What Happens After the Kiss

On Monday she couldn't look at him.

Despite months, possibly years, of being friends, she couldn't look at him. She wasn't convinced that he would brush her off but she also wasn't going to take the chance. In high school there is no room for logic, only decisive first strikes.

He'd had knee surgery just before hockey season and although he was still on the team (she still doesn't understand this, years later), he didn't play and preferred to sit in the bleachers with her. Or at least, he sat in the bleachers away from the rest of the team and she sat with him.

Yes, he was cute. Yes, he was a hockey player. But that wasn't it. There was something grown up about him. There was something that made him unlike the other high school boys. He was always a little apart, a little above. It was this apartness that made him approachable to her. She knew all about living apart from the rest of the team.

Friday was the last game of the season. They put him in for the first time and the team won – also for the first time. They celebrated. For the first time all season, she and he were part of the team. They played quarters, which she turned out to be quite good at. All that time in the physics lab finally had a real-life application others could appreciate.

After the last quarter splashed, he walked her to the car. With her hand on the door, she thought to herself “if I turn around now he will kiss me.” And so she turned around.

By her senior year, she had been kissed by a few random boys. It had made her want to throw up. The boys were, how to say this kindly, grossly unqualified. Messy, clumsy and unbidden. They were exactly what this kiss was not.

This kiss, from the minute she turned around, made the hairs on her neck stand up. She felt his breath on her cheek and wanted what she couldn't fathom with the clumsy ones. His hands were in her hair, his lips on her eyebrows (if the other boys had kissed her eyebrows it was because it was dark and they didn't know where they were going). And then his hands were around her and she wanted him close, so close.

She heard the car start. They were shoved into the back seat by someone else on the team. There was a point where they were supposed to stop, but she didn't know exactly when that was. She thinks it was somewhere between the party and her driveway but again, her only experience was with the unexperienced and she simply did not know. When she got out of the car, she was not sure what kind of girl she was.

She hoped he would call over the weekend, despite the fact they had never talked on the phone. All their meetings had been mutually accepted chance encounters. Hockey season was over and there would be no more chance encounters.

And so on Monday, she did what she did best. She put up walls. She pretended it didn't happen. She did not go out of her way to avoid him, but she was unable to meet his eye when she felt him near. “Near” being “in the same hall.” She always knew when he was in the same hall.

She was tall, thin and had the excellent posture insisted upon by her mother. Her body did not read “I'm scared” as much as “I don't have time for you.” She was almost always scared.

She doesn't know what would have happened if she had turned around to meet him in the light of day, in front of the entire senior class. She still wonders if she would have felt his hand in her hair and his breath on her cheek. She wonders if the two of them would have continued living apart and above. She wonders why she has never felt electrified since that first kiss, no matter how qualified the boys became.

These are questions she couldn't answer in the physics lab, where no one ever came to sit with her.

Comments

[Palinode]

Very nice.

[ZenMom]

Excellent.

[Silver]

Chills.

[Skye]

I thought nobody noticed. Damn, now everyone knows. I can't even remember his name.

[foradifferentkindofgirl (fadkog)]

I am on the third attempt at leaving this comment. Something about this being lovely and there being tears in my eyes. Weird how spell check doesn't catch everything!

[TwoBusy]

This is fantastic. I'm trying to think of the right way to describe it, but then I realize I don't have to — I just need to get people to read it. Also, I hereby nominate you to write all PF posts going forward.

All in favor? "AYE!!!"

The ayes have it.

Looking forward to reading your next one tomorrow.

[Susan (Trout Towers)]

TB, if I write all the PF posts no one will be able to read them because they will poke their eyes out with pixie stix when they hear the news. Nice try though.

[Susan (Trout Towers)]

Thank you, Palinode, ZenMom and Silver. Sorry Cheryl, but everyone's still talking about it and you knew it had to come out sooner or later (you hussy).
FADKOG, three's a charm! Thank you.

[ms picket to you]

Sums up so much and so perfectly. After that perfect great horrible moment.

Which I kind of miss. and Despise. And miss.

And despise.

(xo)

[the Mayor]

A lovely and seductive account, I must say. The moment every teenage girl, heck, most women dream about.

And the disappointment at the follow through, it's the kind of events that never quite disappear from our memory.It just lies dormant in the brain until you read something poignant that makes you feel like you're there.

[Mr Lady]

Um, yes, THIS. So much this. Quite possibly the best high school story I have ever had the privilege of reading.

[Homemaker Man]

You don't know me, but that was great.

[Trout Towers]

I keep trying to respond but typepad has had quite enough of meu.

Homemaker Man, thank you! That's the glory of the internet, right? Various people finding various things and hopefully stumbling on something that works.

Mr. Lady, thanks for 1) this and 2) the twitter shout. It's hard for me to write about high school because I hated it so very much. Cathartic, I think this is called.

The Mayor - My brain lies dormant a lot. But there are things in there that do pop up from time to time.

Ms. Picket - we would have been friends in high school. In fact, the fictitious you would have pushed the fictitious me into the fictitious car. Or I would have pushed you. One of those.

[Trout Towers]

meu. that's french. No wonder typepad shuts me down.

[Kevin (Always Home and Uncool)]

If someone could replicate the magic and wonder and electricity of a first kiss in a spray, we could end wars. Meanwhile, we will need the entire Middle East to read this and regret their past mistakes.