The Kiss: An Anthology About Love and Other Close Encounters

by C. A. Newsome

  The five-minute cab ride seemed to last forever. I refused to talk to Liam until we were in the privacy of my home, but he refused to give up asking me what was wrong. With every word he uttered, my mood grew blacker, a dark and malevolent thing riding in the backseat between us.

  By the time I opened my front door and ushered him into my house, I don’t know which of us was angrier.

  “Are you going to explain yourself?” Liam demanded, pacing the room like a caged panther. “I was in there!”

  “Exactly.” I also remained standing, too tense to sit.

  “What does that mean?”

  “If you think I’m going to spend the rest of my life watching you get off with other men, you’ve got another think coming. I can’t do it, Liam. You can’t make me.”

  “Toby—”

  “No, Liam. I know you, you’re not this stupid.”

  He stopped pacing, suddenly apprehensive.

  “You must know how I feel about you?”

  “I, I…”

  “I love you, you idiot. I’ve always loved you.”

  We stood facing each other in the silence which followed my words. I was holding my breath, my heart hardly daring to beat, waiting for the axe to fall. Liam—my brash, beautiful Liam—looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights, wide-eyed and terrified.

  After the longest of pauses, he finally spoke. “I know.”

  Somehow, that didn’t make me feel any better. If anything, it made me feel worse.

  “What the hell do you mean, you know?” I snarled. “You mean you’ve been using me all this time—”

  Liam winced. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Then explain it to me.” I sat, arms and legs crossed, right foot tapping furiously against my left leg. I couldn’t have made my body language more defensive if I’d tried.

  “You’re my best friend… I don’t want to lose our friendship.”

  “That’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard. Try again.”

  “It’s the truth!” he snapped, glaring at me.

  “Whatever we are, Liam, we’re not friends.” Friends didn’t use each other, didn’t take advantage of someone’s feeling just to get an easy lay. Friends weren’t that cruel to one other.

  “What are we then?” he demanded. “You put a name on it, since you’re the one who’s so keen to label us.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I countered.

  “I know you’ve told everyone about us. I know what you want—”

  “Is that such a terrible thing?”

  “What if it goes wrong?” His eyes were wide, haunted by untold fears, and for a split-second I saw into his very soul, before the shutters came down and he locked me out.

  “Is that all that’s stopping you?” I asked, heart in my mouth and hardly daring to hope.

  “Isn’t it enough? We’ve known each other since we were five, Toby. What if we break up after six weeks and I never see you again?”

  “What if we don’t? What if everything works out and fifty years from now we’re celebrating our golden anniversary?”

  Liam laughed, cutting some of the tension from the room. “You think you’d put up with me for that long?”

  “Forever,” I said, perfectly seriously. I hardly remembered my life before Liam entered it, and couldn’t imagine a future without him.

  “How…” He swallowed thickly. “How would that even work?”

  “You’ve had relationships before,” I replied sardonically. “Cards on the table, Liam. I love you. I love you and it’s killing me. If you don’t feel the same way then I’ll understand, but you can’t treat me like all your other mates, you can’t expect me to sit back and watch you pick up other guys when we’re out. And you can’t pick me up and drop me whenever you feel like it, either! I deserve better than that.”

  He was nodding frantically. “I know, I know. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not enough. ‘Sorry.’ I don’t care that you’re sorry, Li, we have to stop doing it! And,”—I took a deep breath—“and if you don’t want anything more, you need to give me time to accept it.”

  “Would you?” he asked curiously. “Accept it, that is?”

  I fought to keep my face from breaking and revealing just how much it hurt to hear him say he didn’t want me. “Yes,” I said thickly, choking on the word. “I, I think I was starting to, before tonight.”

  “We could still be friends?”

  “Yes, dammit!” I closed my eyes, concentrated on the sharp sting of my nails digging into my palms, the sensation grounding me in the present. “But I can’t, I can’t see you. Not for a while.”

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know, Liam!” How long does it take to mend a broken heart? “Just, please, go. Please.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.” I ground out the word through gritted teeth, my eyes still closed. The room was utterly silent. Liam wasn’t speaking, but he wasn’t leaving, either.

  I startled as he touched my knee, the heat from his palm branding me through my jeans. When I opened my eyes, I looked straight into his.

  “What if I don’t want to leave?” he whispered.

  I was trembling, I noticed with strange detachment. My hands were curled into tight fists, palms sweating. I’d crossed my legs so tightly my foot was going numb. On his knees before me, Liam tipped his head to look deeper into my eyes, a small smile teasing the corners of his mouth.

  “Wha-what?”

  “Fifty years, you say?” He scraped his teeth over his bottom lip, flushing out the colour. Outside, a car turned into my street, momentarily illuminating the room with its headlights. It would take less than a second for me to lean forward and claim the kiss I knew he was thinking about giving me.

  “Is this a joke?” I asked weakly, clinging onto my last shreds of strength and dignity by my fingernails.

  “Do I look like I’m joking?”

  “Why, then?” I had to know, had to be sure he was really considering giving us a chance. I had to know this wasn’t just another cheap ploy to get me into bed.

  “Because I’ve been going crazy missing you these last two months. Because whoever I’m with, I always come back to you. Because maybe you’re right that this can work and I’ve been an idiot all these years for being afraid.”

  We shared a small, indulgent laugh at that, the idea of Liam being afraid of anything too absurd to contemplate.

  He touched his forehead to mine and I sobered in a second. “Is this really what you want?”

  “How many times, yes. Yes I want it, I want you. I think I always have.”

  I still had a hundred questions tripping over my tongue, a hundred answers he owed me—why he’d waited so long, why he hadn’t said something, why he left it until I was ready to give up before speaking his heart. I was still mad at him, and there was still an argument waiting for us after all of this was over, but right in that moment I couldn’t articulate a word of it. Not with Liam kneeling at my feet, nuzzling my face, his stubble scraping over my jaw as he smothered me in butterfly kisses, working his way slowly but surely to my lips.

  “Wait.”

  His breath ghosted over my lips, our mouths so close we were almost touching.

  “If you hurt me, Liam McGinty, I will have your balls on a plate.”

  Liam chuckled at that and caressed my cheek. “If I hurt you, I’ll serve them up myself.”

  It was all I needed to hear.

  I surged forward, my arms around his neck as I threw myself into the kiss. Not our first, by any means, but still something new and scary-different: so good I felt my heart might explode. I couldn’t turn back the clock and make myself the first man Liam ever kissed, but God help me, I was going to be the last.

  * * *

  Kate Aaron lives in Cheshire, England, with two dogs, a parrot, and a bearded dragon named Elvis.

  Find her online at http://KateAaron.com

  *

  A Kiss Through
Time

  Robert Thomas

  Chapter One: Guns of Mortain

  August, 1943

  The rain eased as the heat of the day began to give way, the winds and water having been swept in from the channel. What had surged over the U.S. 30th infantry the past several days had stolen what little strength and resolve they had remaining. The setting sun began to chisel its fading light out from behind the gray wall of clouds before its fall would once again bring darkness to this tiny forgotten town, this backwater in Normandy. Pfc Willy McGuiness slid his hand across his dirty forehead wiping away the water that had dripped from beneath his pot helmet into his eyes.

  “You fixin’ to sleep your turn ta’ night?”

  “I most certainly am.” Willy looked up at his companion and smiled. “One of these days I’m going to teach you how to speak proper English, Hooker.”

  “What?” The smile from the big southern boy rivaled the setting sun. “It’s the only English I knows.” Hooker stretched his frame out across the first dry patch of ground he had seen in days. “If’n I talk like you, I’ll never be ‘llowed back in Alabama.”

  “There’s other places to explore in this world, Hooker.”

  “Likes where? Here? Where we even be at?”

  “Well, maybe not here.” Willy looked quickly for a dry patch but was too tired to even care and plopped his butt down into the wet muck. “We’re on the outskirts of a little French town called Mortain.”

  “How you know that?”

  “I read the sign.” It was Willy’s turn to smile this time. He wearily shook his head and held up his hand. “No, I can’t read French.”

  “Then how ya know...” The sudden and unmistakable sound stopped Hooker in mid-sentence. It was a sound they knew all too well; the grinding metal of wheels on tracks. “Maybe it’s one of ours,” he said in a low whisper.

  “We don’t have anything in front of us, not ours anyway.”

  Hooker rolled to his left off the dry bump into a shallow depression, his right hand bringing his other companion, his M1 up to his side. Willy slipped forward splashing water on Hookers back as he fell into the same depression, his rifle, covered with oil and grime at the ready. They had faced a fire-fight each of the last six days. Reinforcements had been promised. Lieutenant always said they were on their way. That was the running joke; they were, but for someone else.

  The sun slinked back in behind the sullen sky and ensured the night world would come quickly. Willy slipped his hand into his breast pocket and pulled out the tattered photo. No matter the situation, she always brought a smile to his face. He kissed her softly and slid it back in his pocket. As he looked up, the flash from the Panzer’s 75mm gun was the last thing they would see in the light of day.

  *

  The sun broke through the low clouds beating back the morning haze. The end of August was always her favorite time of the year. The New England weather cooled August much quicker than most other parts of the country. She preferred it that way, not one for the hot summer months. She was more of a winter girl, a winter girl waiting for her soldier to come home, her lover, her new husband.

  Kathleen McGuiness was flush with a new life. She had married her sweetheart, the only boy, the only man she ever loved. It was a hurried affair but she didn’t mind. There were much larger issues in the world; the war, the rationing and the hardship. But she was a girl to stand on her own two feet. Her family had known hardship before, having fought through the depression when she was just a child. She chuckled at the notion, not much more than a child still, her mother had thought the day she married Willy McGuiness.

  Her thoughts ambled back to the day of their wedding. The small church on Main Street across from the seawall in the heart of Camden looked as perfect as any girl could imagine. Its white facade had withstood the pounding weather for over seventy years. It had seen the celebrations of baptisms and christenings, weddings and its share of funerals many of those fishermen, their lives lost to the brutal Atlantic.

  She hummed a tune that was a favorite, the melody light but haunting, the words soft and poetic as her fingers danced across the white ribbon as she flipped the last loop and tied the bow. The paper was a crisp blue and adorned with angel’s wings. Her heart raced as she realized it would be Willy’s first Christmas present from his wife. The melody of ‘Ave Maria’ echoed through her thoughts as she remembered words to a song she dearly loved and knew the days and nights would be long as she awaited the first Christmas with her husband.

  She felt the warmth of the morning sun as it lit the entrance to the hallway through the open screen door. It would be a wonderful day it seemed but the sounds of the street were slightly louder than she cared to hear this early. She laid the small package on the hallway stand, the extra bit of weight making it rock forward. She would need to even the legs out sometime, or perhaps move it to a better spot.

  The idling engine sounds so close to her door were annoying. She peered out as she neared the screen and slipped the hook up out of its ring. She paused as her eyes fell to an olive-green vehicle stopped on her side of the street, one house away. Two men dressed in army uniforms stood on the sidewalk looking down at a piece of paper then up again at the houses. Her heart fluttered as she took a deep breath. “They’re not in front of my house,” she thought. Kathleen pushed gently against the wooden frame and stepped out onto the porch, the worn wood creaking beneath her feet. The single white star painted on the door seemed faded. As she looked toward them their eyes rose in unison and came squarely to rest on her.

  Their first steps came her way and her heart sank into the depths of hell itself. Her face streamed with tears immediately as they neared; she knew at once they had come for her. As they began the walk up the sidewalk her legs could no longer support her and she slumped to the porch. Her cries of torment echoed down the street as she clutched the front of her yellow dress and brought nearly all passersby to a halt. Everyone knew what it meant, knew the heartache that came with the message. The first soldier reached her and placed his hands on her head, his knee bending as he came down to meet her.

  “My child.” His rosary slipped out of his pocket and fell onto the porch. Captain Michael Meyer, an army chaplain and a Catholic priest had done this what seemed a thousand times, yet he could never get used to it. “God holds him now in the palm of his hands”.

  Her sobbing continued until she had nothing left to offer, her tears exhausted, her dress now torn from a nail poking up from the planks. A trickle of blood ran down her leg and stuck her stockings to her skin. Captain Meyer slid his arms down about her shoulders and held her in a gentle embrace. Her head came to rest against his chest as the last of the tears left their mark on her skin.

  “Ma’am?” the second soldier offered, “are you Kathleen McGuiness?”

  “Lieutenant!” Captain Meyer’s tone was curt. “Not now.”

  “Captain, we need to be sure.” Lt. Brandon Walker took no notice of the rebuff. They had done this many times together and he knew the captain’s heart was in the right place, but he had been wrong once. It was a difficult moment. Captain Meyer nodded in agreement, his eyes downcast.

  “Kathleen?”

  “Yes.” She choked back the words, fighting the tears she wished now not to show.

  Captain Meyer’s eyes lit with a loving fire. His faith was strong and his will unshakable to his duties. He had seen others give this information to a grieving new widow and simply walk away. He vowed he would never do that, not to one who suffered so.

  “How,” she paused, choking back the words.

  “It’s all in the letter, but I don’t like doing it that way.” Captain Meyer reached up to Lt. Walker and retrieved the official notice. “He was fighting in a little French town called Mortain just south of the channel. It’s in Normandy. They were surprised by a counter assault from German tanks.” He took a deep breath, holding it ever-so-slightly. “I’m sorry.”

  The official visit lasted nearly thirt
y minutes. As she gathered herself in the end, she managed to offer them a cup of tea. Captain Meyer’s heart ached and his faith told him he had made the correct choice in life. They politely declined and said their goodbyes. The last thing she saw of them was the rounded trunk of the army sedan driving off down the street as the sounds of the Atlantic returned to the seawall.

  Kathleen McGuiness stumbled back into her home, a structure that now had no feel, no heart; it was empty. She stared down the hallway where thirty minutes before she had been a happy bride with her future in front of her. Now, she had nothing. She staggered down the hall, her hand brushing the small package as she passed, knocking it to the floor. She took no notice, her thoughts in a jumble.

  *

  She tightened the white belt of her coat as she stared blankly at the closet door before her. The last several months had been difficult, to say the least. She often found it hard to focus and lived day to day with no conviction, no sense of purpose. She knew she could no longer go on this way. As the summer closed and the last three months of the year took hold she had made her decision, one that would change her life forever. It was time to move on.

  Her gaze passed over the surfaces of the hallway, a place that for a few months held all the hope she could imagine. Now it was empty, yet she couldn’t take her eyes off the stained door at the end of the hall. As she finished wrapping her belt, her hand slipped to the small package on the wooden table. It had been there for months. She gingerly picked it up and felt its weight. The bow was nearly perfect, the blue paper still crisp. Without another thought she purposefully strode toward the closet with the package in hand, opened the door and closed it behind her. She came out, letting the door slip behind her as she leaned back against it, the latch clicking as it closed. She stared ahead, the front door calling her to a new life, a life she desperately needed, and another door closed behind her as she made her way out into the world.