Her Kiss (Griffin) (2 page)

CHAPTER 4

Griffin in middle school (after the book incident with Ally)

No other girl had given me a cookie
before. Hickeys, phone numbers, semi-dirty messages—those were the kinds
of things I was used to getting from girls. I freely admit it was most likely
because of the girls I chose to associate with. You know, different types of
gifts from different types of girls. I got that. I did. Still, it intrigued me.
The home-baked cookie thing.

An
hour
after getting it—the cookie in my hands—I was
standing at my locker.
Out of nowhere, I was nudged hard by
Hailey, my friend
(repeat,
friend
)
.
(Yeah, Hailey is a girl—but I
don’t really see her as one. Seriously. I’ve known her my whole life because
she lives a few doors down from me in our shoddy apartment building. Her mom
used to baby-sit me sometimes and we’d play video games together. Still do when
she presses hard enough—but these days video games don’t really do it for
me like they used to—so she has to press pretty hard. Otherwise, I’m all
about hockey.)

Hailey gave me a suspicious
look—not even kidding around. “You’re in love with that cookie.”

I choked on a laugh. “I’m not.”

“Then eat it,” she challenged.

“I will.”

She crossed her arms. “Now.”

I scrunched up my eyebrows at her,
though I still couldn’t help laughing. “Why are you freaking out about it?”

“Because of the way you’re acting.
Please do
not
fall for Ally
Grange!”

“I’m not falling. Have I ever
fell?—ever?”

“No, but you’ve never acted this
way over baked goods.”

“I’ve never
gotten
baked goods.”

Hailey huffed. “No, but you’ve
gotten fan-mail—written on your
body
.”

I closed my eyes, holding back a
grin. It was true. Lacy Webber had written on my chest—with a
permanent
marker—that I have
“to-die-for pecs” and “smokin’ abs.” But that was Lacy Webber. She’s a little
bit psycho … and not in a good way. Sure, she’s nice to look at, but that isn’t
enough to make up for the fact she’s not a nice person. She takes catty jabs at
innocent girls if she sees them as competition, and she’ll spread mean lies
like lightening to get what she wants. The girl bugs me. So her “fan mail” was
scrubbed off my chest as soon as I got home from the party. The one we’d run
into each other at—with our tongues.

Thinking of Lacy, I grimace.

“It’s not the same thing,” I tell
Hailey. “Lacy Webber is—” I shudder “—Lacy Webber.”

Hailey rolls her eyes. “What you
really mean is: You’ve already made out with her. You won’t even give a second
look—let alone
thought
—to
a girl you’ve already kissed.”

I lean the back of my head against
my locker, not
totally
sure that’s
true. My eyelids squeeze shut though, as Hailey goes on to actually speak
reality.

“—
but
face it,” her voice seems laced with accusation, “you’ll never kiss Ally
Grange.”

My heart squeezes a little.

Although I try to block out
Hailey’s delusional next words, I hear them.
Loud and clear.
Her voice is curiously bitter. (All of this over a freakin’ cookie!)

“—
therefore
,”
she decrees, “there is the crazy, totally irrational chance you’ll
fall
for her. Actually,
her
—and her alone.”

Without opening my eyes, I smirk.
“You think I’m going to fall for a church girl?”

Hailey shrugs, though she smiles
tightly as she does it, like the thought
is
impossible—and she knows it. Still, she says around her smirk, “You fell
for her cookie.”

I sigh and go to take a huge bite
of it, just to show her she’s being dumb. But then, I can’t bring myself to do
it.

“Eat it!!!” she groans.

The smile that creeps on my lips is
sheepish. I know it, but I don’t care. I don’t even try to hide it. It’s
true—I’m a goner.
For the moment.
“I’m not going
to eat it in front of you.”

Hailey rolls her eyes. “You have to
be alone with your cookie.”

She doesn’t say it as a question,
but a statement.

Still, I grin. “Yeah.”

“This sucks!” she growls in my
face, then storms away, only half-kidding.
If that.

Then I’m left alone with my
cinnamon cookie that smells like Ally Grange. I still don’t eat it though. But
I lick my fingers. They’re sticky from holding the cookie for so long. As I
lick, I wonder if this is what her kisses would taste like. I’m almost positive
it is. The thought makes me think,
I’ve
got to get me some of that
—
Ally
kisses
.

But Ally is a church girl. And
sweet.

So though I
want
to go for Ally, I know I never will.

Still, I don’t eat the cookie. I
just dreamily sniff it. And don’t care who sees. My friends on the hockey team
playfully razz me about it and call me soft. I let them. They know I
can—and
will
—bash their
faces in if they give me an excuse; but it has to be more than being teased
about Ally. The truth is, I don’t mind being teased about her.

After all, just getting a cookie
from her rocked my world. So face it, I deserve to be teased. It’s hilarious. I
(
Griff, the Grief-Master
) am soft for
the church girl.

At least for
today.

CHAPTER 5

I probably wouldn’t have gone on to
give it much more thought—
me and Ally Grange,
I
mean. The two personages from that sentence were from two different worlds.
Mine was full of hockey and chaos, and well, okay, I’m just going to say it:
violence. But Ally’s seemed full of butterflies and rainbows. And she was
dating this poetry guy, Baker, that to me, seemed pretty much like a girl. So,
it kind of let me know I wasn’t her type. As if I needed proof.
Which I didn’t.
But there it was, in my face.

Still, I have to tell you this
stalker thing I did though. It wasn’t on purpose. It just happened because I’d
said (apparently) some impolite or inappropriate (who knows?) stuff in one of
my classes. For once, instead of getting assigned detention, I got assigned to
clean up (aka: pick up garbage) in the seating area of our school’s theater. It
was after school though—so it was basically detention. But it wasn’t in
the library. Like I said, it was in the school’s theater.

I didn’t bother to turn on the
lights. I wasn’t too picky about missing stuff, and really there wasn’t that
much to pick up. We’re not allowed to eat in there or anything, so there was
just an occasional candy bar wrapper, or balled up wad of paper, or an airplane
made from a concert program. (Lots of those.) Anyway, I was working in the dim
light, which was almost total darkness, but my eyes had adjusted because I’d
been there so long.

I was just finishing up, when the stage
lights turned on. I froze when I saw it was Ally that turned them on. She
thought she was alone, and I thought about slinking out the back door (‘cause I
got to tell you, people do embarrassing things when they think they’re alone)
but for some reason, I couldn’t move. Instead, I tilted my head and watched her
sit down at the piano. Then I lunged into the nearest seat once she started to
play. I got my own private piano concert—the first one I ever attended.
It rocked. It probably had a lot to do with that it came from Ally. But man,
she could play. I was always a fan of music, but not so much the piano. Not
until that day. But suddenly I became a big fan—at least of Ally’s.

I would have sat there listening to
her all night, but then Baker came in—and they started giving each other
soft kisses. That got me out of there fast—and put me into the arms of
this wild chick, Aspen Taylor.

Aspen seemed surprised by my
sudden, unexpected kisses. She was at her locker at the time. I turned her
around and then I was kissing her—mostly just because she was there. She
just went with it though—my sudden attention, my mouth on hers. Some
girls are like that. You don’t need to ask—or talk. You can just grab.
And kiss. Then walk away. Only, I wasn’t walking away. I was holding her
tighter and tighter, trying to get Ally’s haunting beautiful music out of my
head.

Aspen tried to talk in the midst
our make-out, while I was busy at her neck. “I just had detention. Where were
you?” she murmured, just making conversation.

But I didn’t want conversation. I
wanted the church girl out of my head. Fast. Now.

“Looking for you,” I told her,
sending a trail of kisses down the curve of her neck. “Can we go to your
house?”

CHAPTER 6

I didn’t particularly like enjoying
Ally’s music so much. I mean, while I’d been in the auditorium listening to it,
it had filled me with an awe-like peace. Which was something. My life was never
peaceful. Ever. It just wasn’t. But seeing graceful Ally play that piano, and
hearing her beautiful, stirring music—it was sort of like a little bit of
heaven had crept into my heart.
And my soul.
But THEN,
seeing her kissing that tool, Baker—that had been more like
hell
to my soul. And no, I didn’t enjoy
it. Yet, I couldn’t get either out of my head—Ally’s music or the sight
of her kissing another guy.

It made me restless. And avoid
her—which was kind of easy because we didn’t have any classes together.
But not
super
easy, because she spent
a lot of time in the school library. And that’s where detention was held—on
the other side of the library. So, a lot of times I’d look up, and there she’d
be, in the room across from me with her soft, blond hair falling over her
pretty face as she sat hunched at a table scribbling in a notebook. I don’t
think she had a clue that I’d watch her. But I would.

Seeing her, lost in her own little
dreamy world, it made me think about her. A lot. Way more than I felt
comfortable. But seeing her also filled me with a strange peace that I never
had before. And I can’t really explain it. Maybe it was from hearing her
beautiful music—or maybe just because I knew about her. She was so good.
All churchy and into volunteer work.
That sort of thing
wasn’t really my scene, but I had to admire it about her. And
I just kind of knew when I’d hear about volunteer stuff going on at
school
,
Ally was behind it
.
Or
a least part of it.
Maybe that was why she had a glow about
her—one that maybe no one else could see. But I did. Big time. Only, I
didn’t want to. The thing was, though, I had no choice. There it
was—making me stare at her like a freaking stalker.

Then one day, I saw her haphazardly
gather her things and shoot up from her seat. She scrambled out of the library
like she was late for something. I tilted my head, seeing that she forgot her
notebook at the table. My eyebrows rose.
Her
notebook
.

For a long time I just stared at it
from my spot across the room. I kept expecting her to come back.
To remember that she left it.
After all, it seemed she never
went anywhere without it. But after a long time went by with it just sitting
there, open at that empty table, I figured she wasn’t coming back. After that,
I started to worry someone else would come along and get their hands on
it—and read Glowing Ally’s notebook. The thought had me anxious. Especially
when Lacy Webber came into the library after her cheerleading practice.
Thinking of Lacy reading Ally’s story—or whatever Ally wrote in that
notebook of hers that got her all dreamy-eyed—it made my stomach clench
up. Lacy was one cold chick. And Ally was the kind of sweet girl Lacy ate for
lunch. There was no way I could let Lacy read that notebook.

I narrowed my eyes, watching Lacy.
She got the wrong idea though, and waved to me, excited-like. She started to
skip towards me, but Mr. Hicks, the detention supervisor for the day, stopped
her with the warning growl, “Detention.”

That’s all it usually took for most
students to go,
‘Oh, yeah. That’s why
Griffin is here in the library—detention.’

Lacy was no different. She got it.
She gave me a little smile with a shrug, like
‘Oh, I forgot, you’re a loser.’

…
but
not
one she’d mind kissing again. She made that clear by the way she kept looking
at me while she whispered with her friends. And
now—unfortunately—she thought I was interested in her … since I’d
been staring at her. Great. The girl was hard to shake before, now it was going
to be impossible.

At least she wasn’t anywhere near
the notebook.
She
was
about three
tables away from it
. She and her cheerleading cohorts, Sabrina and Jade,
were too busy whispering and shooting glances at me to notice the book. But
man, they were probably all three going to be after me now. Again.

I guess Hailey was pretty much
right. I don’t want girls following me around after I’ve kissed them. I kind of
want them to just disappear.

Finally, Mr. Hicks tells me I can
go for the day. Five minutes early. Decent of him—I guess. I head over to
Ally’s notebook.

Lacy and her friends hop up from
their seats to follow me, but Mr. Hicks stops them. He says in this stern voice
he has, “This is the
library
, ladies.
Not a social club.”

He escorts them out of the library.
For the first time in my life I’m grateful for a teacher’s intervention.

I grab Ally’s notebook, and I swear
,
I have every intention in the world of just closing it and
going to find her. That’s all I want to do—give her back her notebook,
and spare her from prying eyes reading it. That’s it.

Only man, as I’m closing the book,
I see my name written in it.
My
.
Name
. My heart does this violent slam
against my chest. Why would Cookie Girl write about me? What would she say?

I swallow,
then
my eyes involuntarily scan the page. It’s a song. Glowing Ally Grange wrote a
friggin’ song—about me.

The thing is—it’s adorable.

It’s about me carrying her books
for her that day. And she wrote another song right next it about me too.
One about eating a burrito with me in the school
cafeteria—which she never did.
Ever. But I eat a burrito at school
almost everyday, so it’s cute. Ally’s stalking me. Fantasizing about me. Wants
to eat lunch with me.

I smile.

Awesome.

Suddenly it’s like the world is a
bright shining rainbow—like I’m seeing it through Ally’s eyes.
Like puppies are going to start dancing around.

But then of course I have to go
home—and believe me, there’s no puppies dancing there.