Kiss Me Again (12 page)

“Me too,” I said, not knowing if that was true or not, before that moment, when it irrevocably was.

She started to smile a bit, but pulled it down, turning her eyes to the board again. She moved, I moved, she moved and said, “Mate.”

I held out my hand again. “Good game.”

“Good game,” she said, shaking on it. “You shouldn’t say nasty things about people. Even yourself. That’s what my mom says.”

I watched her put the pieces away carefully into their little plastic bags. “She’s right, your mom. She’s smart.”

“Kevin hates her.”

“No, I’m sure he doesn’t.”

“He does,” Samantha said solemnly. “Because she left.”

I nodded.

Samantha zipped up the canvas bag. “I don’t hate her,” Sam said. “I wish Kevin didn’t. Do you hate your dad?”

“I don’t know. I was really mad at him for a while. I don’t really remember, but supposedly I wouldn’t even look at him. It’s like the one thing he and my mom agree about—how mad I was. And it took me years before I could even say hello to his girlfriend, who’s now his wife. I just flat-out hated her. Maybe I still do. But I guess I don’t hate him. Usually. And probably Kevin doesn’t really hate your mom.”

“He does,” Samantha said. “Your dad got a girlfriend while he was married to your mom?”

“Yeah,” I said, surprised by the catch in my throat. I didn’t care anymore about that. Not really. I didn’t think I cared, anyway. “Is that what happened with your parents, too?”

“No,” Samantha said. I waited, but that was it.

“Mmm,” I said.

She bit her lower lip. “I don’t know. They just stopped loving each other, I guess.”

“Oh.”

“It’s my bedtime.” She stood up and extended her hand to shake again. “Thank you for playing with me, Charlie.”

I stood up, too. “Your dad didn’t notice the time yet,” I said. “I could make us ice-cream sundaes, and we could gossip or something.”

She hesitated. She definitely hesitated before she said, “No, I have to go to bed now.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Charlie?”

“Mmm-hmm?”

“Do you ever see swirly colors at the sides of your eyes?”

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“Just wondering. I might be a mathematician when I grow up, or else a rock star.”

“You’d be great as either,” I told her.

“Thanks.”

I stood alone in my living room and watched her drift upstairs in her clunky Uggs. I listened to her footsteps across the creaky hall.

With nothing left to do, I went up a few minutes later and wrote my
Hamlet
essay while listening to music with my earbuds in. I must have drifted off to sleep, because a while later, I thought Laertes was knocking at my door, but no, it was Kevin, in the ghostly hallway light, leaning against my door frame.

STANDING THERE, SO
still and back-lit, he looked like one of the moody photographs hanging in the hall come to life, as if the image had clambered out of the frame and wandered to my room.

I sat up and took off my earbuds, pulled them out of my computer, and shut it. He hadn’t budged.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I whispered.

He shook his head.

“I have to … I have to go to the bathroom.”

“I’ll wait for you in my room?” he whispered. “I need to talk to you. Okay?”

“Okay,” I answered, and lowered my head. I couldn’t meet his intense eyes; it made me turn all melty inside.
We have to talk
is a terrible phrase.

When he left, I quickly dashed to the bathroom, to pee and brush my teeth and figure out what the heck was happening.
He can’t break up with me
, I thought;
we’re not officially … anything.
Though that hadn’t stopped me from breaking up with George, so I really had no good counterargument.

Not that you can argue logically when somebody’s dumping you. It just doesn’t matter. Even if you’re right, you’re still dumped.

But what if he didn’t want to dump me? He didn’t actually say,
We have to talk
; he said,
I need to talk to you.
Maybe he needed to confide in me. Unburden his troubled soul or some such horrible, wonderful thing.

For a girl who likes things clear and definite, I sure was making a murky mess of everything. I didn’t know if Tess was my best friend now, or mad at me again. And Felicity? Were we suddenly buddies? And was George absent the past few days, or just really good at avoiding me?

Of course, that was all just a way to avoid thinking about the boy who was waiting to TALK to me a few steps away in his boxers and T-shirt, in his room, in my house....

And also avoiding the fact that he had awakened me from a dream in which I was kissing Toby in that back alley, on those brick steps during a break, before Laertes showed up to sword-fight him.

I shook my head at myself in the mirror.
Get a grip, girl!

I spat out the toothpaste and washed my face with the already damp (ew) bar of Dove soap. Another new thing: In my own bathroom, before, the soap was always dry when I touched it. Only
my
shampoo was in the shower. And the face towels were never soggy.

I tiptoed to Kevin’s room.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hi.” He stood up and closed the door behind me. The lock clicked. His arm, still extended, hovered inches from my side.

“Hi,” I said redundantly, and then, with goofiness jolting my nerves like electricity, I added, in a fake-husky voice, “We have to stop meeting like this.”

“Why?” he asked in the intimate, unsmiling whisper of his.

“I don’t know,” I whispered back, breathing in the brisk, clean scent of Dove soap on both our faces, so close to each other, getting closer by the millisecond. “But, don’t we?”

As an answer, he kissed me. Hard and full on the mouth, not tentative this time at all. I surprised myself by meeting him there, just as forcefully. I was out of breath in about three seconds, pressed up against the closed, locked door of Kevin’s room.

It felt like thirst. Like when you’re roasting hot in the summer, and all you can think is
water
. You’re gulping from the water bottle, it’s so good; the best anything ever. Even after the first few seconds, when you’re no longer dying of thirst, you still keep wanting more, more, downing it, drowning in it, so fast it almost hurts. That’s what it was like, this time, kissing Kevin.

Want want want. The word stopped making sense. Was that even a word? Or just a sound? Want. Wonton soup. Wanton girl.

What do normal people think about while they’re kissing?

And then, without warning, there was this tenderness falling on us, between us, light like afternoon snow flurries. The kissing got slower, more gentle. His hands on my back pressed softer against my T-shirt, and then tangled up into my hair.

When I opened my eyes, his eyes were open, too, and he was staring at me with
tender
and
want
all swirled up together in his eyes.

“Chuck,” he said.

“Mmmm,” I said.

“Was the shirt I wore today purple?”

“What?”

He reached over to his desk and picked up his crumpled, blue-gray T-shirt.

“Blue,” I said. “Grayish blue.”

“Damn,” he said. “I thought that one was the purple. Spirit Day.”

“And here I thought you just had no spirit.”

“This is why my favorite color is plaid,” he whispered. “I hate being color-blind.”

He looked so disappointed, I plucked the shirt out of his hand and flung it over my head. “Plaid’s a good color.”

“Is this, so, are you okay? With … this? Because …”

“Shhh,” I answered, his answer, because I really was, I was okay with it and wanted to stay in that moment as long as possible. I didn’t want to talk about it. I just wanted to experience it. I watched his eyes close again as his slightly smiling mouth met mine. He turned out the light, and then I felt his hand soft on my back again in the dark.

Soon, I’m not sure quite how, we were lying down together in the dark, private, secret night on his bed. His pillow smelled warm, slightly sweaty, and very, just,
boy
. I was starting to shiver a tiny bit, though, whether from fear or cold or something else entirely, I am not sure. He pulled up his nubby blue blanket on top of us.

We smiled a little at each other between kisses, our eyes closing, our fingers tentatively touching each other’s faces, necks, collarbones, shoulders …

“Don’t fall asleep,” Kevin whispered.

“Mmm,” I agreed, and pressed myself closer to him.

A minute later, it felt like, a knock pounded at his door. I fell off Kevin’s bed onto the floor behind it.

I was instantly more awake than I’d ever been before, there in Kevin’s bedroom in the glinting gold light of morning.

Knock, knock, knock.

THE DOORKNOB TURNED
and jiggled. Hearing it, I flattened myself on the floor.

Locked.

I thanked every god that had ever been worshipped.

Kevin cursed under his breath.

“Kevin?” Joe said through the mercifully closed door. “It’s seven fifteen. You better get a move on or you’ll be late for school!”

“Yeah, Dad!” Kevin barked back, not looking at me but throwing his blanket on top of my flat, quivering self. “On it.”

As Joe’s footsteps clomped toward my room with its open door and its lack of me in it, I could feel my eyes trying to pop themselves out of my skull. I sat slowly, silently up, crumpling the blue blanket in my lap but ready to flop back down under it if Joe stormed back toward us after finding me missing and, like, kicked in Kevin’s door or something.

My life used to be completely plain and unappreciatedly boring. A morning trauma before all this was running out of Crispix.

From behind the bed I looked up at Kevin, not caring how wild-eyed and muss-headed I looked. Like it or not, we were in this mess together. We needed a plan, and quick.

Joe was down the hall, knocking on my door. “Charlie?” he called at my empty room. “Hey, Charlie?”

Finally, Kevin turned to me. I expected a mirror of my bat-crazy scared face, but he was smiling instead, his eyes sleepy but his mouth amused.

“We’re so busted,” he whispered to me, and then bolted out of his bed toward his door, his father’s footsteps coming at us fast.

“Hey,” I started to object, but when his hand hit the doorknob, I flopped down flat on the floor instead.

After he slipped out into the hall, closing the door behind him and convincing his father he was starving and in need of emergency poached eggs on an English muffin, Kevin went to the bathroom. I could hear him in there. How grossly intimate.

I took a few seconds to gather myself and then tiptoed to the door. No sounds out in the hall. I kept listening. Nothing. I opened the door a crack.

Samantha was in the hall outside the bathroom, reading a book, waiting. She looked up and smiled at me. “Hi, Charlie,” she said.

“Oh,” I answered. “Hi.”

She watched me walk past her from her brother’s room to my own. I closed the door behind me and wilted against it.

I had to wait for Kevin and then Samantha to get through with the bathroom before I could get in there. Breakfast was another fabulous episode of
Charlie Collins, This Is Your Very Odd Life
, full of not making eye contact and lumps of granola drowning in yogurt.

Joe poured me a big glass of juice, and said, “Pulp Lovers!”

He held out his fist for me to bump. “Yeah, Pulp Lovers.” I couldn’t leave him hanging, so I bumped it, then said, “Let’s never call ourselves that again.”

“I think Pulp Lovers is a pretty awesome name.”

“Uh, no,” I said. “Really not.”

I ate my Cap’n Crunch (we were out of Crispix) quietly and hid behind the newspaper while Joe quizzed his kids on their homework, hoping his question to me wouldn’t be:
And where the heck were you this morning, young lady?
And there was no way I could possibly drink that big glass of pulpy juice, so if I got rickets or whatever it is you get from not enough vitamin C, it was fully going to be on his conscience.

My mother drifted down to the kitchen clutching a coffee cup and wearing nothing but her robe and a dreamy smile. I brought my half-empty bowl and full glass to the counter and didn’t vomit.

On my way out the door to the bus, Joe called after me, “Hey! Charlie?”

“Busted,” Kevin whispered, passing me.

“Hey,” I whispered at his back. “What did you tell—we need to get—”

“Charlie?” Joe said again, this time right beside me. “We need to talk.”

Don’t pee in your pants, Charlie, hold it together.

“I know we are all getting used to living together.”

“Mngrblrgh.”

“And maybe this is—I should probably talk this over with your mother.”