Kiss Cam

by Kiara London

  “We’re just friends,” I insist, and tuck a curl behind my ear. “So it’s okay if I go over there, right?”

  “Sure.” He smiles and turns his eyes down to watch his thumb slide over the rim of his cup. “But, you know. I would be fine with you guys . . . you know . . .”

  “Dad!” I shriek, and bury my face in my arms.

  “What? I like him. I’d want to have a chat with him first, but I’d be totally okay with—”

  “Stop!” I wail, and flip the hood of Jasper’s sweatshirt over my head, tightening the tassels to hide my burning cheeks. “You’re embarrassing me,” I mumble, and hear him roar with laughter, clearly forgetting about his burn patient from last night.

  After a few moments of his laughter filling the room and my blush spreading from cheeks to neck, Dad finally slaps me on the back and stands up. “Have fun tonight,” he jokes.

  I let myself in at Jasper’s house and hear the TV’s volume turned up well past what could be considered comfortab le. Still shivering from the cold autumn air, I remove my boots at the door and pull my hands up inside the sleeves of Jasper’s hoodie to warm them up. The hallway light is the only one I see on as I walk down the cutely decorated hallway displaying most of the Lahey family photos.

  From the living room entry, I see that I’ve missed the first five minutes of Criminal Minds and that Jasper doesn’t even seem to notice, since he’s thoroughly engrossed in the show, with his legs taking up most of the couch and eyes reflecting the screen. I quietly walk toward him, feet sinking into the carpeted floor, and tap his feet with my sleeve-covered hands. He moves his legs without even glancing at me and lets me slide right up next to him.

  “It’s the episode with the creepy cabdriver who kidnaps women because of their scent,” he tells me.

  “Oh,” I say, beaming, “I love this one.”

  “I know,” he says distractedly, and holds out his hands. I pull my icy hands from my sleeves and put them in his warm ones. His fingers wrap around mine, slowly thawing them out like he always does. “It’s cold outside,” he comments, and I nod.

  “Yeah, well, I stopped over at Lenny’s to give him the camera,” I tell him.

  “You didn’t film anything.”

  “It’s his turn,” I remind him, and he brings my hands to his lips to breathe on them. He shrugs, eyes still glued to the screen. After a couple of minutes of silent watching, the show turns to commercial and Jasper lets go of my hands and gets up.

  Weaving around the low coffee table and stack of newspapers, Jasper mutters, “Be back,” and takes off to the kitchen to get snacks. The screen flashes an Allstate commercial, and I bring my feet up to sit cross-legged—a great position for holding a bowl of popcorn—and look around the familiar and cramped living space. Leeann, Jasper’s mom, tries to fit everything in here, and the room is simply too small. There’s a single couch and a coffee table, an older television set on a short bookshelf, a desk in the corner, her treadmill flat up against the wall. It’s a bit snug, and oftentimes one of us will trip over something—like Jasper does when he comes back with a bag of microwave popcorn and two cans of soda.

  “Goddammit, Ma,” he curses under his breath when he stubs his toe on her weight set beside the coffee table. “Here,” he grumbles, and hands me the popcorn and a soda.

  Ignoring his grumpiness, I go right in to telling him about this afternoon. “Guess what?” I challenge.

  “You’re going to give me my sweatshirt back?” he asks, and pulls on the tassels when he’s seated himself. I look down at the hoodie I was not actually planning on giving back. I had crashed here on a school night a couple of weeks ago and got toothpaste on the shirt I was originally planning on wearing that next morning. So Jasper tossed me his red Blackhawks hoodie to wear over the mess I’d made on myself. Truthfully, it’s one of the most comfortable things I “own,” and I don’t want to give it back.

  “No,” I say quickly, and bat his hand away since it was hovering dangerously close to my chest. He slaps me back and then takes his soda and pops it open. “My dad thinks we do the dance with no pants when I’m over here.”

  Jasper’s mouth is full when I say this, and he about spits out his Dr Pepper. Instead he clamps his hand over his mouth and chokes it down, coming up soon after coughing and laughing.

  “Did you tell him we do?” he asks with a suggestive look—always the troublemaker.

  Despite the grin tugging on my lips, I punch him in the arm. “No!”

  He continues to smile but rubs his arm and prepares himself to shoot away when he says, “Should’ve.”

  “And why is that?” I ask skeptically, ignoring the fact that our show has come back on.

  “It’s hilarious that everyone thinks we’re together.”

  “Yeah,” I mutter, and stick my hand in the popcorn bag while returning my attention back to the screen. “Except we’re not,” I say, and lie back onto his shoulder.

  “HEY, GUYS. SO, it’s like six o’clock right now and we’re supposed to be writing this long, overly thorough paper for English, and this is what we’ve decided to do instead.” I turn the camera to the television screen. We’re at Lenny’s house, which only happens when he adds to his video-game collection.

  Today’s culprit just so happens to be the original Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time game that Lenny picked up from the game store on our way home from school last Friday. Our reasoning for playing the game at Lenny’s is simple. He has every gaming system invented in his lifetime—the Nintendo 64 console being one of his favorites. Also, there’s more space in his house to get excited and jump around after defeating bosses.

  We all take turns passing the controller around and having our share of playtime, but Lenny mostly hogs it—which is why Jasper and I have been sitting around watching and cheering him on for the past hour.

  His parents are used to our antics by now and have busied themselves in the kitchen with dinner, but his twin sisters, Jade and Ruby, keep making themselves present. Both, despite the number of times we’ve been over, like sitting before the TV asking questions and getting their wispy blond heads in the way. They like to consider themselves our groupies, and it irritates Lenny to no end.

  With my feet propped up on the curve of the L-shaped couch, I’ve made myself more than comfortable in the spacious and well-decorated living room. Now that I’ve pointed the camera at the two boys, our audience can take in all the mayhem. Both boys are hunched over and wide-eyed at the screen. Lenny hits buttons frantically on his controller, and Jasper hoots and hollers over and over, “Die, die, die!”

  I swivel the camera back around and state quite seriously, “Seems like a better use of our time.”

  “This version’s graphics suck,” Jasper notes, seeing that I’ve turned the camera on. “But nothing beats the original version of Zelda: Ocarina of Time!”

  He whoops victoriously, and I shake my head at the camera. “Boys, boys, boys. Single ladies, you aren’t missin’ much.”

  “I guess we’re vlogging here!” Lenny chimes in, the strain in his voice evident, and he physically jumps out of his seat when Link gets attacked by a temple boss I can’t remember the name of. I make a mental note to make a How to Understand Boys video on Friday when it’s my turn to have the camera—because let’s face it, most of our viewers are girls, and this is probably a really low moment for Jasper and Lenny.

  “What is that thing?” Ruby asks from her spot in front of the television, her eyes wide in horror at the hideousness of the creature attacking Link.

  “It’s the monster that lives under your bed,” Lenny replies absently, smiling when she shrieks and clutches Jade’s arm.

  “Don’t tell her that!” I scold, and turn the camera off, setting it on the ottoman. Jade shoots up and runs for the kitchen, where the smell of pasta wafts out. Ruby follows her shortly afterward when she realizes that Jade isn’t coming back.

  “Why?” Lenny counters. “It got them to go away.”

&
nbsp; I sigh defeatedly, knowing that Lenny’s not going to be sorry about sending them away. This is why his babysitting excuses are never believable. Lenny and the twins do not get along well.

  After another half hour of Lenny hogging the controller, his parents announce dinner. That gives Jasper and me an excuse to go home. While it’s fun for a while, Lenny completely forgets that Jasper and I exist. That’s when it’s a good time to leave.

  It’s twice as cold tonight as it was this morning, so Jasper and I run across the frostbitten lawn to stop at his house. He informed me that I’d left my sweatpants there from Friday, so I told him I’d pick them up.

  He fumbles with his keys for a minute in front of the house, but then the door is open and we’re inside and we’re both complaining about windburned ears and red cheeks. He takes my hands right away once the door is closed and breathes on them, rubbing them together to get both of our hands warm again.

  “I hate this weather,” I groan, sniffling because even a couple of minutes out in the cold has made my nose run.

  Jasper nods along but then stops and gives me a mischievous grin. “I don’t.”

  “Uh-huh, and what’s there to like?” I retort.

  One side of his smile lifts higher than the other, and he gives my hands one final squeeze before dropping a kiss onto my knuckles and walking away with a wink. My mouth drops open, and I follow his triumphant strut down the hall with my eyes, letting them narrow when he turns to see if I’m coming.

  “You know,” I say offhandedly while kicking off my boots, “sometimes I swear you’re in love with me.”

  He stands at the end of the hallway and puts a hand on the staircase banister, watching me with a smirk as I come down the hall to join him. “Truly, madly, deeply.” He winks again and motions for me to go up the stairs before him. I curtsy and oblige, taking two steps at a time until I’m at the top.

  “Truly, madly, deeply,” I repeat, and keep eye contact as I walk backward into his bedroom while he tries to force down a large smile.

  Lenny’s backpack sits heavily against my knee Monday morning while I sit in the backseat of Jasper’s car. My feet are propped up on the shared armrest between Jasper and Lenny to avoid the garbage-littered floor of the tiny blue Saturn. I stare out the window, listening to the punk rock songs from one of the boys’ CDs and watching my breath pour out of my mouth like smoke while I shiver in the poorly heated vehicle. Like always, we’re all groggy and unfit for conversation. Jasper occasionally lifts his hands from the steering wheel at an intersection and moans about how cold his car is. Lenny has his laptop in his lap and is browsing through the comments of our questions video and previous vlog. I have half a mind to pull the video camera from Jasper’s backpack and film our drive to school in order to lighten everyone up.

  There’s suddenly chuckling from the passenger seat, and Lenny flicks my boot to get my attention. “You’re not going to like this,” he muses while turning in his seat to look at me. “Some of our viewers don’t think you and Jas had a big enough kiss.”

  “Oh, trust me,” Jasper snickers. “We did.”

  My face flushes, and I instinctively kick his seat with more force than necessary. Neither of us bothered to tell Lenny about our kiss Thursday night after he’d left. And, to be fair, he really doesn’t have to know. It was a pact between Jasper and me: Be sure no feelings exist before continuing on as friends. Lenny has nothing to do with it, and there is no reason to involve him.

  Lenny looks between us confusedly, his lips twitching between excitement and question, but seems to decide it’s better not to ask and ignores my exchange with Jasper. “Uh-huh,” he says quickly, and carries on. “So I’d be prepared for more camera kisses, if I were you.”

  I open my mouth to say that we’ll be keeping any kind of on-screen kisses to a minimum, but Jasper is quick to reply with, “We’re cool with that. It’s just kissing, right, June?” His eyes glance at me through the rearview mirror, and I send him a glare.

  “I don’t think that’s the best idea, Jas. . . .”

  “But I thought we cleared this up the other night? I thought that’s what the experiment was for.” Jasper’s eyebrows quirk in the mirror, and his low voice turns accusatory.

  “Whoa, what experiment?” Lenny asks curiously, eyes darting from Jasper to me in confusion.

  “A kissing one, of course,” Jasper tells him, and Lenny’s eyes grow wide.

  “You guys kissed outside of filming?”

  “Not romantically,” I add in among the chaos, especially since Jasper’s way of explaining things is always messy. “Experimentally.”

  “But why?” Lenny’s curiosity has turned to alarm, as if the idea of Jasper and me being in a real relationship is not a good one.

  “To sort out feelings—my goodness, Grasshopper,” Jasper gasps exasperatedly and turns his attention to Lenny. “Keep up.”

  “Look, guys, I thought we were friends. Friends don’t keep kissing secrets to themselves,” Lenny scolds, slamming his laptop shut with an air of finality. “Relationship statuses would be a good thing to know.”

  “There is nothing going on between us,” I say, and motion between Jasper and me. “We just wanted to make sure that kissing wouldn’t ruin our friendship. We were making sure there were no ‘sparks.’ ”

  “But you said yourself that there were no sparks on camera,” Lenny says skeptically, eyebrows rising higher than I thought they could ever go up his forehead.

  “Wasn’t a proper kiss,” Jasper sighs, and rolls his eyes as if it were obvious. We now pull into the school parking lot, and Lenny seems to notice because all he does is sigh heavily and shake his head.

  After we’ve parked, though, he finishes. “I’d just like to be updated every once in a while. You guys spend a lot more time together than with me.”

  Jasper puts a hand on Lenny’s shoulder. “That’s what the vlogs are for, my man. But I promise to tell you everything.”

  I groan over Lenny’s “Awesome” and kick Jasper’s seat again. He just meets my eyes with a cheeky grin and pulls his backpack out from behind his seat.

  Allison leans against the locker beside mine, gawking at me with crossed arms and narrowed eyes. “You did what?”

  I stop shoving books in my bag and put a hand on my hip. “You said you wouldn’t freak out,” I remind her.

  She closes her mouth and shifts. “I’m not freaking out,” she says in a less demanding tone, but her hard clench on her textbooks gives her away. “You’re the one who should be freaking out. You kissed Jasper.”

  “It wasn’t anything serious,” I say, and slam my locker door shut. “It was just . . . an experiment.”

  “June, you had the world’s biggest crush on him freshman year.”

  “So?” I ask. “It’s not like that now.”

  She shakes her head. “Yeah, you’d like to think so, but what happens if those feelings come back—I mean, you’ve kissed him! If those feelings come back and he dates someone else instead, what are you going to do? Date Milo again? I don’t think so.”

  Everyone has a relationship they wish never happened. Milo O’Hara is mine.

  Milo wasn’t just part of my rebellious phase. He was my rebound after Jasper broke my heart for the first time. I had a desperate crush on him, and I thought he liked me, too, and then out of nowhere he was holding hands with some girl named Bree. I latched onto the first boy who told me Jasper was stupid.

  But Milo wasn’t good news. He was the boy I hid from my dad until he found a hickey three and a half months into the relationship. He was the boy who got me in trouble. The kind of trouble that lands you in a situation where you have to call your mom at two thirty in the morning asking for a ride home because kids are smoking pot in the basement and getting busy in empty bedrooms while your boyfriend is nowhere to be found.

  I was vulnerable and easily pressured into things. Everyone told me to break it off, but I didn’t know how. He had a way of changing my mind and
manipulating my naïveté. I became someone else to please him, and I liked the attention I received in return. But things got too real as our relationship progressed. When he tried pressuring me into giving everything away, we broke up.

  It was Allison’s shoulder that I cried on. She had it all figured out before I did. She’s intuitive like that. Anyway, there’s no way she’d let that happen again. I learned my lesson. Jasper and I are never going to happen, so there’s no reason to make a fuss over it.

  “Allison, I know better now. Trust me a little, would you?”

  She frowns. “I just don’t want you to get hurt again.”

  “Oh, c’mon, it was one time.” I shrug and lead the way down the hall. “I’m not letting it happen again.”

  She just sighs deeply beside me.

  “What trend is more disturbing: twerking or ‘The Knife Game Song’?” Jasper reads off the question from the comments and then very seriously looks at the camera and replies, “Clearly it’s twerking.” His eyes seem to glance between Lenny and me for a second, and then he leans into the camera very closely and whispers, “But I only say this because there’s a lady in the room.”

  “You still answered wrong,” I tell him with a smack to the arm. “The question should have been, what’s more disturbing: thirteen-year-olds shaking their asses or thirteen-year-olds chopping off their fingers?”

  Lenny makes a face that suggests he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cringe at this, and Jasper’s whole face just scrunches up. “Both visuals are pretty bad.”