Ethan laughed. “Well it was worth a shot. I’m leaving tonight for Manila. I guess I’ll see you when you get back? You’ll probably be hanging out with Chris anyway, right?”
“If he isn’t out on one of his many dates.” Katie shook her head.
“Who knew my brother would turn out to be a player?” Ethan laughed, a hint of pride in his tone.
Katie didn’t like it, but felt it would be a waste of time if she brought it up. “I guess I’ll just head back then if you’re all going hiking. See you in Manila!”
As she walked back, Katie felt a strong wave of disappointment washing over her. She wanted to spend the rest of the day with Andrew, but she figured maybe it was getting a bit much. He did come to the beach with the boys and probably wanted to spend time with them doing guy things too…like hiking. Ugh. Maybe he was also tired of babysitting Summer since they kind of did that a lot. But what frustrated Katie the most was that today was her last day and she was finally free! Her mom found another two-year-old Summer could play with and Katie didn’t have to babysit anymore. But Katie wasn’t one to let setbacks like this get her down. She figured she could work on her tan instead and wow her friends Megan and Inca with it when she got home.
With a new objective in mind, Katie began preparations for her day of sunning. She carefully laid out her suntan oil, book, iPod, and bottled water on the tiny plastic table next to her reclining beach chair. She was determined to have fun despite the nagging disappointment she felt. With her earphones and sunglasses in place, Katie lay down and closed her eyes, wondering if she was going to see Andrew again when they got back to Manila. He promised she would, but she knew college life could easily whisk him away into a different world—one she was definitely not a part of.
Before she drifted off to sleep, she had already decided that she was Ingrid Bergman and Andrew was Humphrey Bogart in the movie Casablanca—something her best friend Megan insisted they watch because she was currently into old movies and old Hollywood. Megan always had some project or other and lately, it was to educate herself (and Katie, of course) in the origins of present day pop culture. Katie always enjoyed whatever Megan cooked up, but she had to admit the old movie marathons were a lot better than their past attempts at basket weaving and flower arranging. And Casablanca was their favorite of the lot because it didn’t have a conventional ending. Katie told herself that she could be satisfied with her own version of Casablanca, where she and Andrew could just be happy they had their time together at the beach, the way Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart had Paris. And that should be enough.
Just then, she felt an earphone being removed from her left ear and a voice whispering, “Are we just going to lie in the sun all day?”
Her eyes flew open and she broke into a huge grin, seeing Andrew sitting on the sand next to her. “I thought you were going hiking with the guys.” Even if she tried, she couldn’t keep the elation from her voice.
“When Ethan said you weren’t coming, I told them to go ahead. I’d much rather be here with you.” He smiled. And it wasn’t a line. She knew he meant it. Just as much as she knew that she could never be happy if they had the same fate as the lead characters in Casablanca. Not if she could help it.
She sat up and patted the space next to her on the beach recliner. “Andrew, when we get back to Manila—”
“Wait, Katie. Stop. I have something I want to say and I think I better say it before I lose the guts.” He looked at her nervously. Her stomach took a sudden plunge. What was he going to say? Was he going to tell her that they could never be together after this? But wait, that didn’t make sense. He was here and not with the boys, wasn’t he? Katie decided to just listen. Her thoughts were starting to annoy her anyway.
Andrew took a deep breath and continued. “I know you’ve said that you think I shouldn’t be tied down when I enter college. And you don’t want to be either, but for the past few days, you’re all I could think about. And I can’t imagine not seeing you after we go back to Manila. I don’t want to accept that this is the end. That I’ll just tell my friends I met a really hot, crazy, smart, beautiful girl at the beach and I let her go. I can’t do that. I won’t do that. I’m not asking you to be my girlfriend or anything, but I want to continue seeing you after tomorrow, Katie. I can’t imagine my life without you in it anymore.”
Katie started laughing. Then she took his hands in hers and said, “I was just about to say the same thing. But maybe not as eloquently. You do have a way with words, don’t you?”
Andrew let go of her hands and threw his arms around her and hugged her tight. “Oh, thank God. I was so worried you’d think I was insane. I do feel insane, though. And it’s all your fault.”
Katie broke free of his embrace and gave him a light shove on the shoulder. “Well, they do say I have that effect on people.” Then she jumped up and pulled him with her. “Come on, let’s spend our last day in the water!”
As they ran toward the surf, Katie couldn’t help thinking about Chris, hoping that he too could feel this way. She felt it was unfair for her to be so happy when he was still dealing with pain and rejection from the past. How could she completely give in when her best friend was all broken up? But when Andrew took her hand, all thoughts of Chris flew from her mind. She could always worry about him later.
LATER THAT NIGHT, when Katie was about to go to bed, she remembered to check her phone. She had a text from Megan: “Get yourself back here now so you can tell me all about him!!!” and one from Chris: “Got e-mail. Been thinking. Think you’re right. Should take a break from girls first. Problem is, the only girl I trust not to hurt me is you. See you tomorrow.”
Katie felt that pang in her chest return—the one she had felt while looking down at Andrew on the sand that first night. But this time it happened while reading Chris’s text message. She dismissed it by thinking she was probably just touched by what he had said. And it was possible that Andrew had opened up all these places in her heart she had never even known existed before. She texted him back, “She’s out there, don’t worry. But taking a break sounds like a good idea. Night, Chris. Mwah!”
Then another text came in. “Good night, my hot, crazy, beautiful Katie. Can’t wait to see you when we get back. Sleep well.” It was Andrew. Katie smiled, all thoughts of Chris vanishing. So this was what being in love (or something close to it) felt like. No matter how confused you were, it always managed to make you feel that everything was all right in the world. That night, Katie actually fell asleep with a smile on her face, silently praying she could hold on to that feeling forever.
MAKING MY WAY
“HOW CAN YOU talk about marrying Andrew after college? Nobody does that anymore unless they’re, like, pregnant! I thought you were going to focus on your career!”
“Calm down, Chris! Geez. We aren’t making any plans. We’re just talking about the possibility. Of course I want a career. I want to make a name for myself doing… I have no idea what... something. But I will find that something. You’ve been on an overreacting roll, you know that?”
Chris knew it. And he knew why. He couldn’t stand how perfect Andrew and Katie were for each other. Sure he liked the guy. He was great. He took care of Katie, he was fun, he even encouraged Katie to spend time with Chris—which was more than he could say for her BFF Megan. He actually couldn’t find anything to hate about Andrew. And that was why he hated him so much. Because really, why did he have to be so infuriatingly perfect?
“I know, I’m sorry. I just feel that you have so much going for you. If you get married too early, then your life is going to end,” he mumbled, looking away from her confused expression.
Katie gave him a curious look. “Is that how you see marriage? A dead-end?”
“Well what do you want me to think?” Chris shook his head, picked up his backpack, and got up from the bench they were sharing. “I have a class. See you later.”
Without giving her another look, he left Katie sitting on the bench the
y had claimed as their own since freshman year. It was next to the university library because Katie preferred to have easy access to one of her favorite places on campus, and her BFF Megan, the only one who would have kicked up a fuss, agreed. She loved spending time in the library too.
It was actually pretty cool that their grade school friends were back together again. He was also glad that nothing had really happened between him and Inca three years ago, because now they were free to be one big happy barkada. Mario, his buddy in high school, had joined their group, and so did Andrew even if he was a batch ahead and had other friends who were juniors. Then of course there was Katie and Megan. And Chris. They were six in all, give or take a few other friends from high school who would drop by their bench or join them on the weekends.
Chris stomped off to his theology class, berating himself for being so volatile around Katie. She was just telling him her plans and what she and Andrew had recently talked about. Katie and Chris always did that—shared what went on in their lives, in their minds, in their hearts. Okay, maybe not in their hearts anymore. At least not what was in Chris’s heart.
For the past three years, he had made good on his promise to Katie and stayed away from girls. He used to date them randomly, one after the other, without properly breaking up with any of them. This caused Katie loads of grief because the girls in her high school would demand to know what was going on. Since they couldn’t talk to Chris because he wouldn’t answer any of their calls, texts, or e-mails, they zeroed in on their next best target—his best friend who was right there in school, easily accessible, anytime. But it hit him hard when Katie suggested he was probably treating the girls that way because he was still recovering from a big hurt in the past.
Chris was only fourteen when Iris broke his heart. After that, he didn’t think he could trust another girl again. Yes, they were fun to hang out with, but when the girls started talking about their feelings and about going to the senior ball together (a big sign that there was a lot more to what was going on than just hanging out), he’d make a quick exit and find another girl to hang out with—someone who would hopefully not talk about senior ball.
So when the time came for that dreaded senior ball, Chris asked Katie to be his date. Andrew didn’t mind. He said he knew they were best buddies anyway and that Katie was hopelessly and irrevocably his (she giggled at this, Chris rolled his eyes). But that night, something changed.
Chris was definitely looking forward to spending senior ball with his best friend. No awkwardness, no worries about the future (no annoying talk about “what will happen to us if we go to different colleges?”), no silences where they wouldn’t know what to say to each other, and the best ever—no tension because there were unspoken feelings bursting to break free. Theirs was an easy friendship, one he was perfectly happy and comfortable with. And he was looking forward to having the best night of his high school life.
But when he waited for Katie on her living room couch, one he had practically grown up sitting on, with her three-year-old sister Summer running circles around him and wearing her own puffy pink gown and tiara (for a split-second, he hoped Katie didn’t have one on but realized he couldn’t care less if she did), he felt a certain anticipation for the evening. He blamed the TV shows and teen movies Katie had forced him to watch with her for overly hyping up senior ball, but he couldn’t do anything about it now. He felt the hype. He wanted the hype.
When Katie entered the living room in her midnight blue gown that showed off her shoulders and clung to all the right places, places he had never noticed before, his breath caught in his throat. Her hair was all wavy and loose down her back but it looked like she had done something to it because it looked shinier. And she was radiant. Her eyes were sparkling, her lips were glossy—it could have just been the illusion brought on by makeup, but still, he felt as if he were standing next to someone else. Someone he had asked to the ball, not because she was his best friend, but because there was something about her that he wanted to get to the bottom of—because there was something about her that was slowly reeling him in. And at that moment, he realized he wasn’t just anticipating the hype, he was already living it.
He grinned and took out a modest bouquet of pink gerberas his mom had insisted he bring to thank Katie for getting all dressed up because, as his big brother Ethan had said, he was too stupid to get himself a real date. As he looked down at Katie in her three-inch heels—they couldn’t have been anything less because she seemed much taller than she normally was—he couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a real date. No matter what his brother had said.
“Come on! Let’s have our photo taken. We look so good!” Katie took his arm and pulled him before one of his favorite abstract paintings that hung in the front hall. “Mom, Dad, take our picture! I don’t know when else Chris and I are going to look this pretty together!”
Summer was jumping up and down in front of Chris, begging him to carry her. He laughed and scooped her up, glad for the distraction from what felt like his incestuous thoughts. “Here we go. One big happy family.” He grinned as Katie rolled her eyes.
“But we better take one without Summer. Okay, sweetie?” Katie crooned at her sister.
Summer pouted, shook her head vehemently, and clung tighter to Chris’s suit lapels. “It’s okay, Kate. We can take more photos at the ball. Summer’s all dressed up too.”
“Fine, fine.”
Katie’s dad took out his big professional looking camera and snapped several photos of them. When Summer finally let Chris go, he and Katie headed outside to the car. His dad let him take it that night—he had agreed it was a special occasion. And the venue wasn’t that far from where they lived anyway so he didn’t think Chris was going to screw anything up.
Before they entered the car, Chris pulled Katie next to him and snapped a photo of them with his phone. It was a crappy phone and the photo was dark and grainy. But he still had that photo stored in his new phone today. Whenever he felt like crap, which he usually did after hanging out with Katie and Andrew, he took a look at that photo and remembered that night. The night that changed everything.
AS HIS THEOLOGY teacher droned on about social sin and how they were all guilty of it one way or the other, Chris started to do what he had been doing ever since he realized he would never see Katie the same way again. He started drawing them together.
He had started by just sketching her. He had so many memories to choose from. He drew her as a little girl, bossing him around in her flower girl dress, demanding a kiss that he was too afraid not to give. He drew her riding a bike, a baby pink helmet on her head, her bright eyes narrowed in concentration. He drew her in her ball dress. He had several drawings of her in her ball dress. Then he progressed to drawing Andrew and the different ways he would meet his death. His favorite was Andrew getting swallowed whole by a shark and being belched out as a complete skeleton. But his most recent sketches were of the two of them together. At first, he did a quick copy of their photo, the one he had on his camera. He didn’t particularly enjoy drawing himself, but he wanted to see himself next to her—and not just as her best friend either. Then he drew them holding hands, with his arm around her, with him down on one knee (that one went straight into the trash). He would die if Katie or anyone else found his stash. Ethan came pretty close one day when he was looking for socks in Chris’s underwear drawer. Yes, not a very imaginative place to hide his sketchbook, but he didn’t think that their helper Manang Cora looked at his drawings when she put his socks away. At least he hoped she didn’t.
That afternoon in class, he started sketching Katie sitting on their bench. But instead of him leaving in what could embarrassingly be described as a huff, he was sitting next to her, sketching her as she smiled at him. He had never actually done that. He was afraid that if he started drawing her while she looked on, all his feelings would be as clear as if he had written them out on the white page in thick, black ink. He felt the most vulnerable when he was drawing�
��especially now that he had something to hide.
All of a sudden, the page was pulled out from under him. Afraid that it was his theology professor who had caught him, Chris’s head snapped up, his heart banging against his chest, his mouth filling up with unspoken apologies. Then he heard a soft, disbelieving, “Whoa, man” next to him. His friend Mario leaned in as the teacher turned to write on the board and whispered, “This looks like you and Katie.”
Blast his passion for drawing faces. He should have just made them look like any generic boy and girl. He could have even penciled in the features later and just left them blank for now. But faces were his favorite. He carefully drew each line as if he were crafting delicate Murano glass. And he loved drawing Katie’s features. He memorized everything about her face, even the slight dimple on the left side of her face next to her mouth, the light sprinkling of freckles on her right cheek—the freckles she hated and slathered sunscreen on every day so they wouldn’t darken like her grandmother’s—and her expressive, sparkling eyes. No matter what scene he was drawing her in, he always remembered how her eyes had looked that night of the ball. He yanked the page from Mario and mumbled something about Katie asking him to draw it for her.
“I don’t think you want Andrew to see this,” Mario raised his eyebrows, a knowing look on his face.
Chris cringed. No he didn’t want Andrew to see it. Or Katie. Or anyone else. He wanted to kick himself for forgetting that Mario was his seatmate in theology class. He was so focused on how bad he had felt that all he wanted to do was draw.
While he was stuffing his drawing into his backpack, Mario whispered, “I didn’t know you liked her.”
“Who said anything about liking her?” But Chris knew it was futile. Mario knew him pretty well. And anyone who saw the sketch would easily put two and two together.
Only A Kiss Page 6
