“Did you have to take a cold shower?” She snickers, giving my hand another squeeze.
“Shut up. I don’t feel like myself. I think about him too much, and Matty, and how much I love that little kid – and it’s only been a short time, and-”
“Stop! Miii, I’m getting anxious just hearing you talk. I don’t think coffee is such a good idea, after all.” She goes to pull away my mug, when I let out a snarl. An actual snarl. My family would be so proud. “Fine, keep that damn thing. See if I care.” Katie’s dark eyes go gentle. “I’m going to let you in on a secret – this is how it is with everyone on the entire planet. Whatever you’re feeling – completely normal, I promise.”
“What if he sees me naked and makes me leave? Oh God, what if he laughs at me? I’m going to have to move places, and my commute to work is going to be even longer and I’ll never get to see Matty again-”
Katie clears her throat, and gets me out of my vortex of negative thoughts with nails into the back of my hand. “You do this. You make yourself sick with that what ifs. You make yourself sick and you don’t live.”
Her words break my bones and make me bleed. They hurt so much.
“I don’t how else to be.”
“No one is telling you to sign your life away, Sera. No one is telling you to get hitched to this guy and his kid and be a family.” Oh God, that image gets burned into my brain as Hunter and I’s potential fantasy future together.
“You have the power here, and you always will. You could kiss him and it’ll be a total turn-off.” Katie looks supremely proud of herself for coming up with that.
“That’s not possible. It would defy the laws of physics if he’s a bad kisser. He’s like a god – maybe even Thor and Loki’s mortal half-brother. Did I tell you his last name’s MacLaine?”
Her body jerks, eyes going wide. “As in, ‘In McClane we trust’ from Live free or Die hard? This is... this is...God, I have no words. Wait ‘til I tell the guys. MacLaine? I can’t even deal with this right now. We need to stop talking about it. Seriously.” She starts digging into her purse for her iPhone.
“I’m not sure how to be with him in that way. I feel like I need to read books on how to kiss. I might even have to watch porn and re-read all my romances back home.”
“How many times do I have to tell you it’s instinctual? His mouth’s gonna move, then yours is gonna move back, and Mount Vesuvius will explode again, the Earth will rotate out of orbit from the sun, and the galaxy will switch its swirling direction.”
I frown. “A lot of people have told me this is not the case when they have their first kiss.”
Katie shakes her head. Here, she is Master Yoda and I am the untried and young Luke Skywalker, eager to learn. “Most of us had our first kiss with tons of people around us in an awful spin-the-bottle game, or in a musty closet at the age of twelve or thirteen. Nobody knew what they were doing. MacLaine,” she smiles and wiggles on her seat again, “oooh, that got me a little excited. Calm yourself, Delos, I’m joking. Or am I?” I just shake my head, ignoring it all.
“He’s older than us, right? He’s been at the game for awhile; he knows how to play, sweetie.”
“This is so not helping me.” The brownie I ate is congealing in my stomach. “If I’m just off the bench, about to debut in the NHL, how in hell am I supposed to play with him?”
“When this happens, I want details, sistah. De-tails. God, you lucky bitch. What a fine specimen he is. Shit, okay. Sorry, not sorry. Let him set the pace. Learn from him. Hell, drink a jack and Coke, minus the coke before you think he’ll try kissing you again. Blame it on the booze. Don’t get wasted – you’re a sad drunk – but just enough that you won’t care what he thinks.”
“I have to get drunk to kiss Hunter. This is so sad.” I cover my eyes with my hands, rubbing them, hard.
“You’re going to be fine. I don’t even know why you’re worrying so much. You wanna practice on one of the guys? They’re good sports, I’m sure they’ll be up to it.”
“Ack! No! What the hell is wrong with you to even suggest something like that? I can’t kiss any of them! I can’t even tell them I’ve never been kissed. No, no, no.” I shudder. “I’d ruin the whole friend-dynamic thing, and then I’ll never look at them the same way after that.”
Katie frowns, and stares at me. “Why are you so worried, really?”
I take a deep breath, let out the words that I’ve held close to my heart for years and years and years. “When you’ve been told your entire life you’ll amount to nothing, you’ll be nothing, you are nothing – what do you think you believe?” My breath is shaky when I let it out, and the pain in my throat won’t go away. I’m sick of crying, I’m sick of my life not being what I want it to be. “I’m trying to fight it off, to get myself to believe in something else. It’s so fucking hard, K. I’m just tired of fighting, I’m tired of it.”