Manhattan

by Steiner, Kandi

  “I want to.”

  The words flew out of her mouth quickly, and her eyes shot open just as fast, like she was wondering if she’d actually said them.

  I smirked, nodding. “Good. Because I want to, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She flushed the deepest shade of crimson I’d ever seen, and the way her wide, innocent eyes watched me, it made me want to go back on my word that I didn’t want that next kiss to be right here, right now.

  “What are you doing tonight?” I asked instead.

  Kylie shrugged, blowing out a breath through her mouth like it was hard to breathe in that little bedroom. In many ways, it was. “I don’t know,” she said, looking around. “I’ll be here until three, but after that, I was just going to go home and hang out with Dad.” Kylie found my eyes again. “Why? What did you have in mind?”

  And just like I had Friday night, I felt a shift in that little room, in my little world, in the entire atmosphere — one that told me things would never be the same.

  “Come with me to pick out a new guitar?”

  Kylie

  The English language is weird.

  We have a word for almost everything. Calxophobia is the word we use to describe someone who’s afraid of chalk. Serendipitous is the word we use to describe something amazing that happened by chance. Lackadaisical is the word we use to describe something or someone lacking spirit or zest.

  More than a million words in the English language, and yet, not a single one for what I was experiencing on Sunday night as I sat one chair over from Mikey, watching him tune his guitar in the light from the fire we’d built in his backyard.

  Where was the word for “day that turned one’s entire life upside down?” Where was the word for “giddy as hell but also equally terrified and nauseous?” Or, what about “moment in one’s life when one’s best friend who one has been in love with forever says out loud that he wants to kiss you? Er… one?”

  No, I couldn’t rely on the English language to help me summarize what was happening in the pit of my stomach, that mix of contentment and uneasiness that seemed so at war and yet so perfectly comfortable co-existing inside me. All I knew was that it was night and day different from how I’d felt Friday night when I’d crawled into bed and sobbed myself to sleep. And it was definitely different from the day of misery I’d succumbed to on Saturday, when I’d let myself throw the biggest pity party of my life.

  Mikey had finally kissed me.

  I’d waited so long for his lips to touch mine, for a moment when he’d look at me and see something more than just a girl he liked to hang out with. And when it had finally come, it had been at the height of the biggest fight we’d ever had.

  About his ex-girlfriend.

  The reminder soured my gut again, and I sipped on my Dr. Pepper, watching Mikey’s furrowed brows as he toyed with the strings on his new guitar. How was it possible to feel so low and so unsure one day, and then so high and elated the next?

  Earlier, at the nursing home, he told me he wasn’t thinking of Bailey when he kissed me.

  And he asked if he could kiss me again.

  I still couldn’t believe it, especially not after spending what felt like an everyday, normal afternoon with him. We’d met at Carl’s Music Center — the only place to buy a decent guitar without driving at least an hour — and walked the aisles together while Mikey eyeballed his options. Carl had helped him, giving him a few options to play and hold and feel that were up the alley he was searching in.

  He wanted a good acoustic, one like the one his dad had given him — the one he’d thrown in the bonfire at The Black Hole over the holidays. And in the end, he settled on a used Blueridge BR-160 that was in good condition and had a faded Eagles sticker on the body.

  Everything had felt normal.

  We’d horsed around in the guitar shop. I’d made him play a diddy on a small, pastel-pink guitar with My Little Pony stickers all over it while I recorded him on my phone, and we’d stopped to get ice cream at Blondies when the deal was done. Then, we’d come back to his place for Sunday dinner with his family, and now we were here — sitting around a small bonfire in his backyard like we had a hundred times before.

  He didn’t feel any different to me.

  But in the back of my mind, I knew he wanted to kiss me.

  And that was all it took to have my stomach in a knot the size of a Case Tractor.

  “There she is,” Mikey cooed, like he was talking to a two-year-old instead of a guitar as he plucked at the strings on the neck and strummed. For the first time since we sat down by the fire, it sounded right, the tuning done, and he looked up at me with a grin splitting his face. “I got a new guitar.”

  I smiled back. “Indeed, you did. How does it feel?”

  He sighed, looking back down at his new baby as he played the first few notes of “Hotel California” softly. “It feels good, I guess. But a little weird.”

  “Because it’s not Vanessa?”

  He sighed again, deeper this time. “She’s definitely not Vanessa.”

  Vanessa was the name for his old guitar — the one his dad had given him shortly before he passed away. His dad had always named his guitars, and so Mikey did the same, naming it after his biggest crush at the time — Vanessa Hudgens. He’d never admit it to anyone but me, but he’d been obsessed with her after High School Musical. That guitar had been entirely too large for him when he was eight years old, but it was the one he learned on, anyway. And he’d played that old thing well past its prime… up until the day he tossed it in the fire and watched it burn.

  “What are you going to name this one?” I asked.

  “Hmmm…” He stopped playing, smoothing his hand over the body, the neck, over the strings. “That’s a good question.”

  “What about Emily?” I suggested. “After that hot model slash actress. Emily Ratzkowski.”

  He made a face. “Nah.”

  “Nah?” I mimicked, cocking a brow. “She’s a smoke show. Okay, fine. What about Carrie? As in, Underwood?”

  Mikey made another face.

  I chuckled. “Alright. I give up. Who’s your biggest crush right now?”

  He looked at me curiously, with the smallest smirk on his lips.

  “You named your first one after High School Musical’s bombshell who had the voice of an angel,” I reminded him. “Vanessa Hudgens. Eight-year-old Mikey’s biggest crush. So, who’s your biggest crush now?”

  He just kept looking at me with that dumb face, and then he nodded — just once — mind suddenly and definitively made up. “Nelly.”

  “Nelly?” I repeated, scrunching up my nose. “As in Furtado? Or the rapper with a Band-Aid on his cheek? Because depending on the answer, we’re might have more to talk about.”

  Mikey barked out a laugh. “Neither.”

  “Nelly who, then?”

  “C’mere.”

  I frowned, looking at him like he was having a seizure or something. “Come where?” I gestured to the small space between our chairs. “I’m already sitting next to you.”

  Mikey didn’t say another word, just sat his guitar beside him, leaning the neck of it against his chair, and then, he patted his lap.

  I stared at his basketball shorts for a long time — maybe a creepy amount of time — before I glanced back up at him again.

  He chuckled. “Ky, come here.”

  I swallowed, setting my Dr. Pepper in the cup holder of my camping chair before I stood on legs as shaky as a newborn calf’s. Then, I stood in front of him — stupidly — waiting to make sure I hadn’t really, really misunderstood him.

  His smile climbed, and he reached out, wrapping one hand around my waist as the other hit my thigh. And despite the heat coming from the fire and the already seventy-two-degree summer night around us, I was trembling as he pulled me into him, onto his lap, his arms wrapping around me easily as he adjusted me there.

  “Nelly,” he repeated when I was
on his lap, the firelight dancing in his eyes as he looked up at me. “As in my own little nickname for Nelson.”

  “Nelson…” I whispered, not sure why my voice was suddenly gone. In fact, not sure that word had come from me at all, because with me in his lap, with one of his hands on my hip and the other resting on my thigh, and his big, olive eyes looking up at me like that — I wasn’t sure of anything, really.

  He nodded. “Nelson. As in, Kylie Nelson.” Mikey shrugged. “If we’re sticking to the biggest crush theme, then it fits perfectly.”

  My cheeks heated, and not a bit of it was from the fire.

  “Can I ask you something?” he asked, brushing my long hair back behind my ear with his fingertips.

  I shivered at the touch, nodding in lieu of a verbal response.

  “Friday night… before you left…” He swallowed. “You said you’ve been waiting your whole life for me to kiss you. Is that true?”

  My tongue was like sandpaper in my mouth, dry and impossible to swallow past as I nodded.

  His brows tugged inward, his hand framing my face as he slid his fingertips into my hair, his thumb brushing the skin in front of my ear. “Can I ask you something else?”

  “Mmm,” I think I answered.

  “If I kiss you again, right now, can we pretend that one on Friday never happened?” His fingers curled at the back of my neck. “Can we pretend this is the first time?”

  I think I nodded. I think I whispered something close to yes, because Mikey pulled me into him — his hand at my waist tugging me closer, his hand in my hair pulling me down — and with his eyes searching mine before they fluttered shut, he pressed his lips to mine.

  Heat spread like gooey liquid from that point of contact, from where his soft, warm, determined lips found mine, all the way to my toes. And even still, with the heat from the kiss and the heat from the fire, an inexplicable shiver rocked through me.

  But it only made Mikey hold me tighter.

  When the first kiss was broken, a soft sound from our lips breaking contact, he came back for more — and this time, the kiss was deeper, insistent, and sure. I inhaled a stiff breath, and he groaned, both hands framing my face then as he held me to him.

  It was as if the whole world was tilting, like we were spinning out of orbit, like all the laws of gravity were being broken with that singular kiss.

  I felt every part of him as if it were my own — his hands on my skin and in my hair, his lips parting, his tongue slipping inside my mouth to meet mine. I felt his rapid heartbeat reverberating through me, matching my own heart’s rhythm, a new song coming to life inside us.

  And when he pulled away, we pressed our foreheads together, both of us breathing like we’d just climbed a mountain.

  I let out a shaky exhale. “Well…” I whispered, wetting my lips. “That was a much better first kiss.”

  Mikey smirked, nodding slightly with his forehead still to mine. “It was a solid silver medal.”

  I frowned, pulling back to look him in the eyes, but he just smiled wider.

  “Meaning, I think we should go for gold.”

  He pulled me back into him, and for the next hour, neither of us came up for air.

  Michael

  “He’s going to love this one,” I said to Katie — who, I’d just found out during our conversation, was visiting the distillery from Portland. She was on summer break from college and her boyfriend had just turned twenty-one back home. “It’s the most popular one from our limited barrel release this spring. There aren’t many bottles left, either, so you got here just in time.”

  I bagged up her whiskey and shot glasses, and the t-shirt that said Scooter Gal with our logo on it, handing it all to her with a smile.

  “Thank you so much for your help,” she said. “I’m going to stop by the front and tell them what a great job you all are doing here. The tour was fantastic, and you were just the cherry on top.”

  “Ah, stop it. Now you’re just trying to make me blush,” I teased.

  She giggled and waved me off, making her way out of the store with her brother and parents as I tucked her signed receipt in the register drawer. As soon as she was gone, I checked to make sure no one else needed my help, then dug in my pocket for my phone.

  Two texts from Kylie.

  I smiled, typing out a reply to her comment on how we needed to see the new Marvel movie before social media spoiled it for both of us. As soon as the text was sent, there was a knock on the counter.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Logan said, shaking his head. “You really are smiling. I guess not all the rumors that go around this place are false.”

  I rolled my eyes, tucking my phone back in my pocket. “I always smile.”

  Logan cocked a brow.

  “At customers.”

  He lifted the other one.

  “Okay, fine,” I conceded. “So, I’ve been a little grumpy. Sue me.”

  Logan chuckled, looking around the shop to make sure no one was close enough to hear us before he leaned a little more over the counter. “I still can’t believe you and Kylie got into the hard drive.”

  My smile slipped, chest tightening. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten about the hard drive, but it hadn’t exactly been at the top of my mind that week. No, that spot had been reserved for Kylie, and for my new favorite pasttime.

  Which just happened to be kissing her.

  “I know,” I said, lowering my voice, too. “It’s crazy. I think there was a part of me that never really thought we’d get in, you know?”

  Logan nodded, adjusting the curve on the bill of his baseball cap. “Same here. I wonder what Jordan’s found so far.”

  “He won’t tell us unless it’s important.”

  “True,” Logan agreed. “Do you think…” His voice faded, and he looked around again, frowning. “Is it stupid to hope that maybe there are some answers on there?”

  “No,” I assured him. “But, it’s not stupid to think we probably won’t find anything at all, either.” I shrugged. “I mean, from what Kylie and I looked at, it was just sort of a daily log of what he was working on, some brief summaries of conversations he’d had with the board. And it’s not like he could write in it after he…” My throat tightened. “I just think if he would have known something before that day, if he would have felt something off… well… wouldn’t he have told us? Or at the very least, told Mom?”

  Logan nodded again, his brows furrowed. It wasn’t the answer either of us wanted, and I knew it. It was easy to hold onto hope that there’d be something monumental on that hard drive, but the truth was, we’d gone ten years without answers to what happened to our dad that day.

  My bet was that we’d go our whole lives just the same.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I fished it out, smiling at Kylie’s suggestion that we play a game of Mortal Kombat before the movie, and loser has to dress up like a Marvel character.

  Logan nodded at my phone with a grin when I tucked it away again. “Who ya texting?”

  “Kylie,” I answered easily, rearranging some shot glasses in front of the register that didn’t need any adjusting at all.

  “That’s a pretty big smile for texting Kylie,” he observed. “Something you wanna tell me, baby bro?”

  “Nope.”

  He laughed, smacking the counter before pointing at me. “Oh, but I think there is. She’s the reason you’re all smiley and being nice to people again, isn’t she?” He leaned closer. “You guys made out, didn’t you?”

  “I’m not all smiley,” I argued, fidgeting with the shot glasses again. But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t fight back the stupid grin that hit my face. “And who I’m making out with is none of your business.”

  His jaw dropped. “Holy shit,” he whispered. “You really did kiss her?!”

  I didn’t answer. Hell, I didn’t have to by the way Logan was already hooping and hollering.

  “Well, hot damn!” he said, smacking the counter again. “About time yo
u made that girl your girlfriend.”

  I smirked. “Hold your horses, hoss. We’re not there yet.”

  At that, Logan’s face went as still as stone. “What do you mean you’re not there yet.” He eyed me. “Please tell me you aren’t just making out with Kylie without actually dating her.”

  “I’m just saying we haven’t put a title on anything. It’s new.”

  “Mikey,” Logan said, like I just told him I stole twenty dollars out of Mom’s purse.

  “What?”

  “This is Kylie we’re talking about,” he said. “She’s tender.”

  “You saying I’m going to break her?”

  “What I’m saying is you might want to make sure you’re on the same page.”

  I rolled my eyes, but we put the conversation on pause while I rang up a family from Detroit. Once they were gone, Logan leaned over the counter again.

  “Not everything in life requires a PowerPoint presentation, big bro,” I said. “As much as I know you love them.”

  “Maybe so,” he agreed. “But, I think this at least requires a conversation.” He knocked on the counter once, standing upright. “I have to get back for the next tour, taking another one of Susie’s since she’s sick today.”

  “Manager of the year,” I teased with a shit-eating grin.

  Logan ignored me, but he didn’t drop the other subject. “Just think about it, okay? If you really are leaving at the end of the summer… what does that mean for her?”

  He left me on that, and when he was gone, I pulled out my phone with a sour twist in my gut.

  I understood what my brother was saying, but what he didn’t get was that it was early. Really early. We had only kissed for the first time that weekend, and now, here it was Wednesday. It hadn’t even been a full week. Right now, we didn’t need to have a full-blown conversation about where we go from here.

  If anything, we were still trying to figure out how it felt to be in this new territory. After years and years of being friends, crossing the line into more was uncharted for both of us. We needed to go slow.

  And that was something none of my brothers would understand, provided their track record.