The First 100 Kisses

by Danielle Bannister

  I had no idea where Liam had gone to. Probably out for his morning jog, freak show that he was. You couldn’t drag my ass out on a nice day, let alone a Fall one. Guess it was time to raid his fridge, as I knew I didn’t have much in mine.

  That was the sucky part about my job. I never knew if it was going to be a ‘lean’ week or a ‘let’s buy all the things’ week. If I was a smart woman, I’d stock up the big tips for times like this, but I was always so deprived of fundamental things like razors, bras, and tampons, that when I had the money, I went a little hog wild. It was a pattern I knew I needed to change. I should be more like Liam. He had gobs of money saved up. Hell, he could buy that house Angel suggested. Why the hell did he stay in this dump? I didn’t buy for a second that he loved the ‘energy’ of the city. Liam was an introvert. And let’s be real, probably on the spectrum. The only time he went out was when I dragged him kicking and screaming. There was no good reason for him to be in this apartment outside of the fact that he didn’t deal with change well. That was the real reason he stayed here. The change would be too overwhelming for him.

  When I got to the kitchen, I saw that he’d made coffee for me.

  “Bless you, Liam.” If I couldn’t have a burger, coffee would be a good start.

  When I opened the cupboard for a cup there was another sign.

  -Drink me.-

  “Ha, ha. Very funny.” I swiped the note in my hand but grinned just the same. Maybe I hadn’t lost my best friend after all? Maybe we’d be able to get past my colossal line-crossing? Hell, maybe he didn’t even notice I’d fallen for him? I closed my eyes and pressed the note against my chest. I really hoped so. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to live in a world without Liam. For better or worse, and this moment in time was definitely worse, I needed him.

  I poured myself a cup of coffee then opened his fridge to steal his creamer and begin the hunt for munchies.

  Inside was another note.

  -Eat nothing. I’ll be back with your lunch soon.-

  “Lunch? What the hell time is it?” I turned around to look at the clock on the microwave. It was almost eleven. Why wasn’t he at work? It was Monday. He only took the week off, didn’t he? I needed to see if he’d texted me. Maybe he took another day?

  I looked around for my phone, and found it on his kitchen table, charging. I hadn’t put that there. He must have gone to my place to find my phone and charger. The thoughtful little shit.

  Snatching my phone, I hopped up on his counter and turned it on. The second it connected with his wifi, my notifications went bonkers.

  The first one was from Liam.

  -Hey, where are you? I got out of the shower and you were gone.-

  That was the message Liam sent last night. I felt a pull of guilt just as another one came through:

  -I don’t think I can do it. I can see the restaurant…but I don’t know if I can go through with it. Chloe, where are you?-

  My heart stopped. He was texting ME when he stopped at the light? Shit. He needed me. And I let him down.

  “I’m so sorry, Liam.”

  Another notification.

  -She just went to the bathroom. She’s already shoved her tongue in my mouth. I…I didn’t like it. Why didn’t I like it, Chloe? I was supposed to like it…You have to get me out of this.-

  Wait. He wasn’t having a good time on his date?

  -Chloe, we’re on our way back to the apartment. I don’t know how to get rid of her. She is glued to me. Nothing I say seems to be working to get rid of her. Please be home when we get there. I need you Chloe. Please.-

  He needed me?

  Just then, the door opened. Liam was dripping wet. He was soaked head to toe. I glanced out the window and noticed that it was raining. It wasn’t like him to go outside without checking the weather first. He hated the feeling of rain against his skin. Sensory thing. It was a great look for him though. I resisted the urge to appreciate how beautiful he looked when wet. I had to remember that we were only friends. Friends didn’t drool over each other.

  “Where’s your umbrella?” I asked.

  “I left it at your place.”

  When he was defending me against Damon.

  I ran into his bathroom and grabbed a towel to help him dry off. When I came back, he had taken his coat off revealing a take-out bag.

  “Double cheeseburger, extra bacon, no pickle. I wasn’t sure if you want fries too, so I got some just to be safe.” He held the bag out to me.

  I looked at the bag which he had protected from the elements with his jacket. The smell of the grease made my stomach rumble in delight.

  “You got me a burger?”

  “It’s what you like for a hangover, isn’t it?” A look of worry spread across his face, as though he had made some great mistake.

  “It’s perfect. I just, I just… No one’s ever done that for me before.”

  He took the towel from my hand to dry off his hair. “No one’s ever bought a burger for you before?”

  I shook my head. “No. No one’s ever paid attention enough to know just what I need.”

  Looking up at him, I knew what I needed. I needed Liam. I needed every aspect of him. How was I possibly going to just be his friend knowing the depth of how I felt for him? It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. Tears trickled down from the corners of my eyes.

  “Chloe, what’s wrong?”

  I walked over to the kitchen, tossed the bag onto the counter and placed my hands along the edge, bracing myself for what I was about to say. My back was to Liam because I couldn’t look him in the eye for this.

  “I fucked up, Liam. I think we both know it, too.”

  “Don’t worry about last night, I know you were drunk…”

  “It’s not just about last night,” I said, stopping him. “I started way before that.” I took a deep breath in and let it out quickly. “I offered to help with your problem with Angel and somewhere along the way…I got confused. I couldn’t remember the rules anymore. I lost where the lines of our friendship ended and my stupidity began.”

  “Stupidity? Chloe, what are you talking about?” Liam said taking a step closer to me. I could smell his cologne and it sent shivers down my body, so I held up my hand to stop his approach.

  “That’s close enough, Liam,” I said. “This is what I’m talking about. A week ago, I wouldn’t have been phased in the least if you smiled at me or gave me a hug. But now…”

  “Now what?”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Now it means something more. And that is where I fucked up. Somewhere in these practice kisses I forgot that I was just a place card for Angel. I wasn’t the woman you wanted to be kissing. I knew that. I knew that, but my heart fooled me. It convinced me that those kisses meant more to you. That I meant more to you.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment and the sound of the rain against the window felt like daggers to my heart.

  “I see,” he said.

  I do, too. I see what a fool I had been.

  I turned around to face the music. The truth was out. All that was left to do, was to walk away.

  “I screwed up our friendship, Liam. And for that, I am truly sorry. I had thought for one hot minute that I could shove my feelings for you aside and just go back to the way things were, but I realized I can’t do that. I would constantly be second-guessing every kind gesture you did as a friend into thinking it was something more. Like you cleaning up after me this morning, or leaving these notes. Those simple things I would take out of context and think you did them because you cared about me as more than a friend, too. But sometimes a burger is just a burger.”

  With tears clouding my vision, I pushed past him. I had to escape. I wanted to crawl out of my skin and hide myself away from this ache encasing my heart. I had to leave the city, even. Maybe to find my friend in Alaska. Maybe that would be far enough away from Liam to make it stop hurting.

  My hand was on the door when Liam spoke.

  “You’re
right, Chloe. You did screw up our friendship.”

  I wasn’t certain my chest could get any more painful, but it did. I nearly doubled over.

  “But,” he continued, “I’m to blame, too.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.

  He came up behind me. He placed his hand on mine, and together our hands closed his apartment door. He turned me around gently to look at me. It was everything I could do to maintain eye contact.

  “There were countless times I could have stopped the lessons, Chloe. Hell, after our very first kiss, I should’ve pulled the plug. I might not know much about relationships, but I knew what we were doing was skirting the line of inappropriate behavior.”

  “Why didn’t you stop it, then?”

  “Because I didn’t want to. Don’t you understand, Chloe? I didn’t want to end our friendship, but I also couldn’t seem to stop myself from…enjoying the lessons.”

  “Well, that’s just a biological side effect of kissing, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes. So you told me. Which is precisely why I decided to keep the date with Angel. It was an experiment. If the hypothesis was correct, kissing Angel should have exceeded my kisses with you. If she were my soulmate, I should have been able to tell that from her kiss. My heart and my biological need to procreate would be joined in one.”

  The boy had a way with words, didn’t he?

  “And what was your conclusion?” I asked, getting ready to have him dash all hope he inadvertently stirred in me.

  He smiled at me and tucked a bit of hair around my ear.

  “When I kissed Angel, or rather, when she kissed me, I felt…nothing. Well, that’s not true. I felt disgusted. It felt wrong. Like I was cheating on the woman I loved.”

  “Oh.” I found my legs again and stood taller. “That’s a bit of a hiccup to your hypothesis. So, what’s the conclusion? How does the experiment end?”

  His thumb ran along my jawline, a move I hadn’t taught him, and I fought not to melt against his touch.

  “It means we have to close the door on our friendship.”

  Right. Of course. I held my chin up so he wouldn’t see how much those words cut into me.

  “That’s probably the best.” My chin trembled as I spoke, betraying the emotion lying just beneath the surface.

  “Chloe, don’t you know that when one door closes, another opens?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “There’s always another new door for me to open. Aren’t I lucky?”

  “I’m not being clear, apparently.” He tried again. “I’m closing the door on our friendship, only so I can open it for something bigger. I think we are more than friends now. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  I blinked at him through the tears.

  “What are you saying, Liam?” I asked, not sure if I was hearing him correctly, or if it was just me willing his words to mean what I wanted.

  “You were wrong, Chloe. You weren’t the only one who blurred lines. It wasn’t just hormones. I feel something for you. You. Despite how many times you told me to imagine Angel in our practice sessions, I never saw her. I only saw you. Not just your lips, or your body. Something deeper than physical lust. I don’t quite know how to process it all, this is all so new to me. I just know that I can’t let you walk out that door thinking that I don’t want to kiss you, because I do. Very much.”

  “You mean…”

  “Yes. I want you to be my girlfriend, not my girl friend.”

  My tears ran down my cheeks.

  “Why are you still crying? I thought this would make you happy?” Liam asked nervously.

  “I’m crying because I’m happy, goofus.”

  “Ah. I have much to learn about women still, don’t I?”

  “Yes, you do. But I will happily teach you. That’s what girlfriends are for,” I said.

  He cupped my face pulled me up to meet his lips in a brief kiss.

  “One hundred,” he whispered.

  I gaped up at him, stunned.

  “Have you seriously been counting?”

  Nodding, he looped his arms around my waist. “I have a really good memory, Chloe. I remember every single one of those kisses. Every lesson you taught me, is locked in.” He smiled. “It’s actually why I stopped kissing you that last time, when you were on my counter. We were at 99 and…I didn’t want to be done with the lessons. I couldn’t tell you that because I didn’t think you liked me in that way. I kept reminding myself that we were just friends.”

  More tears followed, and he wiped them away with the pad of his thumb.

  “So, we were both pretty stupid, then?” I said.

  “Complete and utter imbeciles.”

  I bit my lip and stood on my tip toes to kiss him, but Liam held me back.

  “I have to warn you, Chloe, now that I am an expert level kisser, you may be in for a very long day.”

  “Well, I have to work tonight, so we better get started.”

  “Work, shmerk. You can call in dead. You’re mine now,” he said.

  “I am more than okay with that,” I laughed through the disbelief that this was really happening. Somehow, we had become ‘a friends to lovers’ story. A tale we might get to tell our own children one day. The future didn’t matter, though. Only this. This most perfect of moments.

  And with that, we came together for kiss number 101.

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  Acknowledgments

  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.

  Author Bio

  Danielle Bannister lives with her two children in Midcoast Maine along with her precious coffee pot and peppermint mocha creamer. She holds a BA in Theatre from the University of Southern Maine and her Master's degree in Literary Education from the University of Orono. Her writing includes: a collection of short stories called Short Shorts, The Twin Flames Trilogy: Pulled, Pulled Back, and Pulled Back Again, The ABC's of Dee, Enigma, Doppelganger, and Must Love Coffee. She's also co-authored a fantasy novel with Amy Miles called Netherworld and Hollow Earth. Book three is currently in the works. She has also written The Lurkers Within, which is located in the Havenwood Falls Series. When she's not on the stage, on the page, or engrossed in a good book, you'll find her binge-watching all the Netflix. As one does.

  Also by the Author

  The Twin Flames Trilogy:

  Pulled, Pulled Back, and Pulled Back Again

  The ABC’s of Dee

  Enigma

  Netherworld with Amy Miles (Book 1)

  Hollow Earth with Amy Miles (Book 2)

  Short Shorts

  Doppelganger

  Must Love Coffee

  The Lurkers Within: A Havenwood Falls Novella

  Look at The ABC’s of Dee

  (Av
ailable now)

  1.

  The chapter in which I have my first ‘first date’ in a pathetically long time.

  It’s ten minutes to seven and my underwear has already climbed up my ass more times than people have climbed Everest. I would love to blame Victoria’s Secret for selling me faulty ‘3 for $25.00 panties,’ but let’s be honest, I’m the one trying to cram my 40-year-old fanny into underwear meant for people who don’t eat food. They just looked so good on the stark white, half-butt mannequin that I thought they would totally cover the square footage of my backside. I was grossly mistaken.

  As I yank the neon pink cloth from the depths no undies should go (again), I debate whether I should change them or not. On the one hand, wearing these will pretty much assure I’ll be getting some because I don’t intend to wear this torture device all night long for nothing. On the other hand, it is only a first date. Wearing some good old ‘period panties’ would guarantee that there would be no traveling South of the Elastic Band Border and my cheeks would actually be comfortably contained. Decisions, decisions.

  That’s it. I’m becoming a nun. Nuns don’t have to deal with this shit. They don’t have to question how much wedgie-control is adequate for a first date. They can just sit in silence with no judgment about who they're dating, why their legs aren't shaved, or why they haven't had sex in two years. I know. I have issues. And a lot of toys.

  It's not like I've always been single. I dated a few guys in college; one was serious, but we sort of drifted apart pursuing our dreams. He was a photographer and needed to travel the world. Me? Not so much. I get air sick. Toss in a few more losers post-college (and a long bout with cancer) and you pretty much eat up my viable dating years. What I'm trying to say here is that I'm single not for lack of trying, but for lack of there being any decent, datable male humans left on the planet that would care to look my way at this late stage of my life. I'm trying not to be bitter about that.