The Kiss Test

by Shannon McKelden

  It might, however, be the highlight of mine. It’d sure make my job loss and my mother’s screwed-up life a little less painful. Afterward, I’d come home, fix the few little broken parts of my perfect life and move on. I gave this serious consideration. Of course, I’d have to tell Kevin about losing my job. He might not notice if I didn’t leave for work every morning, but he would definitely notice if I left one day and didn’t come home at all.

  “No worries,” I said, cracking open my third beer. “Wouldn’t want you along anyway. You’re a spoil sport.”

  Chris smiled and I smiled back, until I realized that he wasn’t smiling at me but at someone over my shoulder. I turned to see who he was looking at. She was tall, with short red hair and a come-hither look on her face. She looked past me and beckoned Chris with one finger.

  “Well.” He patted the bar beside me. “That call appears to be for me, so I’ll be off now.”

  He dropped a quick, brotherly peck on my cheek before hopping off the bar stool to answer the redhead’s call for the Kiss Test.

  ***

  “Graceland, here I come.” I double clicked the reservations button on the hotel website and booked myself a room at the Heartbreak Hotel in Memphis. Yee-haw! On my way to Elvisville. I’d never had a vacation like this and, after blurting it out last night just to annoy Chris, I became totally obsessed with the idea. Some of the sucky parts of my life may have snuck up on me, but I’d more than make up for that.

  The hard part would be telling Kevin.

  Yeah, yeah. I know. I should have told him already but, gee, he rushed off to work early this Saturday morning, and I didn’t have the heart to ruin his whole day with the sordid tale. I was just being a nice, non-wave-making girlfriend. I refused to feel guilty.

  I went back to my vacation plans and quickly forgot all about my job problems. Though I took a forced break when my mother called to inform her I had to work and wouldn’t make it to the wedding. Even her carefully scripted guilt didn’t ruin my fun. I spent the next half hour taking my vacation “virtually,” visiting Graceland, eating fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches (Elvis’s favorite) and even checking out the Free-Flying Elvises in Las Vegas. They might be worth a laugh.

  I was interrupted again by the turning of a key in the lock. Shit!

  “Kevin,” I said brightly, jumping up to block the computer screen. “You’re home.”

  “Guess so,” he replied, looking at me oddly. Can’t imagine why. I mean, I frequently lounge back on the computer table, blocking the screen with my body when he comes home.

  Kevin placed his briefcase into the front closet before heading in my direction, oblivious to my pasted-on smile. Thinking fast, I reached behind me and turned off the computer monitor before Kevin reached me for a kiss.

  He turned his pearly whites on me, and I narrowed my eyes. “What?”

  He rubbed my arms up and down, as if I might need warming up. “I have something to tell you. You’ll love it.”

  “Yeah, well, I need to talk to you about something, too,” I said. “So, me first?”

  “No, let me.” He sounded almost eager.

  Well, our news must be vastly different, I thought, because I didn’t feel anywhere near “eager” about spilling my news.

  “Okay.” I headed for the kitchen for something to drink. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “I want to go house hunting.”

  “House hunting?” I made an exaggerated glance around the moderately sized, efficient kitchen. “We have a house.”

  “No, we have an apartment.”

  “A great apartment,” I reminded him. “With an elevator. And a doorman.”

  “Yes, but a couple eventually needs something more permanent.”

  I blinked. “Permanent?”

  Kevin nodded—eagerly again—and leaned back against the kitchen counter, folding his arms across his chest. “Yes. Permanent. As in Westchester. Or Connecticut.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Connecticut? What’s wrong with Manhattan?”

  “I was talking to some of my coworkers, and they all agreed that Manhattan isn’t the best place to raise a family.”

  I turned to stare at him, holding two frosty beers by their necks. “What are you talking about?”

  “Margo, I want to get married.”

  How could I have come to the conclusion that my relationship with Kevin was the only thing in my life that didn’t suck?

  I was obviously wrong.

  All of my life sucked.

  Chapter Four

  “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”

  “Married?” I slammed the refrigerator door and shoved one of the beer bottles at Kevin, then opened the other and took a swig. I backhanded the dribble that leaked from the corner of my mouth before continuing. “Where the hell did that come from?”

  “I think it’s about time. We could have kids and an Escalade. Maybe even a dog. I was going to wait to ask, but why not now?”

  “Why ever is more like it,” I said. “You know how I feel about marriage.”

  I turned and fled the room. Kevin had the balls to follow, though if he knew how mad I was, he’d think twice about exposing to me the family jewels necessary for creating his hypothetical children.

  “Look, Margo, we’ve been together for two years. Don’t you think it’s time we—”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t want to get married.” I had no intention of becoming my mother, marrying every guy who asked her. Just the idea of starting that downward spiral made me a little sick to my stomach. “Then I would have to feel guilty when hot guys flirt with me.”

  “Margo.” Kevin’s mouth turned up at the corners as if he thought I was joking.

  I wasn’t.

  “We’d get penalized on our taxes,” I threw at him, thinking the financial implications of marriage might deter him.

  “I’m an accountant, Margo. I know that. It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not!” I tossed back half my beer in a big gulp, and paced the room. “We can’t get married. We’d start to look alike. You’d hate that. You hate the way I dress.”

  Kevin had the gall to laugh. He crossed the room and led me to the couch, where he pushed me down onto the fluffy cushions. My shock prevented me from protesting. He sat down, drawing me into the crook of his arm. “Maybe you’ll start to look like me, instead.”

  “This isn’t a joke.” I stared down at the brown bottle rapidly warming in my suddenly sweaty grip.

  “Margo.” Kevin ran a finger along the back of my arm, a move that would normally have made me take his hand and drag him to the bedroom, even in the middle of a hot June afternoon.

  It wasn’t going to work this time.

  “Don’t ‘Margo’ me.” I leaped up and walked away from him, feeling trapped. “You know I don’t want to get married.”

  “I thought that was just temporary. I didn’t think you meant never.”

  Kevin actually looked really upset. And for a fleeting moment—less than a moment, really, a nanosecond—I felt sorry for him.

  It didn’t last.

  All I could think about was my mother and her soon-to-be eleventh marriage and how every one of the first ten had ended—in loud voices, hurt feelings and another round of my mother taking to her bed in despair and depression. It would kill me to ever put a kid through that. To say nothing of myself.

  Marriage was not on my agenda, now or ever.

  “What part of the word ‘never’ was unclear?” I flopped into my desk chair and looked Kevin directly in the eye, making sure he knew I was serious. “I like things just the way they are.”

  “Well, I don’t. Look. You could sell your apartment—”

  “No! I like my apartment.”

  “You don’t live in it, so what’s the point?”

  I stared at him. The point was that, with the Upper East Side apartment I kept in my name, but sublet to a young married couple, I still had a place to go.

  “I just can�
��t,” I said instead, as if that explained it all.

  Kevin wandered over and squatted down beside me, taking one of my hands in his. “Margo, I love you.”

  I blinked. He didn’t say it often. I never said it. I didn’t think I had it in me. When Lance had told me he loved me, I left him. I couldn’t handle it. I had progressed, really. I mean, I hadn’t left when Kevin first said it to me. I don’t know why. With Kevin, they were only words. Words I could ignore…until now.

  Kevin Timber and I were compatible, in and out of bed, most of the time. We liked some of the same things—mostly foods and movies—and what we didn’t both like, we were perfectly content to do separately. But Kevin still didn’t understand certain things about me. My aversion to marriage for instance.

  In the past, Kevin always let it slide when I never repeated his declaration of love. Not this time.

  “Say it back to me, Margo.”

  “I…I can’t, Kevin. I’m sorry.” He started to pull his hands away, and I grabbed them back. “I’m really sorry. It’s not that I don’t care. I just…” I wouldn’t make promises I couldn’t keep. Promises I’d learned through many childhood lessons were virtually impossible to keep.

  Kevin clamped his lips together and stood. I let him go.

  “I need some time to think,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion. He turned and left the apartment.

  I hadn’t even told him about losing my job. I wasn’t sure if it would have helped or hurt.

  ***

  My Elvis bedside clock said 11:00 p.m. when I finally heard the key scrape in the front door. Kevin arrived in the bedroom a few minutes later, and I shut off the Viva Las Vegas DVD I’d been watching. Just me and Elvis, forgetting my troubles. Only it hadn’t worked very well.

  “Hey.”

  Kevin grunted and headed for the bathroom, looking a little rough around the edges. He’d probably been at Jeffrey’s. He didn’t go there often, as it wasn’t the normal hang-out for his accountant friends. He’d been there a few times with me and went occasionally on his own, because it was close. Especially when we’d been arguing and he needed to get away.

  It took another ten minutes before he came out of the bathroom in boxers and no shirt. Kevin had a gorgeous chest, and when he slipped into bed, I ran a hand over his pecs, hoping we could put this nonsense behind us and have some incredible make-up sex.

  “Have you changed your mind?” he asked, looking at me rather hopefully.

  “No.” I brushed my fingers through the light hair on his mostly muscular chest, hoping to tempt him into forgetting this topic.

  “Neither have I.” He lifted my hand and dropped it onto the sheets between us. “I want more, Margo. And, I think you want more, too.”

  “I don’t want more.” I sat up, exasperated at this whole conversation, which I’d replayed over and over for the last several hours. “My life is perfect. Totally, perfectly perfect.”

  “Is it?” His voice was oddly accusatory.

  “Yes. Of course it is.”

  “Funny, from what I heard, it doesn’t sound all that perfect.”

  I glanced at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

  “Some guy from WKUP was at Jeffrey’s. Stuart, I think was his name.”

  I swallowed. I should have come clean earlier. “Steward,” I said. “It’s his mother’s maiden name.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He said to tell you how sorry he was.”

  “For what?” I asked as innocently as I could, just in case he didn’t know what I thought he knew.

  He knew.

  “For your job loss.” Blue eyes bored into mine.

  I paused, silently conceding a small chink in my life’s perfection. “Okay, I lost my job, but everything else is perfect, and as soon as I find a new job, it’ll be perfect again.”

  “When the hell did you plan on telling me about that?” He sat up in bed, smelling vaguely of beer and cigarette smoke tinged with toothpaste.

  “I planned on telling you tonight, but you threw all this on me.” When all else fails, blame someone else. “Can’t we just forget this marriage nonsense, Kevin? You don’t really want to get married. You’ve just been talking to people who happen to like it. We wouldn’t be those people.”

  “Don’t you get it, Margo?” Kevin’s baby-blue eyes were pleading. “I want to take care of you.”

  “I don’t need to be taken care of. I’m a grown woman.”

  “Of course you do. I mean look at you.”

  I glanced down at my “I Love Elvis” baby tee. “What about me?”

  “Look at that.” Kevin gestured at the Elvis lamp and clock on my bedside table. “And that.” He pointed across the room at my black velvet Paint by Number portrait of Elvis. “And that.” He glowered at the blow-up doll that stood in the corner wearing the white sequined replica of Elvis’s jumpsuit I donned every year for Halloween. “You are such a child.”

  He was out of his mind. How did the topic of marriage—or lack thereof—turn into “bash Margo’s Elvis collection”?

  “You need a keeper, Margo. I’ve let you do your own thing, collecting all this stuff. I’ve let you play music and call it a career.” He ground out the last word as if it left a bitter taste in his mouth, which he spat out in sarcasm. “Not that we have to worry about that any more. Maybe you can find a decent job now that you have that one out of your system.”

  I sat there with my mouth hanging open. What happened to analyzing, taking over, drawing up plans? That I could have dealt with. This was just…psychotic.

  Kevin waved his arms wildly, making me lean back in bed out of his reach. “I let you do what you want, whenever you want. And you continue to act like a child. Hell, you even still play with the same childhood friend.”

  “Chris?” I yelped.

  “Yes, Chris,” Kevin snapped. “I mean, come on, the guy thinks skateboarding is a competitive sport. He jumps off cliffs like he’s Super Dude. He sells toys for a living.”

  I finally snapped out of my shock. “Oh, and I suppose all I do is collect stuff that belonged to a dead guy and play with the radio and call it a career?”

  “Yes!” Kevin flashed me a grin I wished I could punch off his face. “Now you get it.”

  I leaped out of bed before I gave in to my baser instincts. “I don’t need this,” I said. “You’ve been drinking, Kevin, and I just don’t need this crap.”

  Kevin sighed and slumped onto the bed. “No, Margo, you don’t need this. You don’t need me either.”

  I blinked. “What do you want? A clingy female who’s incapable of taking care of herself? Of thinking for herself?” Like my mother? I added silently.

  “It would just be really nice to be needed once in a while.”

  Kevin turned his back on me and slid out of bed. He sat with his elbows on his knees and scrubbed his face, the muscles on his back flexing with the movement. Just a few hours—even minutes—ago, I was thinking how nice it would have been to feel those muscles beneath my fingers.

  Now I wondered how they’d feel beneath the blade of a knife.

  “I’m sleeping in the living room.”

  “What?” No matter how we’d argued before, we always slept in the same bed. Usually making up with some raucous sex before the night ended.

  “I can’t go on this way. I want more, and you obviously don’t. You’re happier with a dead guy.” Kevin picked up a pillow and heaved it at the Elvis portrait, knocking it askew. I jumped for it, catching it before it slipped from the nail.

  Kevin stood and threw me a look of disgust mixed with sadness, yanked the comforter off the bed and dragged it toward the living room, slamming the bedroom door behind him.

  Still unclear about what had just happened, I stared down at the picture in my hands. “Kevin has left the building,” I said aloud. “Looks like we’re in trouble, Elvis, old pal.”

  ***

  A week later, Elvis and I were still in trouble. I’d hardly seen Kevin. He’d come back
to our bed after that first night on the couch—probably because the couch was about six inches too short for him—but made sure he went to bed long after I did. When he did come to bed, he rolled the comforter between us like the Berlin Wall.

  Only this wall wasn’t coming down.

  Obviously I’d been walking around with blinders on, like the horses who pulled the carriages in Central Park. It wasn’t the first time a relationship had gone sour on me. However, it was the first time I’d been caught unaware. This time, I was as prepared as I’d have been to step off a curb and get hit by a bus.

  When Mo and I broke up, it had mostly been because I wasn’t willing to don the robes of Tibetan monks and move halfway around the world. But, I hadn’t been unprepared for that break-up. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to know that a guy who spends more time conversing with a Paint by Number Elvis than other humans has had a few brain cells “leave the building” and isn’t exactly long-term relationship material.

  And even though Lance’s proclamation of love had been a surprise, I’d suspected something was going on for a while. He started watching me with dreamy eyes. He spoke more softly to me and gazed longingly at children in Central Park when we ran. At least a dozen times, he opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it again without saying anything. He should have just kept it shut.

  Terrance had been obvious, too. I wasn’t all that surprised he was having a fling on the side. In fact, I probably (purposely) overlooked the signs because everything else was moving along smoothly. Once April started drying her pantyhose on my shower curtain rod, though, all bets were off. The only thing I’d been confused about in that relationship was why Terry felt the need for other women. It wasn’t like we lacked anything in our sex life. He said it was because it was nice to have someone need him. At the time, I didn’t get it. I still didn’t get it now, but the words echoed in my head, a reflection of what Kevin had told me a week ago. “It would be really nice to be needed once in a while.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  All in all, though, I hadn’t been surprised or overly concerned with the demise of any of my previous relationships. That was normal, right? Relationships were temporary. Finite. I even made it easier on myself by not getting too attached in the first place.