The Art of French Kissing

by Brianna Shrum

  “Really empty-handed though? I mean you still went and cooked and learned stuff and—”

  “And the real scholarship was the friends we made along the way?”

  I raise my eyebrow even though she can’t see it over the phone.

  She snorts. “Shut up, jerk.”

  I sigh. “I mean, yeah. Of course the experience will have been worth something. It’s just . . .you and I both know that this place is way too expensive. Like pipe-dream expensive. I . . . ugh, I freaking need to make it past tomorrow, Em.”

  “You will,” she says.

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t but what kind of asshole would say you’re not gonna make it?”

  “I hate/love you.”

  I can hear her smiling when she says, “I hate/love you, too.”

  It’s quiet for a few seconds. Her doing who knows what, me just luxuriating in all this anxiety. And she just says, “Kick their asses tomorrow. Every one of them.”

  It is completely silent in the kitchens the next day. I mean, as silent as a kitchen can be. The air is filled with clanks and clangs and sizzling and that general chaos. But no one is flirting.

  No one is smack-talking.

  Not even Andrew. He’s totally focused on the cooking for once, rather than on screwing me over or messing with Reid or any of the thousand things jackasses fill their time with. When judging comes, we are all basically vibrating with nerves.

  I can barely think about the food because this, this is the round I absolutely have to get past. It’s not likely, exactly, that if this was where it ended, I could justify going here. Even with whatever I’d get from making it to round four, I’d probably still have to stay home, do a couple years at community college, and then think about possibly paying for culinary school somewhere in-state. But still. Like. If I can just not go home today, there’s at least a chance.

  The judges move down the line, dish by beautiful dish. Meat-based again: swordfish.

  Lemon-glazed and blackened and balsamic, and every way you could think to prepare it.

  Everyone is sweating.

  They make us leave.

  We sweat more.

  We come back from the deliberation waiting room and we all look like we’ve just jumped into a pool with our clothes on.

  Dr. Kapoor starts speaking and my ears are actually ringing, I can’t hear a thing he says. Except, “We are sorry, Andrew, but you’ll need to pack your bags.”

  Andrew.

  Andrew.

  Not Carter.

  I want to jump up into the air and squeal right here but that doesn’t seem super sportsmanlike, so I stand there solemnly while Andrew stammers and thanks the judges and shoots me the dirtiest look he can conjure on his way out.

  We are dismissed, and everyone waits an extra couple minutes so we don’t have to run into Andrew crossing the quad.

  Will is the first to speak. “Hell. Yes,” he says. “Hell yes.”

  Riya smiles big and wide and Reid does this little Michael Jackson spin and I am just laughing because we made it. To the final round.

  I almost can’t breathe through the thought of it.

  “Finals are . . . tomorrow?”

  “Semi-finals in the morning,” says Riya. “And then finals that night. Everyone stays though, I think, because scholarships don’t get revealed until the end.”

  “Then home,” I say.

  Riya says, “Then home.”

  Last night, then. Is it really? God, that feels . . . surreal.

  That feeling of total victory deflates and refills with anxiety because I can’t stand the thought of it. Of leaving tomorrow and possibly never coming back.

  I thought that the start of all this would be the most terrifying, the most pre-emptively painful. Just because no one knew what they were doing, none of us had any idea about anything, and there was that first week “What if I get sent home right now and have to tell my friends and family this was all a waste?” fear.

  But this? This feels worse.

  This feels like endless possibility caving in and curling around me and warping my muscles.

  It feels like wanting and hoping and being terrified and what if what if what if.

  Riya and Will walk on ahead and I don’t even realize how slow I’m walking until I see how far ahead they get and how quickly it happens.

  At some point, I guess I just stopped completely.

  Reid laces his fingers through mine. He presses his mouth to my head and says into my hair, “You okay?”

  “I’m okay. Just . . . just nervous.”

  “Me too.”

  I roll my eyes. “You aren’t nervous like I’m nervous.”

  “Come on, Lane. Every one of us is about to chew our nails off. Look at me.” I look at him. “I’m nervous.”

  He looks fine to me.

  Unaffected, as always.

  The sky is getting dimmer. Stars popping out. I am exhausted and electric all at once.

  “Come hang out in my room?” says Reid.

  My pocket buzzes. I feel shaky and nervous for a whole different reason now, for a hundred reasons, really. It’s Riya saying, Hanging out with Will for a while. Don’t wait up.

  “Come see mine,” I say.

  Reid didn’t look nervous before, even when he claimed it. But I can see it when he swallows too hard, see the little tremor in his hand when he brushes it over his hair. He’s nervous now.

  He says, “Okay.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The walk up the stairs feels long; it feels charged. Like I have done more than ask him to hang out in my room, neutrally. Like friends do. Like friends platonically comfortably do; it’s fine.

  I’m maybe just picking up on him and feeding off it. He’s so damn nervous I can see him planning out every tic of the smile he shoots me. Curl up on one side, mouth. Then the other. A little higher; wait! Too high. You’re being scary. Back to lopsided, do the lopsided grin.

  I laugh out loud and he just starts laughing, too, having no idea why I’m laughing and we are ridiculous.

  We both stop for a second when we catch Andrew stalking through the hall.

  He glares at us, like we sabotaged him.

  Like it had nothing to do with him.

  Then grumbles, “A one a.m. flight. Literally one a.m. On standby. What a damn waste—” Then walks off.

  I am such an asshole for smiling, but Reid is grinning too and I know we are both imagining the satisfying justice of exhausted Andrew, waiting at one a.m. for this standby flight, furious in an airport.

  We laugh at the same time when he’s gone. And Reid cocks his head toward my door. He says, “On that note.”

  I push into my room and say, “Welcome to my humble abode.”

  “One of you is extremely messy.”

  “You’re extremely messy.” I close the door behind him and the little click almost makes me jump. I feel like I need to shake my hands out and do a couple pushups just to get rid of this sudden excess energy.

  “So you, then.” He laughs.

  I curtsy. “Yes. Is that a problem?”

  “No. I am extremely messy.” He says it with a shrug and a smile that doesn’t look mapped out.

  I shove him in the shoulder and he wrinkles his nose in this adorably Look at us, teasing. Innocently—god could we be more innocent and adorable way.

  Reid jumps back on my bed, shoulders stretched behind his head, all casual. Maybe it’s a calculated casual—dude is a Slytherin, after all—but it’s enough that I think I can calculate casual, too. So I jump up there with him. Like we don’t have all night to ourselves. Like this isn’t the last night before this ends, so it isn’t basically a license to be impulsive.

  I say, after calculating the exact amount that I should let my head shift over to his chest, and after he subsequently decides how much arm-over-my-shoulders to deploy, “What happens tomorrow?”

  “I mean. A lot.”

  “Thank you, Captain
Obvious.”

  “One of us beats the other, I guess.”

  I breathe out through my nose. “Not strictly true. We could both get knocked out in semi-finals.”

  “No. Power of positive thinking, Lane.”

  “Here is what I need to know. If I beat your ass tomorrow, are you gonna be pissed?”

  Reid furrows his brow and shifts so he can look down at me. “You serious?”

  I swallow. Well. Make a valiant attempt at swallowing. “Yes.”

  “You think I’m gonna be mad at you if you win? Honestly?”

  “Well, I just—”

  “You think I’m that much of an asshole?”

  “No. I just. Listen, this entire thing has been built on a foundation of us hating each other and trying to beat each other and I just need to know. I need to hear you say it.” I am firm, I am resolute, I am allowed to tell him what I need.

  What I want.

  I can want a thing, and stand firm on wanting it, even if it’s unreasonable, dammit, and this is one of those things. I need to hear him say it.

  Reid runs his tongue over his teeth behind his firmly closed lips. He looks at me and he’s pissed. Such a shock, one of us being mad. Both of us being mad. But I don’t care. I need to hear the thing. He doesn’t protest, just sits with it for a second. Then says, “Carter. If you win tomorrow, I swear to god, I’ll be happy for you. Okay? I’m not gonna be mad. I care about you, and even if I didn’t, like, what. You think if Riya won, I’d be mad? Like I’m gonna cry if Will does? I want this as bad as anyone here but if you win, you win, and good. That settled or?”

  I glance down at the bedspread. It was an unfair question probably because I knew the answer. But I’m not sorry I asked.

  “And what if I beat you tomorrow?” Reid says. He wouldn’t be asking it, I don’t think, except I did. It feels like an afterthought.

  I blow out a breath. “Then you beat me.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  “Okay.”

  And now I think we’re both a little mad. Him at having his character totally questioned and me at him being mad, even though he kind of has the right, even though I kind of had the right.

  “Maybe I should go?” he says. “It feels weird.” I realize now that I’ve scooted away from him. “It feels like you want me to go.”

  “I don’t,” I say. I look up at him, scoot closer. “I swear I don’t want you to go.”

  “You sure?”

  “I just needed to hear it. I know you’re not an asshole. Okay?”

  Reid glances up at the ceiling and says, “I get it. No, I get it. It’s a weird situation.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  I slide my hand over an inch and then my finger is touching his.

  “Last night here,” he says.

  Adrenaline is already rushing hard through me, from the fight or almost-fight or whatever, I think, but it runs harder and faster when his finger tightens on mine.

  “It’s weird. Knowing that,” I say. “I’m like . . . surprised at how attached I am. To this place.”

  “Yeah, same.” His fingers move so all of them curl around mine. “I’m really. Attached, too . . . to this—place.”

  I pull slowly back, dragging his hand with mine, so his fingers brush against the outside of my thigh.

  “Let’s just both win tomorrow. Split it 50/50,” I say. His hand slips up to my waistband and waits there. For permission, I think.

  “Fuck no,” he says. He’s smiling and this laugh cracks out of me. “If I kick your ass tomorrow, that scholarship is mine.”

  One of my hands is trailing up his shirt and I’m sliding over so he’s practically on top of me.

  “You’re such an asshole.”

  He laughs. “You’re baiting me, Lane. Like you’d give up a cent if you won and that scholarship was magically transferable.”

  He is on top of me now and I am shaking reaching for his jeans but I do it. “You’re extremely right. I would have backed out on that deal the second it went my way.”

  “How dare you deceive me in such a way.”

  I say, “How dare I,” and then he’s kissing me.

  Slow at first and then I’m like . . . I am overwhelmed with it. His fingers are skating at the hem of my jeans and I think he’s dying to go for that button at the top because he keeps pausing by it but here is the thing. Right here—because I think we both have some idea as to where we want this to go—he’s not smooth. He’s kissing me like he’s confident and a nervous wreck at the same time. And I don’t know if he likes it when I touch his back, if that’s a thing or if he actually knows what he’s doing, and honestly, I’ve done this twice, but I don’t think I know what I’m doing, because if we do sleep together, well, it’s not like if you’ve slept with one person you’ve slept with them all, and good lord, I am a ball of nerves.

  My sex brain is rapidly overtaking my nerve brain, though.

  I try to get the two to work in harmony.

  Reid says, “Hey. Are you . . . how uh . . . Jesus. I don’t know how to talk.”

  I raise my eyebrow.

  “I am curious if . . .”

  “Cat got your tongue, Yamada?”

  He laughs this kind of throaty laugh, rests his head on my chest. “What I am asking is: Am I allowed to unbutton your pants?”

  My heart jumps into my throat because actually saying it out loud is maybe one of the sexiest things I’ve ever heard? And I suddenly can’t breathe over it?

  “Shit, sorry,” he says, and then I panic a little because I think he is interpreting my Oh my god that’s the hottest thing that has ever happened as Sir how dare you ask such a thing. “We totally don’t need to, okay? It’s fine—”

  “No, do. I mean. Yeah. Yeah, you can. I want you to.”

  I can feel his stomach expand against mine when he breathes and it’s this moment of extreme relief and he unzips my jeans and I am feeling everything, like I swear I can feel individual atoms bumping against each other, and it is my turn to be presumptuous so I say, “Do you have a condom? I, uh. I don’t. And maybe we’re not gonna have sex here and I’m being total—”

  “Shitttttttt,” says Reid. “Shit. I didn’t bring any because I’ve only ever done this with one other person and it did not even cross my mind—ugh.”

  “I didn’t either.” What a disappointment.

  “Wait!” says Reid. “Hold up. There’s a Rite Aid like right down the road. This is a college; people need these things all the time.”

  “Oh god.”

  “It’s fine. Let me just . . . give me ten minutes?”

  He gets off me and suddenly I’m embarrassed, like oh lord, him going to actually buy condoms means he is going to go do a thing that is an acknowledgment of what we are going to do. Oh lord oh lord. I say through my fingers, because my face is in my hands, “Okay, great.”

  “I’m the one asking the checker for this, short stack,” he says.

  “I know, just go. I am experiencing secondhand embarrassment for you and also something about buying condoms from Rite Aid is weird. Go buy the things.”

  Reid laughs and does this little adjustment maneuver that I am also embarrassed about, and it takes him eleven minutes from the time he walks out the door until he walks back in. And the thing about those eleven minutes is that they give me time to think past Sex Brain and it turns out, I still want to do it.

  He comes back and my face isn’t flushed and my heart isn’t going 110 miles an hour but I know. In my head. I want to.

  He sets the box on the bedside table and sits beside me.

  “So are we doing this?”

  “I mean,” I say. “You bought the condoms already, so.”

  “So what?”

  I say, “So we’re kind of past the point of no return.” I laugh.

  “Okay, but that’s not a thing that exists.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “Carter.” He shifts, so his feet aren’t on the floor anymore, they’re on t
he bed, and my legs are stretched out, but he sits with his knees bent up over mine. Takes my face in his hands. “We’re not gonna do this unless you get that that is not a thing. Like I’m not just saying this? I’m telling you that just because I bought condoms, just because I spent money or something, doesn’t mean you can’t kick me out right the fuck now. I’ll use them eventually.” His mouth tips up and I smile. I’m blushing. “I don’t care if we’re like . . . having sex. You want to stop, we stop. I want to stop, we stop. Okay?”

  Intellectually, I get that. I know that. It’s just that sometimes it doesn’t feel like that’s a thing. It doesn’t really feel like there’s an e-brake you can pull without someone walking away mad or hurt or—

  “Carter?” he says. “Just you and me here, okay? I’m not gonna be pissed at you if you don’t want to.”

  “Okay.”

  “And anyone who would is an asshole and fuck them. Well. Don’t fuck them. Whatever.”

  I laugh and say, “Okay. I get it. No, I get it. Do you want to stop?”

  When Reid laughs, it’s downright hoarse. “Extremely no.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  I flick the lamp off and pull off Reid’s shirt and he kisses me, slides me back until he’s on top of me and I’m on the pillow, unbuttons my jeans and slips his hand over my underwear. Both of us are in our underwear now and what he’s doing doesn’t feel totally smooth, doesn’t feel rehearsed or calculated, but it feels good, like so good I think I might actually come apart.

  I shimmy out of my underwear and so does he, and then we’re in nothing and I’m a little glad the lights are off and a little annoyed at them at the same time.

  In the time it takes me to unclasp my bra—every teenage boy thinks that is a thing they’ll be good at and every teenage boy is wrong—Reid has gotten a condom out of its wrapper and slipped it on.

  I suddenly feel like I should say something, like I need to fill the air with something that isn’t just the crinkle of foil and this quiet waiting. “How are we going to get back to hating each other now?” I say.