Waiting on Justin

by Lucy H. Delaney

  “I want to kiss you,” I said, and then he knew. The look said more than words, just like the song, and I wanted to show him how much I loved him.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because I love you...and...I want you to be the first boy I ever kiss. I want to know what it's like; I want you to show me.”

  “So you're planning on kissing more boys?” he teased almost brotherly.

  “No, just you.”

  He saw I was serious. He was kind and gentle with my heart when he could have been mean. He was already in high school, and I was still just a dumb sixth-grade kid. Instead of laughing at me, he was sincere and honest and left me with a promise to soften the rejection he was about to give me.

  “Then you can wait until you're grown up.”

  “I don't want to wait; I'm ready now.” I wanted to cry. He was breaking my heart. I was embarrassed and suddenly painfully aware of how much younger I was than him. It didn't seem fair that I could love a boy this much and be too young for him to want me back.

  “Haylee, I wish you were. Trust me, you have no idea how much I wish you were. But you're not ready.”

  “Just this once; then I'll wait.”

  “No, it's not right. Trust me.” He caught the tear from my eye, his thumb warm on my face. His hand dwarfed my little ones as they raced up to catch his and keep him close to me. He was big; I was small; it made me feel even more like a child. I couldn't argue with him.

  “Cheer up, kid.”

  “I can't. You don't love me.”

  “Jeez, Haylee, I never said that. You know I love you.” He reached his hand around my neck and pulled me closer, resting his lips on my forehead before letting me go so I could look at him again. “I will kiss you someday, I promise. But not yet, OK?”

  “When?!” I was so excited to realize that he thought about kissing me too that I forgot to be disappointed about the rejection anymore.

  “I'm not going to tell you. It'll be my surprise.”

  Then a thought struck me, and I had to know the answer.

  “How many girls have you kissed already?”

  He smiled and shook his head.

  He wouldn't tell me, but it didn't matter. Even one was too many. I was jealous and hurt all over again but for another reason. I must have looked crestfallen because his fingers caught my chin and lifted it up until I had to look back into those green eyes of his whether I wanted to or not.

  His eyes penetrated me, told me he loved me too, made me believe him.

  “Wait for it, Haylee.”

  “We really can't kiss now?”

  “No, you're freaking eleven years old! What are you thinking? Get over it!” He teased and ruffled my hair like I was a pet, then pushed me away, “You gotta grow up, kid. I want to kiss a woman, not a girl.”

  “So it'll be your first kiss too?”

  “It doesn't matter. It'll be yours.”

  “But you won't tell me when.”

  “No, wait for it. Now let me practice. Is your homework done?”

  “I don't want to do it; it's stupid.”

  “Doesn't matter. Go get Lizzie and the two of you need to start in on it.”

  I obeyed and retrieved the tag-along, grudgingly. He played all afternoon, rehearsing the same chords over and over again, searing them into my soul. He would only stop if Lizzie or I needed help with a word or math problem.

  Clayton was actually right about one thing: Justin didn't apply himself in school. But that didn't mean he wasn't smart. I know he was. He was the one who helped Lizzie and me with our school work. Sometimes my mom would try to explain something to me, but I was too stupid to understand it when she taught me, so she would send me out of her sight. I eventually stopped asking her for help and started to ask Justin instead. He always knew how to do the work and explained it in a way I understood. Even though he helped Lizzie and me get good grades, his were bad—except in science. It wasn’t that he was stupid; it was that the teachers made him mad, and he didn't like what they taught. If the school would have offered classes in guitar, skateboarding, time travel or fighting, he would have had straight As.

  It was weird how hard he made Lizzie and me focus on our school work. He told us we had a chance to make something of ourselves and we needed to apply ourselves and not miss our chance like he had. Sometimes he took out a book and made notes or did a project of his own, but not nearly as often as he made us do it. He usually practiced chords and songs on the guitar while we figured out multiplication or sentence structure. I still don't know why he did school like that. Maybe it's because everyone already pegged him as a loser and no matter how hard he tried to prove them wrong it wouldn't matter, he would always be Justin Parker the troublemaker. Any school work we did catch him doing was always for science. I loved the way he could get lost in science papers: his eyes would sparkle when he talked about the possibilities and promises the sciences could offer. It was all that space and time travel that intrigued him, and he used any excuse he could find to study it, especially teleportation.

  Even though he was a “bad” student, he always had a book to read. He would keep it hidden with all his undone work until we both said we were finished with our own. We couldn't lie either because he would check us to make sure we completed the work and got it right. After he was sure we were done, he would pull out the book of the day and continue reading to us where we left off the day before. Sometimes we read a chapter; sometimes two or three. We were getting too big to make-believe in the fort, so his stories were becoming our grown-up escape into another time and place, and we could get lost for hours in the words he read.

  I can't remember which story we were reading that day. I guess my brain only had room for the song and the promise that my kiss would come. If they hadn't been before, that afternoon our fates were officially sealed together. He loved me, and I loved him. He wanted me and told me to wait for him. I couldn't trust anyone else in the world, but of Justin I was sure. I could bet my life on him and never be disappointed. I slept that night dreaming of our first kiss and woke up to the hope that he had dreamt of it too. From then on, I knew someday our time would come, but not until I was older; he promised me that. I believed him. I was so tired of being a kid and wanted to be grown up already, but I wouldn't be grown-up enough for him for another two years.

  I hated that everyone else thought he was such a loser, because he was my everything. Justin took a lot of flak from Clayton so Lizzie and I could think we were happy. The older I got, the more I saw the price Justin paid for that: Everyone, I mean everyone, thought he was a punk, his teachers, his dad, my mom, even the other kids he went to school with. And probably to a lot of people he was, but not to me or Lizzie. Clayton complained of his attitude, laziness, stupidity, suspensions, fights, and bad grades any chance he got. Truthfully, Justin did fight a lot, but it always sounded like the other guys had it coming.

  Justin made my childhood happy. He was always there—always. He did whatever he had to do to watch out for me, even when it seemed like he was being mean—and even when it felt like he was abandoning me.

  He started driving before he got his license and got a job at a clothes store in the mall. He worked as much as he could after school and almost every weekend, leaving Lizzie and me to fend for ourselves. Clayton let him use the Accord to get there but told him if he got pulled over he’d tell the cops he didn't have permission to be driving it.

  My mom didn't hardly go anywhere by that time; she mostly stayed in bed or on the couch, getting up only to get more vodka. Come to think of it, I don't know why Clayton put up with it.

  Justin saved up every dime he could until he could pay for driver's ed and get a real license. I missed him when he was gone, but I knew he was doing what he had to do. In the end it was worth it because once he finished driver’s ed, he could take me and Lizzie (when she was there) to school. Taking us meant he was always late for his own classes but he didn't mind. Michael and Kim still had to take the bus a
nd I got to smile and wave smugly as Justin drove us right past them. He was seventeen then, old enough to drive and work and be a man.

  He was seventeen, and I was finally old enough to be kissed.

  CHAPTER 4

  I CAN STILL FEEL the warmth of his lips on mine that first time. I remember everything about it. It was my thirteenth birthday. Justin started the celebration first thing in the morning, waking me up with French toast and giving me a pair of hoop earrings. My mom was sleeping and Clayton had already gone for work, so the house belonged to us.

  “There's one more thing,” he said, smirking, retrieving something from a cabinet. “Unwrap it; you'll like it. You've been asking for it for a long time.” He handed me a gift-wrapped shoe box. I really thought it would be the shoes that I wanted from his store, but I was wrong. It was too light in my hands to be shoes. I opened it, and inside there was only tissue paper and a card that told me to go to the BTTF24—our childhood teleporter, almost forgotten.

  As I looked at him quizzically, his eyes sparkled back at me, his smile and lifted eyebrows hinting of an adventure I couldn't yet imagine. I ran outside and he followed close behind.

  I saw that he had been there already because the bushes and stickers were cleared away enough for us to squeeze inside the door, which seemed much smaller than it used to. Once we were both inside two things struck me simultaneously: the daylight filtering through blackberry stalks and green, corrugated sheeting casting a green glow inside the fort, and there, in the far corner, shadowed in the sea-green dimness, lay his guitar—waiting, like I had been, on Justin.

  “Sit down,” he said, motioning to one of two folding beach chairs. He must have set them up ahead of time because we never had chairs in there when we were kids. If I hadn't known him so well, I wouldn't have noticed his mood and his subtle attempts to cover up his own nervousness.

  I obeyed—what else would I do? He was going to sing me a song for my birthday. I was so dumb I guessed that maybe he had a cupcake hidden somewhere and I would have to make a wish after he sang the birthday song like when we were kids.

  But I was wrong. It was so much more. The song was an old love song I knew by heart. It was our song, and I realized it within the first few notes.

  Apparently the teleporter still worked: one minute we were together in a childhood play fort where we used to share make-believe trips to faraway places, and the next I was sitting on my bed two years earlier, listening to him play our song for the first time.

  I didn't have to flip one of the pretend toggles to go there; the chords and his eyes took me back to that afternoon instantly. His smile was delicious—I wanted to lean in as soon as I knew what he was doing and kiss him—but I listened and waited just a little longer, knowing the time had finally come. His voice was warm honey, no longer awkward and squeaky, but deep and the slightest bit raspy and pure perfection.

  In all my life there has never been a first anything that compared to my first kiss.

  When he looked at me I knew this was the day he had been waiting for too, and I was suddenly afraid. Doubt hit me: could a seventeen-year-old boy with lips like that and a voice that weakened my knees really have waited for me all these years? It was impossible; it wasn't realistic; I knew enough about boys by then to know there was no way he had waited for me. This would not be his first kiss; what other firsts had he beat me to? Would we have anything to save for “our” first?

  But in the next minute, all my doubt was gone. He had never promised I would be his first kiss, only that he would be mine. It was not the time to worry about how many girls he had kissed. This moment was all about me: he was giving me my first kiss, and I wouldn't have wanted it to come from anyone else. I had been waiting on him to decide I was old enough, saving my first kiss for him, and the moment was upon me. I tried to push the doubt, jealousy, and worry away and focus on his words. The last note of the song hung in our shack, holding the silence at bay.

  “Haylee, do you remember?”

  “Of course,” I whispered. My voice had disappeared.

  “It's time for me to keep my promise.” He laid the guitar on the dirt floor and motioned for me. The shack didn’t have high enough clearance for me to stand, so I had to lean down as I came to him. Hunched over, I knew there was no way I could make it look sexy (not that I had a clue how to look sexy anyway), so I moved as quickly as I could from my chair to his lap. I was afraid I was going to ruin the moment, but he wouldn't let me.

  He pulled me close, wrapping his big, strong arms around me, and looked at me. He was warm, so I snaked my hands into his jacket, touching him in the same places I had a million times before, but this time everything was different. I really felt him: his breath expanding his chest under my cold little fingers, his heat warming them. He was broad-chested, and sitting there with him made me feel so small, so safe, so completely wrapped up in everything that was him.

  I must have looked ridiculous, but he didn't say so. He looked up into my eyes, lifted his hand, and stroked my cheek with his thumb, just like he had done that day when he wiped my tear away. My neck grew a million goose bumps, and I forgot how to breathe. It was startling: I had been breathing my whole life without even thinking about it, and now I had to will my lungs to move. I tried to play it cool, like I did this every day, like I wasn't afraid and excited and freaking out inside all at the same exact minute—but I felt like I was breathing too slow and fast and fake. He knew—how could he not?—but I refused to admit it. I told myself to be cool.

  My heart was beating like a hummingbird's wings; it was going to fly out of my chest before he even touched my lips. I couldn't take my eyes off of his. He held me captive. He smiled. He smelled like maple syrup and Eternity by Calvin Klein. I thought I already loved him, but I had never known love like this, mixed with lust and desire and curiosity for the unknown. It was intoxicating. He was what I wanted more than anything.

  “You understand now, don't you? We shouldn't love each other like we do. I'm too old; you're too young; we're almost brother and sister.”

  “No, we're not.”

  “I know, but it doesn't matter what we think. Clayton will freak; your mom will freak. They can't know.”

  “I know, I won't tell.”

  His hand pulled my face down closer to his. We were going to touch; our lips were almost together. Breathe, breathe!

  “Wait, Justin!” I stopped him, my hands flying from his sides to push back on his chest, “I don't know how.”

  I think there was relief in his smile. “Good, I'll show you.”

  That was it. He pulled me down, put our lips together, and touched mine with his tongue. It was warm, wet, and strong. I had no idea what I was doing, but it didn't matter. My eyes closed instinctively, and my hands—limp noodles that they were—somehow managed to rise slowly from their resting place on his chest and trail up to his neck. I had to touch his skin.

  It has always amazed me how at that minute nothing else mattered, not the cold or the time or the fact that my left leg was going numb. All I knew was him and his body by mine and in mine.

  As his tongue pierced through my lips, I hoped for the slightest second that my chapped lips didn't feel rough to him. That made me think of his, and I paid attention to them all over again as if his lips hadn't been what stopped time in the first place. They were full and soft—surprisingly soft considering that just above and below them his skin was scratchy with whiskers, a contrast that made him feel all the more magnificent.

  I stroked his neck, moving my fingers up into his coarse, heavy hair. He found my tongue, and I startled. I could tell he noticed because I felt his lips curl up into a smile; then his tongue trailed my teeth. We both opened our eyes, still connected, and he lifted his other hand to my face. It was easier to breathe with my eyes closed because as soon as I opened them I had to think about taking breaths again. He moved back a little, separating from me, but just barely.

  “Don't be afraid, Haylee.”

  “
I'm not.”

  It happened all over again: the lips, the tongue, the touch, my eyes shutting, shutting out everything but our bodies coming together. This time I didn't pull back. The first thing that came to my mind, honestly, was that his tongue didn't taste like anything at all. I don't know why that struck me—I never imagined that a tongue would have a flavor—but I was used to tasting things with my tongue, so to have something in my mouth devoid of flavor perplexed me. Despite that, he was delicious and beautiful, and he overwhelmed me in all the right ways. I felt his tongue stroke and play with mine, twisting and turning, pausing to play with my upper or lower lip before sneaking back in. His mouth held mine, and I wanted nothing more than to stay like that with him forever.

  I felt him other places too, his neck and hair in my hands. I touched his cheeks with my thumbs like he was doing to me. His were hard, firm and rough, the opposite of my own soft pudgy ones. In a split second I realized that his was the only other face I could ever remember touching. Our bodies were together, and even as we made out my leg was going dead, but I didn't want to stop the kiss.

  All I could do in that moment was smell him and feel him. I don't remember a single sound or sight. It was as though my eyes and ears weren't allowed to be a part of that first kiss, like it would have been too much for them.

  His scent was all over me. I knew his cologne well; he had bought some from a store in the mall a year earlier, and it was as much a part of Justin by then as the sound of his voice was. If I was somewhere and anyone else had it on, I turned, expecting to see him, as if he was the only person in the world who was allowed to smell that way.

  That day—that moment—was all about eternity in my heart and in my memory ... eternity and maple syrup. I knew where he sprayed the cologne, but even while we were kissing I wondered where the syrup smell stayed hidden. I have never been able to figure that out, or how the smell of French toast can magically teleport me back to that morning even after all these years.