If We Kiss (18 page)

thirty-nine

THE THEME OF Darlene’s party was: My parents aren’t home.

She hadn’t told any of us ahead of time for fear word would get out and people wouldn’t be allowed to go, or her parents would somehow hear about it and cancel their weekend away. “You know the expression ‘Three can keep a secret—if two are dead’?” she asked me, when I got dropped off.

I hadn’t heard of it before. It didn’t do a lot for my mood. I brought my sleeping bag and duffel up to her room. Tess and Jen and I were all planning to stay over. I wasn’t sure how I felt about doing that with her parents not due back until the next day, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby so I kept my mouth shut. I could always call my mom later if necessary. I went back down to help put chips in bowls.

It wasn’t long after most people arrived that the bottle of gin from Darlene’s parents’ liquor cabinet started getting passed around. I had one sip from the Dixie cup Tess poured for me and almost puked on the spot. It tasted like liquid Band-Aids. Other people I guess did not agree.

“You just have to chug it,” Tess told me. “Like this.” She threw her head back and tossed the whole shot of liquor into her mouth at once. Swallowing, she made a terrible face, then smiled. Kevin smiled at her and shook his head, then kissed her lips lightly.

I threw my head back and tossed my drink in, too. It burned, it was bitter, it was disgusting. For a few seconds I was unsure if I’d be able to force myself to swallow it and, once I did that, whether I’d be able to keep it down. But I did. So there.

“See?” Tess said. “Isn’t that better?”

I crumpled my cup before she could pour me any more.

“Let’s bake,” she said. “C’mon, Kevin, let’s see what there is to bake.” He followed her. She flipped her head back to look at me, her blond hair catching the light. “Aren’t you coming, too, Charlie?” She gave me a little pout with her lip-glossed mouth. She still had some on, then. She hadn’t done all that much kissing yet. I knew I was being mean, if only in my own head. I had been internally nasty toward her ever since she went to the library instead of coming with me to the Bridge. As if I had any right to question her loyalty to me. But there it was.

I followed them to the kitchen. Loud music was playing in every room, different songs all smashing together. It was hard to think through the noise and the buzziness that must have come from that horrible stuff she’d made me drink—what was it? Gin. Oh, yeah. Beaten again.
I should know I’m no good at gin by now,
I thought, which made me smile.

“What?” Kevin was looking at me.

“What what?” I asked him.

“You had a . . .” he whispered. Man, his whispering really kills me. “Nothing. Hey. Mr. McKinley asked me to tell you something.”

I raised my eyebrows at him, unsure whether the heart palpitations had to do with him or with newspaper or both. “What?” I asked.

“He said he re-read your article and if you want to reconsider quitting the paper, he’d be willing to take you back.”

“How grand of him,” I said. “But he won’t publish it, will he?”

“No.” Kevin shrugged. “Who cares? It’s just the school paper, Chuck.”

“Chuck?” Tess asked. “That’s cute. I like it. Chuck. Chuck, help me get up on the counter.” She took another swig of gin, then grabbed my hands, made them into a step for herself, and climbed from my palms onto the counter.

I felt myself grimacing at her behind her back. I tried to shake myself out of it, reminding myself that she was my best friend, and even if this is one side of her I don’t enjoy so much, this fun-loving-party-girl-flirtatious side, well, there are sides of me that are even worse so I should have some patience and tolerance. We all suck, especially me.

She threw down a box of brownie mix. “Score!” She jumped down and crashed lightly into Kevin, who caught her. “Whew,” she said. “Guess I’ve had enough.” She picked up her cup from the counter and handed it to Kevin. “You have it.”

She crossed her arms and leaned back against the counter where I was already leaning with my arms crossed. Her and me, a team, as always. We watched Kevin look into the cup, swirl the clear liquid around a couple times, then chug it. “Ugh,” he said, screwing up his face. “Bleh. That stuff is lighter fluid.”

Tess laughed her wicked laugh and got busy making the brownies. I helped; a bunch of people helped. She has a way of deputizing everybody. She was just bugging me, I guess.

About fifteen minutes after the brownies started baking she opened the oven door to check on them. “I think they’re ready,” she announced, and took them out, her butt up in the air.

“They’re not ready,” I said. I grabbed the box out of the garbage to show her. “It’s thirty-four to thirty-seven minutes, if that’s a nine by nine pan. If it’s eight by eight, it’s forty-two to forty-five. They’ve been in for fifteen! They’re still liquid.”

“They’re still liquid,” she mocked. “Listen to you, Chuckie. When did you become Chef Boyardee?” She was rummaging through drawers. She pulled out a spoon and shoved it into the hot brownie goo. She blew on it a few times, then put it in her mouth.

“That’s disgusting,” I said. “You ruined them.”

“Come on, Betty Crocker,” she said, tossing the spoon onto the counter beside the pan of half-cooked brownies. She looped her arm around my shoulders and leaned toward Kevin, dragging me with her. “Don’t judge your stepsister-to-be when she gets like this, Kevin. Deep down inside, she is not as serious and self-righteous as she seems. It’s just a phase. Charlie can actually be a lot of fun.”

“He knows,” I said. And I felt a wave of cold slide down me, from her arm on my shoulder down to my toes. Cold, cold, cold.

“What?” Tess asked, cocking her head at me.

“He knows I can be fun. Ask him.”

“You know she can be fun? Kevin?”

Kevin looked a little pale. The room had gotten quiet, I think. Everybody seemed to be leaning forward, listening.

“Sure,” he said, shrugging.

Tess leaned toward Kevin and kissed him on the mouth, a teasing little kiss, light but lingering. Her arm was still around me so I was dragged in near the kiss myself. “Mmm. You just need to get kissed, Charlie. You are so tense lately.”

“Shut up, Tess,” I said.

“What? It’s true.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I said.

“Really?” Tess smiled at everybody in the kitchen. “It doesn’t matter? Says the Crusader for the Truth? The Kamikaze Karaoke Truth Crusader?”

She laughed her wicked laugh. I didn’t laugh with her, didn’t crack a smile. I couldn’t look around, knowing all our friends were watching this. Knowing George was behind us by the fridge, and Jennifer over by the pantry.
Please stop
, I begged Tess silently;
hold it in
, I begged myself.

“Come on, Charlie, I’m just kidding. Can’t you take a joke? I’m sorry.” She tried to kiss me on my cheek. I pulled away. She picked up Kevin’s hand and held it. “She won’t even kiss me. She’s never going to kiss anybody. She is purity itself.” She leaned in to kiss him again.

“That’s not true,” I said.

Tess pulled her mouth away from Kevin’s, or maybe he pulled away from her. I couldn’t really tell.

“Really?” Tess asked. “Who are you going to kiss?”

“Kevin.”

Her face went white and, though she was trying to smile, the effort showed more than her teeth.

“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.