Kiss Cam

by Kiara London

  I walk between Lenny and Jasper, hands deep in my coat pockets and arms occasionally brushing against theirs. It’s funny how people pass by you in an unrecognizable blur until the day you feel like you’ve done one of them wrong, and then that person seems to pop up everywhere as an ugly reminder of what you’ve done.

  That happens.

  As we turn the final corner at our lockers, Elaina pops out, and her eyes grow in what looks like embarrassment when she sees us. It’s a slightly uncomfortable exchange. She shuffles a bit to the right, catches eyes with me for a moment, then Jasper, gives us a tight smile, and then trots off.

  As soon as she has passed, Jasper lets out a breath and rubs at his jaw with his fingertips. “Well, that wasn’t very fun,” he comments.

  Lenny snorts. “Could’ve been worse. She could’ve flipped you off or slapped June. . . .”

  I swat Lenny’s arm. “I didn’t do anything.”

  I say that, but I don’t quite believe it. Jasper really didn’t do a good job of explaining how the breakup occurred or why, but Lenny has been making jokes all morning about my part in the breakup—which doesn’t exactly make a person feel so good.

  “You exist,” he replies, and shoots a look at Jasper, who rolls his eyes.

  “You know what?” Jasper says. “You try getting over someone by means of another girl, and tell me how that works out for you.”

  “You know,” Lenny starts, “I told you it was a bad idea, but you didn’t listen to me, so don’t go throwing that in my face. If I wanted to get over someone, I would do it the right way.” He crosses his arms and nods a little at his statement.

  I raise my eyebrows. “And what exactly would that look like?”

  Lenny laughs under his breath like I’ve told a joke. Then he wraps an arm around my shoulder and holds his other hand in front of my face. “One,” he says, sticking out his thumb, “binge watch every season of Desperate Housewives. Two”—his pointer finger juts out—“eat my feelings. And three,” he says while his middle finger joins the others, “fall madly in love with Eva Longoria all over again because she can’t break my heart. Fin.”

  “That’s not healthy,” Jasper mutters.

  “Uh-huh.” Lenny shakes his head and motions between the two of us as he breaks off from our group to find his locker. “And you two are just a prime example of healthy. I think I’ll take my chances.”

  He turns on his heel and disappears into a mass of students near his locker, leaving Jasper and me.

  We take a few strides in silence, and then he takes a sidestep and follows an invisible trail to his locker. I pause for a second and then decide to follow him. When he sees I’ve joined him, he checks over his shoulder and then looks back at me with a raised eyebrow.

  “Is Milo over there or something?”

  I shake my head. “No, I just wanted to ask you something.”

  He shrugs. “Shoot.”

  I feel weird asking this, because it sounds self-interested and snobbish, but I need to know so that I can treat the situation accordingly. I don’t want to make Elaina feel uncomfortable when she sees me. She was nice to me, and I don’t want to feel like I betrayed her.

  “When you and Elaina broke up—”

  “She told me she didn’t want to be my second choice. She knew, June, but it wasn’t your fault.”

  “It just doesn’t make sense,” I insist, mind stuck replaying the conversation I had with Elaina the night of the Winter Semiformal. “I told her there was nothing going on between us. She looked relieved. She even said she was being paranoid.”

  Jasper stops picking at books in his locker and grabs my hand to stop it from tangling in one of my curls. “We had a fight, and then she found you and me too close for comfort in an empty hallway. She wanted to believe you, but I’m the one who ruined it, okay? The whole thing was my idea, and it was never honest. I finished it. It’s all over now.”

  “We did a bad thing,” I mutter, pulling my hand from his. “We involved another person. Elaina was nice, Jas.”

  Jasper puts his hand on my shoulder instead and takes a deep breath. “She’s okay. I called her last night. It’s just a little . . . Well, you know how breakups go.”

  “I’m not on good terms with my ex-boyfriends,” I remind him.

  “You have bad taste,” he counters.

  “Not entirely.”

  His eyes meet mine for a second and my stomach flutters. Then he ducks his head and releases an airy chuckle. Pushing my shoulder back, he mutters, “Get ready for class, Juniper. Your flirting sucks.”

  I bite my lip to stop a smile from spreading across my face. “Sure it does,” I taunt, and nudge my shoulder into his arm as I walk away.

  After school on Thursday, we pile into Jasper’s room and prepare for our Q&A video of the week. Lenny immediately flops down onto Jasper’s mattress and pulls out his cell phone. I sit down beside his feet and watch Jasper cross the room to grab his laptop off his desk.

  We’ve all been getting back into the swing of things since Jasper and Elaina broke up. Jasper was right about Elaina being a roadblock even in our friendship since New Year’s. Since they’ve broken up, it’s easier for us to be together without feeling guilty. He’s been throwing an arm around my shoulder more casually, talking to me more freely, and just being more Jasper as a whole.

  VlogIt has been informed of the breakup as well. Jasper vlogged about it, making it clear he didn’t want to hear any more hate toward Elaina, which I guess has been a trend since they started dating. She threatened Jasiper, so our fans naturally hated her and blamed her for ruining Kiss Cam.

  We’ve all been feeling really bad lately. We’ve been doing a lot of lying in our vlogs to hide our personal lives. Lenny pointed out how we started WereVloggingHere as a video diary to log our lives for our future selves, and how our videos have stopped following our original intentions. So that pushed us to clear things up for our sake.

  So things finally feel like they did a few months ago. Like the first time we got a kissing request: Thursday, an ask day. Lenny and I are staying out of Jasper’s way. He’s setting up the camera to face his bed. It kind of looks like we’re going to film cheap porn. Jasper smiles at me like he knows what I’m thinking. I wink back.

  This is us. This is WereVloggingHere.

  Lenny sits up suddenly and scoots to the edge of the mattress. “What’s today’s ask theme?”

  “Twenty questions,” I say, and pull my legs up, crossing them neatly under me. “Hopefully all innocent questions.”

  “Yeah, right.” Jasper rolls his eyes at me. “We’re too hot to get innocent questions.”

  Lenny’s eyes crinkle as he chokes back laughter, and he buries his face in his hands.

  “You’re so full of it,” I say, shaking my head at Jasper.

  Jasper lets out a short laugh and steps back from the tripod. “Check your e-mails more than once a week and you’d see the love letters they write us.”

  I watch him turn on the box lights and shake my head again when he looks back at me. “I have never gotten a love letter. The only e-mails I receive are ones asking if I can confirm Jasiper or whether Lenny is single.”

  “What?” Lenny squawks, sitting up. “They ask you that? Every e-mail I get tells me I’m adorable. Try feeling manly after that.”

  I smile at him, but then my eyes hood. “They totally just use me for information.” I gasp, offended. “I am the third wheel on this channel. You guys get the love and I get the buffer questions.”

  “Our viewers are eighty-seven percent teenage girls, actually,” Jasper says offhandedly, spinning about as he collects the remote and avoids wires in his path. “So it doesn’t surprise me.”

  I sigh and flop back onto his mattress. Lenny leans over me. “You’re only good for Kiss Cam, really,” he teases. “You can only save yourself by bringing it back.”

  I push his face away and sit back up to point at him accusingly. “You two are out to get me,” I whin
e.

  Lenny giggles, and when I glance over at Jasper, he simply bites down a grin and shrugs.

  “Trouble,” I say. “You both are trouble.”

  Jasper falls down on his bed between Lenny and me, laptop in hand. “Oh, Juniper.” He sighs. “You’re paranoid.”

  I lean over to eye them up. Both are wearing mischievous grins, but I can’t tell if they’re just doing it to mess with me or if there’s something going on that I don’t know about. “Just remember, boys,” I say, “the last time you two tag-teamed, it did not end well.”

  Jasper bumps my shoulder with his. “Relax.” He laughs. “It’s really easy to get you going.”

  “Yeah,” Lenny says. “You’ve made it crystal clear that Kiss Cam, or anything related to it, is never happening again.”

  “The subject just needed a new tone, one that doesn’t make you and me cringe,” Jasper adds. “We can joke about it now.”

  I glance between them skeptically one last time, then lean back. “Uh-huh,” I reply slowly, “sometimes a girl has to make sure.”

  “You sure you’re sure?” Lenny asks through a smile.

  “Yep.” I pop the p and place my hands in my lap. “Let’s start this video, then.”

  Jasper nods and then hits the record button.

  After the video, Lenny leaves and I stop at the bottom of the staircase to wait for Jasper. I haven’t stayed at his house in a while. Lately, I’ve been leaving at the same time as Lenny, just to ease Jasper and me back into our routine. Today I want to stay, though. I’m tired of waiting to make sure we’re all healed, but I want to make sure it’s okay with Jasper first.

  Jasper notices me halfway down the stairs and grins. “Are you staying, then?” he asks.

  “Is that okay?”

  When he reaches the bottom, he grabs my wrist and pulls me along after him. “It’s always okay.”

  He leads me into the living room, where I immediately find my spot on the couch and make myself comfortable. He sits down beside me for a moment, and then he stands back up.

  “Actually,” he says, “I want to show you something.”

  Then he darts out of the room. I sit a little straighter and duck back to see where he went. I don’t know if he meant for me to follow him, so I stay put, fingers restless in my lap. The last time he did this he came back with a love declaration and jewelry. The memory makes my stomach uneasy, and I pinch my fingers together in my lap.

  I can’t think about that now.

  He returns after a minute with an envelope in hand. He tosses it in my lap and sits down beside me, watching as I turn it over and slide my fingers under the flap. What I pull out is an invitation to the next VlogIt meet-and-greet.

  “It’s this summer,” he says. “Lenny already knows.”

  The last meet-and-greet we did with the VlogIt family was fun. Lenny’s parents chaperoned since it was held in L.A., and we got to meet our viewers and other vloggers. It was a three-day thing full of speeches and pictures and ding-dong-ditch on our hotel room door. But with that came viewers who asked us to kiss for the camera or shout out to their friends and family. Lenny would be there to politely turn some suggestions down, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be any less awkward— especially this time.

  “Oh,” I say, and purse my lips as I read the remainder of the invite.

  “Yeah . . .” He trails off. I hand the invite back to him.

  A silence settles between us, not an awkward one like I would expect, but a silence that begins when both parties are lost in thought.

  I love that we’re back to having our regular old friendship. It’s comfortable and it’s fluid, but the thing is, it’s not the same. We’ve changed, but since this past weekend we’ve been pretending we haven’t, and I don’t know why. I guess we’ve been so eager to get around the roadblock that was Elaina that now that we’ve gotten around it, we’re ignoring the fact that we have to take a new route to do so.

  We can joke all we want, tease as much as we like, and beat around the bush for as long as we want, but at the end of the day, I know this change is on our minds and we need to do something about it while we have the chance. Otherwise, everything we went through will have been for nothing.

  He’s worried about pressure at the meet-and-greet, but what if there wasn’t any pressure? What if we stopped hiding from each other, from our viewers?

  My patience has reached its end.

  “Jas,” I say, turning my head to look at him

  “Hm?” he hums but doesn’t look up from the envelope he is now twirling between his fingers.

  “What if we stopped being pathetic?” I ask.

  He stops playing with the envelope and looks up to meet my eyes. “What?”

  “Our viewers only pressure us because they’re in fantasy Jasiper land,” I tell him. “They’d stop pressuring the moment Jasiper became real. They try so hard because they believe in us, but the hard work would be done if we believed in ourselves for once.”

  “June.” Jasper squeezes his eyes shut. “Don’t be rash.”

  “I’m not being rash, Jas. I’m being serious,” I say, voice steady.

  “You know I love you,” he says, eyes snapping open. He places a hand on my wrist. “But being together for the sake of the fans or because you’re lonely doesn’t do anything for us. You don’t love me, June. Sometimes I think you do, but then your reasoning doesn’t match up.”

  I make a frustrated noise in the back of my throat and stand up to pace in front of him, hands scrubbing my face and legs weak but unable to stop moving. I don’t know what more he wants from me. I’ve tried to make him see how I feel in every way that I know, and he shoots me down every single time. He’s still scared of me.

  “What do you want me to say, huh?” I ask as I push my hands through my hair and turn toward him. “What do you need to hear from me? You don’t believe I love you? Okay,” I say, and clench my teeth. “You sing in the shower, but not cool guy songs. You sing Adele, and you sing her music really off-key. I love that. I think it’s hilarious. You never eat the crust of your pizza, which is really weird, but I kind of think it’s adorable. You have one hundred and eighty-four comic books, I’ve counted. Sometimes I steal them from you and read them so that when you talk to me about them, I can keep up. Freshman year, you told me you liked the new perfume I was wearing. I haven’t stopped buying it since. You don’t wear body sprays if you can help it, but you smell good anyway and I’ve never understood that. I’m the only girl you’ve ever let see you shirtless. I don’t know why that matters, but it makes me feel important. You never pick up the phone when your dad calls; you stopped caring about him the moment he left. You’re good at that, forgetting people. Oh, and do you want to know why ‘Drops of Jupiter’ is my favorite song? Because you used to sing ‘Drops of Juniper’ to me to be obnoxious, but I secretly fell in love with that version of the song. Actually, I just secretly fell in love with you, but you never seemed interested. You’d always chase after some other girl after I convinced myself that maybe you had a thing for me. So don’t blame me for not picking up the memo. I’ve been paying attention all along. You’ve been the tease, and I learned how to convince myself that I was imagining things. You love me? Okay. Well, I love you, too. Believe me, I do.”

  I’m shaking, and I don’t realize I’ve been talking fast and tripping over my words until I’m finished speaking. Jasper sits tensely on the couch in front of me, eyes wide and a little startled, jaw unhinged, looking like he just got slapped. When he doesn’t say anything, I decide I’m done waiting and march out of the room, eyes stinging.

  I’ve done everything I can. There’s a hundred ways to show someone you love them? Well, screw that. You can show someone you love them, shout it at them even, but sometimes they still ignore you. Sometimes they still convince themselves you’re lying to them. With some people, a single heartbreak can ruin your chances completely. That’s when you need to force yourself to walk away, no matter how muc
h it hurts, because if you hang around waiting, you might be there forever.

  At his door, I pull my shoes on and grab my jacket off the rack, hoping to hear him call my name or appear around the corner, but he doesn’t, so I yank open the door and slam it shut behind me.

  Halfway across the street, I’m beginning to jog, anxious to get home and cry tears of frustration into my pillow, when I hear Jasper yelling my name from his front door. But for me, it’s already too late. I don’t stop.

  “Juniper!” he calls again.

  I shake my head angrily and step over the lip of the curb, just a few feet from my front door.

  “Hey!” This time his voice is closer, this time a hand yanks my arm back, stopping me from climbing the steps to my porch.

  I turn and yell right back, “What?”

  “You really love me?” he asks.

  I wipe away a tear that managed to escape my eye and sniff back a sarcastic answer. I could say, Were you not there two minutes ago? I said that, you idiot! or Are you hard of hearing these days, Jasper, darling? Because I’m getting really sick of repeating myself like a broken record. But I don’t say either one of those things. I know what he’s looking for.

  I say it slowly, enunciating each word. “Truly, madly, deeply.”

  “Okay,” he mutters, nodding. “Okay . . .”

  He looks at me for a moment, eyes sweeping over my face. Then I extend my hand out to reach for him, and he ducks forward, pushing my hair between his fingers and cupping the base of my head to brace me as he presses his lips to mine. We pull each other closer, kissing like we’ve been without each other for too long. Finally, we pull back a few inches to catch our breath.

  “If you say Kiss Cam, I swear to God . . .”

  “It’s real.”

  FIVE MONTHS LATER

  WE DECIDE TO come out as a couple at the VlogIt meet-and-greet.

  After dating for five months and seeing how strong we are together, I gave Jasper the okay. It was becoming harder and harder to keep our relationship a secret. Lenny had purposely been leaving Jasiper moments in the vlog when editing.