The Kiss

by Lucy Courtenay

  ‘That’s bad,’ he says.

  ‘It wasn’t Romeo and Juliet,’ I agree.

  I could bite my tongue off. Why didn’t I choose Hamlet or Macbeth? Or even Eastenders? He gives me the same searching stare he gave me in the lift, like I’m a layer of paint or a sheet of old wallpaper ripe for stripping.

  ‘You’re lovely,’ he says.

  Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not going there.

  ‘Now that I’ve got you standing still,’ I say, whipping out my phone, ‘can I message you this number or what?’

  He takes the phone from me and places it beside the long mirror. ‘Later. I was going to do my skull, but I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to paint you instead.’

  The jungle vine posing for photos is wearing pants and paint and nothing else.

  ‘No way,’ I say, horrorstruck.

  ‘I’m not asking you to take your clothes off,’ he assures me, pulling small pots of paint and different brushes

  from the pockets on his jacket. He pauses for a beat. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  I want to flirt back but the Cat of Mistrust holds me in its amber gaze. I glance around the room to regain my composure. I feel him grinning over his paints, opening lids and checking colours.

  ‘Does it wash off?’ I ask at last.

  He circles his face with his finger, reminding me that he was a skull less than an hour ago. It has the distracting effect of centring my gaze on his features: long-lashed eyes the colour of the sea at Brighton, a strong straight nose, a small scar on his upper lip.

  What choice do I have?

  ‘You can paint my hand,’ I say reluctantly. ‘But you have to promise you’ll call Tab’s boyfriend.’

  ‘Deal.’

  ‘You mean it?’

  He takes a packet of make-up wipes from his pocket and cleans the back of my hand. ‘Not everyone in this business uses wipes, but I prefer it,’ he says, blowing to dry the surface of the skin. ‘Paint is useless over moisturizer, and these make sure the skin is clean and dry. And I already told you that I always mean what I say. Keep still now.’

  This is the point at which I should relax. Job done, promise made. But I can’t. Him blowing on my hand has just sent me into orbit.

  He paints on a base layer and blows again, waggling my hand in the air like it’s a straw-filled rubber glove on a scarecrow’s arm. When the base is dry, he dips the point of a smaller brush into a pot of red paint and puts the tip of the brush on my skin. I bite my lip. It tickles, and is cold. It is also the sexiest thing anyone has ever done to me. Seriously. If hands could dribble, mine would be dribbling. Mesmerized, I watch him stroke the little brush between the veins leading from my fingers to my wrists.

  I do my best to sound cool. ‘What are you painting?’

  ‘Blood, bones, veins and arteries. The things that make us real.’

  I think about this, mainly because it stops me thinking about other more dangerous things. ‘You paint what’s real in the same way that you mean everything you say?’

  He pauses, as though surprised by what I thought was obvious. ‘Truth is a big thing with me,’ he says at last.

  ‘Get you, Gandhi.’

  I shut my eyes at the warmth of his breath on my fingers as he leans in closer. The brush sweeps up and down my skin. I have to say something else or risk bursting into flames.

  ‘Is this a hobby or a life plan?’

  ‘I’m not working in bars all my life. All those sci-fi lizard men and undead zombies you see at the multiplex? Some day they’ll be down to me.’

  ‘So much for keeping it real.’

  He laughs. ‘You may have a point.’

  As he blows on my skin again, my hand zings urgent messages all over my body. The Lust Labrador starts to drag me down dark and sultry paths.

  ‘Do your friends let you practise on them?’ I squeak.

  Blue paint next, following the tracery of my veins. ‘They’re generally too busy stealing cars.’

  I laugh in a mildly hysterical way. He raises his eyebrows.

  ‘You’re serious?’ I say, realizing.

  ‘You’re learning, grasshopper.’

  He keeps painting me as the rest of the artists and models take turns before Kev the bullet man’s camera lens. The smell of hash grows stronger; the music grows louder. I remain on my chair, lulled into a state of highly charged semi-sleep.

  ‘Photo time,’ says Jem.

  I peel my eyes open at the cold blast of a spray sealant on my skin. The internal workings of my hand lie before me in gory detail. Bone, blood and tissue glisten. Veins bulge. It’s grotesque and amazing at the same time.

  ‘I should be in A and E,’ I say incredulously. ‘How do you get the detail so perfect?’

  ‘Reading lots of anatomy books.’ Jem checks his watch. ‘Whoa, that’s the time? I have to be back at the Gaslight by nine. Val’ll dock my wages if I’m late.’

  When in doubt, feel guilty. It’s the English way. ‘Coming here was your idea, not mine,’ I say quickly.

  ‘I know.’

  He plants a hand on the wall either side of me so I am trapped on the stool. His eyes are more blue than grey this close up.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘Can I kiss you now?’

  He says it like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Like he’s offering me a cup of tea or something. He’s so blinking close.

  ‘What?’ I stammer.

  ‘You don’t have to sound so shocked,’ he says reasonably. ‘Your pupils are enormous, which means you like the idea as much as I do.’

  ‘I—’ No one has ever read my eyes like that before. ‘It’s the pot, OK?’

  ‘That makes your pupils smaller.’

  I fight back feebly. ‘These are the pupils in my poo-coloured eyes we’re talking about?’

  ‘I was trying to win back some of the ground I’d lost to that teatowel. I’m thinking more topaz now, or tiger’s eye. You’re lovely.’

  I summon the strength from somewhere and duck under his arm.

  Outside the long windows, the light has faded to nothing and the moon is rising: a great Toffee Penny of a moon, still wearing its golden cellophane, shining over the pinprick lights of an urban evening. I feel like I’m floating on the haze, high up here above the town. Bullet-holed Kev takes pictures; people talk to Jem and peer at my hand like forensic pathologists studying a murder victim. I hardly listen, bombed out by the smell of dope and the effect Jem is having on me.

  The lift back down the block seems smaller than ever. I hold my fingers carefully away from my body and try to think about anything but the figure lounging against the steel walls of the lift beside me.

  ‘Why the zombie stance?’ he inquires, amused.

  ‘I don’t want to smudge it.’ I still find it hard to believe that the skin on my hand genuinely hasn’t been flayed off.

  ‘The sealant will hold it for a while. Anyway, Kev got plenty of good shots, which is all that matters. You’ll have to smudge it eventually. I’ll smudge it for you, if you like.’

  The implication scorches like a red-hot iron. He grins as he catches my reaction.

  ‘I’ll do your collarbone next time,’ he offers.

  My hand was bad enough. Two hours of this guy’s brush on my collarbone and I’ll be a wordless wreck.

  ‘Who says there’ll be a next time?’

  ‘I do,’ he says as the lift stops. ‘Can I kiss you yet?’

  ‘No!’

  He takes my unpainted hand and pulls me down the bleach-flavoured corridor to the double doors and out into the evening. The cool air smacks me in the face like a big glassy glove.

  ‘Not exactly romantic, is it?’ he says, looking at the waterstained concrete and over-full wheelie bins nearby. ‘We’ll find s
omewhere else for that kiss.’

  ‘You’re very sure of yourself,’ I say, trying not to sound as breathless as I feel.

  ‘Call it optimism.’

  The moon is already starting to lose its golden edge as it pulls away from the earth’s grip. The shadows are confusing, part streetlight and part moonlight, striping the broken tarmac below our feet. I order my fingers to detach themselves from his but they aren’t listening.

  ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ he asks as we walk.

  Say yes and all this will go away.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he dump you?’

  ‘Other way round.’ What is this, truth or dare? I’ve caught Jem’s habit of telling it straight. I haven’t even told Tabby that.

  ‘Did you love him?’

  ‘I just said I dumped him, didn’t I?’ I snap, groping for focus.

  ‘Doesn’t mean you didn’t love the guy. Just that you had your reasons.’

  We walk on in silence for a while, which is just as well because I am trying not to cry. As we reach the road that will lead us back down towards the Gaslight, the town lies at our feet like a glittering carpet. The moon shines large and bright over our heads.

  ‘Aphrodite’s moon,’ Jem says, turning to me. ‘Isn’t that what they call the really full, fat ones?’

  The view spreads behind him like a spangled magician’s cloak. Bloody moon, I think with ecstatic dread as he leans forward to kiss me. Bloody Aphro-bloody-dite.

  He’s hardly started when he pulls back like I’ve electrocuted him. His eyes are wide.

  ‘Whoa,’ he says. He sounds shaken.

  I have that panicky sensation I had when I was fourteen and kissing a boy for the first time. That need to appear confident with absolutely no experience to back it up. If used incorrectly while kissing, tongues are little better than slugs. Have I just done a slug?

  ‘What?’ I ask nervously.

  He mutters something I can’t hear, gathers me back into him and kisses me harder. The kiss is deep and full and, frankly, lush. I soften and mould myself to him. If I’m honest, I practically start climbing him like one of those ropes in an old-school gym.

  A chuckle from the shadows breaks the spell. I fling myself out of Jem’s arms like a spring-loaded sucker toy as Studs walks into the glow of a street lamp, fists thrust deep into the pockets of his denim jacket.

  ‘Jem,’ he remarks, grinning. ‘Doing fine, I see.’

  Jem is having difficulty focusing on the change in circumstances. I hunch myself into my clothes, wishing and wishing that my hair wasn’t so distinctive. It’s hopeless.

  ‘And Deli-la-lah,’ whistles Studs, suddenly recognizing me. ‘Naughty girl, messing with this one.’

  ‘You know each other?’ Jem says, surprised.

  ‘Depends how you define “know”,’ I mutter.

  ‘Delilah and me got a mutual friend,’ Studs says, smiling slyly.

  Recovering, Jem exchanges a complicated palm-and-knuckle routine with Studs that speaks volumes: the kind of routine you come up with when you’re ten and hone for years until it’s second nature. Any fool can see that these guys have a history. Studs winks at me and vanishes again. There’s no denying he has that melting-into-the-shadows thing down.

  My heart hardens. How many cars have Studs and Jem robbed together in the dark of night, sneaking around, spraying their territory like skunks?

  ‘Kiss me again,’ Jem whispers, sliding his warm hand under my hair to rest on my neck, bringing me back

  to him.

  I bat him off and run down the hill, keeping in the glow of the streetlights. The moon feels like it’s burning my skin. It’s only when I reach the safe haven of the High Street and fling myself on the almost-departing forty-two bus that I realize something crucial.

  I haven’t given him Sam’s number.

  ‘Lilah! It’s nearly ten o’clock! Where have you been? You haven’t answered your phone or anything. I’ve been worried sick! How did it go?’

  I wonder how to explain the evening to Tabby as I kick my shoes off.

  ‘Not brilliantly,’ I say at last, sinking on to my bed.

  ‘Did he say he wouldn’t do it?’

  ‘I . . . forgot to give him the number.’ I hold the phone away from me as Tabby squawks. ‘I’m sorry!’ I say at a safe distance. ‘I got distracted, OK?’

  ‘I left you at the Gaslight nearly five hours ago! What have you been doing?’

  ‘Tab, please don’t go on,’ I beg. ‘I’ve just walked back from town and my head and feet are killing me.’

  ‘You walked? Are you nuts? Lilah, it’s over a mile and it’s dark. Why didn’t you get the bus?’

  ‘I did! But the bus driver threw me off because I didn’t have any cash on me to buy a ticket so I went to the cash point to get some and catch the next one but just like at M&S my stupid card wouldn’t let me take any money out. I felt like a medieval peasant walking home from the market because he’d sold his donkey by mistake.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call me? I could have asked Dad to fetch you in the car!’

  ‘I didn’t know how to tell you I’d messed up,’ I improvise lamely.

  ‘You said you’d fix this . . .’

  ‘Jem promised to call Sam and explain,’ I tell her, pleating my crumply duvet cover between my fingers. How he’s going to do that without Sam’s number is something I’ll worry about later. ‘I tried to message him the details about ten times throughout the evening but he kept saying, “Later, I’ve just got to paint one more teensy blood vessel on the back of your hand and will you kiss me” and all this stuff about moonlight and I forgot.’

  There is a long pause.

  ‘What?’

  I just want to put my head under my pillow and sleep until Wednesday.

  ‘Can we talk about it tomorrow?’ I mumble. ‘Love you. And sorry. Again.’

  I switch my phone off and crash out, fully dressed. At some point in the night I have the kind of dream you don’t even tell your best friend about. I’m human, OK? You try getting through the kind of evening I’ve just had and then deciding: ‘Right, where’s that ice-pack, I’m going to sleep on it and dream about road maps and plumbing.’

  I press the button again. Nothing.

  ‘Get a move on, love,’ says a voice behind me in the queue.

  I stare at the cashpoint, willing it to spit my life out. ‘It just swallowed my card!’ I say in dismay.

  The grizzled guy in a workman’s hat behind me shrugs. ‘You finished?’

  I hesitate. If I move away from the cash machine, I’ll never see my card again. The next person’s transaction will lie over the top of mine, like a Rottweiler on a trapdoor.

  ‘What’s up?’ Tabby stands over me, head hunched into the woolly scarf she wears round her neck.

  ‘Your mate’s holding up the queue.’ The grizzly workman’s eyes flick over our student gear. ‘Some of us have to get to work this morning.’

  ‘But—’

  Tabby pulls me away from the cash machine. The queue moves up; the grizzly guy punches numbers on to the keypad with calloused fingertips. I watch, hoping the machine is broken. But no: fat ten-pound notes come crinkling through without a problem. Folding the cash and sliding it into his back pocket, Grizzly Guy eyes me narrowly, as if I am after his PIN number.

  ‘I’ll buy you lunch,’ says Tab, marching me across the street to college. ‘Not that you deserve it. I can’t believe you got with the bar guy last night.’

  ‘I didn’t set out to kiss him,’ I say crossly. Losing my card is all I need today. ‘Unlike some people I could mention.’

  Tab leans against me in silent apology and I pat her with my painted hand. The fake veins and arteries are still pretty freaky, even though I left
half of them on my sheets in the night.

  My phone shrieks like a boiled cat in my jacket pocket. After failing to hear any of Tab’s calls yesterday, I’ve turned it up deliberately loud. Unknown number. I hit the green button.

  ‘Whatever you’re selling, no thanks.’

  ‘I was going to say, good luck with Keynes,’ Jem says.

  I am so shocked I can’t speak.

  ‘I went home and Googled him last night. Interesting guy, if massive moustaches and the cause of a boom-and-bust economy are your bag.’

  ‘How did you get my number?’ I stammer.

  ‘I texted myself on your phone last night when you were half-asleep. You know. Just in case you forgot your very important promise to your mate about giving me her boyfriend’s number.’

  Tabby is watching, hawk-eyed. Is it him? she mouths. I nod. My mind is racing like the Grand National round a small suburban garden.

  ‘Why did you run away last night?’ he asks. ‘We were only just getting started.’

  The heat in his voice almost scorches my ear off. I hang up and stare at my phone like it’s a bomb.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ Tabby demands. ‘That was your chance to give him Sam’s number!’

  ‘I panicked!’ I say helplessly.

  My phone rings again.

  ‘I really want to kiss you again, Delilah. And you still haven’t given me your mate’s boyfriend’s number.’

  I can feel myself flushing. ‘I . . . I’ll text it.’

  I message Sam’s number and turn off my phone as quickly as I can. Then I shove it deep into my bag where I plan to forget about it all together.

  ‘Did you—’

  ‘I sent the number, OK? Can we now stop talking about this?’

  ‘Welcome to Friday, ladies!’ Oz bounds up the college steps towards us with his arms extended and his bag bouncing on his back. ‘Delilah Jones, will you be my date in Chemistry? I can’t think of anyone I’d rather go with.’

  Tabby is still looking at me with anxious puppy-dog eyes. Reminding myself how much she relies on me, I give her a hug. ‘Jem’ll call Sam and sort everything out,’ I tell her in my most bracing tone of conviction. ‘Trust me, your lippy will all be kissed off by lunchtime.’