Kiss and Repeat

by Heather Truett

  “That part’s true,” I admitted.

  “You told us you were going to Ballard’s house. You lied, Stephen.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am, but—”

  “Sorry isn’t enough. Lying is unacceptable. Let’s talk about the rest of Erin’s story.”

  “She’s mad at me, Mom. She’s mad and she did this to get back at me. I knew I shouldn’t have kissed her.”

  “You kissed Erin Mielke?” Dad raised an eyebrow.

  I nodded.

  Dad tried not to smile. Talk about flipping roles on me. Here Mom was, pissed as hell, and Dad was the quiet one.

  “Can we talk about this later? I have homework.”

  “No, we can’t, and you will have plenty of time to do your homework. Trust me. Plenty of time.”

  “Am I grounded?”

  “I’m asking the questions here.” Mom leaned onto the table and looked at me. “Stephen, I need you to be honest with me.”

  “I’m always honest with you.” I ducked my head. “Okay, I’m usually honest with you. I knew you’d say no to the party and I wasn’t planning to drink or do anything stupid.”

  “Stephen, are you having sex?”

  “With Erin?”

  “With anyone,” Dad amended.

  “No. I’m not.” I stood up from the table. They were acting like I’d committed murder by going to a party and kissing a girl.

  “Erin said—”

  “I know what Erin said, Mom, and it’s Ballard who started that rumor. I did not have sex with anyone anywhere, and especially not in some dirty mall bathroom. I can’t believe you are even asking me this crap.” My arms shook from my shoulders to my fists.

  I inherited Mom’s quivering anger mixed with Dad’s shouting rage, though Dad controls his way better than I do.

  Mom sighed. “Why would Ballard say such a thing?”

  “Because he was drunk. He was drunk and I was teasing him, and he couldn’t take being the one people laughed at. He had to turn it back on me.” I backed away from my parents, fists clenched and breath coming harder and harder. This is how it always started, with me trying to be understood. I didn’t want much, just to be understood.

  Mom watched me. She recognized the signs, my labored breathing and the way my shoulders shook. “Stephen, take a deep breath. Count to ten.”

  “I don’t want to fucking count to ten,” I growled at her, light flashing oddly before my eyes. My head was swimmy, not like Friday with the beer making me tipsy. When I get angry, really angry, my head fills with someone I don’t recognize and my brain has to fight to keep that other person out of me.

  “Stephen Luckie, don’t you dare speak to your mother that way.” Dad stood and took a step around the table. “You have no right to be angry with us for something you’ve done to yourself.”

  It was his usual spiel, telling me I didn’t have the right to feel my feelings. He was wrong though. Maybe I didn’t have the right to shout at my mother or throw things, but I did have a right to be angry.

  “You don’t understand. You aren’t listening to me.” The room spun.

  “I do understand. I understand you lied to us and went to a party where you knew there would be drinking and who knows what else, and while there you got drunk and took advantage of the situation with a young lady who is dear to our family.” The my-son-kissed-a-girl pride was gone from his voice.

  “That’s not what happened.” I clenched my teeth. The room spun faster.

  “It is exactly what you just told us happened.”

  He’d twisted it. He’d twisted what I said, what I admitted to. I did not take advantage of Erin. I went to the party. I drank. I kissed her, but it was her idea, not mine. She took advantage of me, if anything. She handed me the beer. She asked me to kiss her.

  “It’s about time you grow up and take responsibility for your actions, Stephen. You have to quit using your Tourette’s as a crutch.”

  I don’t even remember picking it up. One minute, Dad was lecturing, his voice rising, and the next, I was screaming and a saltshaker was flying across the room. It hit the wall near my mother’s head and bounced to the floor.

  The rage drained out of me. I looked at my outstretched hand, my eyes on the indentations from gripping the rose-shaped saltshaker, its red petals and green leaves now shattered on the tile floor. Mom’s face was white.

  I didn’t wait for further reprimand. I ran down the hall and locked myself inside my bedroom. Through the wall there were hammers and men’s voices. I supposed the construction crew heard everything. I pictured Nick Dane, smoking his cigarette, telling his buddies about the family feud at the Luckie house that afternoon.

  “Stephen?” Mom knocked on the door.

  I didn’t answer, just pressed my back against the wood. It was all so eerily familiar, my sitting like this, the carpet thick beneath me, the door thin, the sound of Mom breathing on the other side.

  I didn’t hit her though. The saltshaker busted against the floor. It only hit the wall, and Mom was wearing shoes this time. So she didn’t step in the glass.

  Minutes passed. I sensed Mom’s weight against the door and heard her sliding to a seat. For a little while, we sat like that. Then, slowly, I inched my fingers under the door. Sure enough, Mom’s hand was there, waiting.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tuesday, I canceled thrift store plans with Joan. I had no choice. I was grounded for two weeks. I didn’t cancel on Pilar though. I knew I should, but I had high hopes of getting time off for good behavior. I wanted to go study with a friend, right? There was no party. There would be no alcohol.

  Tuesday night, after dinner, I was working on a paper for English. My phone was turned off and locked in a drawer in Dad’s desk, but I still had access to iMessage on my Mac. My parents both used ancient PCs, so this didn’t occur to them, and I wasn’t about to point it out.

  Joan had gone to the thrift store without me and sent a message to say there were no bikes in stock this week. I promised to take her for a ride again when I got out of prison. I’ll break you out, she replied.

  Please do, I wrote back.

  A car pulled into the drive and for a second I thought Joan was magic. It wasn’t Joan though.

  “Knock, knock,” Matt said, stepping through my open bedroom door.

  I snapped my Mac closed and crossed my arms.

  “Your mom said you might need someone to talk to. I hear it’s been a tough weekend.”

  “Thanks to you.” No way was I going to bare my soul to Matt. I knew good and well he was Erin’s confidant, and he turned around and handed me over to my mother. I get it, she’s his boss, but he’s supposed to be someone I can trust. Before this, I did trust him. He’s the only nonfamily member who knows I want to write songs. He and I stayed up till three in the morning talking on youth trips. How could he automatically believe Erin and tattle on me?

  Matt sat on the edge of my bed, brow knit seriously. “I didn’t know anything about it before today. Am I missing a detail?”

  “How can you even pretend that’s true? When I left Sunday morning, who was with Erin? You.”

  Matt folded his hands and went quiet for a minute, then spoke. “Erin hasn’t said a word to me. You’re right about her being upset Sunday morning, but she didn’t want to speak with me. She talked to Kelly instead.”

  “So your wife turned me in. Same difference.”

  “Not quite. I didn’t even know this is what Erin was upset about. Can you cut me a little slack, buddy?”

  “Please don’t call me ‘buddy.’ I’m not twelve.”

  Matt nodded slowly. “I know rumors get blown out of proportion in high school. I’ve been there, and not too long ago.”

  Matt was only twenty-five. He liked to remind us of that pretty often. Kelly’s even younger.

  “Whatever.” I reopened the Mac and pretended to focus on the screen.

  “Okay, then. Well, your parents are going out of town this weekend, for a conferenc
e, and I said you could stay with us.”

  That was news to me. “I can stay here. I’m old enough to take care of myself.”

  “Your mother said the same, but you are still grounded, so we needed a compromise. You can stay by yourself so long as you check in with me every few hours, and you come to our house for dinner Saturday. Deal?”

  “Fine, whatever. Please go now.”

  He left me alone with my thoughts and the glowing laptop screen. I couldn’t stay mad at Matt for something he didn’t do. I’d apologize for my grouchiness later. In the meantime, at least my parents still trusted me enough to leave me home alone. Checking in with Matt was better than staying at his house under Kelly’s watchful eye.

  * * *

  By Friday, with no word from Pilar about my coffee shop suggestion, I’d decided not to go at all. Joan was right. If I went to Pilar’s house when her parents weren’t home, there’s no telling what would happen. Besides, Dad left his car parked in the driveway instead of the garage. I had keys in case of an emergency, but if I took the car, Matt would know. He and Kelly lived three doors down.

  I texted Pilar in the morning and told her I couldn’t make it. When I joined Joan in the library at lunch, I still hadn’t gotten a reply.

  “Let’s do something this weekend. Your parents aren’t around. I’ll pick you up.” We were proofreading each other’s English essays. Joan had written about Daisy in The Great Gatsby, about how being a “beautiful little fool” sounded like a fate worse than death. She said her sister, Pearl, was a beautiful little fool.

  “I can’t. Matt might see you pick me up. Or he might call or knock on the door. The whole thing’s stupid.” I passed Joan’s laptop to her, typos corrected.

  She handed me mine, an essay about the similarities between Jay Gatsby and Jay-Z. “I’ll come over. I’ll sneak in the back. I’ve gotta get out of my house tomorrow. Pearl’s home.”

  “Did she bring the new husband?”

  “No, thank God. But she did bring news.” Joan closed her MacBook and slid it into her backpack.

  “News?”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t sure what the proper response was. “Well, yeah, come over if you want. You can help me figure out what to say to Pilar.”

  “Sure. We can write you a script.” She smiled at me, her eyes bright but not entirely happy.

  There was a girl at the table next to us. I noticed her as we passed, headed for English, Joan trying to explain the importance of the color yellow in the Gatsby narrative. I remember because the girl at the table had on a yellow dress, and when I looked at her, she ducked her head. Her hair fell over her face as she typed away furiously on her laptop. I followed Joan out of the library.

  * * *

  On Saturday, Joan crawled over the back fence and dropped onto the ground in my yard, her pink Converse high-tops bright against the dying grass. That’s how she landed in my life too, quick and smooth, suddenly my friend instead of the girl who defended me in seventh grade when I didn’t want her to.

  After she grabbed snacks from the kitchen, Joan’s eyes alighted on the guitar in my bedroom. “Stephen! You play guitar? Play something?”

  My heart scattered its beats all over my chest, tossing a few into my throat for good measure. I lifted the guitar and spent a few moments twisting the tuning pegs so I had time to get my nerves under control. At the opening chords of “Hey There Delilah,” she smiled, and I was glad she recognized the Plain White T’s. It’s one of the first songs I learned all the way through.

  “Here.” I held out the guitar and she took it. I showed her how to pick out three chords, nudging over to where the morning sun shone through my bedroom window and illuminated the strings. My fingers curled around hers on the neck of the guitar. The simple touch made my whole body turn to jelly. My hands itched to do it again, to wrap around her hands and her arms … to lead me closer and closer until I could touch every lethal part of Joan Pearson.

  Lethal, because that’s what a girl like Joan is—a girl I couldn’t have.

  When I messaged Pilar Friday morning and told her I couldn’t come, she took a while to respond, but when she did, she seemed okay with me canceling. I told her I was grounded because of drinking at a party, and that’s true. I didn’t tell her I wouldn’t have driven to Dadeville even if I wasn’t grounded. There was no reason to upset her.

  Joan was going to help me figure out how to extricate myself from my might-be-a-relationship with Pilar, and I would drive to Dadeville then. I wasn’t a break-up-with-her-via-text-message kind of bastard. I would man up and do it face-to-face.

  At lunch, I made sandwiches and flipped on the TV. “There’s a Doctor Who marathon on BBC America.”

  “I’ve never watched it,” Joan said.

  “Well, then you have to start with the ninth doctor, not the newer seasons.” I grabbed the DVDs from a shelf and put the first one in the player. We ate on the couch and then split a bowl of popcorn with white chocolate, something my dad showed me how to make.

  “This is so good.” Joan reached for another handful and we had one of those movie moments when our fingers brushed, except our hands were sticky from the melted chocolate. When her fingers pulled away from mine and she put those same fingers in her mouth, dropping kernels onto the couch, my body froze and so did my brain.

  I forced my eyes to return to the television screen, the breath in my lungs struggling to get out.

  It was early evening when Nick Dane arrived. Joan hid in my bedroom while I answered the door. I spotted Matt checking his mail, or pretending to at least. He waved, and I waved so he could report to Mom I was home.

  “Hey, man,” Nick said when I let him in the house. “I left some tools I need. Mind if I dig around for them?”

  I led him down the hall and watched him disappear past the tarps into the in-progress office and bathroom area. Everything smelled of sawdust.

  I was pretty sure Nick hadn’t forgotten any tools, because when I peeked around the corner a few minutes later, he was sitting with his eyes closed, a joint pinched between two fingers. I didn’t ask him to put it out. I was still pissed about being grounded, so I didn’t feel like defending my mother or keeping her rules. Besides, she hadn’t expressly forbidden me to allow one of the construction workers to get high in our house.

  “So, Nick Dane is smoking pot in the add-on,” I told Joan, closing the door behind me.

  Joan laughed. “That’s the least weird place Nick has gotten high.”

  “You know him, right? I remember he used to drive you to school sometimes.” My leg jerked, my foot knocking against my desk.

  “Yeah, he lives next door. We hang out sometimes.” Joan watched as my foot jerked again. “Come sit before you break something.”

  I sat on the bed where Joan had a box of my CDs. She popped one into the player on my nightstand and James Durbin’s voice filled the room.

  “Who’s this guy?” Joan turned the case over in her hands.

  “He was on American Idol. He didn’t win, but he came close. And he has Tourette’s, so I was into him for a while.”

  “Is this his signature?” Joan pointed at the thick black cursive scrolled across the booklet that came with the CD.

  “Mom mailed it to him, and his wife wrote us a letter when they sent it back signed. That’s when I learned to play guitar.”

  “How come you don’t play in the band at The Exchange?” Joan dropped the case into the box and set it aside. When she leaned back again, her hair fell onto my shoulder. It tickled my neck, but I didn’t brush it away. “I mean, you’re there all the time, and I hear they’re pretty good.”

  “I don’t like being on stage or in front of people.” It was easy to talk to Joan this way, sitting side by side, looking straight ahead, no eye contact. I could tell her anything.

  My shoulder jerked and her hair slipped away, the tickling sensation gone, but the memory of it engraved on my skin. “It stresses me o
ut and I’ve got this vocal tic, a coughing, throat clearing kind of thing. I hate it.”

  “But, when you were playing earlier, you didn’t tic at all. Not once.” She turned her head to look at me and I met her eyes, certain I was going to kiss her. A couple of inches closer, and I would do it. I would take a risk and kiss Joan. I didn’t even register what she’d said, her voice quiet against drums pounding from the speakers.

  I put aside my grudge against God long enough to say one prayer, a quick plea he would keep my face from grimacing while we were this close, while her eyes were so intensely staring. Let my face hold still while I lean forward …

  My bedroom door flew open. Joan jerked backward, cold air rushing between us, and we both turned.

  “Pilar?” What the hell? I couldn’t make sense of her standing there, like some sort of guilty nightmare.

  “I knew it,” she said. “I didn’t want to believe Luz when she said you were all over some girl in the library, but she was right. She was right!”

  “What—”

  “I told her she didn’t know what she was talking about, that you’re a good guy, a nice guy, not the kind of guy who cheats.”

  I stood and crossed the room, but Pilar wouldn’t let me talk.

  “No, I’m not finished. You listen to me, Stephen.” She glanced at Joan and her eyes widened. “Wait a minute. I know her. She’s the girl from the mall.”

  “The mall?” Joan’s forehead wrinkled in confusion.

  “Yes, you were at the mall when we were, and Stephen was watching you, and I asked if he knew you.” Pilar turned back to me. “You called her a bitch. You said she was some bitch.”

  “That’s not what I said.” My skin turned clammy. My eyes darted between the two girls in my bedroom.

  Joan stood, shot me a dirty look, and left the room. I poked my head out the door and watched Joan disappear behind the tarp, into the construction area where Nick had gone earlier. I wanted to call after her, but I knew it was pointless. I’d have to explain, but I couldn’t do that, or anything else, until I faced Pilar. There was no reason for Joan to suffer Pilar’s wrath when she hadn’t done anything wrong.