THE TROUBLE WITH KISSING YOU

by Gen Phan

  *Prologue (Maria)

  Who knew that five seconds would change everything?

  One minute it was light…..

  It was Brett’s birthday party and he’d pulled out all the stops. A cheesy disco ball was spewing out dancing dots of light over the dancing crowd. Pink and blue lights were flashing, momentarily illuminating the corners of the room which were full of kids doing things that should only be reserved for dark dingy corners.

  In the far corner Emmy was getting man handled. That was surly the only way to describe the movement of his clumsy hand under her shirt as he did something to her breast that actually looked like he was milking a cow. I cringed. Oh well, she seemd to be enjoying it.

  In the other corner, the ones that wear far too much black eye liner on their perpetually sad and unnaturally pale faces where smoking pot and looking totally disinterested in what was going on around them. (Did they practice that disinterested look at home in the mirror, I wondered?) They were probably discussing vampires, the mysterious dark arts or some strange Nordic band that made music using chainsaws as instruments.

  The corner closest to me was no exception. Except the nefarious deeds going on there were a little different from the rest. But no less wicked. My sister was there in all her Pepto-Bismol-pink glory, looking every bit the perfect blonde cheerleader, with her equally blonde, perky looking friends. Tiny cut-off jeans, large bouncy boobs squeezed into strapless tops that sent rather unsubtle signals to all the males in the general vicinity. Pouting lips flushed with gloss that shimmered under the colored lights. iPhones out, statuses being updated, hashtags being created and photos being uploaded. Faces pushed together and seductive poses struck as the seventh selfie was taken. The were giggling like a bunch of witches around a cauldron. Probably dissing the fat girl or talking about which guy looked the cutest. Walking clichés. Blondes with big smiles and bitchy dispositions that did backflips.

  How were we even related? How the hell were we twins?

  My eyes moved from my sister to the dance floor and…there he was.

  He was just standing there in-between the dancing, swaying bodies and an odd chick trying to twerk.

  He was laughing. He has the best smile; it brings out the dimples in his cheeks. He threw his head back and ran his hands through his sandy blond hair. I love his hair. I prefer it this length to when it was shorter and he was going through his excessive wet-look gel phase. His black shirt clings just enough for me to see he’s been hitting the gym a lot- which I know. He puts his hands in his pockets, which causes his jeans to slip down a bit, and for a split second, I see a tiny flash of his stomach.

  Okay, so I know I’m perving like a total freak right now. I know that if anyone could read my thoughts they’d laugh and tell me that I was the last girl on the planet that Mike Matthews would ever go out with. And they’d be right. Mike went for girls like my sister. Not like me.

  I’d cut my long blonde hair short about three years ago out of sheer rebellion and defiance. Unbeknownst to my mother, this was my anarchy. My mother wanted Stepford-daughter, so I gave her tomboy. She had a long list of unreasonable expectations, I decided to live up to none of them. I’d refused to do cheerleading or join in any group activity that required war cries and choreographed movements—let alone fluffy pom-poms. Instead I’d chosen soccer, much to my mother’s horror; apparently I was bound to get “muscular, manly thighs.” I was flat chested; my sister must have seeped all that genetic material in utero, like the demon soul sucker she is in real life. Sorry, that wasn’t nice. She’s not so bad, when you don’t get to know her. I’m lanky, lacking the curves that the other girls seem to have in such abundance and don’t know a mani from a pedi, and nor do I want to.

  But of course all this doesn’t stop me from being totally, madly, utterly, heart-stopping-ly, breath-stealing-ly in love with Mike Matthews. Sigh. In love with him for the last ten years, since the very first day he moved in next-door to me and we built our first tree house together, terrorized our first neighbor with ding-dong-ditch and spent our first night sneaking into each other’s bedrooms and playing video games until the sun came up.

  If there was a scale from one to “that’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire effing life” this would be right up there. Being in love with my best friend for more than half my life and never saying a word about it. To him. To anyone.

  So that’s my sad sob story. The pathetic story of Maria Glover, the girl silently, painfully drowning in the agony of daily unrequited love. Unrequited love… it has to the cruelest form of torture around. It’s always there. It never leaves. Always lurking in the back of your mind, taking up so much space and energy that sometimes you wish it could just be surgically removed.

  Suddenly I’m feeling nervous again. Even though I know him so well, probably better than anyone in the world, he still makes me as nervous as hell sometimes. I instinctively raise my finger to my mouth and I’m just about to bite down on my cuticle (a bad habit I have) when my mother’s face comes flying into my mind.

  “Stop! It’s unladylike to bite your nails. Here, take this, and every time you want to bite, chew one.”

  So typical of my mother and her constant need to be “helpful” as she calls it. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the unopened pack of gum. I basically rip off the wrapping before nervously shoving it into my mouth. The intense flavors burst in. Icy mint mingles with fiery cinnamon. I’ve never liked gum, and certainly not this flavor. I'd just started looking around for a distbin to throw it in when… BAM -

  It’s dark….

  The lights go out with a loud, frightening pop. A distressed gasp rises up from the room and I can hear people scratching in their bags and pockets for their phones as chaos breaks out around me. Someone bumps into me and I stumble backwards slightly. I can’t see who it is it’s so dark and then…

  …and then…

  That’s when I decide to do it.

  Perhaps everyone gets one of these moments in their lives. The kind that demands you to defy logic, reason, sense and just throw caution to the howling gale-force wind. The kind that demands you “just do it.” No thinking. No reasoning, just doing…

  And so I run forward, pushing people out the way before it becomes too light. A few phones are already glowing in palms and being waved around in the air. I keep moving until I run slap bang into his chest.

  I recognized his smell immediately. It’s intoxicating and I want to drink it in. I reach up, taking his face between my hands and I stand on my tip-toes until we’re face to face. And then, I just kiss him.

  WTF? I kiss him. I can barely believe it myself.

  To say it was electric would be an understatement. To say it stopped my heart, melted my insides and liquefied my kneecaps would not be sufficient either. Nothing can adequately describe the feelings as he reaches out, wraps his arms around me and pulls me even closer. The kiss intensifies and I hear him let out a tiny breathy moan… it’s just about the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced in all my seventeen years. I put my hand on his chest and splay my fingers, God, I’d wanted to do this for so long. And then I hear a familiar voice behind me and I wiggle out of his grip and disappear into the darkness before he knows it’s me.

  * Chapter 1 (Maria)

  My heart was racing as I sprinted home. It wasn’t racing because I was running. It was racing because of what I’d just done. Mad, impulsive, insane and totally amazing. Had I completely lost my mind? I certainly wasn’t going to wait around to find out.

  So now I was running home as fast as my “manly thighs” could take me. I didn’t bother looking back, not for a spilt second and my timing couldn’t have been better, because the moment my feet hi
t the road, the lights came back on and the music started blaring again. I heard a collective cheer rise up from the room as I rounded my first corner and picked up even more pace.

  Brett, Mike and I all lived in the same gated community, and my house was only a few roads down, but still I must have reached it in record time. I didn’t bother with the front door. I never did and I climbed up the trellis and into the window of my second story bedroom. My blood felt like it was swishing through my veins violently. It felt like my veins weren’t wide enough to contain it. My lips still tingled from the kiss… The Kiss. I ran my tongue over them, I could still taste him. A slight hint of cigarette smoke and my minty-cinnamon gum but…

  Crap! Where the hell was my gum?

  My brain took a few moments to register the rather serious implications of this. Mike had the gum. In his mouth. It must have maneuvered its way out of mine and into his. I cringed. Sharing a kiss is one thing, but sharing gum, chewed gum I might add, that’s just…

  I shuddered again at the thought.

  I released a breath that felt like I’d been holding since the kiss and threw myself onto my bed. Despite the misfortunate misplacing of the gum, I couldn’t wipe off the stupid smile that was threatening to split my face in half.

  First kisses are often awkward as you bump and navigate your way around. My first kiss was definitely awkward, there was way too much spit and teeth and I kept having to pull away and wipe the flood from my face. But this hadn’t been awkward. It was perfect. It had been electric from the first second our lips had touched until the second I’d pulled away. I could still feel the pressure of his warm hands on my back. If I thought I was in love with Mike before, this just took it to a whole new level. That kiss…

  But suddenly a thought hit me... had Mike felt the same way? Can you fall in love after one kiss in the dark?

  I’d tried to tell him once... that I was in love. The words were often on the tip of my tongue and sometimes it took all my energy not to just blurt out…

  “I love you.” “I love you.” “I luuuuurrrvveve yooooouuu"

  Sometimes the words felt like they sat in the back of my throat, chocking me. Almost as if they wouldn’t allow me to talk until I let them out. Sometimes when we talked, I would say them over and over in my head, imagining what would happen if I let them out. I came so close once.

  It was a year ago on summer vacation. I’d gone away with him and his family to the coast. It was the best holiday. We’d learnt to surf, we’d snuck out and gone to clubs where we’d danced like idiots, we explored the coast line for hours on end and we’d had an ongoing mini-golf tournament running the whole time. He’d whipped my ass. But on the inside, I was dying. While I was supposed to be having fun, I was suffering from the agony of undying devotion. It was our last night there and we were lying on the beach looking up at the sky when a shooting star shot across the blackness.

  “Make a wish.” He’d said.

  Make a wish. And of course I did. And of course it was the same damn wish I made over and over again. I even threw a coin into a wishing well once (despite my non-belief in such things as wishing wells and leprechauns).

  So I closed my eyes tightly, focusing all my attention on the moment and the star and the perfect holiday we’d just had. Please let Mike love me back.

  “What was your wish?” he’d asked when I finally opened my eyes.

  I blushed just thinking about it. Luckily it was dark. “If I tell you it won’t come true.”

  He’d turned to face me. I remember it so clearly because he’d had this strange look on his face and I couldn’t read it.

  “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he’d said, holding eye contact in such a way that it somehow managed to suck all the breath from of my lungs.

  “No. I can’t.”

  “Okay, then I’ll say it.” He'd paused and for a second and I’d let my imagination run away with me. For a second I imagined Mike telling me that he was in love. Telling me he’d always been in love. My heart rate had quickened until it felt like I needed to call an ambulance because I was about to go into cardiac arrest, or it was about to fly out of my chest.

  And then he said it…“It’s about you.”

  I thought I was going to pass out. Was it possible to black out from sheer anticipation?

  This was it.

  The moment I’d been waiting for. And I was so ready for it.

  But then… Gong, gong, gong -

  “I wished that we could be friends forever.”

  A deathly silence had descended as his words had slammed into me. In that painful pause it had felt like my heart had been ripped from my chest and thrown across the beach and into the waves. I imagined it sinking all the way to the bottom of the cold sea where it was doomed to stay forever. Cold and wet and lonely with nothing but some bottom feeding aquatic life to keep it company, and maybe a few sharks. I was in serious danger of having my heart totally and utterly destroyed.

  So what the hell had I done? The only thing I could do? I’d smiled at him. It took every bit of energy I could muster. I'd opened my mouth, it had taken so much focus to get my muscles to do what they were supposed to.

  “Me too. Me too.” Lie! Lie! Lie!

  I hated this memory. Every time I’ve thought about it over the last year I’ve had a physical reaction to it, as if I’m violently allergic, like those kids with peanut allergies. I tried to push it out of my mind when my curtains suddenly moved and opened. And there he was. Climbing through my window as if he owned the place.

  And then he said the worst word imaginable. The word the killed me every time he uttered it—which is at least ten times a day.

  “Dude. Dude, you won’t believe what just happened.”

  Chapter 2 (Mike)

  The party was cool, but the people sucked. I think I’ve just gotten to that point in my life where I’m over clichés. They seem to be everywhere I look. There’re the girls trying to attract my attention, with their short skirts, dancing like they should be sliding up and down a pole. (Sometimes I wonder what their fathers would do if they saw them dancing like that.) Not that they aren’t hot, but it’s just so predictable.

  Then there’re the girls standing in the corner looking, giggling and posing for selfies until their phones run out of battery power. Every now and then one calls my name and waves at me. I’m not sure if it’s meant as an invitation? Am I supposed to wave back, walk over there or are they just reminding me of their presence? I’ve dated at least two of them over the years, but they all end the same way. Boredom.

  On the other side of the room are the one’s dressed in black, looking like they just bit down on a lemon. They all look pissed off. As if being pissed off makes them cool or unique in some way. Along with crappy, morbid poetry and depressing music.

  Then there’re the Hipsters. Big, black framed glasses, black skinny jeans and I see that one of the guys is even wearing suspenders - and I’m sure it’s not to keep his pants up. It’s probably just meant as some ironic statement about the nature of pants in our postmodern world. The guys are pale, their hair seems lopsided and the girls are all wearing some vintage button up shirt that was probably hand –sewn and makes then look vaguely Amish. They’re all so against the mainstream, so against conformity and yet they all look the same. Like I said, cliché.

  And then there’s me. Total walking cliché. The ultimate cliché. First team tennis star, destined to turn pro. Most likely to be prom king, most likely to date the hottest girl at school. God, sometimes I piss myself off. I was just about to look for Maria, the only non-cliché in the whole of high school, the only girl that doesn’t bother to fit in and doesn’t give a shit about what anyone thinks—she’s badass that way—and tell her it was time to duck. We could be having much more fun playing Grand Theft Auto, when the lights go out…

  I’m disoriented for a few moments, and as I’m digging in my pocket for my phone, someone bumps into me. At first I thought someone had tripped an
d fallen onto me, but then I feel it. A kiss.

  I’m so shocked that for a second or two I don’t reciprocate. What the hell is going on? And then without warning, it’s the best fucking kiss I’ve ever had. So I wrap my arms around this mystery person and pull her even closer until our bodies are pressed into each other so tightly you couldn’t get a piece of tooth floss between us. The kiss changes. It gets better if that’s even possible. It deepens and becomes more urgent, and is the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced, and I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anyone in my whole life—and I don’t even know who she is—and then as fast as it happened, it stops.

  She’s gone. I swing around in the dark with my arms out, hoping to catch onto her. But she’s disappeared and I'm left spinning, or something. Something that doesn’t feel quite normal and I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this way before. It feels like the sounds of the party have disappeared, the people have all vanished into thin air and it’s just me.

  The lights flicker back on and everyone cheers loudly. I look around frantically hoping I might see her, but there’s no one near me. No one is even looking in my direction because they’re all too preoccupied with what just happened. She’s just gone. And then…

  I bite down and feel it. Her gum. It tastes of cinnamon and mint and reminds me of her and how she tasted. Suddenly, this is the best flavor in the world. And then a thought strikes me, I have to tell my best friend about this. She’ll never believe me. Plus, she’ll probably laugh her head off. It’s the kind of thing she’ll find funny.

  “Dude. Dude, you won’t believe what just happened.” I climbed through her window like I do most nights and found her sitting on her bed. Her room isn’t like other girls’ rooms, there’s nothing pink or frilly about it. No big mirrors for applying make-up, no clothes lying on the floor because she perpetually can’t decide what to wear and her walls aren’t covered in male torso’s - thankfully. Instead her walls are filled with maps and pictures of Nellie Bly. Who is Nellie Bly I hear you ask? I wouldn’t have knowen either if it wasn’t for Maria. She was a famous female explorer who once went around the world in seventy-two days. Maria’s always saying that the second she graduates, she’s putting on a backpack and heading out. She’s the only person I know that wants to escape this place, other than me. I think that’s what drew us together in the first place, a sense of adventure.