The Things You Kiss Goodbye

by Connor, Leslie

  I’m sure I stood there giving him a dumbfounded look, at least at first. But I shrugged and said, “Oh. Okay.” So he wanted to have a “guy smoke.” No problem. I watched them move off under a stand of pines about a hundred feet away. Soon, a haze rose over their huddle. Off my mooring, I felt cold. I tucked my hands up into the sleeves of my sweater—still being careful of my wrecked fingers—and looked up at the moon. Music was drowning out the silly singers now. Something danceable filled the air. I swayed a little by myself, tamped down some grass, and fantasized about getting Brady to dance with me. Does anyone dance out here? I wondered. What a great place for it. I stretched my arms out.

  “Nice night, huh?” Tony Colletti was suddenly next to me.

  “Tony! Oh, hey! Yes, it’s awesome. I’m so glad to be out like this—oh, but never say that you saw me here. Please. You know how my father is.”

  “Ooh, yeah,” Tony said, and nodded. “He hasn’t let up on you?”

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “I lied about where I was going tonight, so . . .” I let it hang. I trusted Tony Colletti. Then I distracted him. “Hey, look at that silvery edge that runs all along the tree line.” I pointed up at the moonlight as I stood shoulder to shoulder with him. “It’s like liquid metal.”

  “Like solder,” he said. I laughed. We’d had an industrial arts class together the beginning of sophomore year, and Tony had spent two whole periods helping me put a seam on a metal napkin holder. (I’d been afraid of the torch.)

  “Hey, Tony,” I said. I tilted my head at him. “Is everything all right? With you and your family? When I saw you the first day of school, well, I just had a feeling . . .”

  “Yeah. Well. I guess I kind you blew you off that day. Sorry.” He sighed.

  “No, no. I didn’t mean that you had,” I said.

  “Well, you remember my nonna Regina?”

  “Of course,” I said. The notion that anyone might forget Regina Colletti was laughable. I put a finger in the air and spoke. “We could call her Regina but we were not allowed to call her ‘Nonna’ unless she was our nonna.” Tony laughed. But I remembered my mistake as a little girl. I had thought Nonna was her name so I had called her by it. She’d grabbed me by my wrist and she’d set me straight in front of a room full of people while I blushed like a cinnamon candy. After that, I had been equally scared and mesmerized by her.

  “Does she still live upstairs from you?” I asked.

  “She does. She’s real sick though.”

  “Oh, Tony.” I hesitated then asked, “What is it?”

  “The big C. She’s fighting. But it’s not going so good,” he said.

  “Oh my gosh. I’m sorry. Regina? Really?” I said. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

  Regina Colletti was beautiful—never vulnerable. I’d sensed that even as a little kid. Instead of a Madonna statue, Regina had a statue of a little pissing boy in her yard. He filled up her fountain where the neighborhood cats came to drink. She’d been both queen bee and rebel of that old neighborhood.

  “Hardest part is keeping her cheered up,” Tony said.

  “Hmm . . . well, she always liked a crowd.” I was thinking aloud.

  “You’re right. And she doesn’t have the energy for big parties now, but she likes when people visit. Hey, why don’t you come by?” Tony faced me. “She’d love that!” he said. “Walk home with me one day. I’ll take you up to see her.”

  “Oh, Tony, of course I will.” I heard myself say it, and immediately wanted to backpedal. Regina didn’t even like me. I didn’t want to see her. “I don’t know when—”

  “Hey! Hey, P’teen-uh!” Suddenly, Brady was coming across the toppled grass like his ass was on fire. When he reached us, he put on the brakes and gave Tony a pseudo-convivial nod. “What’s up, man?” he said in that way that lets the person know you don’t really expect an answer. Tony extended his hand, and Brady eyed him before he gripped it.

  “Just catching up. Old friends,” Tony said.

  Brady cupped my elbow. “Come on. Let’s take a walk,” he said. I gave Tony a weak smile and Brady pulled me away, my boots catching on tangles of long grass. He stopped abruptly and gave me a big, territorial kiss.

  My face went hot and my hair prickled. I wiggled out, whispering, “Stop it!”

  “Stop it? Oh, that’s nice. I can’t kiss you?” Our breath mingled in the cold.

  “Not like that.”

  “Like what?”

  I glanced back toward the spot where I’d been talking to Tony Colletti. I lowered my voice way down and hissed at Brady. “Like you’re trying to drench me in piss!” I tried to take a step but it was like that damn grass had me tied down. I swore under my breath and ripped my foot free. I put a few paces between Brady and me. Found a little breathing space of my own.

  Well, Brady got quiet after that, and I guess I did too. We didn’t stay much longer at the glider field. I never got to ask him if he’d dance with me. As we drove along the dark roads toward home, he asked me if I was okay.

  “Yes. Fine.”

  But Brady pulled over and shut off the car. He turned to me. “Look, the thing is, you act so shy all the time,” he began. “It’s like you never talk to anybody. Then you finally do and it’s a guy . . . and it’s that guy, and I don’t know. I don’t think I get that.”

  “Well, first, if you haven’t noticed, I am just a little outside your circle of friends. So, yeah, around them, I feel shy.”

  “Aw, you just have to keep coming out with me. Get to know them better.” He brushed my shoulder with the backs of his knuckles.

  I nodded. “And I will,” I said. “But about Tony, he is an old friend. I already told you that, and now he’s told you that, too—”

  “So what? That means you’re going to talk to him no matter what?” Brady stared forward, maybe looking hurt, I wasn’t sure.

  “Listen, Brady . . .” I thought for a second. “His nonna—his grandma—is super sick. That’s what he was telling me tonight. He just wants me to come see her. It’s nothing more. You and I are rock solid.”

  I leaned across the split seats and got as close to him as I could. He sighed and took my hand—the good one. (Protecting my mashed fingers was automatic for me.) He looked into my eyes and we kissed. I remembered summer, and my throat ached for wanting to roll in reverse, to go back to the way it was when Brady and I had kissed under the rhododendrons in the park. I tucked my face into his chest, breathed him in. He said, “I better get you home before Bampas Dinos sends a goon after me.”

  I broke a little grin. “He doesn’t do things like that,” I said.

  “I wish we stayed longer at the field,” Brady said. “Felt like half a party. We could have found a little camping spot, you know?” He slid his hands inside my jacket, took a tour all over the front of my sweater. He laughed. “You’re cold!” he said. He turned on the car and cranked up the heater fan. “Man, I want you. Did I ever tell you, I’m always wanting you. . . .” he said. “Always, always.”

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  Eleven

  I CALLED TONY OVER THAT WEEKEND AND MADE A PLAN to see Regina on Tuesday. I dreaded it in at least a hundred ways. Surely having cancer was making her even crankier than ever. The one good thing about the pending visit was that Momma and Bampas had agreed that this was a “lovely” thing for me to do. I was released from going straight home one more afternoon.

  But before I had to face Queen Regina on Tuesday, there was Monday. I lied about using the library after school so I could hang with Brady. He asked me to go with him to Jumpin’ Joe’s—best sweet potato fries in town, and walking distance from school. We went Dutch. Brady never had a lot of cash and I had never thought that guys should always buy.

  I thought it’d be just the two of us, but it ended up being six of his friends too. I ordered somewhere in the middle of
the pack, behind Brady. I turned from the counter, balancing the little cardboard boat of hot fries and a root beer, all while thumbing the change and a receipt against the palm of my bad hand. I glanced up to see where Brady was. Instead, I laid eyes on my motor-head, finger-fixer guy—just coming in the door.

  Our eyes locked. I felt a split second rush of something good, like when I am instantly glad to see someone. I might have even started to smile. He raised his chin a hitch as if to say he recognized me. In the next rush, I was not glad to see him. I swallowed hard. He was looking at my hand, of course. No hiding that behind my back—not when what I really needed that day was a third one to carry everything.

  He went up to the counter to order. I took my balancing act to the condiment table. I set it all down, pocketed my change. I broke open a salt packet and shook it over my potatoes until it was empty. Then I looked toward the counter again. He had a coffee cup and at the same second that he brought it to his lips, we caught eyes a second time. I looked away quickly.

  Come on, Bettina, just get to a table, I thought, and I gathered everything up again. Then Brady came up behind me and knocked his knees into the backs of mine. My legs buckled and my drink sloshed onto my hand and into the fry boat. “Oh, don’t do that!” I said. His friends were laughing and I could feel my face flush.

  “Okay, I’m sorry,” Brady said, tilting his head at me a like a contrite little boy. Then he nudged me with his elbow, and my drink spilled again. He had this loud, high-pitched laugh, so there he was, crowing and gathering attention.

  “Brady, come on.” I kept my voice low and tried to give him a good-sport sort of grin. “Stop it,” I said. “Seriously.”

  “What? I didn’t do it again. I did something else!” he teased.

  We sat down and, with my hands in my lap, I used a stack of napkins to mop my sleeve. I went carefully over my swollen fingers, trying to be invisible about it. I looked toward the take-out counter. No cowboy guy. Phew. And yet, I found myself scanning the lot outside the plate-glass window to see if he was getting in a car or just walking away. But he was gone.

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  Twelve

  NOW THAT I HAD SEEN HIM AGAIN, THAT COWBOY STUCK to me like crazy. The light had been strong coming through the glass at Jumpin’ Joe’s. His gray-green eyes were intense, set deep behind an uncommon froth of pale lashes—or that’s what I saw in those few seconds. It was a long way to travel up to those eyes, and it seemed that not just anyone got to go there. My sense of that was moony; I wanted another look. The thought of him passed through my mind every hour or so. He’d been nice. Well, sort of “pissed-off” nice, if that was possible. Even that was interesting. I still had my class ring on his shoestring. I fiddled with it often. I thought about the way I’d walked out of his garage without saying thank you. What a mess I had been.

  So, the next morning I stood, hesitating, in the doorway of the auto shop with a coffee in each hand. I heard a hissing sound and followed the trail of an orange air hose across the cement floor to a car. I could see only his boots until I squatted down.

  “Hey!” I called, and then again more loudly. “Hey!”

  The hissing stopped and the guy rolled out from under the car. He squinted at me. “Hay’s for horses,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. “So original.”

  He shrugged. “So, what are you doin’? Cramming for exams and now you need two coffees to get you started?”

  I smirked. “Naw. I thought one could be for you. If you want it. But I didn’t know how you take it. One’s black, one has cream. You can have either.” I showed him two sugar packets as well, but he ignored those.

  “I’ll take black.” He sat up and took the cup from me. I watched him peel the lid back while his dusty-blond head bowed forward. He took a sip and said, “Ahh. Thank you.” He put his cuff to his bottom lip as if to catch a small spill. All I saw was the perfect, roundish dimple in the center of his square chin. I watched him stand—again, it was a long way up somehow. He was older, but boyish-looking, and cleaner than your usual motor-head, I thought. I should stop staring.

  “Uh . . . thank you,” I said. I looked down at the clean cement floor. “I should’ve said that. The other day.” I looked back up at him. “You were . . . nice to me.”

  He nodded, switched the hot cup from one hand to the other and rubbed his palm against his thigh. “I saw you yesterday,” he offered.

  “I saw you too.”

  “Yeah. Well. I saw you first.”

  I took a drink of my coffee so I could hide an idiot’s smile from him, but instead I laughed and I burned my mouth. Then I tried to hide that too. It didn’t work. He winced for me.

  “Be careful now,” he said. “So . . .” he said. He glanced up at the fluorescent lights above us, then eyed me pretty hard. “That guy you were with at Jack’s yesterday, is he the one who hurts you?”

  “Hurts me? Pfft!” I pulled my chin back, then put the coffee to my lips again.

  He gave me this all-knowing nod that kind of pissed me off. Then he asked me, “How’s the hand?”

  At my side, I flexed my fingers and felt the ache, the thickness from the swelling. “It’s better. That was a dumb accident,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.” He let it go. “So, you got a name?”

  “Yeah. A terrible one,” I said.

  “Come on now. How terrible?”

  I pointed to myself and enunciated: “Bettina.”

  “B-buh-what?” He opened his eyes wide and pretended to choke on his coffee.

  Oh, he was quick. I had to smile.

  “Yep. I know. It’s awful,” I said.

  “So, what do your friends call you?”

  “Bettina.” We both laughed. “Yeah, I keep wishing for a nickname but . . .” I held my shoulders to my ears in a suspended sort of shrug.

  He tilted his head at me. “What could we do about that?” He took it on. “Buh-buh-Betty? Bette? Tina? Ugh. Change a letter? Drop a letter? Bettina, Betweena . . .” He closed one eye at me.

  I shook my head and thought, Oh, please don’t let him say “P’teen-uh.”

  “B-bah . . . Bay . . .” and then as if striking a match, he said, “Beta! Second letter in the Greek alphabet.” He probably had no idea how relevant that was. But he looked very satisfied. “May I? May I call you Beta?”

  “Depends. What may I call you?”

  “What do you wanna call me?”

  I looked him over for about a nanosecond. “Cowboy,” I said, and I didn’t bother to ask if that was okay.

  All through that day, during homeroom, morning classes, and then lunchtime with Brady sitting right next to me, I thought about this nice guy—this Cowboy who’d called me Beta—oh, I liked that. He’d done it in a matter of seconds; I’d been waiting for a nickname most of my life.

  Just before I’d left the garage, he’d said, “You know I was kidding, right? It’s not really that bad—your name.” But I wouldn’t let him take it back.

  I wished the Not-So-Cheerleaders would call off afternoon practice so I could go back across the parking lot and playing fields, and through the chain-link fence to see him again. But I had no reason to go see some guy who was, for one minor thing, older than me by years. . . .

  Brady poked my shoulder. “Hey. You spacin’ out?”

  “No.” I straightened my back. I watched him draw a chunk of bread through the gravy on his plate.

  “You want my salad?” he asked. I shook my head. He gave me a handsome grin, put an arm around me, and pulled me close. I went all soft and just a little guilty inside.

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  Thirteen

  “I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW MUCH MY FAMILY AND I APPRECIATE this.” Tony Col
letti bounced along beside me through the crosswalk. I listened to my heavy boot heels making contact with the street. Tony’s shoes must weigh nothing, I thought. “I hope I’m not making trouble for you,” he added. I knew that he meant trouble with Brady.

  “No, I’m glad to do this,” I said. It was at least a half lie, maybe more. I was up for seeing the old neighborhood. In fact, it seemed ridiculous that I hadn’t been back before this. But the prospect of having to hang in Regina Colletti’s apartment this afternoon was making my stomach roll. I was already thinking of ways I could leave.

  But Tony was talking on about the fall mums he was putting into the garden for his nonna to look down on from her bedroom. His voice and his bounce carried me along the increasingly familiar rows of homes and garden Madonnas.

  There was a place in the sidewalk that looked like a broken cracker where the root of an enormous oak had pushed on it for years. That root had been our “home free” spot during games of tag and hide-and-seek. Tony laughed when I took an extra-wide stride to plant my foot on it. The crack also marked the place to turn into the narrow passage between the two-family houses—“up and downs,” I had called them when I was little—and to the stairs that led upward to Regina Colletti’s door. I gripped the white iron railing and followed Tony. With every step, I wondered what I’d find for skin and bones and attitude at the top. Bampas and Momma would want a report at dinner.

  “Nonna? I brought an old friend,” Tony called as he pushed the door open. “Can we come in?”

  I wiped my feet on the little carpet of fake grass that covered the decking while I waited. It would be just like me to piss Regina off at the start, though maybe if I did, she’d want me to leave and all would be done. Hmm. I felt one of my eyebrows pump upward.