I grab the info on the engine and a stack of promising car listings and make my way across the street. I stop in the crosswalk when I see her through the window, thinking about the night of that kiss. The Fourth. Her birthday.
Kissing Cassie wasn’t like kissing any woman I’ve ever been with. None of the fast, furious, grope-and-get-off sessions I’ve gotten used to since I left home. I try not to be selfish, but it’s usually best not to stick around and get comfortable. Everything is about maintaining distance.
The way Cassie kissed was like a slow, gentle exploration. Looking at her now, I can taste her lips on mine all over again.
A horn honks. She looks up and our eyes meet through the window right before I turn and give the finger to the guy who blasted at me. He had good reason. I’d stopped like some dipshit in the middle of Evergreen Grove’s brick-paved Main Street, replaying that moment Cassie kissed me and wondering why.
But since the honking guy in the minivan is responsible for me getting caught in the act, he gets the force of my self-loathing. I add a second middle finger and storm across the road toward Cassie, trying not to look too happy to see her.
Cassie
Maybe if I ignore him, he won’t come in here.
For someone who’s supposedly so anxious to leave town, I’m on day four... no, five... of avoiding my mechanic. I keep telling myself I shouldn’t have kissed him, but I can’t find it in me to be sorry. I am kind of embarrassed. I’ve only kissed four guys ever, in my twenty-one years of life.
Four. Seems like a small number when I roll it over in my head. I can make it smaller if I take my first kiss out of the equation. Zeke Quincy, when I was twelve, and he kissed me on a dare. It was really more of an awkward mashing of mouths. He was my first though, and even now as I wipe down tables for closing, I remember he had the cutest smile. Blue eyes, too. Like Jake.
Guess I’m a sucker for blue eyes.
I don’t really count the next “kiss” after Zeke as a real one either. I try not to ever think about it. When I let my memory wander too far, I can feel the sharp points of a pair of office scissors against my throat. I can feel the slime of him pushing his lips against mine, and the way I tried to push him away even while I tried to convince him I liked it.
Quiet. If you please me, I’ll let you live. Except I was fifteen, and my awkward kiss with Zeke Quincy and a few romance novels hadn’t prepared me for pleasing a psycho who followed me into the empty “used” section of my favorite downtown music store.
I’ve heard girls say since then that they’d rather have died. It’s amazing though, in the moment, what you’re willing to do to stay alive. It’s why I have trouble understanding about what my mom did. It’s what I was trying to remind myself, that night with the truck.
I remember I refused to use my tongue, so it wouldn’t be a “real” kiss, and that something in his mouth left chalky residue on my lips. Even now thinking about it makes me queasy. It makes my heart pound and my body go cold, like all I want is to run away.
God, and I’d been doing so well since I got here. I hate, hate, hate that something good—something like kissing Jake—brings me back around to such a disgusting memory.
I suck in a huge breath and put extra force into wiping the table in front of me, using my tension and my anger to rub out a stubborn piece of something stuck to the bistro top. Another deep breath and still another one helps to chase the memory away, but a tremor remains in my hands. Resentment and frustration linger, at Jake, at my mother, at being here at all. At that man who made it so I always look at the world through a cracked, smeared lens.
I’m not someone that anybody should get close to. Whatever you’re looking for, I can’t give it to you.
How on earth would Jake know what I’m looking for? I think of Keith, the guy who came... after. He was a perfectly decent boyfriend. Kissing him took work. I had to think about it. I had to focus so hard. He wanted so badly to be gentle with me that I felt awkward, which made being in the moment with him impossible.
Kissing Jake... All I wanted was to feel normal. To kiss someone with none of that stuff attached. That’s all I wanted. I guess the margaritas may have helped. Still, it was good. It was nice. It almost felt normal.
I do know the memory of that night with Jake plays in vivid color in my head. The fireworks, the stars overhead, the warmth of his lips on mine and the quick brush of my fingers on his stomach before he realized it had gone too far and pulled away.
Every time I think of it, my breath catches and my heart beats faster.
After everything I left home to escape, a memory that makes my pulse race for a good reason is one I’ll hold onto any way I can.