The Kiss Test

by Shannon McKelden

  Again, remind me never to move to Montana. In fact, remind me never to move anywhere you’re not. I miss talking to you, and not just because all anyone here talks about is horses, cows or chickens. I miss hanging out with you. I miss skating and goofing around. I miss going for pepperoni pizza at Shakey’s. I miss cruising the loop. “Young people” never see anyone often enough to have friendships like we have. Makes me realize how lucky I am.

  Oh, by the way, I broke up with Heather before I came out here. I didn’t have time to tell you before we left. I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about what I like in a girl. It’s more than good looks. And putting out doesn’t make very good conversation. What I’m saying is that I need more. I need someone I can talk to, spend time with and don’t get tired of. You know what I mean? I’m not saying this very well, I guess. And, I don’t really know how to write it. I really want to talk about it with you, but it’s hard to communicate in a letter. Hey, wait…

  I just talked to my grandma. She says you can call collect. So, call me. I really want to talk (and I promise I won’t talk about 4H or crop rotations, ha!). Call me as soon as you get this letter. I really, really need to talk to you and I don’t want to wait until next month. Call 406-555-2653. Hurry.

  LOVE,

  Chris

  The pen Chris used had been so faded he’d used a different pen—bold and red—for the salutation. LOVE, Chris. Odd way to sign a letter to your best friend.

  I hadn’t called him. A few hours later, Will Barlow had asked me out. By the time Chris returned from Montana, Will and I had been dating for a month and I was no longer a virgin. Chris had been pissed—not about my loss of virginity—but because Will played water polo and “only geeks play water polo.” Obviously, Chris had an ongoing issue with my dating geeks. I attributed his out-of-proportion anger at my “sin” of dating a member of an “unmanly” sport, to not getting laid in a while. He didn’t replace Heather for a long time after he got home. Eventually my theory proved right, when Chris started dating again and seemed to get back to his normal self. Things between us grew comfortable again, although for a while we didn’t have much time for each other until we were both dumped before the prom.

  I tossed the uninteresting letter on the coffee table and stretched out on the couch. I never found out why Chris wanted me to call Montana collect. Nothing important, I imagined, since he hadn’t said anything profound to me when he returned, except, “What the fuck are you thinking dating an asshole like Will Barlow?”

  As I fell into a restless sleep, I thought about the request in Chris’s letter to remind him never to move somewhere I wasn’t. In all these years, Chris hadn’t needed reminding not to move away from me. And now that he did, I knew I wouldn’t ask him to stay. Because it was pathetic to run after someone who obviously didn’t feel as strongly about you as you did about them.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Love Me Tender”

  “Here’s the key to the apartment, Manuel.” I dropped it into his outstretched hand. “You guys go ahead. I’ll, uh,” I turned and vaguely gestured around Chris’s living room, “I’ll close up here, and then I’m going to run through the park. I’ll meet you there.”

  “You sure you don’t want a ride, señorita? We have room in the truck. And it’s raining.” Manuel, one of the brothers I hired to haul my boxes to my apartment, waved toward the window where the unexpected shower washed the grimy Manhattan streets clean and reflected my mood perfectly.

  I shook my head. “No. I need to run.”

  Manuel closed the door behind him and I checked the locks on the living room windows. The letter was still lying on the floor in the living room. Not wanting to leave it for Chris to find, I folded it and tucked it in the back zipper pocket of my running pants. I’d throw it away when I got home.

  I wandered slowly through Chris’s apartment, memorizing details I’d never see again. The portrait of an extreme skier, a wake of snow blowing up around him as he hurtled down a mountain. The pile of rock-climbing equipment Chris left in the corner of the living room, where it was handy for an unexpected trip. The shelf of photographs on the wall of his bedroom.

  I paused and smiled at the most prominent photo of Chris and his parents, taken not long ago from the looks of it. They looked so happy, so at ease with each other. Could my mother and I achieve that? I’d like to think we started something in California last week. Healing maybe.

  There was a snapshot of Chris and Chip Xavier, decked out in snow gear, noses frosted white with sunblock, eyes hidden behind reflective lenses, grinning widely atop Mt. Rainier in Washington State, where they’d climbed last year. One of Chris’s proudest moments.

  There was a third photo in a silver-plate frame. My breath hitched as I took it down from the shelf. Best Friends read the caption on the frame. The pose was casual. The clothing and hair styles mid-nineties. The setting, Lake George. Chris beamed down at me, his thousand-watt smile turned on high. I was laughing back at him.

  Two weeks ago, I questioned his loyalty to me. Yet, he slept in this room, brought girls home to this bed and kept this picture in plain sight. I’d kept mine in the bottom of a cardboard box. Who was the loyal friend here?

  Returning the picture to the shelf, I locked the bedroom window before turning back to look around the room once more. Leaving felt final. So final that I choked back a sob as I picked up Chris’s pillow and buried my face in it, inhaling his scent one last time.

  At the last minute, before leaving the apartment, I removed my key from the ring and left it on the kitchen counter. I stepped outside into the humid, rain-permeated city. The showers had stopped and steam rose from the sidewalks. I sighed, taking in the moist air and hoping it would make breathing easier. I suspected only time would help.

  At the bottom of the steps, I stopped and turned back to look at the familiar brownstone I’d visited a thousand times. As soon as Chris moved out another renter would move in. I’d learn to deal with it. I’d find other facilities to use for potty breaks.

  Something struck me in the shoulder. “Ow!” I turned to see what hit me. I spotted it on the sidewalk a few feet away and bent to pick it up, not quite believing what I was seeing.

  “Elvis?” Bobblehead Elvis to be exact. I searched the street for the Jeep, knowing there was no way Chris could have driven from L.A. to New York in four days.

  But he had. Chris leaned against the red Jeep, arms crossed, expression dark. He didn’t appear to have combed his hair in four days and had at least that many days’ growth of beard.

  Stony-faced, belying my pounding heart, I raised Elvis in salute. “Thanks for returning him,” I said, as casually as I could manage. “I left your house key on the kitchen counter.”

  I turned and headed for the park, thrusting Elvis in my pocket and praying Chris wouldn’t follow. Of course, he did.

  “Why did you leave?” he demanded, falling into step beside me.

  Since this was my warm-up, I kept walking and snorted my disgust. “You’re a fine one to talk about leaving.”

  A taxi blared its horn at us as I ignored the Don’t Walk sign and Chris, unblinking, followed me into the street.

  “You know, you are the most damned exasperating woman I’ve ever known.”

  “Great. I’ll add that to my résumé.” Central Park was still several blocks away, but I didn’t care. Warm-up was officially over. At the next block, I started running.

  Chris persisted. He followed me the next few blocks, keeping step. I knew he could follow for quite a while before he got tired or gave up.

  As we ran past the former Tavern on the Green, he finally spoke again. “When are you going to stop running?”

  “When I get to my apartment.”

  “I mean,” Chris ground out, as he dodged a woman with a stroller crossing the running path, “when are you going to stop running away?”

  “When are you going to stop chasing me?”

  I was having a hard time not looking at h
im. I wanted to stop, to memorize his face before he was gone. I wanted to talk to him, to tell him how I felt so he wouldn’t go.

  Instead I picked up my pace.

  “You’re right,” Chris said, keeping up, but tiring I could tell. He was a sprinter, not a long-distance runner. “You are so right. Thirteen years is too fucking long to chase anyone.”

  With that, he dropped away from my side and was gone.

  Thirteen years? What was he talking about?

  Thirteen years was too long to chase someone?

  The blood roared in my ears as I slowed to a stop and turned to see Chris walking away from me, back toward home.

  “What do you mean?” I called, following him.

  “Just what I said,” he replied heavily. “A fucking waste of time.”

  I flinched at his tone. Chris rarely swore and even less frequently got angry. At anything. Now, rage steamed off him like the rain from the sidewalks. It made his anger at the police station in Memphis look mild in comparison.

  I didn’t know what he was talking about, but the slapping of his shoes on the wet pavement suddenly reminded me of that little hammer in Don’t Break the Ice. Tapping away at the few ice blocks I had left holding me up on my little chair, my life. With a burst of realization, I decided that, unlike the little red man on the little red chair in the game, I wasn’t going to just sit here and wait until I fell through. I was going to get up and run, not away, but to something.

  “Wait!” I took off after Chris, dragging on his arm when I reached him. “What do you mean thirteen years is too long to chase after someone?”

  His face was grim as he searched mine. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Tell me,” I whispered.

  “Why? So you can run away again? Before I even finish? That seems to be your forte. As soon as you get uncomfortable, or think you might have to feel an emotion, off you run.”

  “I do not,” I protested, planting my feet to show him I wasn’t running now and thereby proving him wrong.

  “You did it in the restaurant. Didn’t give me a chance to finish.”

  “You said you were leaving me! What else was there to say?”

  “I never said I was leaving you.”

  A businessman passed us by, briefcase swinging against his thigh, leather shoes repeating that ominous tapping sound I was beginning to hate. “It sounded like leaving to me.”

  “Because you didn’t stay to hear me out!” Chris shot back, drawing my attention back to him. “Just like always. Just like the morning after we made love. After I made love. Apparently that’s not what you were doing.”

  “But you said…We agreed—”

  “No. You said. Then, you walked away. Without giving me a chance to say anything.”

  I deflated. I couldn’t look at Chris anymore. Couldn’t face his anger. I’d never seen him so furious.

  “You always run away, Margo. Every time. You ran away thirteen years ago and haven’t stopped running yet.”

  I inflated again. “What happened thirteen years ago? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Chris snorted. “Why would you? You ran so fast you didn’t have time to think about what anyone else thought or felt.”

  “Would you stop talking in goddamn riddles? What happened thirteen years ago?”

  “I wrote you a letter.”

  I stilled, my thudding heart the only evidence I was still alive. “A letter?”

  “Yeah. A letter. A letter in which I tried to tell you how I felt about you. I didn’t do a very good job, so I told you to call me collect, at my grandmother’s house. You didn’t. So I called you. You were out. For days you were out and didn’t return my calls. Found out later you’d run right into the arms of the nearest guy.”

  His words knocked me back a few steps as my hand unconsciously went to my back pocket where a letter was concealed. A letter written thirteen years ago. In slow motion, I unzipped the pocket and withdrew the wrinkled paper.

  “This one?” I held it out to Chris. His angry expression gave way to one of bewilderment as he took it from me.

  His face grew stony again as he read the words. “That’s it.” He shoved it back at me. “Still have it and still don’t care, do you?”

  The sound of him kicking up a spray of puddle water as he stalked away from me was like a cold splash in the face. I sprinted after him, throwing myself in front of him, planting my hands on his chest to stop him.

  “What did you want? What were you going to tell me when I called?”

  Instead of answering right away, he tore the letter from my hand and flipped to the back page. He pointed to the word above his signature. LOVE.

  “I would have told you I loved you. I didn’t want to do it in the letter, but I didn’t want to wait another month until I got home either.”

  “But you couldn’t mean—”

  “Why couldn’t I? Shit, Margo, lots of people in your life love you, but when they tell you, you brush them off and run away.”

  I didn’t understand. “But, why didn’t you tell me later? It’s been thirteen years.”

  “Because there haven’t been more than a few days or weeks for the past thirteen years that you haven’t had a boyfriend.”

  My mother’s words came back to me in a flash. “If I hadn’t been married at the time I first met Quinn, maybe we’d have been together these last ten years.”

  Had Chris really been waiting for me for thirteen years?

  Two weeks ago, Chris told me to stop dating safe men and “pick a dangerous guy.” Had he meant himself? Because Chris was the most dangerous man I knew. The only man with the capability of ripping my heart to shreds and stomping all over it. A man so dangerous, the thought of letting him into my heart was scarier than the thought of letting him go.

  I couldn’t believe this. I dropped my hands from Chris’s chest and stared at the buttons on his shirt as if they were the most fascinating things I’d ever seen. “But, in between, maybe you—” Something suddenly occurred to me. “Why weren’t you honest? All this time, you’ve been lecturing me about being honest, and you’ve been lying to me—keeping things from me—for thirteen years.”

  Chris shoved both hands through his hair and looked at me like I was a lunatic. I was inclined to agree with him. I felt crazy. Out of control. Like I was losing my mind.

  “You know, a man has his pride. Yeah, maybe I could have been honest. And maybe you’d have run away again. And maybe it would’ve fucked up our friendship entirely. And then where would we be?” He shook his head and stared into the distance. “It was safer just to forget how I felt.”

  I’d stomped on his heart all those years ago. I’d run, just like he said. I remember reading those red-inked words, LOVE, Chris, and feeling…fear. So fearful I didn’t even let the inkling of what it meant take hold in my brain and heart. Instead of facing my fears, I’d run after Will Barlow, jumped into bed with him, gave him my virginity. Hadn’t called Chris. Hadn’t taken his calls.

  “God. You must hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you, Margo. You’re my best friend. That didn’t change.”

  I laughed bitterly. “I can’t see why.”

  “Because I loved you.”

  Past tense. I blinked back sudden tears. “That was thirteen years ago.”

  Chris grabbed my shoulders and shook me gently until I looked at him. “That was thirteen years ago that I loved you. When I wrote that letter and when I danced with you at the prom, for hours and hours. It was also ten years ago. And five years ago. And a month ago when I asked to go on this crazy trip with you. And two weeks ago in that motel where we did what I’d wanted to do for more years than I can count. It was also the next day, when you walked out on me. It was the days in L.A. It was Sunday at dinner when I was going to ask you to stay with me in L.A., or, if you said no, turn the new store over to Mitch Vogler, the manager I hired. It was every one of the last four days, when you’ve ignored my calls, as I dro
ve like a maniac trying to get home before you left. It was—is—right now. Love doesn’t go away. Real love doesn’t go away. No matter how much you try to ignore it. No matter how far or fast you run.”

  With the slightest of tugs, I was in Chris’s arms, my tears mingling with the rain that fell again. He felt so good. He felt like home. He felt like…the words I’d never said to anyone before.

  “I love you, too,” I whispered. “And I’m scared.”

  “Oh, Margo.” His hands were in my hair, on my face, brushing off the rain and my tears.

  “There’s nothing to be scared of.”

  “I’ve never loved anyone before.”

  “Sure you have.” Chris turned up the wattage on his smile. “You’ve loved me this whole time. You just didn’t know it.”

  My laugh came out like a sob, but I didn’t argue with him. He very well may have been right. “What if it doesn’t work?”

  “It’ll work.”

  I wanted to believe him. With every fiber of my soul I wanted to believe it would work and he’d never leave me. But so many people in my life had left me. How could I keep my heart from being broken again? I’d never cared before. Now I cared, and it was terrifying. “How do you know?”