The Art of the Kiss

by Holly Schindler

  It was such a strange feeling. Especially after all these years.

  “She chooses her photography over me. Every single time. I’d had enough.”

  “You’re such a hypocrite!” Fayth blurted. She couldn’t help herself. It was so stupidly sexist. “How many times have you been over here practicing—or at a gig on a weekend—instead of fawning all over her? And that’s okay. You assume it’ll be okay. But when the tables are turned, and she’s the one chasing after her dream, it’s not.”

  “Not true,” Ryan argued, but he had that look on his face like he was going to be sick.

  “I think that sometimes, we see what we expect. Not necessarily what’s actually there,” she said. But how was he interpreting her words? Now her stomach was absolutely churning.

  “You should embroider that on a pillow.”

  She shoved his leg, making his knees clang together.

  “Don’t get defensive and dismiss what I said. I’ve seen you with plenty of girls before, and you’ve never moped about a breakup like this. It’s like you’re still hanging on to it for some reason. You need to decide. Let her go or ask her to take you back. Just get off the fence.” She stood, brushed off the seat of her cutoffs. “Either way, be sure to leave Prince Charming at home from now on. Heather’s not the kind of girl to go for that crap. Very few of us are.”

  Nobody with half a brain is. You like Heather—and she’s sweet, but she’s got her own toughness. Don’t you see that? You like tough. I’m tough.

  “You coming in?” She held the door for him, but he shook his head.

  Inside, Fayth lunged to a spot where she could still see him through the small window.

  What was he going to do?

  He pulled out his phone. Fayth held her breath, hoping that she had pushed him enough to decide, right there, that his instincts to call it off had been right. Hoping that he would erase Heather’s number. Go about unfriending her on all his social media accounts.

  Instead, she listened as he began to leave a voicemail. “Hey, Heather. Uh, it’s me. Ryan. I was talking to the band, and we—the band, I mean—we all agree that we need a photographer. Someone to take some live performance shots. At one of our next gigs. Something other than those crummy posed shots. We, uh, we need them for the website. And online stuff. Help advertise our gigs. So. Let me know. Okay?”

  Fayth pulled her face away from the window. What had she done?

  Sent her maybe-Prince Charming back into the arms of another woman. A woman he was obviously really attracted to.

  Of course, she tried to assure herself, there was still a chance Heather wouldn’t accept Ryan’s offer.

  Then again, what princess had ever turned down her chance to show up at Prince Charming’s ball?

  If only Fayth had a Tinker Bell she could count on. Someone who’d sprinkle a little fairy dust and make everything better again.

  But no—it was all on Fayth’s shoulders. She would forever be her own rescuer. Her own Tinker Bell. Fayth, the now-black belt in taekwondo, would tackle emergencies herself.

  Did that radio guy know anything about heroines like that?

  ~Sharon~

  “A shoot!” Heather announced as we descended back down to the studio basement. “Over at Murio’s.”

  “Murio’s?” It was starting to get a little uncomfortable, frankly, the way Heather was moving in on my territory. Only, it wasn’t really territory, exactly, was it? An old camera I didn’t use anymore, a bar I’d stopped visiting.

  I’d made a decision long ago to stop traveling the same ground, stop following my own footprints. Why did it hurt so much to find Heather standing in them?

  “…Ryan’s band plays there. Needs some shots…” Heather babbled. “My best friend, Amanda, she’s the one who got me interested in taking pictures. You know I took her senior photo? Preserved for all time in the annals of high school. But she was always into artistic stuff. Music…”

  Amanda. The name had filled the darkroom frequently as Heather and I developed her rolls of film. Shot after shot—images she had once intended to take back to Liu. Now, she was acting like these were all practice shots. Like she was training, getting ready for this night with her ex. Hoping to use images from Murio’s as the entirety of her portfolio.

  I had my own Murio’s portfolio. One that Heather had never seen. I’d never shown her. Why wasn’t I now?

  Heather kept on chatting and chatting about her oldest friend, this Amanda person. Maybe, at first, it was only to erase the silence in the darkroom. Maybe it was a way to seem friendly and not like an imposition as she brought me yet another roll, developed for free.

  There were times, when Heather spoke of their friendship, that I was carried backward—not necessarily to the faces of my own old friends, but to my feelings about them.

  “We used to call each other,” Heather confessed. “Me and Amanda. After we should have been asleep. On these really basic early cell phones. The two of us with our comforters over our heads, whispering into these flip phones both our parents had bought us.”

  What did they talk about? I wanted to know. Oh, the same old stuff. Boys. And teachers. Their parents. Hopes and fears and music and the world. The kind of things that seem like kid stuff later on, but are the whole world when you’re whispering through the night. They talked the way we all dream of being able to talk to someone as adults, but so rarely do.

  Her story brought back the way I’d once sneaked downstairs while Dad was asleep to make calls to my own teenage best friend. Kathleen, that was her name. Kathleen, who had a line in her room and a fancy phone that could light up instead of ring with the flip of a switch. I could call her and her parents were none the wiser. Two girls talking and giggling and pledging secrecy through the night.

  “Sometimes, things seem different now,” Heather admitted. “A little distant, kind of.” She twisted her face, showing the explanation for it was something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  They were older. In different places in their lives. It’s easier when you have the same teachers and go to the same school and are the same age and going through all the same milestones—dating and learning to drive and figuring out college. When the struggles are the same, the triumphs are more easily celebrated together.

  I couldn’t remember the sad slow loss of a close childhood friend. It didn’t even seem like I’d gone through this—no post-college time of friends drifting off in their separate directions.

  It had happened, though. It had to have. The same girls who had once had extra toothbrushes in Dad’s bathroom. Who had helped with chocolate chip pancakes after sleepovers. Who had spent hour after hour on the phone. They were gone from my address book.

  Why hadn’t I noticed?

  I frowned, reaching for my tongs. Before I could pull Heather’s latest image from the fixer, the answer came to me, giving me a shiver: Because I had Michael.

  He’d come into my life fairly soon after college, when I was so absorbed with my business, with making my own way. I was just so busy. Before I had a chance to so much as take a deep breath and wonder where everyone had gone, he was already there. Filling all the spaces my close girlfriends had once occupied.

  Underneath every single one of the titles he’d worn in relation to me—boyfriend, fiancé, husband—he’d also been my friend.

  At that moment, with Heather’s ramblings in my ear and Michael’s face at the front of my thoughts, I found myself aching for another long, winding, aimless conversation—the kind you can only have with a best friend. The kind that went nowhere and to all the exact-right places at the same time.

  From the

  Studio Walls

  ~

  Bottom Step

  #2

  The bottom of the stairs to the basement—the same step where Sharon’s father had once sat at night to listen to the fights and talk to his daughter—was empty.

  Well. Empty except for the one last can of Pabst, anyway. A wordless toas
t to the man who had told Sharon she could. Whatever “could” amounted to at any given moment. Photograph the world, go into business, be married, not be married.

  He’d drummed it into her head. She could.

  One brief look at Sharon’s picture and you’d know the entire basement was empty. You’d swear it echoed with loss.

  And you’d be right.

  Not because the basement’s darkroom was gone—and had been for some time. Because he was gone. The man who had acted as her bodyguard while simultaneously making sure she had her own pair of boxing gloves, one that would protect her knuckles from every blow he wanted her to give the world.

  Sharon had inherited her father’s estate. It was hers to break apart, folding some things into her life with Michael and selling or giving away the rest.

  His house was the biggest part of everything he’d left behind. And yet, she was selling it. Letting someone else take up where he had left off.

  Was that always true? Were the biggest parts of us the things that had to be let go of in the end? Even our hopes? Our fears? Who we’d really been? Did we let that go with the last beat of the heart?

  She wasn’t sure, but avoided developing the roll that contained the shot as long as she could. Six months. Until the “Sold” sign appeared in what had once been her front lawn.

  She’d hung the picture in her studio as a tribute.

  And then she’d tucked away her 1967 Nikon F. Not just back into its case. She’d put it in the farthest reaches of the studio shelves, behind the rest of her portrait equipment.

  Over the next few years, the camera would eventually drift out of the studio, into the junk closet upstairs. But that was the day she officially retired it, the camera that had started everything.

  It was time. Her father was gone. Sharon’s beginning was over. Besides, she’d thought, maybe the ache of missing him would be a little less if she used a different camera. One that had not been purchased with her father’s money. One that had never had his fingerprints on it.

  A foolish idea, born in grief.

  “Buck up,” she could still hear him chanting. “Can’t quit now, just because I’m not around.” And she’d chuckled a bit, turning from the old camera case for what she thought was the last time. It was the one thing that would make him proud. Keep going, keep pushing, keep adapting, keep moving ahead, his tenacious little fighter Sharon.

  Excerpt from

  The Fairyland Times

  About Town

  March 7, 2001

  The best young talent in Fairyland performed on the Central High School auditorium stage last night to a standing-room-only crowd.

  Performers from all three Fairyland high schools battled for several titles: Best Singer, Best Band, Best Dancer, Best Comedy Skit. The Central High band Tomfoolery took the trophy for Best Overall Act.

  Fayth Johnson, Tomfoolery vocalist, and lead guitar player Ryan Withersby accepted the award to a round of cheering and deafening applause—so loud, in fact, their thank-you speech went largely unheard.

  Audience members Heather Scott and Amanda Pierce, both juniors at Fairyland South, left humming “Worlds Apart,” an original song written by Tomfoolery members. “We’ve never heard that band before,” Pierce said, “probably because we all go to different schools. But they were so good. And so different. I wish they had an album out. If they did, I’d play it until my next-door neighbors knew all the lyrics. Definitely deserved to win.”

  ~Sharon~

  Listen, I know Michael’s all about slow burn and getting to know the characters and using a bunch of literary acrobatics. Me? I like the now we’re getting to the really good stuff.

  And trust me, nothing makes a story juicier faster than a villain getting more villainy. Like Amanda was doing.

  Yeah, I used the word: villain. You already know where I stand on Michael’s fairy tale stuff. But I can agree with Michael on this much: Amanda was getting to be quite the bad guy.

  Besides, I know these people. I get Heather. And Amanda’s family had been the snoots of Fairyland for generations. The sort whose overt displays of wealth never did seem to quite match up with their résumés.

  Which sounds a little judgmental. But I’m just trying to say I’d photographed them all. Which means I had to really look at them. Every one of those Pierces.

  So you can trust me on this part. Every single word…

  ***

  Amanda’s gated community had a pool, which should have been a perfectly fine place to take Heather for the afternoon. The two could have stretched out on neighboring beach towels while the kids played, and Amanda could have bled Heather for information on what, exactly, was going on with Liu. The adjacent game room and bar, the pricey tropical plants in the landscaping surrounding the kidney-shaped pool would have done quite the job of reminding Heather how far down she still remained on the social scale.

  And yet, Amanda decided instead to drag her—and all three of her kids—to the pool at the country club.

  It had to be the most devilish thing Amanda’s rebellious little heart could think of.

  Oh, sure, Amanda could reason her way through this decision too. Paint it in a way that made her look helpful. Why, she was inviting Heather to the club for her own good. Preparing Heather for the realities of the big-time world she was about to enter. The world of the Lius and corporate jobs and advertising was no place for wide-eyed girls who wore lipstick from the Dollar Tree and talked about promising their dying mothers to lead with kindness. The world didn’t respond to little darlings. It responded, quite frankly, to straight-up intimidation.

  And money. It always responded to money.

  Amanda would be doing Heather a favor by toughening her up. She needed to help the girl grow a few calluses. Enlightenment—she could provide the exact dose Heather needed.

  It was bound to be an uncomfortable enlightenment. And a big part of Amanda found that absolutely delicious.

  Her twins bolted ahead of the group. Heather carried Aiden. Amanda, in sync with their current atmosphere, carried a crocheted beach tote from Nordstrom. And a few brightly colored Lilly Pulitzer beach towels, draped over one arm. (Nice. Tasteful. Designer. But nothing too ostentatious or over the top.)

  The girls were so anxious to get inside that they sprinted through the wrought iron gate the moment Amanda used the coded keypad to swing it open. They cannonballed into the cool water before Amanda, Heather, and Aiden even stepped onto the stone patio.

  Amanda paused to breathe in the smells of broad-spectrum, oil-free sunscreens and lightly tinted lip balm. And smiled—only a little, nothing that might give her away. Things were about to get interesting. After all, country club members abided by an unwritten code of conduct. Rules of behavior. An intricate hierarchy. A meaning existed behind everything—choice of drink, choice of bathing suit, where you sat…Amanda could have written her own book explaining the etiquette of a country club pool.

  The rules applied, even here, in a town considered on the small side in the middle of Missouri. Or was that especially here? After all, if a woman couldn’t make it at Southern Hills Golf & Country Club, what were her other options? Fairyland wasn’t exactly brimming with country clubs. Just one.

  Rules were important. And the beautiful part was that Heather knew none of them.

  In the first place, single women of Heather’s age were generally in a somewhat precarious position at the Southern Hills pool. Should they appear lacking the proper degree of ladylike decorum, they were promptly punished with the ever-feared cold shoulder. A woman Heather’s age did not wear a string bikini. She was not to pretend to be seventeen. She wore a structured bathing suit. She usually had a ring on her finger. And if she didn’t, she made it quite clear (through her choice of modest attire and by sitting near other women) that she was not out to snag a few good times with anyone’s husband.

  A woman Heather’s age did not drink too many fruity drinks with umbrellas. She did not douse herself in oil and sunbat
he, putting her toned body on display. Single women of her age did not play in the pool, either, splashing and squealing and drawing undue attention. Nor did they attempt to align themselves with one of the grand dames who generally sat in the shade beneath large straw hats and designer sunglasses and shapeless sundresses, not to mention gold earrings and necklaces, never once sliding out of their closed-toe sandals.

  The grand dames ran the show. If they shunned you, good luck ever being able to strike up a conversation with anybody at the pool for the rest of the summer—maybe even two summers. They reigned supreme in their own supercilious closed community of sorts, right there under the eaves of the pool house, complete with an invisible (but very real) gate. Having arrived without the proper credentials, Heather would only be allowed to admire them from afar.

  She was bound to screw up. How else could it go with a girl like her, who had no knowledge of the rules of proper behavior?

  Heather put Aiden down, giving everyone at the pool a full view of her first faux pas: her outfit. She was wearing cutoffs. Daisy Dukes. The kind she’d made herself, with scissors, and washed a few times, so that white strings dangled and danced down her toned thighs. And an ancient T-shirt commemorating some summer music festival she and Amanda had attended together a lifetime ago. Amanda chuckled softly as Heather quickly tugged it off, exposing a bikini top, the kind that tied on around her back and neck and had no support whatsoever.

  Amanda expected Heather to jump into the pool with the rest of the kids—to play with the girls, who had learned to swim last spring. Instead, she followed Amanda to the wading pool.

  “Can’t leave my boy, now can I?” she asked Aiden.

  The other women sitting poolside to watch their own toddlers smiled at Heather—there she was, using Amanda’s son to show herself to be uninterested in any of the husbands, and like a real sweetheart to boot, the kind of woman who never ran out of patience with the most trying little kids—even, dare Amanda think it, the brats.