nodded. “Tess . . .”
“Shut up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care,” she snapped.
A thousand explanations, justifications, arguments popped into my head. I kissed him first, I tried to tell you, it just happened, it didn’t mean anything, you hurt me sometimes, too, it will never happen again. Even the few that were true didn’t excuse me, though. I had nothing to offer. I just sat there silently, torturing myself with the knowledge that this was probably the last moment we’d ever spend alone together.
“Why?” she asked, after a few minutes.
“I don’t know,” I said. “George asked me the same thing.”
“You told George? How many people do you want to stab? What is wrong with you?”
“I’m crazy. Stupid. Selfish. I don’t know.”
“And . . . why?”
“Lust? Love? Desire?” I tried to think, to be honest. “I guess, I wondered about it. I wanted to feel it, to experience how it would feel if we, you know, kissed—and, for the first time I was feeling the awesomeness, the overpowering—that’s how you said it felt—overpowering. Indescribable. I didn’t know what to do with the—I was overpowered, maybe, by the feelings.”
She sniffed. “You love him that much?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“But you hate me that much.”
“No,” I said. “The only one I hate is myself. I love you.”
“No you don’t. Not if you could do this to me. Not if you could betray me, all these times, not just when you kissed him, not just tonight, but every conversation, you just kept betraying me, your best friend. I’m the best friend you’ve ever had.”
“Yes,” I said. “You are.”
“I was.”
I started to cry. I tried to stop, to hold it in. She had every right to say that, I reminded myself. I knew the price; I’d always known.
“What did I ever do to you?” she asked. “I really want to know. What?”
“Nothing.” I took a breath, and answered the only truth that occurred to me. “You just . . . were . . . one notch better.”
She shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do,” I said, and cleared my throat. “We both know, we’ve both always known. You are the prettier one, the more confident, the more fun, the more talented one. I’m almost as much, always almost. It’s not your fault, I’m not blaming you. I’m just saying, if we’re being completely honest here, that’s always been the thing, you—and then me. And that was always fine with me, I didn’t mind, or I didn’t think I did—but maybe a little bit, I did.”
“So you kissed Kevin just to get back at me.”
“No, not just,” I said. “There’s also a thing between me and Kevin. I’m sorry, but there is, which is obviously, and not just because of you, going to have to be eliminated. Maybe it already is. I don’t think I love him, really. Kevin is more . . .”
“Forget Kevin,” Tess said. “What is that, like, a boy fantasy, to make out with best friends? Please. But he’s just a boy. You were my best friend.”
I nodded. Were.
“And you what, wanted to bring me down a peg?”
“No. Not that. I just, I wanted to be chosen. Instead of you.”
“Well, congratulations,” she said, looking away from me. “You win.”
The tears ran down my face. I didn’t care; I didn’t wipe them away. “Will you ever forgive me?”
Her mom’s car pulled into the driveway. Tess picked up her stuff. “I don’t think so,” Tess whispered as she passed me.
forty
THE LAKE HAD thawed and buds dotted all the trees around it. Samantha’s hair was done in long ringlets with baby’s breath threaded through, and mine was pulled back on top in complicated twists, but blown out straight and shiny beneath. I agreed to lip gloss and mascara. Sam got only gloss. Kevin and his dad were wearing identical suits, except for the sizes. And my mother looked more beautiful than ever. Her dress was plain, a pale pink sheath, and she wore a wreath of flowers in her hair, but it was her face that was remarkable. She couldn’t stop smiling. I asked her if her cheeks felt sore as we checked ourselves in the mirror before heading downstairs. “Very,” she said.
Samantha came out of her room, which used to be the old TV room. She had declared she was absolutely not getting rid of the wallpaper in there because she absolutely loved the little jungle animals on it. I had picked that wallpaper. I smiled at her and told her she looked great. She arranged her legs into an awkward stance like my own and shrugged. “Whatever,” she said, but her random-toothed smile gave away her cool.
I squeezed her around the shoulders and we headed downstairs, past the closed door of Kevin’s room. He and Joe were downstairs shooting pool in the basement, killing time. Our basement, now—all of ours.
The social whirl had calmed down somewhat after Darlene’s party—not because of my outburst, either. That was overshadowed for most people by the fact that a bunch of kids drank so much they threw up all over Darlene’s living room just as her parents came home early and surprised everybody who was still there. Pretty much the whole grade was grounded for a while, and things hadn’t picked up all the way, since. Jennifer and Brad had started chatting more, and he even beat her twice at basketball, but so far, as far as anyone knew at least, no kissing. Though I suppose you never know.
A couple of times George walked me home, through the woods. Sometimes we talked, but sometimes we just cracked sticks or tossed rocks into the stream. It was nice.
I missed Tess so much it ached.
I sent her an invitation to the wedding, of course. She didn’t RSVP. Friday in the hall, she nodded at me, I think, or else her head had just bobbed coincidentally. But for once she didn’t turn away. That’s something. That had to mean something, I told myself.
Joe walked down the aisle first, between Kevin and Samantha. They all looked beautiful. Kevin and Samantha stood up on the platform and turned to face us. Joe waited on the ground and smiled his slow smile as my mother and I started down the aisle. We stopped halfway there, as we’d practiced, and I gave her an air kiss near her cheek. “Charlie,” she whispered.
“What?” If she was panicking I’d run with her back up the aisle and we could ditch our shoes and hike down the hill, home.
“You’re my number-one love, and you always will be.”
Tears sprouted in my eyes. I tried to suck them in but eyes are not all that well suited to sucking. “Mine, too,” I croaked. “You, I mean.” And I continued down the aisle to stand under the canopy across from Samantha and Kevin, passing Joe, who was on his way up the aisle to join my mother.
The party afterward was fun. The Association made an exception and let us use the clubhouse, which was decorated in a wedding theme. There was a DJ playing decent music, mostly old stuff, but okay. I danced with Joe, and with George, who had come as my sort-of date. While I danced with George, Kevin danced with Samantha. Tess had dumped him, of course, and he hadn’t asked anybody else out since. I guess we all needed a break from love.
The next dance, Joe asked Samantha. I figured that was Kevin’s cue to ask my mother, but he turned to me instead and held up his arms. What could I do? I stepped into Kevin’s personal space and felt his arms close loosely around me.
We didn’t talk, didn’t make eye contact. That was our way now, even when we weren’t dancing together with a roomful of adults watching us. It felt weird and distant yet familiar, like what had happened between us was a long time past. I was thankful for that. The slight heart-thudding was like an aftershock from an earthquake, I figured, and aftershocks are natural, expected, and always diminish in power with time.
The song ended and I left quickly to get a drink from the bar. An orange juice. I had made a vow never to drink alcohol again—especially gin, ever. The sun was setting so I walked out onto the deck to look at it, over the lake. Nothing like lake-looking to dilate the mind.
“Charlie.”
It was Tess, down below the deck. She was in shorts and a T-shirt, her bike between her legs, her helmet unbuckled on her head.
“Tess.”
“Congratulations.”
“Do you want to come in? Get a drink? Did you get the invitation? You were invited, Tess. I swear I . . .”
Tess nodded, then shook her head. “Tell your mom I send my love.”
“Okay.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You?”
“Yeah.”
“So, um . . .”
“So.” She buckled her helmet. “I just wanted . . .” She shrugged.
“Thanks. You’re the best.”
“No I’m not,” she said. “I’m just . . .”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
She jumped up onto the pedals of her bike and sped away. I watched her go until I couldn’t see her anymore. Inside, people were clapping. I looked up at the endless, cloudless sky.
Someone tapped my shoulder and I turned around. George. He’d surprised me again. I felt myself smile at him, and watched him return it.
“Want to walk a bit?”
I nodded, set down my glass on the railing, and led him toward the woods. We walked awhile. I was thinking I should ask him if he was having a good time, thank him for coming, something polite. Instead I asked, “Is it you?”
“Who?” he asked, and pointed at his chest. “This? No, this is someone else entirely.”
I shook my head. “It’s you I should also be asking to forgive me, right?”
“Why me?”
“Because,” I stammered. “Because you, at the time, when I, when Kevin and I . . .”
“Oh, that again?” George shrugged. “No. It had nothing to do with me.”
“So you weren’t mad, then?”
“At you? Why would I be?”
“You know,” I said. Why did he always have to torture me? “Because Kevin and I . . .”
“Kissed?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“It didn’t bother you?”
“No.”
“Because . . .” Oh, how embarrassing to figure it out at this late stage, especially with him there as my date. “Because you didn’t, I mean don’t, like me in that way.” I smiled to show no big deal, I always knew that, I haven’t been flattering myself into thinking otherwise all this time.
“Oh, no,” George said. “I liked you in that way. In the kissing way? Oh, I liked you, I like you, very much, in that way exactly. I always have.”
I was so confused. “So then . . .”
“All right, it bothered me a little. But I knew I had to be patient, and . . .” He touched my shoulder. “It’s you. You have to ask to forgive—yourself.”
“Me?”
“It’s always been you,” he said. His face was all a question. I put my hands behind his back, pressed against his jacket with my palms, tilted my face up to his, and kissed him.
It wasn’t at all like kissing my cousin, or Kevin. It was soft and sweet and romantic and even under a tree. And in the background, up the hill at my mother’s wedding, music was playing. George touched the side of my face with his palm and pulled back, his eyes still closed. He opened them slowly and said, “I didn’t care who kissed you first as long as I kissed you last.”
We eventually made it back to the party, holding hands. Everybody was still having a good time. It was a good party, and I had come to seriously hate parties. At one point the guests picked each of the five of us up in chairs and gave us rides around the room, which was more harrowing than fun. After that, Mom and Joe cut the cake, and then the good-byes began. Mom and Joe were postponing their honeymoon until the summer, when we kids would be away at camp, so the five of us were the last to leave.
Joe carried Samantha half-asleep up to bed, and I helped Mom untangle the wreath from her hair. “You looked beautiful tonight, Mom,” I told her reflection in the mirror. “Heck of a night.”
“Thank you, Charlie,” she said. “Thank you for being my best woman. You are, you know. You’re the best woman I know.”
I didn’t want to ruin her night by explaining to her why I am so not, why I am so far from the best woman, or even a good woman, or even a woman. Well, but I am not a little girl anymore either, I guess. I said, “Thank you, I love you, good night,” the mother-daughter greatest hits.
I hung up my dress on the special hanger it came with and pulled on my flannel nightgown. I was tired. I was tired from the whole year. I headed for the bathroom to wash up. My hair got a little wet as I started to wash my face. I wanted to try to keep the twists in for the after-wedding brunch in the morning, not mess myself up so fast. What to do?
I pulled off my underwear and put it on my head. Just as goofy-looking as Tess, I saw in the mirror, and almost as pretty. No. Not almost. Different. Goofy and pretty and obviously still deeply messed up. I finished washing up and put my underwear back where it belonged. It was clearly time for bed.
When I opened the bathroom door, Kevin was in his doorway, staring at me.
I was startled. I stared back. We stood those few feet apart, in our pajamas, frozen. He was probably just waiting to go brush his teeth, I realized, and turned away, went back down the hall to my room. The thumping of my heart would just take a minute to subside, I knew, so I sat on my bed with my eyes closed and waited. I congratulated myself on getting used to this chemical stuff.
When the thumping calmed, I opened my eyes. There was Kevin, standing inside my doorway. His chest was expanding, contracting under his white T-shirt as he moved two steps closer to me.
I stood up. “Kevin . . .”
“Chuck,” he said. “I . . . you . . . I wanted to . . .”
“What?”
He lifted his right hand, touched his pointer lightly to my forehead, and whispered, “North.”
A Global Kiss. He was giving me a Global Kiss. My mind sped forward. I knew what was coming, I knew the end of the Global Kiss: I love you all over the map. I love you. . . . I felt my legs starting to shake. Do I love him?
He touched my chin. “South.”
What should I do? It would be so bad, so deliciously bad, if . . .
My cheek. “East.” If we do this, if we kiss . . .
Other cheek. “West.” Do I love him all over the map? No. I smiled. It was simple and clear, and George’s face was in my mind. But even that wasn’t what pulled me back to the shore of sanity. I had stopped spinning.
He opened his eyes, his dark blue eyes, deep as the lake, and stared into mine. We waited, both of us, wanting and waiting to see what would happen. I leaned forward, a little, toward him. He leaned forward too. I do like these feelings, these powerful new charged feelings, but they don’t belong to him.
We met in the middle. One of us, I’m not sure which, made a humming sound, or maybe it was a sigh. I think it was me.
I kissed him, lightly, on the forehead, and pulled away.
Bonus Material
A Q&A with Rachel Vail
Q: Why did you decide to write a story about a first kiss?
A: Is this a story about a first kiss? I guess it is. Hmm. The thing is, that’s not how I write. What I do is, I make up characters and figure out who they are and what they want, need, are afraid of, or regret—and then imagine what could happen to them that tests all they believe about themselves. So this is a story about a girl named Charlie, who has never kissed anybody, who has convinced herself she has no interest in being swept away by the passionate feelings of falling in love for the first time.
Q: Do any elements of If We Kiss come from real-life experiences?
A: Absolutely. Some of the details come from my own life, or from lives of friends or things I overhear on the subway or in grocery stores, or from letters or e-mails kids write to me. Some plot points are imagined or cobbled together from many sources. But every feeling that any character experiences is a feeling I have felt myself. For example, though I never fell in love with a guy who then became my stepbrother (and in fact don’t have a stepbrother) I have certainly felt my heart pound for a completely inappropriate guy, and been simultaneously ashamed and intrigued by the feeling.
Q: What was your first kiss like?
A: I was in the play Bye Bye Birdie and my real-life boyfriend was playing the part of my boyfriend in the show. We had held hands a couple of times and I remember to this day how his hand felt—big, soft, and warm. Opening night of the play, when we were in the wings on opposite sides of the stage about to come out for our bows, I saw that he had flowers for me. We met center stage and as I tried to grab the bouquet, he leaned forward and planted a big soft kiss right on my lips. Ack! I was so surprised, I did what I usually did when a relative landed a kiss on my mouth—I wiped it off with the back of my hand. My father filmed the whole thing. My first kiss: wiped away in front of hundreds of people and preserved forever on family film.
