Who I Kissed (10 page)

“Man. You’re tighter than a pair of football pants,” he whispers. He’s leaning forward, and his breath tickles the outer shell of my ear. I close my eyes as he moves his head closer to my skin. I wonder if I should stop it, stop him.

I don’t.

When his lips press against my neck, a shiver runs down my spine. His fingers keep moving, and then his mouth presses against my shoulder. My body fills with longing while my heart aches, but my brain turns pleasantly fuzzy and warm. He can make Alex disappear from my head. He can make me forget Zee. Everything dissolves except the feel of Casper’s hands and lips on my skin.

I ignore a voice in my head trying to tell me it’s not right. That I should stop him. That I’m not even close to being in love with this guy, I’m not even truly sure how much I like him. Or that I’m not the kind of girl who goes around kissing boys she hardly knows. And I’m not doing a good job of proving that to anyone. The trouble is, maybe, just maybe, I need him right now. He’s making my pain go away and erasing thoughts from my head. And how can that be bad?

I ignore my guilt as his fingers stop massaging, and he turns me slowly around. He presses his lips against mine. For a moment, I’m reminded of Alex, but Casper pulls me closer and keeps kissing, and the image recedes further and further. All I can think of is right now. This moment. It’s such a relief that he isn’t reacting badly to my kiss. I inhale his powerful cologne and run my fingers through his light hair. I want to stay entwined like this forever. I want to hide in his bedroom, sleep in his closet, and be pulled out only to kiss him. I’m losing myself in his arms.

My body starts aching for things, asking for things my heart isn’t sure of, but before we cross any more lines, Casper abruptly pulls back.

“Whoa,” he says. “You are a great kisser.” Between him and Alex, he must think I go around making out with random dudes all the time. Heat floods my cheeks, and I press my face into his shoulder so he can’t see me. “We better stop now, while we still can.”

My cheeks get even hotter. He obviously doesn’t know I’m a virgin. A total virgin. All he knows is that I seemed ready to do almost anything he asked. He’s more of a gentleman than I thought, showing restraint when clearly I didn’t deserve it. The old me would have been grateful. This me is just empty inside.

Casper is not the boy of my dreams. We have little in common except some genetic quirk that makes us both smart. His voice doesn’t send thrills through me. Catching a surprise glimpse of him doesn’t fill me with excitement. And just like Alex, he’s not Zee.

And just like Alex, I’m using him to try to forget. To try to show Zee that I am worthy. That boys want to kiss me. I shiver, thinking about what happened to Alex because of me. I suppose I’m trying to prove something. That kissing me isn’t the most horrible thing in the world. I wonder if the experience with Alex realigned my value system? I want it to mean something more. I want
me
to mean something more. I want to be held and I want to allow a cute boy to stop me from thinking.

Aunt Allie said I’d go on to kiss other boys and she was right, but it’s happening faster than either of us probably imagined. Casper strokes my hair as I drift back to the real world, hiding the conflicting emotions threatening to burble out of me. I want to kiss him again, lose myself and forget my thoughts.

“I’m sorry, Sam.” He lifts his arm and glances at his watch. He’s one of the few boys I know who wears one. “I have to be somewhere in about fifteen minutes.” He grins sheepishly. “And it takes me at least twenty to get there, so technically I’m already late.”

He leans his head forward and kisses me again. “As much as I don’t want to, I have to get going.”

I’m being dismissed.

“God. I’m sorry.” I untangle my needy arms from his.

He stands but reaches down and grabs my hand and squeezes it. “Don’t be sorry. It’s totally worth being late for you. You’re amazing.”

I frown. “I am?”

“Sam I am.” He grins. “You are.” Then he bends and picks up my laptop, unplugs the cord, and slides it into my backpack for me.

“I’ll walk you to the door? Okay?”

He takes my bag and leads me out of his room, and we silently reverse our steps through his house. I can’t think of a thing to say, but Casper whistles under his breath, the kind of whistle that someone does when they’re not even aware of it. When we finally reach the front doors I quickly slip my shoes on.

“Uh. I’ll see you at school, I guess.” I take my backpack from him, wishing he’d ask me what I’m doing tomorrow. If I want to hole up in his room again and make the outside world disappear.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Casper says in a calm voice, as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.

“You don’t have to, you’re late.” My face burns. Reality is rushing back. He thinks I’m the type of girl who does things like this all the time. First Alex. Now him.

He reaches around me, holds the door handle, and waits. “I want to.”

He opens the door and then slips his hand inside mine. It fills my heart enough that it doesn’t feel completely empty as he walks with me down the long driveway. I want to believe it’s a sign that this means more. There’s more to this than me making out with the wrong person again. When we reach my car, he opens my door for me after I click the lock open.

When I’m in the driver’s seat, he bends down, closes the door, and waves through the glass. “See you Monday. I’ll call you.”

I attempt a smile, but I don’t answer as I pull on my seatbelt. Carefully, I back out of the driveway while he stands watching. I pray I don’t run over a gnome or something and then wave, put the car in drive, and drive away.

I wonder where he’s going. Why he didn’t ask to see me again this weekend. But of course, who do I think I am? The perfect girlfriend? I swallow and swallow and swallow, but a lump is back in my throat. A hollow ache settles back in my chest.

Casper helped me forget. How sorry I am about everything. I want to be in Casper’s arms again. Forgetting.

And what does that make me?

I see Bob early Saturday morning, but I don’t tell him about Casper. I think I’m afraid he’ll talk me out of what I’m doing. Later, when I’m home, Dad freaks out when I refuse to go to swim practice. As far as I’m concerned, he has no right to act surprised. It’s not like we’d agreed today was the day it would magically happen. At no point did I tell him any such thing.

While we’re arguing, Aunt Allie puts on her coat and boots and dresses Fredrick in his sweater vest. “You two need to talk,” she says.

“
Adios
,” she says, holding Fredrick up to me. And then she carries him to the door and hooks him up to his Harley Davidson leash.

Dad storms out as soon as they’re gone, and for the first time since Aunt Allie arrived, the house is quiet. It’s good for about three seconds, and then images and thoughts boom too loudly in my head. I think about the letter Aunt Allie wants me to write. But I can’t do that. I decide a run is the only way to liberate some of the edginess from my body.

After a quick change, I find my running sneakers at the back of the closet, put on my sunglasses and ball cap, and clip on my iPhone. I head slowly down the street, jogging toward the school yard. My lungs tighten almost right away, and I fight the rapid breaths and burning sensation. It’s embarrassing how quickly I’ve lapsed out of shape, but instead of slowing down, I sprint harder. My lungs scorch trying to pump in more oxygen, and I pant, but the pain is good and I don’t slow my pace. The streets are empty. No one is outside enjoying the beautiful fall weather. I run down a pathway across the street that leads to the school yard and keep running until I reach the field.

As I head across the grass to the playground, I see someone running toward the flight of stairs beside the school. From the back, I can tell it’s a boy with long hair sticking out of the bottom of his cap. His track pants hang low, and the butt looks familiar. I keep running and watch as he vaults over the railing with a huge drop. He disappears. I run to the wall. The boy rolls on his shoulder and then leaps up and turns my way. As suspected, it’s Zee.

We stare at each other, and as much as I want to turn and run the other way, I can’t now without looking like a complete jerk. He lifts his hand. “Hey,” he calls when I almost reach him.

I slow to a walk and pull out my ear buds. “Hey,” I say. “You trying to break your neck?” I hold my side, as the stitch I’d been ignoring slices into me. I blow out slowly and bend toward the cramp, trying to stretch it away.

“Hardly.” He actually grins at me. “It’s called Parkour.”

“That’s what you call jumping off steps and almost breaking your neck?” I lift my arm and stretch it over my head, opposite the stitch.

He jumps up and down in place, bouncing high as if he’s on a trampoline. “Maybe to an untrained eye. Parkour is about using the body efficiently to quickly get from one place to another. We use the obstacles in the way to help the journey.”

“So you had to get”—I point to the top of the stairs and then to the drop—“to there quickly?”

He grins for a second, but it’s gone so quickly I’m not sure it even happened.

“Um, why?” I ask.

“I’m tracing. The official definition of Parkour.” He stops bouncing and punches at the air, as if he’s boxing. “For those uneducated in our ways.”

“I see.” I push back my braid, which got stuck in my sunglasses as I ran. “So that’s Parkour.” I don’t want to bring up the fact that Casper was talking about it. And Alex. My cheeks flush.

“Look it up on YouTube,” Zee says as he shadow boxes, ducking from an imaginary opponent. “I mean, if you’re interested. You can see the basic moves there. Like monkey walks and cat leaps and kong vaults.”

I smile and nod, pretending to know what he’s talking about.

“The first time I tried Parkour, I ended up face first on the pavement with a bloody lip,” Zee says. “My ego hurt more than my face, though I pretty much resembled a cat’s scratching post. I wiped the blood away and got up and tried again.”

“Doesn’t sound so fun to me.”

“But it is. Even David Belle falls, and he’s the greatest free runner in the world. He makes basic Parkour moves look easy, but trust me, they’re not.”

I start bouncing on my heels with him as a gust of wind rips right though me. “I’m surprised Clair lets you do it. You know. In case you get injured.”

He shrugs. “I don’t do everything Clair says.”

“I know that for a fact.” I quickly bend over and touch my toes, not wanting him to see the look on my face since I was talking about his drinking. And we both know what happened the only time I saw him do that. I don’t want to think about or talk about that night.

“What about you?” he says as I straighten up. “You’re not exactly following Clair’s training schedule, now are you?”

I grab my ankle and stretch my leg back behind my back, keeping my expression neutral. He doesn’t need to know how much I miss the pool.

He stops faux boxing. “At least you’re cross-training,” he says. “Keeping in shape for when you come back?”

I change legs. “No. I’m going for a run. That’s it.”

“Hmm,” he says. “Sounds like cross-training to me. Can’t keep a fish out of the water for too long, Sammy.”

I turn from him, ready to jog away, back to punishing my body.

“Clair hates it,” Zee says quickly, and his deep voice catches at the end. I slowly turn back. He starts jumping, but lower to the ground.

“She thinks it’s stupid to do Parkour during swim season.”

“And? Is the jury still out on that one?” I ask. Another gust of wind blows my ponytail straight up.

He pulls his cap lower. “A jury is made up of twelve people not smart enough to get out of jury duty.”

I hold in a smile. For a moment, the old chemistry bubbles between us, below the surface.

“Why would I let anyone decide whether what I do is stupid or not? I kind of run my own life,” he adds, and the light Zee-ness is gone.

“She’s your coach,” I say.

“She’s your coach too.”

I roll my neck to loosen it and ignore his comment. “You could get hurt. She’s looking out for your best interests.” Leaves billow up around my feet.

He stares at me, squinting his eyes, and the scrutiny makes me squirm. “It doesn’t seem as important as it used to.”

I glance at him and then down at the grass under my shoes, brown and stagnant. “What about your parents? They’re not worried you’re going to get hurt doing Parkour?”

“My parents have never seen me doing Parkour. They don’t get it. They like swim meets because it makes them feel good about themselves when I win.”

I look up at him. “You can’t win at Parkour. It can’t get you into Berkeley.”

He runs his hands through his hair. “I think that’s your dream, Sam. Not mine. Not anymore.”

“What’s changed?” I ask.

“Everything.”

I know what he means. I realize how much I’ve really missed Zee. We used to have great talks about what we wanted.

“Swimming came easy for me. Body type or genes. But with Parkour, I have to work at it.”

“You have to work at swimming too.” I can’t help defending my old sport.

“True. But I don’t get roughed up swimming. Actually, I think my dad liked the bruises and cuts. He played hockey. He’s used to injuries. Manly, you know.” He grins, but he’s staring off into the distance and it fades from his lips almost as quickly as it appeared.

“How’d you learn Parkour?” I ask, even though I’m starting to freeze and need to get moving.

“They have drop-in classes at the gymnastics place downtown. But mostly we learned from watching YouTube.” He starts jumping up and down again, springing from his toes, reaching for air. “We practiced on scaffolding at first and then vaults and horizontal bars at the gym, but mostly outside. Free running. Me and Alex.”

At the mention of his name, we look away from each other.

“Casper came to the gym sometimes too, but his dad didn’t really like him doing it. No glory in it, I think. Casper used to swim too, but since he wasn’t the best, his dad made him quit. Anyhow. He’s not that good at Parkour. He doesn’t follow the rules.” He sounds kind of pleased.

My cheeks burn. I want to ask why they’re angry with each other, but that would be as stupid as sticking my hand inside a hornet nest. I don’t want him to know about Casper and me. Whatever it is we are.

“Alex wasn’t much good either. He had ball practice all the time.”

It’s there again. His name. An anchor that drops between us.

“I’m sorry.” My words come out in a rush. “I’m so freakin’ sorry about Alex.”

“I know.” He flips his head back and stares at the school wall instead of me. “He came to the pool to see you that day, you know. He had to drop off my iPod. But mostly he wanted to see you swim.”

I bend my head. “I’d do anything to take it all back…”

“Well. You can’t.” His voice cuts deep. It drips with harsh reality. Nothing can change what happened that night.

I take a deep breath. “I didn’t know about his allergy.”

I wince, realizing I’m practically begging for forgiveness from the best friend of the boy I killed. My body stays tense, waiting. Zee says nothing. I try to imagine how much he must miss Alex. His best friend. They had years together. I barely knew him.

“I never should have kissed him,” I say softly.

My feet feel as heavy as my heart, but it’s time for me to leave. I take a step away from Zee, about to sprint away.

“I shouldn’t have been with Kaitlin that night,” he says.

I freeze in place.

His voice is almost a whisper. “I was wasted. But it was a shitty thing to do to you.”

My ears burn. My instinct is to pretend not to know what he’s talking about. To deny that he and I had a thing. I’m flooded with the memory of how I’d been so sure that he was going to kiss me.

It’s too late for us now. But for a moment I remember being on the deck. Before Kaitlin showed up. Before I knew Alex was watching.

“Kaitlin and I had this weird history of hooking up. That sounds bad, I know, but she was pretty aggressive, and…it was before.” He curses under his breath. “I’m sorry.”

Zee spins then and runs from me at full tilt, heading toward a play structure nearby. He jumps on top of a planked wooden bridge. He leaps to a higher level and then, while my heart pauses in fear, he does a flip to the ground, landing on both feet.

“See you around, Sam,” he calls, and he jumps up on a play boulder and disappears over it in a blur of motion.

Just like that, he’s gone. Things can change so quickly. One second you’re in the present, the next you’re remembering the past. My insides ache, staring at the empty spot where he stood.

Pushing my ear buds back in place, I jog off in the opposite direction. Fast beats pulse in my ear, and I press the volume button to full, so loud my hair vibrates. I break into a straight-out run and concentrate on nothing except the beat of the music and the pounding of my feet.

I run and run, trying to get rid of the angst icing up my belly. My body finally quits on me, so I circle back and start heading for home. I bring down my pace. I have no choice but to take the route that passes the school, but I stay on the perimeter of the school grounds until I hit the field I need to cross.

Zee is still on the playground, but he looks tiny and far away. I squint and frown, watching as he runs to the parallel bars at full steam. His foot must slip on his takeoff because he ends up slamming his head straight into a metal bar. The sound of it echoes across the schoolyard, and my head stings in sympathy.

Zee stays down for a minute, rubbing his head, and then gets up and goes back and runs at it again. This time he swings his body up but misses the second bar completely. His hands are down and don’t break his fall between the two bars. He flips off the side onto his back. I watch as he lies still, not moving. Inhaling deeply, I start running toward him. My legs ache, but I move them as fast as I can.

Before I reach him, he pushes up. I watch as he runs at the school wall, stopping at two posts that run parallel to the roof. He stares up and then puts one foot on a post and the other foot on the other post and shimmies up to the roof like Spider-Man on a rescue mission.

Wind blows through me and I shiver, but it’s not from the breeze. I’m just close enough to see Zee as he flings his body onto the roof and stands. He glances down at the drop, then looks up to where another wall juts higher with another roof about four feet above the one he’s on. He backs up, staring at the taller wall.

I realize what he wants to do and shout his name, but the wind catches my voice and carries it away. Zee doesn’t even look my way as I get closer. He backs up and then charges, like a bull running at a target. My belly is on fire from a rush of adrenaline.

“Zee! Don’t!” I holler.

My toes touch pavement on the school ground as he leaps off the edge, jumping and reaching for the taller wall. His fingers grip the ledge, but his feet flail against the stones. He’s thrown off balance and slips. I gasp as he loses his footing. He stops moving, pushing his feet against the wall, and then tries again. In slow motion he manages to crawl up the side of the wall and scrambles to the higher roof. He collapses on his back when he’s on top of the roof.

“You asshole!” I yell.

He looks over the edge at me standing below him. “Thanks for noticing,” he calls.

My hands clench into fists, and I make a sound in my throat instead of yelling profanities.

“What are you doing back here?” he asks.

“I need to go this way to get home. You scared the crap out of me.” I’m shaking from his near miss. “You could have been hurt,” I yell.
He
could
have
been
killed
, I think.
Doesn’t he get it? We’re not invincible
.

“I didn’t know you cared.” A gust of wind blows as he jumps to the lower roof and shimmies down the poles on the side of the building.

“Would you stop that already,” I yell at him.

When his feet touch the ground, he holds one hand in front of his stomach, puts the other behind his back, and bows.