Stuck With You (First Kiss Hypothesis)

by Christina Mandelski

  I’m more than going to make up for it.

  It takes a while before it’s our turn to pull onto the ferry—the summer traffic is bad—but when we finally do and I put it in park, we exchange glances and get out. She’s got a huge smile on her face, and I know I’ve hit the nail on the head here. We walk up the stairs, just like old times, and start looking for dolphins. You can almost always see at least a few and sometimes a lot more than that.

  She’s standing next to me, looking out to the bay, leaning against the rail, but I’ve got her in my peripheral vision. If it was my goal to make her happy, so far, so good. She scoots closer and then wedges herself in front of me. My arms surround her as we look out to the water. I’m happy, too. I lean down and kiss her neck, behind her ear. She shivers and holy hell, how am I gonna make it through this day?

  She pulls my arms closer to her as the boat starts moving, and I take in the salt air that I’ve breathed for years, only this time, it’s mixed with the scent of Catie. Her shampoo, her perfume, whatever it is, makes her smell like the air after a big rainstorm when everything is clean and new.

  That’s even an understatement, I think, as the boat moves on and her back straightens and she points to the first dolphins sighted. There’s a whole pod of them, and she pulls out her phone to take some video.

  Everything does feel new. When I got here Saturday night and walked in on my surprise roommates, I was tired and confused and trying to figure out how I was gonna be okay with this plan for my life. I was supposed to be rediscovering my laid-back self, who was all of a sudden not so laid-back.

  When I saw her, I was mad as hell. Not at her, but at my life—she just happened to be in the way.

  Now this has happened, and I’m glad. I am figuring it out. It would probably be smart to stop meeting up with Professor Jackson and his class—but it’s been hard to say no. He told me again this morning about how it’s not too late to apply. I could still make it there by the start of the school year. I told him thanks again, but it’s too late. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to turn my back on something that makes me feel like I felt tromping through that marsh this morning. It won’t be easy, but I can do it. For her. For my parents. For me. It’s a good path—one that makes sense.

  Catie points to another pod to the right of the ship, their arched backs curving up out of the sparkling water.

  Of course, if I did go to school here, I’d be closer to her, take her to her senior year homecoming and her prom. I’d ask her to everything before the school year even started. I wouldn’t take any chances.

  But that’s not the point.

  “Let’s take a selfie,” she says, and I step out of my brain and come back to my senses. The point is, I’ll be in Florida. She’ll be in Lockhart. Then she’ll be at Northwestern if I have any say in it.

  Today, though, is today. So, I’m gonna take a selfie with this beautiful girl. I hold up the phone and capture us. I wish I could do that to right now, this moment. Freeze it. Make it last forever.

  As the ferry comes into Galveston, I’m staring at the docking mechanism on shore, but I’m still thinking about her. She touches my arm.

  “What’s up?” She tilts her head, worried, waiting for an answer. I’ve been too quiet.

  I’m not about to tell her that I’m thinking about her, at Northwestern. So I lie.

  “The Ike Dike I showed you. That giant gate system to keep out the storm surge? If it all gets approved, it’ll be built around here. It’s a good idea. Professor Jackson did some of the research for the proposal.”

  Her face automatically springs into that serious look—eyes wide and lips pressed together, jaw tense.

  “Caleb. They might be building it while you’re in college. You could watch it being built. Maybe even help out. If you come to school here.”

  I shake my head. “I’ll be in Florida.” I smile again, hoping that convinces her.

  “It’d be nice if it keeps the beaches from ever getting wiped away again,” she says. “The house could still be standing when we’re old.”

  I look back into her eyes. They’re not as serious now. She pulls my arms tighter around her.

  “Then we’ll always have a place to come back to and make out.”

  I laugh, glad she’s thinking of kissing. That’s a good change of subject, and that’s the kind of future I don’t mind thinking about.

  “Sounds like a plan.” I step back and away from her as the boat stops moving, but I take her hand, trying to be optimistic, knowing that none of this is gonna be as simple as she just made it sound.

  We park along the Galveston seawall, which is an actual wall that was built after the hurricane that hit way back in 1900. I wrote a paper on it once in school. Over six thousand people died in that storm—the surge reached up to twelve feet, and every house on the entire island had at least some damage. They started building the wall a few years later to keep that from ever happening again, and now it’s ten miles long.

  Which after Ike we found out wasn’t nearly long enough. The coast dodged a bullet when Harvey hit in 2017, but parts of Houston were devastated with flooding. The point is, hurricanes happen, and they can be monsters.

  I’m glad there are people working on changing the way we survive storms. Would I like to be one of them? Yeah, sure. It would be amazing. Maybe even life changing. But you can’t have everything. Adults say that all the time. I guess since I legally am one as of my last birthday, I need to accept that.

  I take her hand and help her out onto the curb. She’s giving me a look; it’s one that I never saw before yesterday, really, but I’m starting to understand what it means. She steps into my arms, then reaches up and pulls me down to her. We kiss again.

  I like that look.

  When we finally separate, she bites her bottom lip. “Just in case I forget to tell you later, this is the best date ever.”

  I laugh. “It’s barely even started yet.”

  “Still.”

  We walk hand in hand up the seawall and end up at the entrance to Pleasure Pier. She gasps and looks up at me. “Oh my God, no way! Are we going in?”

  “I don’t know—you still like roller coasters?”

  “More than life.” She squeezes my hand, and we spend the next few hours on the pier, which sounds like that place in the old Pinocchio cartoon, where all the kids are drinking and smoking cigars and then they turn into donkeys.

  That was some weird shit.

  But no, the Pleasure Pier on Galveston Island is an amusement park built on an actual pier out over the water. I buy day passes for us, and it’s crowded with vacationers, so a lot of our time is spent standing in line, but it’s okay. We never run out of things to talk about, and she makes me laugh. For as serious and stubborn as she can be, she is also goofy as hell. It’s not a bad way to spend the day.

  While we’re waiting in a long line for our second go-round on the Iron Shark roller coaster, she reaches up and winds her arms up around my neck. “All right. You ready?” she asks.

  “For what?”

  “Two truths and a lie?” she says.

  I reach around her middle and join my hands around her back. “Really?” I still can’t believe we’re doing this, holding each other like this, but it feels a little more real each time.

  “Yep,” she says. “You first.”

  I lift an eyebrow warily. “So what do I gotta do?”

  She gives me the stern warning face. “Gray. It’s not rocket science.”

  “All right,” I say, scratching my stubbly cheek. Thinking. “This isn’t easy. You’ve known me a long time.”

  “Oh, please, we haven’t hung out since practically middle school. Come on, two truths, one lie. Go.”

  “Okay. Number one. I hate roller coasters, always have. Number two. I’ve never been drunk. Number three. I’ve never skipped class.”

  She looks away and scrunches up her nose, thinking. “I know you’d never skip class—your daddy’d kill you. And you’ve
been drunk before. I know this for a fact.”

  I nod. “How’d you know that?”

  She smirks. “You don’t remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  “You sent me a snap the night you graduated. You were holding a beer can and were wearing a cowboy hat.”

  “Oh yeah?” I have no memory of doing that, but I remember the night. I was with friends, mostly my lacrosse team, and yeah, I got drunk. This might be bad. “What did I say?”

  She laughs, raising her eyebrows. “You honestly don’t remember?”

  Okay, I’m getting worried now. “Refresh my memory?”

  “You said you missed me, and you made a big mistake acting like you hated me all these years, and that you hope you get to kiss me one day soon.”

  I laugh nervously. “I did not say that.” Did I?

  She smiles. “Fine. You said ‘Hey, Catie.’ That was it. Not very exciting.”

  “But you didn’t respond?”

  “No way.”

  “No way,” I repeat. Why would she respond to me, the asshole who ignored her for years? I pull her closer to me and stand with my chin on top of her head.

  She pulls back and stares up at me.

  “What?” I ask when she doesn’t speak.

  “Nothing,” she says.

  “Okay. Your turn, come on. Two truths and a lie.”

  She steps out of my embrace and glances at the family waiting in line behind us, then she looks up at me. “Okay.” She swallows hard. “I love Lucky Charms. I love waterslides. I had a huge crush on you from about sixth grade until, like, last year.”

  This one’s easy. “The last thing. I know that’s not true.”

  She smiles shyly and stares up at me with her big blue eyes. “Yeah, it is.”

  “I didn’t know,” I say honestly, although maybe if I had thought about it, I could have figured it out.

  “Oh, I know you didn’t know, trust me—I mean, it took a long time, but I finally took the hint.”

  I reach for her fingers. “Probably around the same time I started crushing on you.”

  Her eyes snap to mine. “On me?”

  I frown. “Yeah. You and Darren? That whole thing about killed me.”

  “Really?”

  I nod.

  “But then you went to Florida. Without saying goodbye.”

  “Right.” I look at the ground.

  “Caleb?” She peers at me, shielding her eyes from the sun.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is this real? I mean, I know you want this today, but what about tomorrow?” She pauses and bites her bottom lip.

  I know I deserve that question, and I know what she’s asking. For years she annoyed me, and I acted like a jerk to her. Now in a few days, I go back to Florida, my head definitely not clear. If anything, I’m more confused than when I got here, but I’m not confused about her. What can I say to convince her?

  “Because if it isn’t real,” she fills the silence, “just tell me. It took me way too long to get over you, but I can do it again. I just need to know.”

  “Truth is,” I start, hoping I have found the right words. “When I saw you at that last Christmas party, I knew I’d made a giant mistake treating you like I did. I mean, you are braver and better and more honest than I’ll ever be, and I didn’t know how to deal with that. So I treated you bad, and I’m really sorry I did.”

  A smile plays on her lips.

  “You know what I’ve been thinking on and off since that party and most of this week?”

  “What?” she asks.

  “I’ve been thinking that you scare the shit out of me.”

  Her nose wrinkles up. “Oh. Yay?”

  “No, you do,” I say. “I think you always have. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. And I don’t know what’s going to happen next—school, your parents, my parents, hell, I don’t know anything. But this—this is good. Catie, I want to be with you. That’s the one thing I know.”

  I pull her close, my hands go to her hair, and I push it behind her ears. I wait to see something in her eyes—faith, trust, the fact that she believes me.

  “Okay?” I say, desperate for her to respond. I make eye contact with the lady behind us in line. She’s older and frowning at me. It’s obvious she’s listening in and thinks we’re ridiculous, but I couldn’t care less. Catie presses against me, and I hold on as tight as I can.

  “Okay.” Then she lifts up on her toes and kisses me, sweetly.

  When the kiss is over, she steps back and squeezes my hand.

  “Caleb, you don’t like roller coasters?”

  I laugh. “Hate them. Wait. Lucky Charms?” I hold a hand over my mouth in mock horror.

  She grimaces and shakes her head. “Nasty.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Catie

  My prediction wasn’t wrong. It was the best date ever in the history of dates, I’m pretty sure. We rode every ride on Pleasure Pier, though we stuck to the milder ones after Caleb admitted that he hates roller coasters, and after he admitted he had a crush on me, too.

  I’m glad I took Sunny’s advice and asked him if this thing we’re doing is real. I liked his answer, and I think I actually believed him.

  We went to Fish Tales, the restaurant across the street, and sat on the second-floor patio with its water view, and I ate my weight in fish and chips.

  We walked around the Hotel Galvez and tried to summon the ghosts (it’s haunted—that’s the rumor anyway, though we didn’t have any luck).

  We got ice cream and walked along the beach, and in one of the little shops we bought two little jade rocks carved into the shape of sea turtles, to commemorate the day.

  As if I could ever forget.

  Now and then, as the day went on, I’d catch a glimpse of his profile—that jaw and the sweet grin, offering it to everyone, not stingy with it at all. Outgoing as he is, he still somehow made me feel like I was the only other person on earth, checking that I wasn’t getting worn out from the heat, buying me a tube of sunscreen because I’m already burnt from the waterslide, holding my hand, making sure I was drinking enough water.

  None of it was too much, though. None of it felt like he was clingy or playing me or insincere. It all felt real.

  At the end of the day, we drive back onto the ferry and roll down the truck windows. Caleb kills the engine, and the two of us sit side by side in the front seat.

  Neither one of us moves. It’s really hot, and the nice breeze out on the open boat deck would feel great, but I don’t care. My heart is racing, and my blood feels like it’s an electric current looking for an outlet.

  Him. He’s the outlet.

  I pivot in my seat, and he does the same, and I don’t know who moves first, but suddenly we connect, our hands, then our lips, and the entire rest of the world is gone.

  We do this until it feels like our heartbeats and breath are one and the same, and I know that sounds impossible. Romantic. Potentially very cheesy.

  What can I say? It is true.

  We’re still kissing when the boat begins to slow down, which means we’re almost back to shore. Caleb pulls away first, eyes never leaving mine, hands on my face. I am drunk on him, swimming in him, floating on those eyes, completely wasted on Caleb Gray.

  Neither of us says a word, but I know there’s a question hanging in the air between us. The boat stops. It’s not long before we’re docked and they’re letting us off the ferry. The cars in front of us begin to move, and he drives.

  I stare at my reflection in the side mirror, hair all messed up from the impromptu make-out session. I have never felt like this before, completely light and totally free. Is this ridiculous? Is it too risky? Is it too soon?

  I don’t care!

  He’s focused on the road, tight-lipped and staring silently forward. I find myself hoping he’s rethinking how far we might let this go. This might be our only chance for a while.

  “What’s up?” I ask him.

  He turns to m
e, and I expect to see a smile, except there’s a crease between his eyes like he’s worried. “What happens tomorrow, like, for real?”

  Okay, so maybe he’s not asking the same question as me. My buzz is instantly killed.

  “Let’s not think about it tonight.”

  I reach out for his hand and squeeze his tightly.

  “That doesn’t sound like you,” he says.

  “Worrying about tomorrow doesn’t sound like you,” I answer.

  “No,” he says. “It doesn’t, does it?” He laughs low. “Maybe I just never cared this much.” He stops at a red light and reaches out, pushing a lock of my hair behind my ear. I lean into his hand. “But I do now. I really do.”

  I face forward. Inside I’m exploding, like I did when I was seven and my parents got me a kitten for Christmas. I was so excited that the cat was terrified of me for at least a month. I don’t want to do the same thing to Caleb. He already admitted I scare him. I need to try to stay calm. It all worked out with Squishy, who loves me as much as a cat can love a human.

  It’s really difficult to keep it all inside, but I manage. “Me, too,” I say. “I care, too.”

  When we get back to the house, he takes poor, dejected Mo out for a walk, and I go to my room to clean up. It was hot in Galveston, and I want to look good for this last night alone. Whatever happens, I want to look good for him.

  I take a quick shower to get off the sunscreen and dried sweat from the day and come back to a text from my mother.

  What did you do in Galveston?

  What?

  Went to pleasure pier. How did you know I was there?

  I look over my shoulder, my eyes scanning the periphery of the room. If this place is bugged, we’re in trouble.

  Tracking app. With Caleb?

  The beginning of anxiety twists at my stomach. When I broke up with Darren, she made me promise that if I was ever thinking about having sex, I should come to her first, and we could talk about it. I had some guilt after that.

  Yup

  She doesn’t answer right away, which immediately worries me.

  What’s going on?

  I have to be very careful with how I reply to her.