Kiss Me Like You Missed Me

by Taylor Holloway

  Ward slammed the door to his room in answer. Once he was gone, I looked at Lucas in a panic.

  “You’re screwed,” Lucas pronounced. He picked up his cereal bowl to drink the milk, seemingly unconcerned about my fate.

  “I have to figure out a way to get out of this date,” I told Lucas, scared shitless. “I think she has a serious crush on me, man.” I said nothing of my feelings for her. My need for self-preservation was too strong in that moment.

  Lucas drank his cereal milk—a revolting habit if there ever was one—and then put down the bowl to stroke his nonexistent beard thoughtfully. “Shit,” Lucas eventually said, shaking his head. “This is going to be complicated.” Which meant he was going to help. He liked complicated. Lucas rose from his desk chair and slumped down onto our tired, second-hand couch. It groaned under his weight. I knew how the old couch felt. “We need a plan.”

  Even though I hated what I was about to do, I couldn’t figure out another way to deal with my current predicament. It was this, or murder. In the second I had to decide, I made the only choice I had available to me. And I truly didn’t want to be murdered by my best friend. So, Lucas and I sat down around a pizza and six pack and we came up with a plan. Project Kate Date was born.

  11

  Kate

  Present day…

  I was glad I had to work the following evening, because it gave me something to do other than dodging texts from Emma or obsessing over the kiss. I threw myself into work and let it carry me through the next four hours. The good thing about working in a bar is that no amount of work ever really feels like enough. There’s always something that needs doing.

  By the time I surfaced again around ten, it was only because Ward texted me while I was working on our tax returns and asked me to come meet him in the main room.

  Predictably, Ward was behind the bar with Lucas sitting in front of him. Less predictably, Cole was right there as well. I swallowed hard, put a smile on my face, and told myself to act normal.

  “What’s up?” I asked in a too-high voice. Cole looked especially good tonight. His hair was pushed back from his forehead and it looked so soft and shiny. I wondered for the one millionth time where his family was from. His smooth, tan skin was too olive to be Irish like Ward and me, and his handsome features were ambiguous enough that he could be almost anything from Hawaiian to Turkish. His people, wherever they came from, were hot.

  Ward grinned at me as I approached. “Can you hook Cole up with your girlfriend Tiffany?”

  I blanched. My friend Tiffany was beautiful, single, smart, and bound to jump at the chance to meet a hot, successful guy like Cole. I’d rather gargle glass than see her have him. “What?”

  “Cole needs to find a place to live,” Ward added. “Isn’t Tiff a realtor?”

  My brain caught onto what Ward was actually saying. “To buy a place to live?” I asked dimly.

  “Or maybe rent,” Cole interjected. “I haven’t decided exactly what to do yet, but I’m determined to figure it out. I’m here to stay and need to find the right fit.” He was looking at me intently, and I wondered if his words were a double entendre. My heart skipped.

  Lucas, who was watching this whole exchange, was smirking into his citrusy beer like he knew something. Ward was as oblivious as ever. I frowned at all of them.

  “Tiff only works with people looking to buy in east Austin, that’s her specialty,” I managed to spit out. “Do you want to live there?”

  Cole shrugged. “I don’t know. I was thinking that I should probably look all over.”

  “Ok, well I can text you her number. She can hook you up with somebody good.” I shifted uncomfortably as he smiled appreciatively.

  “Thanks,” he replied politely. He was a better actor than me, or else he didn’t have any trouble pretending like we hadn’t passionately kissed the last time we saw each other. I could feel a blush spreading over my cheeks already.

  I didn’t think I could hold together for much longer. Standing here having a regular, boring conversation was making me feel lightheaded. Just twenty-four hours ago, Cole had kissed me. Even now, all I could think about was the feeling of his lips on mine. The weight of his hands on my body. His intoxicating smell. The way he felt like he belonged to me…

  “Is Tiff the hot Latina girl with the red hair and all the tattoos?” Lucas asked, ripping me out of my daydream.

  I nodded at him and frowned. “Yeah. Do you want her number, too?” That would be an interesting pairing to say the least. Lucas did have quite the documented preference for redheads. I couldn’t actually recall him dating women with any other hair color.

  He looked like he was giving it serious consideration, even though my voice had been entirely sarcastic. “Nah, I’ll let Cole have the first shot at her. Once he strikes out, I’ll swoop in all gentleman-like and ride off into the sunset with her.” He was doing an impression of Cole’s lilting Arkansas accent, and all three of them laughed. Ward and Lucas also fist-bumped at this declaration of strategy.

  I rolled my eyes at them. Lucas had no game whatsoever, and I knew for a fact that he was still sobbing into his pillow about his ex-girlfriend. Little did Lucas know, Tiff could eat him for breakfast. She was nobody’s rebound fling, either. She was the woman men needed to rebound from. She went through men’s hearts like I went through sunglasses: the ones I didn’t misplace, I crushed to smithereens.

  “Ok, well I gotta’ get back to the office,” I told the trio, backing out of their conversation. “I’m doing our quarterly taxes.”

  “How’d we do?” Willie interjected from down the bar. He’d owned this bar for a good thirty years before Ward bought it, and still acted like it belonged to him when it suited him.

  “Ward did well,” I said sweetly. “You and I had less impressive revenues.”

  Willie shook his head and grinned. “You don’t know what I pulled in last year. I don’t report my cash tips. Besides, I’ve got investments.”

  “Yeah,” Ward teased, “Willie’s been putting a lot of capital into the bank of Nancy lately. He’s excited to start collecting dividends any night now…”

  Willie’s cheeks turned a darker color where they emerged from his whiskery beard, but he didn’t deny it. The fact that he was seeing his ex-wife again was something of a running joke in the bar these days. Unlike Ward, I actually liked Nancy quite a bit. She was an old, crazy hippie, just like Willie. The last time I’d seen her, she had orange and green streaks in her hair.

  “I think it’s sweet that you and Nancy are reconnecting,” I told Willie. “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s got it in her head to move back to Lubbock,” Willie admitted, looking saddened and confused. “We barely got out of that godforsaken town with our sanity intact. I don’t know why she’d want to go back.”

  Whether Willie and Nancy actually escaped west Texas with their sanity intact was up for debate, but the answer was still fairly clear. “Doesn’t your son’s family still live there?”

  Willie nodded. “Yeah.” His voice was stubborn. “God knows why.”

  “That whole town smells like cow shit,” Cole remarked. Ward nodded in disgusted agreement.

  “That’s only when the wind is from the southeast,” Willie explained, “since that’s where the feedlot is for the dairy. Forty thousand head of cattle don’t smell nice, but that’s not even the worst of it. When the wind blows from the other direction you get the hell-on-Earth Sulphur smell off the oil fields. You do get used to it after a while.”

  Lubbock sounded like a delightful place to live.

  “Perhaps someone just used a bit too much polish on the 2008 Big 12 South Division Co-Championship trophy,” Lucas offered, earning him a look of treasonous disgust from the other three.

  “I think you mean the smell of Aggie defeat,” Cole corrected. The rivalry between Texas A&M and the University of Texas football programs was strong.

  “Well,” Ward added, “you know what they say: Lubbock or l
eave it.”

  I used the moment of ensuring laughter to make my way back to the office. Not fifteen minutes later, however, a knock on the open door made me look up. Cole was looking at me expectantly from the hallway.

  “Can I come in?”

  I nodded. “Um, sure.” My voice sounded shaky in my own ears.

  “I have a proposition for you,” he said, settling into the chair in front of the desk.

  There was probably a really snappy answer I could have given right then, something clever and witty, but I couldn’t think of it. All I could do was stare. Eventually, Cole blinked at me and continued.

  “I think we should go out on a date,” he said confidently. “A real date. We need a total reset on the past. What do you think?”

  My stubborn heart screamed gleefully but I looked down at the tax documentation in front of me and tried to play it cool. A very real part of me still hadn’t forgiven him for what happened in college.

  “I think you give yourself a lot of credit,” I said. “What makes you think I even still like you? You had your shot back in college.”

  “I was an idiot back in college,” he replied. His voice was earnest. “Forgive me?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  12

  Kate

  Six years earlier…

  He picked me up at ten past eight on Friday, and every second he was late took a bite out of my self-esteem. I answered the door in a blue and white striped dress with a hi-low hemline and a halter neck that I thought treaded the perfect line between sexy and cute. In addition to the dress, I was wearing kitten heels, my one strand of real pearls, and the world’s biggest smile.

  Cole looked like he’d spent the afternoon doing yard work. He was wearing cargo shorts and a stained wife beater tank top. He had on crocs. Fucking crocs! I looked at him in silent dismay. This was how he’d dressed for our date? He’d texted and said to dress nicely. I’d tried, so why couldn’t he?

  He’d also asked if I still liked daisies, so I was half expecting some. But he was empty handed. I swallowed my disappointment. He certainly didn’t have to bring me flowers.

  “You look beautiful,” Cole said wide eyed, and then looked like he regretted the compliment. He dropped his gaze to my feet and stayed there for some time.

  “Thanks,” I said tightly, not understanding what was going on. He seemed so standoffish and uncomfortable all of a sudden. It seemed like he didn’t want to look at me. I followed him out to the truck and let myself into the passenger seat when he didn’t move to open the door. His truck was filthy inside and out. It smelled like something had died in it.

  We drove in almost complete silence to our destination. Every time I tried to make conversation, Cole would start to engage with me like usual and then trail off and frown. Eventually, I gave up and stared out the window in confusion. This wasn’t going well so far.

  The easy chemistry that had always been there between us was gone. The way he was behaving was like he was trying to be rude and couldn’t quite manage to pull it all the way off. The result was excruciatingly awkward.

  Cole drove us to part of downtown that I’d never been to or seen before. It looked ok. The restaurant was just your average, boring Applebee’s. I wasn’t particularly impressed, but we were starving college students, right? Money was tight. I wasn’t disappointed, either. I’d grown up poor enough that any restaurant where the food didn’t come in a big paper bucket felt like a fancy restaurant.

  The restaurant was ok inside, and we sat down in a booth. I mentioned that I’d eaten Applebee’s a lot as a kid when my dad came around and decided he wanted to be ‘cool dad’ for a few days, so it actually had a special place in my memory. Cole shot me a pitying look, ordered a beer, and then pulled out his phone.

  I blinked at him for a moment or two before shaking my head. If it had been anyone but Cole, I would have snapped at him. This date would have ended right there. I would have told him off for ignoring me like this on a date, but I just couldn’t. I still believed that somehow this date would turn out ok. I ate my very mediocre chicken tenders in relative silence while Cole continued to ignore me. He barely even looked at me the entire time. He seemed more focused on his beer, of which he drank three during our thirty-minute meal.

  After dinner, I paid for my own food without Cole asking. I was ready to go home, but he said we were going to meet up with Lucas and his date for the evening. I almost demanded to be taken home but couldn’t make myself snap at Cole. He almost seemed disappointed that I wasn’t protesting. We walked a few blocks to a bar I’d never heard of. The hulking doorman asked for my ID, and when I produced it, he looked at me like I was an idiot.

  “You can’t come in,” he said slowly, articulating every word so I would be sure not to misunderstand. “This is a twenty-one and up club.” He pointed at a sign to his right that announced the age requirements in English and Spanish, just in case I had some sort of hearing impairment or language barrier.

  I looked over at Cole in confusion, who pulled me aside.

  “Do you have a fake ID or something?” he asked me. “I forgot that you were only eighteen.”

  I didn’t see how he could have forgotten that since he knew I was a freshman. He’d known my age for years. I shook my head in disbelief. “What? No. I don’t have a fake ID.” I wasn’t really a hard-partying type, and I wouldn’t even know where I’d buy one. “There are lots of places we could go that are eighteen and up…”

  “Look,” the bouncer said grumpily, “get out of the line or produce an ID. No ID, no entrance to the club.” He paused and looked me up and down, “Unless you’re working, I mean. Some of the girls are under twenty-one. Are you a stripper?”

  Cole brought me to a strip club?! I was too stunned to be angry. This entire date had been totally surreal, and this was just the fucked-up cherry on top.

  “N-no. I’m not,” I managed to stutter out. “I’m not a stripper.”

  The beefy guy shrugged. “Well then you can’t come in. Sorry.”

  Just then, Lucas arrived with his date. “Hi Cole, hi Katie,” I winced at the nickname. “This is Amy.” His date was a small, somewhat scary looking redhead with a lip ring and a lot of very poorly inked tattoos that looked like they might have been done in a prison somewhere. She smiled to reveal one of those weird, split tongues that people get done at tattoo parlors when they’re—presumably—on drugs.

  “Hi Cole. Nice to meet you Katie. Are you two ready to get totally trashed?” she asked us. “I’ve been pregaming a bit,” she admitted with a wink, “but I’m sure you can catch up.”

  “It’s Kate,” I corrected softly, but I didn’t think anyone heard me.

  “Kate’s got an issue,” Cole said. He looked at me and I felt like it was my fault. “She’s underage.”

  Amy rolled her eyes and tugged at her fishnet stockings. “Well I’m going inside. Since I work here, I get half price drinks. You two can go to Chuck-E-Cheese with baby Katie if you want.” The way she twitched her ass back and forth as she stomped off made me suspicious that she was doing it on purpose.

  Lucas and Cole both stared at me as Amy walked inside.

  “Dude,” Lucas said to Cole in a stage-whisper, “I’m trying to seal the deal here with Amy. Don’t cockblock me with your jailbait date.”

  Cole looked at me, then at Lucas, then back at me. He didn’t say anything. I sighed. Even now, I didn’t want to disappoint him. I ought to be angry, but I was just stunned and sad.

  “I, um, I’ll just call an Uber and go home,” I told him. “Go have fun with your friend.”

  I made it only halfway down the block before Cole caught up with me. He grabbed my elbow and swallowed hard when I turned to look at him. There were tears in my eyes, and I couldn’t very well hide them now. He stared at me, shook his head, and then grabbed my hand.

  “I’m so sorry Kate. I thought this was a good way to push you away,” he said. “But I don’t want to. Not like this. I’ve
got to tell you the truth.”

  13

  Kate

  Present day…

  “Oh please. I forgave you a long time ago,” I admitted. I chewed on my bottom lip for a moment in indecision before continuing. “Call me crazy, but I just don’t want to be humiliated again.”

  Cole sighed and shifted in the chair like it was poking him in the back. “I never meant for you to be humiliated.”

  “Are you sure?” I challenged, arching an eyebrow at Cole. I’d found my anger for the way Cole treated me way back when, although it had taken a while. At least he had the good sense to look ashamed when called out.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right.” He hung his head and stared down at his hands. He ought to be sorry for taking me on the world’s crappiest first date.

  I nodded. The anger evaporated again the moment I saw his unhappiness, just like it had years before. I couldn’t ever seem to stay angry at him, even when he deserved it. “I know you are.” I sighed.

  “Will you give me another shot, Kate?” Cole asked hopefully. He leaned forward in the chair and looked at me eagerly. My heart beat faster.

  “Why?” I asked. There were so many reasons we shouldn’t be together.

  “Because I like you, Kate!” he replied like it was the most obvious thing in the world. His amber eyes reflecting the light in a way that made it look like they were glowing from the inside. “Because you like me.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was soft and vulnerable. “And because I really think we’ve got a shot at something pretty amazing, and I don’t want us to miss out on it this time.”

  “You might not like me once you get to know me,” I warned.

  “That’s a chance I’m really very willing to take. I’d say it’s not very likely. I know I’m going to like you more once I know you.” His eyes sparkled mischievously, and that heat that made me feel breathless was back in them again.